Maryland’s Judiciary Rules Committee Fails to Fix Maryland’s Failed Bail Reform Experiment

Learning from one’s mistakes is an important part of life. It is how most people grow emotionally and intellectually. It is how people mature, and our society evolves. Unfortunately, the Maryland Judiciary Committee doesn’t see things that way. In fact, they decided that instead of admitting that their plan to remake and reimagine Maryland’s bail system had failed miserably, that they would do what most political folks do…NOTHING.

In 2017, Maryland’s bail reform plan involved the wholesale release of accused criminals into our streets. Their plan, empty the jails, by releasing defendants without bail, without accountability. The result, more crime, more violence, and zero accountability. According to a recent report, the number of people being held in jail actually increased. Why? Because the defendants that they believed would show up for court and stay out of trouble if you released them for free, were not showing up for court. So in response, judges stopped releasing defendants, and the jails filled up. Which by the way, is what ALWAYS happens when you try to release people without bail. In our reality, we call that a colossal failure. Read the full story here.

Read the whole article here.

New Mexico’s Criminal Justice System Shows its True Colors

Over the past several years, New Mexico has been one of the poster children for the Bail Reform Movement. And yes, the results on the street have been exactly as one might expect…devastating. Albuquerque, New Mexico has become one of the most dangerous cities in the country. The wholesale free release of those charged with crimes from jail pretrial with zero accountability has led to a criminal justice system that has no teeth and no leverage. Crime runs rampant because those accused with crimes know that they will just be released for free, and no one will come after them if they don’t show up for court. This is bail reform in a nutshell. That being said, it is very interesting that in a recent case against a magistrate judge who was harboring illegal immigrants, the court decided to set a $10,000 “secured” bond on the judge.  So let us get this straight. New Mexico judges are those charged with crimes into the streets every day for free, without bond, but suddenly they decide to use a secured bond on a magistrate judge, who to be honest is probably the lowest risk person that has been let out of jail in several years. Apparently, there is no more common sense left in New Mexico.

Read the whole article here.

One thing has always been true when it comes to criminal justice, we rely on judges making the best decisions possible. Relying on their judicial discretion, judges have the ability to choose the most appropriate and effective form of release for a defendant. The problem is when state legislatures pass laws that handcuff judges into releasing people for free. People that they would have most likely put on a secured bond if allowed the opportunity. A recent article on Fox News showcased several judges in New York that are releasing violent defendants more than 85% of the time. For example, according to the article, Judge Wanda Licitra releases violent criminals on free bail 85% of the time and Judge Valentina Morales releases violent criminals without a secured bond 83% of the time.

Read the whole article here.

If there is one thing that New Hampshire Governor Ayotte is right about, it is that bail reform is absolutely a “failed social experiment.” Any type of public policy that allows for the wholesale release of violent criminals into our communities is dangerous and bad for our communities. Unfortunately for New Hampshire, the solution that is being proposed in SB 592 is not any better. According to this bill, there will be three options for defendants who are arrested and accused of a crime, release on a personal recognizance bond or unsecured bond, release on a condition or set of conditions, or no release and the defendant will be detained. Based on this bill there does not appear to be an option for secured released, which is in our opinion, extremely shortsighted as release on a secured bond is and has always been the most effective and accountable way to release a defendant pretrial. Why in the world does New Hampshire want to create an ineffective pretrial system? The Governor talks about bail reform being bad, but what she doesn’t realize is that her proposed solution, just might be worse.

Read the op-ed from the Governor here.

No matter how many New Yorkers become victims of crime, public officials are just unable to see the truth. There are no questions about it that bail reform efforts in New York have failed miserably. This insane social experiment of letting people out of jail for free with no accountability has done nothing but destroy public safety for all New Yorkers. And still, the group of politicians running for Mayor of New York, continue to grasp to this failed dangerous policy. The latest candidate to enter the race, former Governor Cuomo, threw his support behind bail reform this past weekend with the same old tired narrative and talking points. He referred to people being thrown in Rikers because they can’t afford a bail bond. He talked about rich people being able to pay their way out and poor people being stuck in jail. At some point you would think that those who support bail reform would come up with a new approach, some new talking points. But I guess it is too difficult to come up with any new arguments that support releasing dangerous repeat criminals into our communities for free with zero accountability.

