Two respected Wake County judges say that they see no evidence in a study on bails set by county magistrates indicating racial bias. That's good news, although the study by a former UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student, now a county employee, shows black defendants typically had higher bails set than white defendants. Critics of the study, including Wake's chief magistrate, Gary Wills, say its scope was narrow and that a variety of circumstances affect bail amounts.

Fair enough, but Wake's senior resident Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens and Chief District Court Judge Robert Rader, acknowledging that the study was based on a limited number of cases, have ordered magistrates to write down their reasons when they go over the recommended amounts of bail for different charges.

That makes good sense, as a way to guard against any pattern that might work against some defendants.

Bryan Collins, head of the county's public defender office, has another issue with bail. He says there are people charged with Class 2 misdemeanors (such as resisting arrest, bad checks, carrying concealed weapons) who sometimes have to wait in jail for long periods of time because they can't make bail, even though such charges usually carry jail time only when there are multiple offenses. That may, he noted, encourage people to plead guilty instead of fighting charges in court. That's not the way the process is supposed to work, and the issue sounds worthy of a look from Stephens and Rader.

Ironically, Durham County has had a different sort of problem, namely questions about whether those charged with violent crimes have been getting out too quickly. Bails there have been raised.

Setting bail is a tricky part of the justice system. But that part of the system, like the other parts, must be held to a standard of fairness to all. It appears that Stephens and Rader are trying to see to that, while exercising their own common-sense judgment.