One writer calls the bail bond process an “extrajudicial weapon against the poor and Blacks.”
I am always amazed at how those in favor of more government-run programs can muster such lofty sounding arguments for programs that ‘sound’ great, but simply don’t work.
Over-dramatized jail cell picture to promote an emotional response
Here’s one case from an author writing about the bail bond industry. Note in particular where I have highlighted… then see my comment below and the comment of one “Concerned Citizen.”
Does Bail Really Work To Promote Justice?
In the U.S. justice system, bail is used as an extrajudicial weapon against the poor and Blacks. –By Frederick Reese | October 17, 2013
Former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy once said: “What has been demonstrated here is that usually only one factor determines whether a defendant stays in jail before he comes to trial. That factor is not guilt or innocence. It is not the nature of the crime. It is not the character of the defendant. That factor is, simply, money. How much money does the defendant have?”
In the United States, bail — or the promise to report to court for trial and sentencing after being arraigned through the staking of property or a monetary value — traditionally imposed a different weight if one is poor than it did if one was of substance. The inability to meet a costly bond could be life-destroying. “There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illustrations of how the bail system has inflicted arbitrary cruelty:” President Lyndon Johnson remarked during the signing ceremony of the 1966 Bail Reform Act, which established the right to an affordable bail for most offenses. The Bail Reform Act has been amended and rendered mostly inert in following administrations.
“A man was jailed on a serious charge brought last Christmas Eve. He could not afford bail, so he spent 101 days in jail until he could get a hearing. Then the complainant admitted that the charge that he had made was false,” the former president presented as one example.
In other examples presented by Johnson, “a man could not raise $300 for bail. He spent 54 days in jail waiting trial for a traffic offense for which he could have been sentenced to no more than 5 days. A man spent 2 months in jail before being acquitted. In that period, he lost his job, he lost his car, he lost his family — it was split up. He did not find another job, following that, for 4 months.”
As Johnson explained in further remarks, the bail system is designed to allow those with resources to “buy his freedom,” while those who can’t afford the price must linger in jail. Bail is not punishment but a motivation to reappear in court — what this creates is a wealth-based de facto imprisonment regime ignorant of a person’s actual guilt.
. . . most states have defaults that allow defendants of nonviolent crimes to be released into their own recognizance while waiting for trial on the weight of their promise to report back to the court when called. As failure to appear is an arrestable offense, the law upholds that the arraigning judge must have reason to grant bail, instead of automatically assigning it.
. . . bail bondsmen — who post 10 percent of an arrestee’s bail in surety, but charge 10 to 15 percent of the bail amount to the arrestee to pay for the service. This fee is non-refundable. So, say a person has a $5,000 bail. The bondsman posts a $500 bond, but charges the arrestee $750. As most arrestees show up for their court dates, this represents easy money for the bondsman. In the rare event, however, that someone jumped bail, this creates opportunities for bounty hunters.Due to this, individuals with small bail amounts — $1,000 or less — are usually ignored by bondsmen, as the expected profit is too low to make the effort worth their time.
Never mind that the author uses isolated anecdotes to prove a much broader conclusion. (Good thing good science practice is categorically rejected in political argumentation.)
But the highlighted sentence is just plan wrong. Bail bondsmen in my State (VA) have to post a promise to pay the WHOLE bond amount if the defendant fails to appear, no 10 percent. And routinely, bondsmen charge 10 percent, not 15%. The whole paragraph is simply wrong.
But as to other points in the article that other methods may work better, allow me to simply post one “Concerned Citizens’s” comment . . .
If the author really wants to write a legitimate story on pretrial release on bail then he should focus less on how wrong having people pay to post bail is and rather focus on the results. Every study ever done on the subject of pretrial release has shown that financially secured bail is the most effective form of releasing an individual pretrial and ensuring their appearance in court.
Additionally, people are not languishing away in jail because they can’t afford a bail bond. In fact a recent study by the JFA Institute that was funded by the ACLU showed that the 70% of people who are in pretrial status in Los Angeles County Jails were not all there because they couldn’t afford a bail bond.
Rather the research showed that most of them were there because their pretrial status also included a “no bail” criteria. The actual number of people eligible for bail was only 12%. It is time for proponents of public sector pretrial release to stop blaming private industry for being ineffective when the truth is quite the opposite. Financially secured bail exists and has existed not because the big bad bail bond lobby, but rather because it works.
Ask yourself this question. Why does your county government financially guarantee through a surety bond of some type, just about every other element of its operations? From employee contracts to vendor agreements to construction contracts the county requires these types of insurance products to make sure that their vendors and contractors guarantee their performance. Why do they not require the same financial guarantee in the criminal justice system? Why don’t they require the same financial guarantee when it comes to public safety?
That is exactly what the commercial bail industry does. It financially guarantees to the court that the defendant will show up or the policy (or bail bond) goes into default and the full amount of the bond is due to the court. It is this financial incentive that makes bail bond agents so effective and ensuring appearance and ultimately ensuring justice. It is time the public start demanding results for our tax dollars.
If public sector pretrial service programs can not prove their effectiveness like the commercial bail industry does everyday, than they should go back to what they were designed to do in the first place, which is help the indigent and those with special needs as opposed to being a get out of jail free program for people.
To appreciate why the bail bond system that’s been in place for centuries works so well, see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW65ibfIPqU
