Florida State University College of Law Scholarship Repository Scholarly Publications 3-2014 Pretrial Detention and the Right to Be Monitored Samuel R. Wiseman Florida State Universeity Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.law.fsu.edu/articles Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, and the Criminal Procedure Commons Recommended Citation Samuel R. Wiseman, Pretrial Detention and the Right to Be Monitored, 123 YALE L.J. 1344 (2014), Available at: https://ir.law.fsu.edu/articles/458 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Samuel R. Wiseman Pretrial Detention and the Right to Be Monitored abstract. Although detention for dangerousness has received far more attention in recent years, a significant number of non-dangerous but impecunious defendants are jailed to ensure their presence at trial due to continued, widespread reliance on a money bail system. This Essay develops two related claims. First, in the near term, electronic monitoring will present a superior alternative to money bail for addressing flight risk. In contrast to previous proposals for reducing pretrial detention rates, electronic monitoring has the potential to reduce both fugitive rates (by allowing the defendant to be easily located) and government expenditures (by reducing the number of defendants detained at state expense). Second, despite the potential benefits to defendants and governments, electronic monitoring is not likely to be adopted by legislative or executive action. The best prospect for meaningful change is the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive bail.