Indiana’s constitution now only allows pretrial incarceration without bail for murder or treason, but a ballot question asks whether judges should have that power more often.
A “YES” vote means you want to give judges this new power. Andee Huxhold hopes you’ll vote “NO.”
As executive director of Dismas House of Indiana in South Bend, Huxhold focuses on helping people re-enter the community after conviction and prison. But her graduate degree is in public policy and justice reform, so she’s also researched pretrial incarceration.
“Pretrial incarceration is not shown to reduce crime," Huxhold says. "It’s not shown to reduce harm. If you look at it statistically over all, we’re much more often incarcerating people that are never going to be convicted of a crime. We aren’t actually incarcerating people that are a danger to society.”
For example, Huxhold says she could support it in some domestic violence cases. But states that have allowed more pretrial incarceration have a narrow list of crimes in the law to guide judges. That wouldn’t be the case in Indiana.
“Every judge is going to have to interpret subjectively if they feel someone is a threat. It’s way too broad.”
