Bail: Preventive Detention

President Nixon's suggestion that "preventive detention" would be one good remedy for crime in the District of Columbia met with sharply divided reaction on Capitol Hill. West Virginia's Democratic Senator Robert Byrd applauded the idea of pretrial jailing of accused criminals thought likely to break the law while out on bail. "Unless we have a safe society," said Byrd, "we are not going to have a free society." But North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin Jr., a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee and usually no supporter of libertarian causes, was incensed....

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