In the past decade, more and more research has come out and made one thing clear: cash bail causes more harm than good. The imposition of a price on freedom causes numerous harms: loss of family unity, housing, medical care, and more, and, crucially, eliminating cash bail does not have a negative impact on public safety.
The original purpose of bail was to ensure an accused person would show up at their trial and the hearings before their trial. A judge would set an amount of money that the accused person could afford to pay but would not want to lose to motivate them to come to court. In practice, cash bail has become a mechanism for holding poor people in jail on charges for which rich people buy their own release.
A bail determination is supposed to be based on an assessment of the likelihood that the individual will appear in court when summoned and, sometimes, on an assessment of the potential threat an individual poses to the community if released. In reality, bail decisions are made in hearings that may last mere seconds and rarely are longer than a few minutes. These critical bail decisions are made quickly and arbitrarily and have no correlation to ensuring someone appears in court and does not cause harm in the community. The result is that 80% of people in jail are waiting for their trial with little gain for public safety—in fact, some research reveals that pretrial jailing (being “held in on bail”) can actually cause more crime down the line. For these reasons, we are at a moment of national reckoning: Is now the time to take steps towards a smarter policy on pretrial detention, or will Americans choose to maintain outdated, colonial policies that tear families apart?
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