Read the full article here: Cuomo doubles down on bail reform during NYC mayor’s race: ‘Righted a terrible social wrong’

No matter how long you have been in the bail profession, you will continue to see the same people, conducting the same research, getting the same results. If it wasn’t so predictable it would be shocking. This past week, in Minnesota, that very thing happened. A report was released outlining several recommendations for making changes to Minnesota’s pretrial system. And guess what one of the number one recommendations was? Getting rid of surety bail. Shocking, huh? But this shouldn’t surprise anyone that has been doing this as long as we have. The same group of activists and so called experts put a study together to inform us how horrible the bail industry is. In the study, they cite other studies and experts which are really just opinion pieces written by bail reform activist groups and their pundits. For example, they cite articles from groups like the Bail Project and advancingpretrial.org, two groups that have shown significant bias towards the surety bail profession. They also claim that other jurisdictions that have tried their recommendations have had huge success. This includes Illinois (which of course just reported that their jail populations have spiked) and New Jersey (a state that eliminated bail about 10 years ago and still hasn’t shared any data proving it is working). Here are the recommendations outlined in the new study…and none of these will shock you.

• Strengthen and expand cite and release policies.
• Guarantee the right to counsel at bail hearings.
• Create an intentional release/detain system that does not use monetary bail.
• Direct judges to order the least restrictive release conditions necessary to maximize court appearance and safety.
• Establish and fund Pretrial Service Organizations (PSOs) statewide.
• Collaborate with victim/survivor advocates to craft policies that address risk assessments, domestic violence programming, wraparound services, and court notifications.
• Afford ample time between the passage and implementation of any new pretrial law and establish an implementation committee to guide stakeholder collaboration, technology upgrades, training, funding, and monitoring, technology upgrades, training, funding, and monitoring.

Read the full report here.

In a recent article published by R Street, a Washington D.C. think tank, it was suggested that cashless bail and bail reform policies weren’t necessarily the cause of increased crime. But rather, they point the finger at certain procedural failures in the court system. For example, they claim that dismissals play a more important role in releasing defendants that should have potentially been detained. These dismissals are caused by certain deficiencies within the court system itself. This includes things like discovery rules, availability of public defenders, right to a speedy trial, police failures to appears, and additional considerations like insufficient evidence and the need to prioritize caseloads. Now don’t get us wrong. We are not arguing that these deficiencies don’t exist. What we are pointing out is that you can say the same thing for the use of secured bail.  For decades, jail crowding has been blamed on bail bondsmen. Crime has been blamed on bail bondsmen. But the very inefficiencies that this article points out as contributing to wholesale release and dismissals in the court system, are the same ones that should be used to move the blame from bail bondsmen to the system itself. If you are going to claim that bail reform policies aren’t to blame for crime because of these failures, than the same claim can be made for bondsmen.  That being said, we do disagree with the general theme of this article that bail reform policies aren’t to blame. We believe that many of the the deficiencies that have been identified in this article have been made worse by the passing of soft on crime, bail reform policies that do exacerbate the inefficiencies of an already failing court system.

Read the full article here: Bail often blamed for crime, but dismissals may be a much bigger problem

For the past 2 decades, activists and bail reform proponents have been trying to force the expensive ineffective federal bail system down the throats of states and local jurisdictions. They file lawsuits, they pressure state capitals, and they protest in the streets that poor people are languishing away in jail because they cannot afford a bail bond. They claim that the jails are crowded and the streets are unsafe because of bail bondsmen. The sad reality of this claim is that it is patently false. The ironic reality of this claim is that it is actually the federal system in which they are promoting that crowds the jails and releases violent defendants into our communities for free with no accountability. Check out the recent article out of Illinois that shows that since they passed the Pretrial Fairness Act, which promis`ed to free up the jails and reduce populations, the jail populations have actually increased significantly. Hmmmm? Hate to say we told you so.

