Court no-shows need consequences, reports on Philadelphia system say

The Philadelphia criminal-justice system should crack down on fugitives who duck court by jailing them in newly freed-up city prison cells and trying others in absentia, according to a pair of reports commissioned by the state Supreme Court.

"One of the key reasons for Philadelphia's high failure-to-appear rate is that there are few meaningful consequences for defendants who fail to appear," said one report, describing the current system as breeding "a culture of disrespect."

In a companion analysis, experts with the Pretrial Justice Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, interviewed nearly two dozen top justice officials in Philadelphia about the courts' bail and fugitive issues.

The institute said the city courts must impose "meaningful, swift, and certain" punishment on those who skip court and default on bail.

The courts, which took over administration of the bail system 40 years ago, are owed $1 billion in unpaid and forfeited bail.

Cracking down was vigorously endorsed by Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, a former Philadelphia district attorney, and Justice Seamus McCaffery, a former administrative judge in Philadelphia.

"There have to be some consequences for failing to show up," Castille said last week. "Lock them up for five days and see how they feel."

Said McCaffery: "We need to put some teeth back into the system so if people do not show up, absent a reasonable excuse, they'll be put in jail."

In early 2010, the two justices set in motion the review of the fugitive tally and other legal issues in response to an Inquirer series on the city's criminal-justice system.

This has already led to stepped-up efforts to collect bail owed by defendants - the amount collected went from $40,000 to $1.6 million, still a small share of the total.

One part of the Inquirer series, headlined, "Violent Criminals Flout Broken Bail System," reported that Philadelphia faced a fugitive crisis.

The article reported that a staggering 47,000 defendants were loose on Philadelphia warrants for skipping hearings and trials, and that Philadelphia was tied with New Jersey's Essex County, home of Newark, for the nation's worst fugitive rate.

Drawing upon its own analysis of court statistics, the newspaper reported that a third of all defendants in Philadelphia skipped one or more court hearings.

In interviews, top court officials have consistently minimized the fugitive situation in Philadelphia. One leader, Municipal Court President Judge Marsha H. Neifield, said she was uncomfortable calling it a problem.

In one of the two reviews, experts with Chadwick Associates, hired by the Supreme Court, said Philadelphia courts faced "a severe breakdown" in the basic task of getting defendants to court. The full consulting report, obtained by The Inquirer, is to be formally released Monday.

Since The Inquirer published its findings in December 2009, the Chadwick report noted, two other analyses have confirmed the paper's conclusions.

The Pretrial Justice Institute, hired by the courts under a grant to study the issue, also found that a third of all defendants skipped hearings.

So did the Pew Charitable Trusts. In a study of Philadelphia jails last year, Pew found that Philadelphia had a failure-to-appear rate twice that of New York's and 21/2 times that of Washington's.

Moreover, the Pretrial Justice Institute said Philadelphia court officials had adopted a flawed method of measuring its fugitive problem, falsely telling itself its rate was only 6 percent. That "was not a valid measure," the Pretrial Justice Institute found.

In its report, Chadwick Associates said the current bail system was providing the worst of both worlds. Under cash-bail provisions, the courts were locking up people too poor to post bail even though they posed little risk while setting free wealthy criminals likely to flee.

The report was written by veteran former city prosecutor William G. Chadwick and project director Laura A. Linton. The Pretrial Justice Institute study was done by two nonprofit staffers and by a top pretrial official in the Cleveland area.

The two reports cited a series of flaws in the current Philadelphia system.

Among other criticisms, the reports said the guidelines for bail decisions in Philadelphia were outmoded and routinely ignored by court officials.

The Philadelphia courts were the nation's first to adopt a matrix to make bail decisions. But the criteria in the matrix were last revised 16 years ago.

According to the Pretrial Justice Institute report, thousands of defendants are released annually in Philadelphia to await trial with just one requirement: a demand that they attend a lecture about the importance of coming to court. Almost six in 10 skipped the lecture, the institute found.

Court officials sent those who did not show a letter warning them they might be arrested.

That threat was empty. In fact, the court system expressly "requested that it not be notified of the failure to report," according to the institute.

Officials said they could not jail anyone for ducking the orientation "due to chronic crowding of the prison," the report said. "Thus, no sanctions are pursued."

The report said it was time to end that practice.

In a positive criminal-justice development, officials have greatly reduced overcrowding in city jails in recent years. The typical daily number of inmates, most awaiting trial, has fallen from almost 10,000 to 8,000 or fewer.

Chadwick Associates said that meant cells could now be reserved for court fugitives.

Castille, Philadelphia's district attorney from 1986 to 1991, said the prison complex in Northeast Philadelphia should reserve 200 cells for that purpose.

"Take a ride up to State Road," he said. "See how you like that."

Under Philadelphia's government-run bail program, most defendants are released after putting up only 10 percent of the bail. They are warned that they will owe the rest if they skip.

Until the newspaper spotlighted the issue, the court made no effort to collect the remaining 90 percent when defendants absconded.

As highlighted in the Chadwick study, the courts are now going after that money.

And for the first time, the courts are confiscating the 10 percent paid up-front by defendants if they are rearrested on new charges but owe past bail.

The courts also set up a special office to go after the money and brought in an outside collection firm and lawyers to dun and sue people to pay up. It especially targeted a group of 622 city employees who owed back bail.

Even so, the report cautioned, "For various reasons - poor record-keeping . . . the age of most of the debt, and the 70 percent unemployment rate among defendants - a large portion of the outstanding debt realistically will never be collected.

"However, the reforms implemented to date will ensure the responsible management of these critical processes going forward."

To really get the attention of defendants, the reform panel urged the court to require judges to proceed with trials in absentia when defendants go missing. Judges are permitted to do that now, but such trials are rare.

Once judges start doing that, "Word will unquestionably get out on the street that the courts mean business when it comes to skipping bail," Walter M. Phillips, a former city and state prosecutor, wrote in an advisory report for the Supreme Court.

Phillips was one of 13 experts, including judges, prosecutors, and academics, who served on an advisory panel for the Supreme Court as part of the reform effort.

In an interview last week, McCaffery said he and Castille would keep pushing for an overhaul of the city's bail system.

He said reforms could run the gamut from finding a way to text-message reminders to defendants about court dates, to the expanded use of electronic monitors, to jailing some fugitives. He said the effort had not ruled out a greater role for private bail companies.

"Whatever works," McCaffery said.

To read The Inquirer's investigative series on Philadelphia's criminal justice system - Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied, which was published in December 2009 and triggered sweeping changes - go to www.philly.com/courts

There, readers can also use interactive media and review scores of follow-up articles.

To read the full report of Chadwick Associates and other advisory documents, go to www.courts.phila.gov/reports/EndText

After The Inquirer published an investigative series on the Philadelphia criminal justice system, Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille and state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery in January 2010 appointed a volunteer panel to study the issues raised in the series.

The members are Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judges John L. Braxton and Benjamin Lerner; former Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes; Bucks County Court Judge Alan M. Rubenstein; former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor, now a county commissioner; lawyers Thomas A. Bello, Roy DeCaro, and Charles J. Grant; Syndi L. Guido, deputy counsel for the state police; Steven L. Chanenson, Villanova University associate dean and law professor; lawyers Walter M. Phillips Jr., former chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee on Crime and Deliquency, and Michael Kane, its former executive director; and David L. Lawrence, former administrator of Philadelphia courts.

Serving as expert consultants were William G. Chadwick, a former top city prosecutor, and project director Laura A. Linton.

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