NCJ Number
204173
Journal
Israel Law Review Volume: 35 Issue: 2-3 Dated: Summer-Autumn 2001 Pages: 266-284
Date Published
2001
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This article examines the effect of two Israeli pretrial detention reforms on court hearings in which the police have requested that the detention of suspects during an investigation be prolonged.
Abstract
Since 1996 the Israeli pretrial detention laws have undergone two major reforms. The first was the New Detention Act (NDA), which was passed in May 1996 and implemented in May 1997. A significant aim of the NDA was to minimize the use of detention and to encourage the police to use alternative, more sophisticated means of investigation that do not require placing a suspect in detention. Although the NDA did not reduce the broad detention powers of the police and the courts under the former detention legislation, it increased judicial review of police work; it reduced the maximum period of police custody without judicial permission from 48 hours to 24 hours. The second reform specified economic criteria by which suspects would be declared indigent and eligible for a public defender. The current study examined the impact of these legal reforms on detention hearings in the Tel-Aviv Magistrate's Court as well as on the court's decisions. Detention hearings were compared for 1995, a year before the NDA was implemented; in 1998, 15 months after the law's implementation, but before establishing the economic criteria for public-defender eligibility; and 1999, a year after the implementation of these economic criteria. A total of 2,408 hearings were subjected to content analysis. Approximately 65 percent were requests for detention, and the rest were requests to release the suspect under bail conditions. The content analysis was applied to the requests to prolong detention. The study found that prior to 1999, most detainees were not represented by counsel. This changed under the law that set requirements for eligibility for representation by a public defender. Legal representation had a significant effect on the nature of the hearing, as it became more formal and adversarial. The presence of a defense attorney led to the use of procedural safeguards and the presentation of facts and claims in favor of the suspects. In contrast to the significant changes in the nature of the hearing, however, the changes in the hearing's outcome were somewhat limited. Following the implementation of the NDA, the number of detentions even increased slightly, but the length of the detentions decreased by 25 percent. The NDA did not succeed in strengthening the court's discretion to any significant extent, which explains why the number of detentions did not decrease over the years. 6 tables, 4 figures, and 31 notes