The cash bail system unfairly punishes the most vulnerable Americans before they have been convicted of a crime. 

“Because of the bail system, the scales of justice have been weighted for almost two centuries not with fact, nor law, nor mercy. They have been weighted with money.” –– President Lyndon B. Johnson (1966)

DID YOU KNOW…

A judge has ruled that bail practices in Dallas County are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas said that the county has to stop the practice of imposing pre-set bail bond amounts, which often keep poor defendants locked up for days or weeks while letting wealthier ones go free, without individual consideration if arrestees claim they can’t afford it. He sided with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the county uses “wealth-based detention.”

“Wealthy arrestees — regardless of the crime they are accused of — who are offered secured bail can pay the requested amount and leave,” Godbey wrote. “Indigent arrestees in the same position cannot.”

Read more at Texas Tribune

Money bail discriminates against:

  • The poor: A national average of two out of five individuals in jail are locked up because they cannot afford to buy their freedom. The indigent either sit in jail or face crippling debt while the bail industry and its corporate insurers rake in billions in profit.
  • The mentally ill: More than half of the people in jail have a mental health condition. Compared to people without mental health conditions, they are less likely to be able to post bail.
  • The homeless: People who are homeless are more frequently criminalized, often for basic activities like resting or preparing food in public. They end up stuck in jail because they cannot pay the fines for these minor violations.

Money bail needlessly harms our weakest citizens.

  • Nationally, in 2014, local jails admitted over 11 million people. The average daily pretrial population was 467,500. These are people who have not been convicted of a crime and are presumed innocent.
  • Even short periods of pretrial incarceration can be devastating. Jails are marked by overcrowding, violence, and limited resources. They are not designed for long-term detention, and so do not offer adequate health care – including mental health care – or other services.
  • Pretrial detention costs $13.6 billion each year. The resources required to lock up the poor and mentally ill can be reallocated to address health and social needs.

Money bail has devastating residual consequences.

More than seventy percent of people locked up in Dallas County Jail have not been convicted of a crime and are sitting in concrete cages simply because they can’t afford to pay bail. Every day they sit in jail, they’re losing more than just their liberty in the short term. Whether a defendant spends a night in jail or is immediately released pending trial can determine the outcome of his case or even his life.

  • People who sit in jail, unable to make bail or held without release, lose their jobs, lose touch with their family, are more likely to fall into debt, and miss out on school.
  • People stuck in jail pretrial on money bonds are more likely to be convicted; one study found that money bail alone made it 12% more likely that a person would be convicted. Incarceration can be a powerful incentive to plead guilty, regardless of one’s innocence, both to speed up release, but also because it is difficult to fight a case from inside a cage.
  • And it has dramatic consequences for sentencing. Defendants detained pretrial are more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison – and for longer periods of time. Detained defendants are over four times more likely to be sentenced to jail and over three times more likely to be sentenced to prison than defendants who are released at some point pending trial.
  • Sentences for detained defendants are significantly longer: Jail sentences are nearly three times as long, and prison sentences are more than twice as long.
  • In Dallas, avoiding the collateral consequences of conviction is a privilege with a price tag. The only way to get out in a day is if you can pay for it. People who are released on a pretrial bond stay in jail an average of 24 days. Even where prosecutors ultimately decide not to prosecute, the defendants sit in jail more than a month.

Cash bail disproportionately targets the economically disadvantaged.

  • In Dallas County, 70 percent of the jail’s roughly 5,000 inmates are there because they can’t afford the price tag placed on their pretrial freedom.
  • Those who can buy their way out of jail spend an average of 1 day in jail pretrial. Those too poor to afford bond spend an average of 24 days in jail pretrial.
  • Some poor people charged with petty crimes in Dallas are stuck in lockup for nearly two weeks on $500 bail, without a lawyer or court date.
  • The current money bail system in Dallas strongly favors the rich, who are released because they can make bond.  Those unable to afford the amount are deprived of their liberty and cut off from family and friends before any determination of guilt.
  • Harvey Weinstein posted a $1M bond and never spent a night in jail. A poor person charged with a similar crime in Dallas County would languish in jail for months before trial.
  • Judges rely on bond schedules when setting bail, which set presumptive bail amounts based on each charge.  Dallas County judicial officials follow these set schedules without even considering whether an individual can pay, which means that a defendant’s wallet – not public safety – usually determines whether he or she goes home.  
  • Under the commercial bail bonds system, poor people who cannot afford the bond pay a 10-15% fee to a bondsperson. The poor defendant never gets that money back, even though a rich person who paid the entire cash bond has that money returned.