Recent Bail Articles
Over the past few years, community bail funds have become a hotly contested issue in state legislatures across the county…and rightly so. After the George Floyd incident, we saw inflow of millions of dollars to these unregulated and unaccountable groups. Once the public started asking questions about where the money went, and once criminals released by these funds starting reoffending and committing violent crimes, state legislatures started waking up.
While we all know these groups are dangerous and irresponsible, it is always interesting to hear their side of the story and their perspective on what is happening regarding the influx of legislation looking to regulate these funds. The following article on the Waging Nonviolence website give us a brief glimpse into the activist’s perception of what is happening in this area. While you will probably disagree with the opinions presented in this piece, it is always interesting to read what the opposition is thinking and doing..
Read the full story: How bail funds are fighting new legal attacks on solidarity
Another week rolls by and another article about the success of Illinois’ Safe-T act is published by the main street media. At this point, you can say that it seems like they are trying just a little too hard to convince people that the unaccountable free release system being implemented throughout Illinois is working. They cite decreasing jail population numbers as a sign that the program is working. The other area where they claim success is around increasing detention rates in the cases where 68% of the defendants statewide are being detained, when detention is requested by the prosecution. While they claim success, they admit that it is too soon to say so because they don’t have the data to compare their results to. Are you serious? The people in charge of the courts and the data, don’t have the data to prove their program is working? That makes no sense at all.
If you are going to drastically change your criminal justice system in the way that Illinois did, don’t you think that they would establish some sort of benchmark for comparison? Apparently, that was not a priority in this case. Has to make you wonder… also, they talk about detention of dangerous people, but they don’t talk about how many of those people were wrongly detained, as in they would not have committed another crime. So much for their cries of innocent until proven guilty.
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Read the full story: 6 months after Illinois ended cash bail, jail populations are down as courts settle into new patterns
Wait a second…Jail populations are down 13% since Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act was implemented, but judges are detaining 59% of the cases…something doesn’t pass the smell test here. It sounds to me like Illinois voted to give up their constitutional rights to freedom and can now be locked up by any judge for any reason. Not sure that is going to end well. Flash forwards a year…how many people will be stuck in jail because at a 59% detention clip you are going to lock up a lot of people who are supposedly innocent until proven guilty. And when the jails are full, you will start releasing all these dangerous people into our communities on taxpayer funded pretrial supervision…which basically means supervision during working hours and no accountability.
Additionally, where is the data? Great, jail populations are down. Great, more people are on pretrial supervision. But those results are expected. Where are the real numbers people care about. Failure to appear rates, pretrial violation rates, recidivism rates, etc. Those are success metrics. It is really amazing to see how hard Illinois elected officials and the media is trying to put lipstick on this pig.
Read the full story: Cook County Courts Have Seen ‘Mostly Smooth’ Transition After Elimination of Cash Bail, New Report Finds
At a recent conference entitled “Justice Unveiled: Debating Crime and Public Safety”, the former “voter recalled” San Francisco District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, made the statement “The Constitution created rights for criminal defendants, but it does not create rights for victims of crime.” Think about that. The former top cop and prosecutor for San Francisco thinks that victims of crime have no constitutional rights. But instead, he believes that criminal defendants are the only ones that do. It is truly a scary proposition to think that a district attorney for one of our country’s large metropolitan cities cares so little for victims so as to make such a myopic and hurtful statement.
Read the full story Recalled San Francisco DA Says Victims Don’t Have Rights Under the Constitution
Bail reform advocates talk about our jails being filled with first time, non-violent, low-level defendants. They pressure local governments and state legislators to implement soft on crime pretrial release policies that empty the jails. And the result, guys like Ron Poore get out on a FREE release. Poore was not a low-level first time, non-violent offender. He was a dangerous repeat offender who tried to flee from law enforcement before he was apprehended.
