In February 2002 People Against Injustice asked SLAM for help with their Bail/Bond Campaign. They wanted to do a study of how bails had changed in the past year, and what differences there are between the city and suburbs, across racial lines, and in different parts of Connecticut. SLAM offered to help by organizing Yale students to observe the arraignments in court and fill out forms with information about what sort of bails were set for what crimes.
It quickly became apparent that a thorough study would be very difficult because of the number of variables. As a result, SLAM continued to observe court, with two better-defined purposes: 1) to gather evidence that there was enough of a problem in the city's bail system that the state should perform the systematic study, and 2) to educate students about the goings-on in our courts.
Over the course of the semester the Student Legal Action Movement at Yale brought upwards of 20 students into court to obverse arraignments and keep record of bonds. A number of those students have attended over 4 times.
Although it is very difficult to generalize from our time in court and from the forms we filled out, there are a few documents that emerged:
Report for People Against Injustice- prepared by Stephen Osserman (who
collected the forms and spoke with most who observed court)
Statements of personal experience from Court Watchers (not ready yet,
sorry)