Read the full article here: Ill. Sheriff: Bail Reform to Blame for Spike in Jail Population, Arrest Warrants

History is full of examples where good intentions paved the way to disastrous outcomes. Today, we are witnessing another such moment — a social experiment in criminal justice reform that has unleashed unforeseen consequences on our urban communities.

This experiment was built on two flawed premises. The first was that bail is unnecessary, and people would voluntarily appear in court without financial incentives. The second was that “soft-on-crime” policies would not lead to increased criminal activity. Both assumptions have proven catastrophically wrong, but the damage has already been done.

A group of individuals advocating bail reform — and criminal justice reform in general — established a network of groups to push a series of initiatives. It was funded by a small number of extremely deep-pocketed foundations and wealthy billionaires. Among them, the Open Society Foundation and its prominent backer, George Soros, played outsized roles in driving the agenda. They set up a network of groups that may be broken into four categories.

The first group identifies certain soft-on-crime district attorney candidates running for office who were open to adopting these controversial policies. Those that did would see generous contributions flowing into their campaigns. Other groups were often deployed during these election cycles to discredit or smear opponents who might challenge their reformist candidate. Since early races were usually in Democratic strongholds, they concentrated on primary elections. Once their DA candidate won these races, general election victories were all but assured.

Read the full article here: The Untold Story: Selling Out Public Safety One District Attorney at a Time

When one reads an article about bail reform, it is easy to assume that the article is from a more liberal state like California or New York. Recently, there has been a lot of media attention and coverage on the topic of bail reform, but the stories haven’t come out of California or New York, they have come out of Texas, of all places. The difference, however, is that the articles are talking about bail reform in a different way. Instead of wanting to reform bail away and let criminals out of jail with no accountability, like we have seen attempted in several states across the country, bail reform in Texas is the complete opposite. It is about strengthening the bail system and holding criminals accountable. Here are just a few of the commonsense reforms being supported:

• Prohibiting criminals charged with violent offenses from being released on personal bonds.
• Requiring that bail be set or denied within 48 hours of arrest, with criminal history considered.
• Mandating mandatory training for judges on their responsibilities when setting bail.
• Ensuring that bond conditions are reported enables law enforcement to apprehend offenders violating court orders.
• Creating a state jail felony offense for tampering with electronic monitoring devices.

Read the full article here: Governor Abbott declares ‘Bail Reform’ an emergency item, criticizes ‘Activist Judges’

If you told us 3-4 years ago that there would be an article in a University of California at Los Angeles’ newspaper, The Bruin, that was critical of a progressive DA, we would have told you that you were crazy. Well, guess what? Pigs must be able to fly, because The Bruin just wrote an article criticizing the policies of their favorite progressive District Attorney, George Gascon (a DA they fully supported through his tenure) even pointing out the increases in violent crime and property crime. Something that the progressive media have ignored for the past 4 years. The article even went as far as seeming hopeful with the swearing in of LA’s new District Attorney, Nathan Hochman. Have we finally woken up to the dangers and ineffectiveness of bail reform and progressive soft on crime policies?

Read the full article here: Los Angeles cracks down on crime following lenient district attorney policies

How many times have we heard the talking points? People languishing away in jail because they can’t afford a bail bond. The jails are too full. Crime is down. Well despite the fact that each and everyone one of these talking points has been proven to be false, supporters of bail reform in New Hampshire continue to use them. Apparently, things work better in New Hampshire. So much better, that even failed criminal justice policies like bail reform that have been proven to fail in every other state they have been tried in, for some reason succeed in New Hampshire. Maybe it’s the fertile soil or the northeastern climate that makes criminal defendants so willing to show up for court. Maybe it’s because JD Salinger and Robert Frost lived in New Hampshire. Yeah, that must be the reason that arrests are down, and crime is down all over the state and the jails are less full. Or….just maybe…crime is down because the FBI statistics that are being quoted have been shown to be incorrect. Or…just maybe…arrests are down because they aren’t being reported anymore. No, it can’t be those things. It must be because bail reform is just a great policy in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire criminals who are released for free with no accountability have seen the ills of their ways and have stopped committing crimes. Why wouldn’t they? If no one was watching you, and if you knew no one would come get you if you didn’t show up for court…I can see that being a reason to change my ways and start following the law (said very sarcastically).  The truth is that no matter how much lipstick the media and supporters of bail reform want to put on the pig, it is still a pig…even in New Hampshire.

