Professor Lauryn Gouldin’s University of Chicago Law Review paper “Defining Flight Risk” is quoted in the recent Prison Policy Initiative article “High stakes mistakes: How courts respond to “failure to appear”.
The Prison Policy Initiative article examines reasons behind missed court dates or “failure to appear”, analyzes causes and outcomes, and provides examples of how advocates are addressing the issue.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative article, “Professor Gouldin proposes a different approach involving a policy distinction between “True Flight” and “Local non-appearance.” The idea is to differentiate between someone who has left the area and someone who missed court but remains in the area and is easy to locate. She suggests the court assess absences along a matrix of persistence, cost to the court, and willfulness. Where implemented, this would represent a meaningful and commonsense improvement to court responses.”