Bail Studies Part 2: Helland & Tabarrok, The Fugitive
Part 2: Helland & Tabarrok, The Fugitive Evidence on Public Versus Private Law Enforcement from Bail Jumping (2004) In the ongoing debate over bail reform and pretrial release, one question stands out: What actually works best at getting defendants back to court? The second bail…
Bail Studies Part 1: The Cohen & Reaves Study
Part 1: The Cohen & Reaves Study The Most Comprehensive Pretrial Release Analysis Ever Conducted and Why Its Findings Remain Unrivaled Pretrial Release of Felony Defendants in State Courts, 1990–2004 In November 2007, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) statisticians Thomas H. Cohen, Ph.D., and Brian…
Bail Studies: The Six Most Significant Surety Bail Studies Ever Conducted
Bail Studies: The Six Most Significant Surety Bail Studies Ever Conducted The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth Over the last 30 years, there have been six key pretrial release studies that have not only supported the effectiveness of secured release over…
Why We Fight for Bail
Why We Fight for Bail Accountability. Appearance. Justice. The bail profession keeps the system working. As a surety representative in the bail profession, you spend a great deal of time traveling across the country, working with bail agents, state associations, and other criminal justice stakeholders.…
Eroding Accountability: How Bail Reform is Creating a Two-Tiered Justice System
Eroding Accountability: How Bail Reform is Creating a Two-Tiered Justice System Ability-to-pay schemes and equity-driven policies are not making the justice system better but are instead creating a system where some groups of people can commit crimes and other groups can’t. In a functioning criminal…
AIA Surety’s Eric Granof on the Bail Post with Ken Good
AIA Surety’s Eric Granof on the Bail Post with Ken Good In the latest episode of the Texas podcast the Bail Post, Eric Granof, a longtime voice in the bail industry, strongly criticizes the current push for bail reform and pretrial release policies. He argues…
The Dangerous Myth of “Evidence-Based” Bail Reform: How Three Prominent Studies Collapse Under Real-World Scrutiny
The Dangerous Myth of “Evidence-Based” Bail Reform: How Three Prominent Studies Collapse Under Real-World Scrutiny For years, bail reform advocates have conducted many high-profile studies and reported them as ironclad proof that eliminating or dramatically weakening surety bail is both safe and effective. Three of…
Washington State Bail Reform
Washington State Bail Reform The False Narrative Behind Washington State’s Proposed Court Rules A Five Article Expose By JL Fullerton For many years, Washington State has had one of the most effective bail systems in the country. The product of a bipartisan task force, Washington’s…
The “Willful Non-Appearance” Trap: How Bail Reform Activists are Eroding Accountability
The “Willful Non-Appearance” Trap: How Bail Reform Activists are Eroding Accountability In the push for bail reform and expanded pretrial release, some jurisdictions have quietly rewritten a core enforcement tool: redefining “failure to appear” (FTA) as “willful non-appearance.” What sounds like a minor semantic tweak—adding…
Accountability Matters: A Simple Text is Not Enough to Keep us Safe
Accountability Matters: A Simple Text is Not Enough to Keep us Safe How Bail Agents Outperform Automated Texts in Getting Defendants to Court Lately, there have been a lot of articles being written on the value of a simple text reminder in the criminal justice…