The Chief Judge of the New York court system, Jonathan Lippman, was correct in his State of the Judiciary speech last week that the bail system is both unfair to the poor and unsafe for the public. That paradox is not new; there was a pass at bail reform in the 1960s, pushed by then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Time has not cured the problem. The paradox then and now is that poor defendants are jailed because they cannot afford bail, and dangerous defendants are freed because they can.

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