Read the whole story here: Bail reform: Safe and free in New Hampshire

This past week in Michigan, a West Virginia bail agent showed the country why secured release through a licensed surety bondsman is the most effective way to ensure that defendants released from jail pretrial are held accountable. After bonding a defendant out on a $100,000 surety bond, the bail agent travelled across state lines to apprehend the defendant when they failed to appear for court. If this defendant had been released without a surety bond and instead through a taxpayer funded pretrial release program on a FREE bond, he would most likely still be at large and a danger to the public. Because when someone fails to appear on a FREE pretrial bond, no one is accountable…no one goes and gets them.

Read the whole story here: With $100K at stake, West Virginia bail bonding company tracks down fugitive in Michigan

As if the cold, snowy weather wasn’t enough to worry about in the Rocky Mountain city of Denver, Colorado, now people must be on the lookout for dangerous criminals with knives. We have all heard the crazy stories of criminals being released for free on personal recognizance bonds. But this latest incident in Denver takes the cake. Not only was this defendant sitting in jail on a charge of sexual assault, but he also had an active warrant out on him. So, what did the judge do? He released the guy anyway on a free personal recognizance bond.

Read the whole story here: Denver Stabber a Fugitive From Justice with an Active Warrant on a PR Bond for Sex Assault at Time of Stabbings

January 8, 2025

Over the past several years we have seen example after example of the failed social experiment of bail reform resulting in less accountability and more crime. The latest example comes out of Baltimore, Maryland. When will state legislatures and our leaders finally start understanding that letting people out of jail without any sort of financial guarantee doesn’t work?

The American Bail Coalition shared a study that shows all of the promises that bail reform was supposed to fix, including all of the ills our criminal justice system didn’t materialize. In fact, all the money and the hope invested in releasing defendants for free has made things worse.

Check out the study here: Maryland Bail Reform

December 31, 2024

At some point you would think that the narrative of poor people languishing away in jail because they can’t afford a bail bond would run its course, but for the Bail Project, it definitely hasn’t. In fact, in this recent article in US News and World Report, the Bail Project CEO is doubling down on the same old narratives that bail reform activists have been using for decades.

They even pulled out the tragic Kalief Browder story, and once again blamed the bail industry for his death by claiming he was stuck in jail because he couldn’t afford a bail bond. When in reality, the part they never want you to know, Mr. Browder was not bailable since his latest charge violated his probation.

To say he was stuck in jail because he couldn’t afford a bail bond is just not true. In the article, the Bail Project also talks about the effectiveness of soft on crime policies which were implemented in places like Illinois and New Jersey. They claim that pretrial populations have dropped and that means the policies are working. Unfortunately, they seem to always ignore the true measure of any criminal justice policy, public safety.

Read the full article: New Year’s in Jail: Presumed Innocent But Too Poor to Post Cash Bail

As part of its end of 2024 media blitz, the Bail Project is continuing to perpetuate the myth that the only reason people are in jail is because they can’t afford a bail bond. This statement couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason people are in jail in the first place is because they are accused of breaking the law. They are not there because of how much money they have. Unfortunately, that reality doesn’t fit with the Bail Projects narrative. They still adamantly support the same soft on crime policies that gave Harris County Texas an over 80% failure to appear rate in their criminal courts. They support the same soft on crime policies that caused retail theft to explode across the country. And they support the same soft on crime policies that, despite claims to the contrary by the Bail Project, increased violent crime across the country significantly.

