Holding people in jail on bail increases crime, finds California judge

Bail reform is one of the more complex and thorny arenas of criminal justice policy work, because there are a lot of ways for judges to interpret most bail laws. That said, the concept is simple; the constitution doesn’t allow, nor should a democracy ever tolerate, when a person is held in jail before their trial solely because they are too poor to pay the money required to get out. We should not be allowing rich people to buy their way out of jail while poor people rot inside. But it gets trickier as you dig into it. We do actually want there to be a mechanism for people charged with crimes to contest their charges without having to sit in jail the whole time, so it’s not right to say we need to “end bail.” Bail is a good thing, and making it easy for people being able to bail out is important. Nearly 430,000 people on any giving day in America are sitting in jail awaiting their trial, legally innocent, and we should be working hard to reduce that number. So it’s a real a problem when judges set high bail amounts for the purpose of trapping people in jail.

Unfortunately, bail reform has been painted as a tug of war between safety and freedom, with the press suggesting that we are giving up safety in order to respect the right to freedom. When bail requirements are changed and more people are able to get out of jail while awaiting trial, media outlets have told the public that these people are a threat to safety. It’s a battle that’s raged especially hot in New York and Illinois, though bail has become a talking point and a political football all over the country. 

So that all sets the stage for why the recent ruling from a California judge in Los Angeles, prohibiting the County and City of Los Angeles from setting a strict bail schedule that requires cash bail for non-violent and non-serious offenses prior to an arraignment, is so important. In this ruling, the judge tabled that safety vs. freedom question, and found that there is no evidence that enabling more people to get out of jail before trial harms public safety. In fact, the judge found the opposite! Here’s an excerpt: 

A court considering a [preliminary injunction] must consider the broader public interest. During this extended PI hearing, the court implored the parties to produce evidence on critical questions of public interest: does secured money bail in fact reduce the incidence of (1) arrestees committing new criminal activity (“NCA”) and (2) arrestees failing to appear (“FTA”) at future court appearances? Bluntly put, would plaintiffs’ requested PI thus increase crime and FTAs, compared to the current secured money bail regime? The plaintiffs have produced a vast amount of evidence, via four well-qualified expert witnesses and more than a dozen academic studies, that decisively shows that the answer to these questions is ‘no.’ Their evidence has demonstrated that it is highly likely that the opposite is true: secured money bail regimes are associated with increased crime and increased [failure to appear back in court] as compared with unsecured bail or release on non-financial conditions.  [emphasis added]

And here’s the rundown from the L.A. Times Editorial Board, which praised the ruling. 

Coda: No wonder holding people in jail leads to increases in crime, considering how bad the conditions are. Here are three recent pieces sending that point home: 

• Chris Blackwell, a prisoner in Washington state, was shocked at the conditions in the county jail where he was held for a short time pending a court hearing.

• Priscilla Grim detailed the horrible conditions of the Atlanta city jail where she was held for 31 days for protesting ‘cop city.’ Read her account of freezing cells, unlawful deprivation of sunlight, infrequent food, refusal to treat medical emergencies, and abuse of pregnant women. 

• Liz Glazer, who previously oversaw criminal justice for DeBlasio, penned a furious rebuke of the NYC Department of Corrections, which is utterly failing to protect people on Rikers Island from brutal assaults by guards and others. She’s urging the federal court to step in. Meanwhile, the NYC Department of Corrections announced that it would no longer be reporting deaths on Rikers Island to the media, throwing this grotesque track record into the shadows.  Meanwhile, the NYC Dept of Corrections is proposing to slash $17million from social programs inside Rikers.