Why would someone like this be given a FREE release? Because the purpose of bail reform is to release any and everyone. It does not just apply to the first time, low-level, non-violent offender; it applies to ALL offenders. These bail reform policies are not making us safer, they are putting our communities in danger and removing any sort of accountability from the system, and accountability is one of the most important aspects of any criminal justice system.
To read the full story and see the research study, click on the link, Sheriff Thompson: Robbery Case Highlights Public Safety Issues with Bail Reform
This should be the one story that ends the bail reform discussion forever. A group of people charged with dismembering a murdered body were released on a FREE bond in New York. How in the world does someone accused of such a heinous act qualify for a FREE bond? Well, this is what bail reform looks like. It is not the low-level, non-violent offenders who are being released with no accountability, it is dangerous, reoffending criminals who are taking advantage of bail reform. Unfortunately, this story will not deter the advocates of bail reform, but rather it will be ignored because it doesn’t fit their narrative. The truth is that this is not an anomaly. Dangerous, repeat offenders are being released everyday into our streets under the guise of making us safer.
To read the full story and see the research study, click on the link, Republican state lawmakers propose changes to bail reform following human remains case.
It is really hard to believe any bail reform report that comes out of a left wing Washington DC think tank, so read this one with that in mind. The author of this article believes that bail reform policies around the country are not soft on crime. The problem here is that this author is basing this statement on the use of so called “evidenced based” tools and risk assessments. We aren’t sure if this author didn’t get the memo, but there has been plenty of research, including acknowledgments from dozens of civil rights groups that these risk assessments are actually racially bias and impacting people of color more harshly.
The author also makes the false assumption that using non-cash bail practices are safer and more fair. The reality is that the use of financially secured release has always been proven to be more safe and fair for the public, and isn’t that what pretrial release should be focused on? The safety of the victim and the community and the “guarantee” that whoever is released pretrial is going to show up for court.
To read the full story and see the research study, click on the link, Is Bail Reform Soft on Crime? Not When Done Well.
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No matter how many times you hear New York Politicians tout the success of their bail reform legislation, the reality is that it continues to fail. They talk about recidivism rates being only 1% or 2%. Well according to a new study from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Data Collaborative, the recidivism rates are much higher. The study showed 66% of the people released from jail who had a prior arrest were re-arrested within two years of their release. It also showed that “67% of defendants who had a recent prior violent felony arrest in the past year who were released under bail reform were re-arrested within two years of their arraignment.” About half of those were rearrested for a felony. So to say that bail reform is working is a lie.
To read the full story and see the research study, click on the link, Bail fail: Study shows that repeat crime INCREASED in New York because of justice ‘reforms’.
Why is it that the media continues to publish misinformation and false stories regarding bail reform. In a recent editorial from the Los Angeles Times, they are claiming that the newly adopted ZERO bail policy in Los Angeles County is working. They also claim that there are studies showing that crime hasn’t increased, and court no-shows (FTAs) are down, yet actually show no studies. The reality is that crime is down because the number of unreported crimes has skyrocketed. Just ask anyone in law enforcement. People are no longer reporting crimes because they know nothing will happen.
Additionally, court no shows are down because judges are no longer forfeiting bonds and issuing warrants for FTA’s. Instead, they are just rescheduling the court dates. Most of all, none of their claims align with common sense. You remove the financial guarantee for someone appearing in court and we are supposed to believe that they just showed up anyway. That makes no sense at all. If that were the case, why require any person to post a bond or a financial guarantee for anything. Why should the county of Los Angeles require any contractor they work with to obtain a bond for the work that they are doing?
If financial guarantees are unnecessary, then the county should just let the work take place based on a hand shake and promise…just like they do in the criminal justice system. But we know that won’t happen, because bonds work. They create accountability and incentive to comply with the contractual guidelines you have agreed to. To say that you will get similar or better compliance without that guarantee is ludicrous.
To read the full story and see the research study, click on the link, Editorial: L.A. County cities should stop fighting the end of cash bail. It’s working.