Read the full story: Make jail the last resort: End the incarceration of those who cannot afford bail

When a judge sets a bond amount, they are supposed to be setting it based on an amount that will incentivize the defendant to show up for all court appearances. Unfortunately, this setting of a financial bail amount has spurred much discussion about fairness and equity. So much so, that states like Illinois have recently eliminated the use of cash bail. So how has that turned out? According to the media, it is working great. But is it? What metrics are they using to determine success? Are crime rates being calculated accurately? There are so many questions that must be answered before success can be claimed, but that isn’t stopping the media who is spiking the football from the 10-yard line and yelling touchdown.

Read the full story: End of cash bail in Illinois showing early signs of success in reaching ‘better and fairer system’

There has been a new groundbreaking study released by Drexel University and anti-bail progressive activists. Get ready for it…it shows that when you open the jail door and let people out of jail for free, you have less people in jail. Wow, really? That is like a study that says the more water you drink out of a thermos, the less water there is in the thermos. In other words, pure nonsense. The challenge is that this nonsensical study is making its way through state legislatures as fact and proof that eliminating financially secure release works. This is not only false, but also dangerous and irresponsible.

Why in the world would anyone believe that opening the doors to the jails and letting everyone out somehow has a correlation to public safety? It doesn’t…plain and simple. The only correlation with opening the door and emptying the jails is the disturbing result of having less people in the jail and less public safety in the community.

Read the full story: New Jersey’s cash bail reform reduced incarceration without increasing gun violence, study says

First and foremost, when someone is released on a PR bond, that is NOT being released on bail. Bail reform activists want you to believe that the “bail profession” is evil, so they create policies that release dangerous people on a PR bond and then get the media to call it “bail”. When the dangerous defendant commits another offense, then they claim that bail doesn’t work. The media needs to start being honest and differentiating between financially secured release on a surety bond and FREE unaccountable release on a PR bond. They are very different pretrial release mechanisms which have very different levels of effectiveness.

States like New Hampshire have fallen for the bail reform trap of releasing people from jail who then go out and commit additional crimes. They are now trying to swing the pendulum the other way and detain people without bail. The question they never want to answer is what was wrong with the system that existed before? The system of balance and accountability that is created by financially secured release on a surety bond. Once you start arbitrarily tinkering with that system, you create an unbalanced and unaccountable system of chaos. It’s time to return the system to where it was before, balanced and fair.

Read the full story: PR Bonds are not Bail

Why does the media and our elected officials continue to believe that people are incapable of making smart decisions on their own? The purpose of a representative government is to “represent” the people who elected you. It is actually a pretty simple concept. Why then do our elected officials and members of the media continue to think they know better than us? In a recent Los Angeles Times article, the author states that “California blew it on bail reform.” Did they? In 2020, over 9 million Californians voted to keep the bail system and not go to a system of accountable catch and release. But the Los Angeles Times felt differently. They actually supported bail reform and despite their attempts to convince Californians through the power and influence of their media outlets that using racist risk assessments and releasing people from jail for free was a great idea, bail reform failed. Why? Because Californians aren’t as stupid as the LA Times thinks they are. So now the LA Times is going to shame California and tout the self-proclaimed success of Illinois’ new bail reform law. Just for the record, Illinois’ largest city, Chicago, recently topped 177 Homicides this year. If those results don’t scream successful bail reform, I don’t know what does.

Read the full story: California blew it on bail reform. Now Illinois is showing it works

First and foremost, when someone is released on a PR bond, that is NOT being released on bail. Bail reform activists want you to believe that the “bail profession” is evil, so they create policies that release dangerous people on a PR bond and then get the media to call it “bail”. When the dangerous defendant commits another offense, then they claim that bail doesn’t work. The media needs to start being honest and differentiating between financially secured release on a surety bond and FREE unaccountable release on a PR bond. They are very different pretrial release mechanisms which have very different levels of effectiveness.

States like New Hampshire have fallen for the bail reform trap of releasing people from jail who then go out and commit additional crimes. They are now trying to swing the pendulum the other way and detain people without bail. The question they never want to answer is what was wrong with the system that existed before? The system of balance and accountability that is created by financially secured release on a surety bond. Once you start arbitrarily tinkering with that system, you create an unbalanced and unaccountable system of chaos. It’s time to return the system to where it was before, balanced and fair.

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.