We've been spending the last few weeks and months discussing the monetary burden of the criminal justice system for poor people and how so-called Legal Financial Obligations bail, fees, fines and the like - undermine a poor defendant's ability to break the cycle of incarceration.
Tonight, we'll be exploring this topic further in a Cleveland Connects event at the Idea Center from 5-7pm. Cleveland Connects is a partnership between ideastream and Cleveland.com with sponsorship from PNC Bank.
This morning, we thought we'd tee that conversation up with the help of Cuyahoga County Law Director Bob Triozzi, who has been working on court reform in Northeast Ohio for a long time and now is specifically championing a new tool for Judges when deciding on whether to set bail and how high. It's called the Arnold Foundation risk-assessment method.