The Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) for more than two decades has routinely tracked millions of state court felons to determine how commercial bail bonding compares with unsecured release in getting persons back to court.
For twenty-two (22) years that arm of the U.S. Justice Department has published its findings in a report called Bureau of Justice Statistics Pretrial Release of Felony Defendants, and every time commercial bail came out on top significantly. The studies also demonstrated that not only does commercial bail do a much better job in terms of failures to appear, but it also dramatically trumps unsecured release in holding down recidivism. In other words: the more commercial bail is used, the fewer the crimes being committed.
These research reports not only showed the superiority of commercial bail in their statistical tables, they flatly stated the same in such remarks as: “Bench warrants for failure to appear were less likely to be issued for defendants released on surety bond.”¹
AIA in its dedication to promoting private sector bail bonding capitalized on these BJS findings by incorporating them into the AIA publication, Taxpayer Funded Pretrial Release, A Failed System, an information booklet very widely distributed over the last year in states and counties where Pretrial Service Agencies are operating.
Feedback has been that these booklets, at every dissemination point, were having their desired effect in convincing State and local policymakers that Pretrial Services is a wrongful waste of taxpayer money.
This, along with others broadcasts of the BJS findings, recently drove the Pretrial Service lobbyists to go whining to the liberal Obama Justice Department about the success the private sector was having using the BJS materials.
And this is not the first time they have prevailed upon a liberal U.S. Justice Department to “bail them out,” no pun intended. During the second term of the Clinton administration when the bail industry was using BJS data to expose the failure of Pretrial Service Agencies, what did that liberal Justice Department do? They shut BJS down on doing any future such studies and reports. The bail industry worked diligently through Congress to get the project resurrected, and two years ago, after years of hiatus, a new report was published.
And what did the new report state? “Compared to release on recognizance, defendants on financial release were more likely to make all scheduled court appearances.”² And we have been making great use of that report.
So in response to this latest plea from help, what has the Justice Department done? You guessed it: they ordered BJS to publish a bulletin which has just come out called Bureau of Justice Statistics DATA ADVISORY. It states: “Evaluative statements about the effectiveness of a particular program in preventing pretrial misconduct may be misleading.”
It is interesting how similar this language is to the remarks that the BJS materials are “…not designed to answer the question effectiveness.” Know where this came from? The Pretrial Justice Institute, syncophants of the “get rid of compensated surety” liberals. Anyone starting to see a pattern here?
In other words, they are now saying BJS didn’t really mean what they have been clearly and unequivocally stating for over twenty (20) years: that secured release wins out, over unsecured release hands down, every time.
How does the commercial bail bonding industry fight back against this latest “social justice” ploy of the current administration? One way: vigorously promote Citizens Right To Know legislation in every state where Pretrial Services operates. We say: “OK. If BJS can’t tell us how well, or poorly, these agencies function, make them tell us themselves.” This should be our retort every time they try to use their “BJS doesn’t mean what it says” argument.
In this way, we turn their own liberal deceitfulness against them.
¹Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, Nov. 1994, NCJ 148818
²Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Nov. 2007, NCJ 214994