Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb and this is a
Speaker 1: classic episode from our archives. Today's question has to do
Speaker 1: with one of the many aspects of criminal justice reform
Speaker 1: that's being discussed more seriously as of late. Is there
Speaker 1: a better alternative to cash bail? Hey brain Stuff, Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogel Bomb. Here. If you're arrested in most cities and
Speaker 1: towns in America, you'll be fingerprinted, booked, and tossed in
Speaker 1: a jail cell until the judge sets your bail. Technically,
Speaker 1: bail means any kind of conditional release from custody between
Speaker 1: your arrest and your actual trial date, but in most
Speaker 1: cases bail means money. Cash bail is one of the
Speaker 1: oldest ways of ensuring that the accused person shows up
Speaker 1: for trial, dating back to the medieval Anglo Saxon's Cash
Speaker 1: bail allows a defendant to be released from jail before
Speaker 1: trial by giving the court cash or collateral. The money
Speaker 1: or property is returned to the defendant if andhly if
Speaker 1: they show up to court. Today, most cash bails aren't
Speaker 1: paid directly by the defendant, but by a third party.
Speaker 1: Bail bonds agent, also known as a surety bondsman. That's
Speaker 1: because the cash bail schedules used by most judges X
Speaker 1: crime equals x dollars in bail, don't factor in a
Speaker 1: person's ability to pay. For example, if you were to
Speaker 1: look at theeen bail schedule for Orange County, California, you'd
Speaker 1: see that the bail for residential burglary is set at
Speaker 1: fifty thou dollars. A bail bonds agent charges ten percent
Speaker 1: of the full amount, nonrefundable for your release, and promises
Speaker 1: the court to pay the balance if you don't show up.
Speaker 1: They also promised to hunt you down and collect on
Speaker 1: your debt. But bail bonds agents don't have to post
Speaker 1: bail for everybody. Some people may be too risky, and
Speaker 1: others are simply too poor to cover the ten percent fee,
Speaker 1: so they sit in jail awaiting trial, sometimes only for
Speaker 1: a few days, but often for months, and in extreme cases,
Speaker 1: for years. Currently, four hundred and forty three thousand people
Speaker 1: who haven't been convicted are sitting in America's jails away trial,
Speaker 1: according to a nonprofit group called the Prison Policy Initiative,
Speaker 1: that's seven out of every ten people in jail who
Speaker 1: have yet to be convicted or sentenced. Note that jails
Speaker 1: aren't the same as prisons. Jails are designed for shorter stays,
Speaker 1: whether it's a short sentence or a pre trial detention.
Speaker 1: According to a report by the Prison Policy Initiative, the
Speaker 1: total number of Americans incarcerated in both jails and prisons
Speaker 1: is more than two point three million. The real crime
Speaker 1: for criminal justice reform groups like this one is that
Speaker 1: the cash bail system produces two very different outcomes depending
Speaker 1: on how much money the defendant can scrape together. A
Speaker 1: person arrested for felony assault who poses a potential safety
Speaker 1: risk to the community could walk free if they make bail.
Speaker 1: A person arrested for misdemeanor shoplifting could sit in jail
Speaker 1: for weeks because they can't come up with a few
Speaker 1: hundred bucks for bail. We spoke with Rachel Soddle log FN,
Speaker 1: vice president of the Pre Trial Justice Institute. She said
Speaker 1: money has now become the primary determining factor of whether
Speaker 1: or not you're released. Her organization advocates for eliminating cash
Speaker 1: bail entirely and maximizing release by moving to a risk
Speaker 1: based system that assesses a defendant's threat to public safety
Speaker 1: if released, and his or her likelihood of appearing in court.
Speaker 1: Bail reform isn't a new issue. Speaking at the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four National Conference on Bail and Criminal Justice, Attorney
Speaker 1: General Robert Kennedy concluded, what has been made clear today
Speaker 1: in the last two days is that our present attitudes
Speaker 1: toward bail are not only cruel, but really completely illogical.
Speaker 1: What has been demonstrated here is that usually only one
Speaker 1: factor determines whether a defendant stays in jail before he
Speaker 1: comes to trial. That factor is not guilt or innocence.
Speaker 1: It's not the nature of the crime, it's not the
Speaker 1: character of the defendant. The factor is simply money. How
Speaker 1: much money does the defendant have. But despite being on
Speaker 1: reformer's radar for more than fifty years, only recently has
Speaker 1: city and state government's begun to really do something about bail.
