Bailing and Jailing the Fast and Frugal way!!

This we in our groups we had to discuss the article ‘Bailing and Jailing the Fast and Frugal way’ Dhami and Ayton (2001). I believed that the main focus of the article was about how magistrates make decisions about whether to realise defendants on bail based on predictions on their previous crimes and whether they have re offended when out. Decisions to bail upon adjourning a case have major consequences for both defendants and society. Some of the facts from this article are that 98% of criminal cases are dealt with from start to finish by magistrates. Also that magistrate’s decide whether to make punitive or non-punitive decisions on whether a case is adjourned for subsequent trial or appeal.

The article was split into two sections the first half was on reasons that affect accuracy of judgements and the second half was about the models. Basically some of the things that can affect magistrate’s decision making is sometimes having a lack of information on the defendant which could results in an inaccurate decision. Also all magistrates decisions are also always under time pressure and are therefore pushed to rush their decisions so as to make them quickly. Rushing the decision can therefore have an impact on decision making. Another is the quality of info as magistrates do not know how useful different information is in predicting what the defendant will do when bailed. Also there are no statutory rules for the procedure for bail hearings in magistrate’s court. Looking at all these reasons made me think that magistrates can’t always make the right decision and how much this can have an impact on a person’s life. It shows me the importance of having the right information when making such an important decision.

The other half of the article identified the different process models such as the due- process model, which aims to reduce crime, whilst minimizing the number of innocent people wrongly convicted.  There was also Judgement analysis which is an ability model to describe and predict individual’s judgement data is limited by their consistency in making decisions because inconsistent individual will be hard to predict. Other models were the Conjunctive/ Disjunctive/ Former models where all cue values must pass a specific threshold before a judgement is made. Lastly were the Fast and Frugal models that are simple process models that do not search through all available info, do not integrate all relevant info and base their decision on only one cue. They are accurate and the evidence for the F& F models are as good as compensatory integration models at describing human judgements.

Overall the results from the article showed that magistrates showed inconsistency in their bail decisions and that they are influenced by defendant and crime control related cues. Looking at matching heuristics backs up compensatory models. The fast and frugal way model portrays a picture of bail decision making that conflict with the ideal practice as defined by due process model of justice. I believe that given that not all information presented to magistrates is accurate and that it is always hard to predict human behaviour, and therefore hard to predict whether a defendant will re- offend, makes decision making very complicated and often inaccurate.