Tennessee Falling for the Promise of Public Safety<\/h2>\n
![\"Preventive](\"https:\/\/www.aiasurety.com\/bail\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Constitutional-Crisis-Part-2.jpg\")
In November, Tennesseans will vote on Amendment 1, which would rewrite Article I, Section 15. Today the constitution says that all prisoners \u201cshall be bailable by sufficient sureties,\u201d except in capital cases when the proof is evident or the presumption great. The amendment would expand that exception to a much longer list of over 70 crimes.<\/p>\n
That is not a modest housekeeping change. It converts a constitutional right to bail<\/a>, historically framed as release upon sufficient sureties<\/em>, into a longer list of cases in which the default can become detention when the evidence looks strong. Supporters say it is not mandatory detention and that judges still look at facts. That is true as far as it goes. It is also how constitutional exceptions work: once the right is narrowed by category, the pressure of a high-profile case will run toward holding, not toward the least restrictive alternative. We have seen this unfold in the federal system, where over 70% of defendants are now held without the opportunity for bail.<\/p>\n While we don\u2019t agree with Amendment 1, one can easily see how it answers a political demand that is easy to understand. Voters saw people released after serious charges and then rearrested. Legislatures reached for the most visible lever they had: the constitution. Visibility is not the same as appropriateness.<\/p>\n Most of the damage from \u201csoft on crime\u201d pretrial policy<\/a> did not come from a judge being unable<\/em> to detain a capital or near-capital defendant. It came from routine cases moving slowly, from release with no private or public person accountable for appearance, and from technical conditions that neither helped the defendant return nor protected anyone. Rewriting the bail clause does not make a prosecutor file faster, a public defender appear ready, or a court refuse the fifth continuance.<\/p>\n A mother who co-signs, an employer who will fire someone for missing court, a personal surety who will look for the defendant, or a commercial surety who has money and reputation at stake are all proven forms of accountability that government supervision does not reproduce. An ankle monitor is not a substitute for a person who will knock on the door. If the last decade taught anything, it is that replacing money with government surveillance does not make us safer. All it does is restrict liberty without producing appearance. The ACLU was right to warn that electronic monitoring can become \u201ce-carceration.\u201d The answer to that warning is not to skip the monitor and go straight to the cell.<\/p>\n Tennessee\u2019s 85-percent-sentence catch-all<\/a> is a legislative snapshot frozen into the constitution. Offense lists age badly. New statutes are written. Charging practices change. A constitution is a poor place to warehouse the criminal code\u2019s current severity rankings. Statutes can be amended when the jail fills up, when hearings collapse under their own weight, or when data show that detained defendants lose jobs and cases still take a year. Constitutional language does not move that way. Using the hardest legal instrument available is a confession that ordinary tools were not even tried with seriousness.<\/p>\n A defendant held without bail still needs a prompt hearing, counsel, discovery and a trial date. If those do not exist, preventive detention simply moves crowding from the street to the jail and leaves victims waiting just as long for a verdict.<\/p>\n PART 2: The Constitutional Crisis No One is Talking About Will Tennessee fall for the preventive detention trap? In part two of our three-part series on the constitutional challenge that no one is talking about, we take a look at the state of Tennessee.… <\/p>\nLocking More People Up is Not Public Safety<\/h2>\n
\nThe Constitutional Crisis No One Is Talking About<\/h3>\n
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