Speaker 1: New Jersey passed bail reform and launched its new assessment
Speaker 1: based system in January of seven teen. The Maryland Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ruled in February of seventeen that defendants can't be
Speaker 1: held in jail pre trial simply because they can't afford bail,
Speaker 1: and bills have been introduced in states like California, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and New York to reduce the reliance on cash bail
Speaker 1: for pre trial release. The bail bond industry has been
Speaker 1: lobbying hard against changes to the cash bail system, which
Speaker 1: it insists is still the best way to ensure that
Speaker 1: defendants won't skip out on their court date. Jeff Clayton
Speaker 1: is executive director of the American Bail Coalition. He takes
Speaker 1: issue with a statistic that seven and ten people in
Speaker 1: jail are awaiting trial and haven't been convicted or sentenced.
Speaker 1: Clayton says that most detainees aren't there because they can't
Speaker 1: pay bail, but because the judge has placed them on
Speaker 1: other holds for violating probation or a pending charge in
Speaker 1: another jurisdiction. Also, to say they haven't been convicted ignores
Speaker 1: the fact that they may have a long history of
Speaker 1: prior convictions. The real question about cash bail, he said,
Speaker 1: is what would the alternative be and would it look
Speaker 1: any better? For that, there's really only one place to look,
Speaker 1: and that's the Pre Trial Services Agency or p s A,
Speaker 1: headquartered in Washington, d C. The p s A an
Speaker 1: independent federal agency with a forty five year track record
Speaker 1: is widely regarded as the gold standard of pre trial
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform. While cash bail is still legal in
Speaker 1: d C and used in rare cases, the p s
Speaker 1: A releases eighty percent of defendants on their own recognizance,
Speaker 1: meaning nothing but a pledge to return for trial even
Speaker 1: without bail. The p s A has seen nine of
Speaker 1: release defendants appear at all of their scheduled court dates
Speaker 1: and remain arrest free between pre trial release and their
Speaker 1: trial date. How does it work. The p s A
Speaker 1: uses a risk assessment tool that calculates each defendant's real
Speaker 1: threat as a safety or flight risk, using metrics like
Speaker 1: the defendant's current charges, criminal history, age, and other attributes,
Speaker 1: race not among them. Based on this assessment, the system
Speaker 1: recommends the least restrictive non financial release conditions. Next, a
Speaker 1: team of p s A case workers sits down with
Speaker 1: each defendant, particularly the higher risk individuals, to lower their
Speaker 1: barriers to success. There's on site drug testing and an
Speaker 1: in house drug treatment facility. Defendants with mental health issues
Speaker 1: are referred to community counseling partners. The p s A
Speaker 1: can provide help with employment and housing to help disrupt cycles.
Speaker 1: Of poverty and crime. If a defendant skips on a
Speaker 1: court date, the judge doesn't automatically issue a bench warrant
Speaker 1: for his or her arrest, the p s A case
Speaker 1: workers conduct a failure to appear investigation, which includes phone
Speaker 1: calls to the defendant, to the defendant's family, to other jurisdictions,
Speaker 1: and even to hospitals if the defendant has known health issues.
Speaker 1: All of this costs money. The p s A has
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty full time employees seventer case workers,
Speaker 1: with an annual budget of sixty five million dollars. Clayton
Speaker 1: of the American Bail Coalition said supervision and all these
Speaker 1: alternatives are hugely expensive, and noted that New Jersey's new system,
Speaker 1: which follows the p s A model closely, may cost
Speaker 1: in the hundreds of millions of dollars to operate. Leslie Cooper,
Speaker 1: director of the p s A, says that the agency's
Speaker 1: core tenants, risk assessment and release conditions tailored to that risk,
Speaker 1: are scalable and replicable anywhere, and can be customized to
Speaker 1: fit a jurisdiction's budget. What's harder is the culture shift
Speaker 1: that needs to happen from within Cooper said, if a
Speaker 1: jurisdictions culture of criminal justice has developed around the use
Speaker 1: of money bond as a system, particularly money bonds that
Speaker 1: are secured by a third party bail bondsman, it's a
Speaker 1: huge cultural change to tell people that your system can
Speaker 1: be equally, if not more effective when you take away money.
Speaker 1: Nothing sells the case better than being able to say
Speaker 1: it works and we have the numbers to prove it.
Speaker 1: The bail industry and criminal justice performers rarely see eye
Speaker 1: to eye, but Clayton of the American Bail Coalition agrees
Speaker 1: that diverting some detainees to drug and mental health treatment
Speaker 1: is the way to go. He said, people with mental
Speaker 1: health and drug issues and all these problems, nobody's going
Speaker 1: to post bond for them. Doesn't mean that we need
Speaker 1: to keep these people in jail. No Phay's episode was
Speaker 1: originally produced by Tristan Meal and is based on the
Speaker 1: article cash bail punishes poor, but What's the Alternative? On
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com written by Dave Rooves. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clain.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart radio, visit the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.