The Truth About Zero Bail: It Makes Zero Sense
About 3 years ago, the District Attorney out of Yolo County, Jeff Reisig, conducted a simple research project. He wanted to know whether releasing criminal defendants on zero bail, also called cashless bail, was an effective tool. He specifically focused on recidivism and appearance rates of those released through this questionable pretrial release mechanism.
The results were not surprising. They showed an increase in crime of 163% amongst those released without a surety bond and an increase in violent crime of 200%. That being said, the biggest question that one must ask themselves is how come this study is not easy to find online? Why is it that when you search for any bail related term on Google, you not seeing studies like this, that point out the truth about these dangerous and irresponsible zero bail and cashless bail policies? Below is a small section of the article…
Zero Bail Case Study – The Catastrophic Results of Cashless Bail Reform
If you search for the term “Bail Reform” online you will see article after article telling you how wonderful it works. And for some strange reason, every anti-bail article and study that you find online and on the first page of Google has an eerily similar connection to each other. It almost appears as if there has been some sort of coordination amongst all the authors and sources provided in the studies so that only a single narrative would be provided to the public. And that narrative is that soft on crime cashless bail policies are making our communities safer and our pretrial release systems fairer and more equitable. Unfortunately, that narrative is far from the truth, and with only one side of the story being shared, it is getting harder and harder for the public to know the truth behind bail reform.