As our communities try and claw their way out of the crime and lawlessness that has been perpetuated by social justice activists and misguided legislators over the past decade, we must be wise and vigilant to the same old tactics being used by the activists. One would think that continuing to be soft on crime and continuing to perpetuate the false narrative of the activist groups that label criminals as victims has to eventually run out of steam. But unfortunately, activist groups continue to spew lies and misinformation about the bail industry. And they double down on false research and dangerous propaganda that does nothing but put our communities in harm’s way.
The latest example is a brand new, hot off the press, research study conducted by none other than, guess who? The Bail Project. And guess what their groundbreaking findings were…
- “… money bail is not associated with better court appearance rates.”
- “Research and experience consistently show that minimal support and encouragement is more effective than money in getting people back to court.”
And the most eye-opening finding of all…
- “People who used cash to pay bail in full or who purchased services from a commercial bail bond agent — mechanisms that in theory incentivize return to court — do not have especially high court appearance rates.”
As expected, the report is filled with references and studies, that the Bail Project confidently refers to as sources and factual proof. But here is the problem, the sources and facts they claim support their findings are just propaganda pieces put together by other activist groups. In other words, it is all part of the collective lie to push for the release of criminals into our communities. Here are some of the groups and sources cited in the endnotes:
- MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge (cited multiple times)
- Vera Institute of Justice (cited multiple times)
- American Bar Association (cited multiple times)
- Oklahoma Policy Institute
- The Sentencing Project
- Arnold Ventures
- The Appeal
- Urban Institute
- Prison Policy Initiative
The interesting thing about these groups and sources is that each of them is against the use of financially secured release. In fact, most of them have come out very publicly and decried the use of surety bail in the criminal justice system. Are we seriously supposed to believe these groups and their data which make up this study are truly objective inputs? I don’t think so.
Another glaring issue about this study is when the data was collected. The data was collected between 2020 – 2021. Hmmmmm? Wasn’t there something big going on during that time? Something that impacted our courts, our police departments, our jails, and our communities…what was it? Oh yeah, Covid. To think that you are going to be able to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion from data pulled from the global catastrophe that was Covid is laughable.
The other thing that the Bail Project does is intertwine what they call data with a pure propaganda narrative. As you read the report, you find yourself being lead back and forth between mentions of the so-called study and the usual false narrative they have perpetuated around the bail industry. They talk about the “Rise of Bail”. They talk about how people who don’t bail out are “more vulnerable to the consequences of prolonged detention and how they are more likely to lose their job, their housing, etc.”
It is really hard to take a research report seriously when it is so entwined with the same old, same old bail reform talking points.
Finally, the big result, the big finding, Financial Obligations Do Not Impact Court Return Rates. As if anyone reading through this study or even looking at the cover image of the study couldn’t tell you that this was going to be the finding from the very start. They really want us to believe that letting someone out of jail with zero accountability is more effective than letting someone out of jail who has money on the line and something to lose? How does that even pass the smell test? It doesn’t. It goes against all common sense and is a laughable conclusion. But just assuming that there is a chance that this study could be right, we went ahead and looked deeper into the endnotes and guess what we found under endnote #45?
“The court appearance rate is calculated based on the total number of individuals who attended all required court appearances (throughout their pretrial case duration), relative to the total number of individuals with required court appearances. Required court appearances were captured using qualitative text analysis of court docket information, resulting in possible data limitations in extracting all required court appearances, ensuring that court appearances are inherently associated to the release case(s), though we attempted to account for this, spelling errors in the court docket, and missing information in the court docket – language and codes were not necessarily consistent in allowing for clean extraction of this information.”
First, they admit that this is not a true quantitative study, and that they had to use qualitative text analysis of court docket information to come up with numbers. In other words, there were no reliable numbers kept by the court on who showed up and who didn’t, but rather the Bail Project had to interpret court dockets to come up with numbers and that interpretation might not be accurate because the interpretation was limited. You can’t make this stuff up. How is anyone supposed to take this report seriously? It is nothing but pure propaganda disguised as research.
The bail reform issue is not a complicated one. Most people want to live in a community where their families are safe. Where people who break the law are held accountable for their actions. They want a fair system that does assume we are all innocent until proven guilty, but one that ensures that people will show up for court and face their charges. And we all know that will never happen without an accountable and time-tested solution like financially secured release.
The Bail Project’s findings from this report not only go against all common sense but go against everything the public wants. Wouldn’t it be nice if groups like the bail project focused their efforts on keeping people out of jail by teaching them not to commit crime, as opposed to removing any and all incentives they have to follow the law by offering them a free release? Wouldn’t that be nice.
Read The Bail Project’s study.