When Even $50 Is Excessive Bail
DEMachina.
Posted to Legal on Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 08:43:25 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
It turns out that 2/3 of the inmates in U.S. prisons are there because they can't afford the bail set for them, and this is costing taxpayers $9 billion per year.
NPR has a three-part story (part one is here) on how the bail system is hurting both inmates and taxpayers alike, but is being kept in place in part because of intensive lobbying efforts by private bail bondsmen.
While many bonds are not especially high (some as low as $50), this can still be unreachable for many. Part one profiles a couple offenders and how an out-of-reach bail has affected them.
The first is Leslie Chew, who was living out of his car. He tried to steal some blankets to keep warm, and was arrested. His bond was set at $3,500, which he says "is like a million dollars to me." His alternative is to pay a bail bondsman $350, which is no less beyond his means. Instead of being given pretrial release, he sat in jail for 8 months until prosecutors gave him time served. Cost to the local taxpayers? $9,120. The cost to Chew: his car (the only place he had to sleep) and his job. He spent 8 months in prison waiting for things to get sorted out, and then had to plead to felony theft, which has made it impossible to get a new job.
The next is Doug Currington, who tried to steal a TV while high on meth. His bail was set at $150, while he is costing the taxpayers about $40 per day. As of when the story was written, he'd been there for 75 days, or $2,850. This inability to make bail also costs him any ability to mount a decent defense: "If I can get out and hire an attorney, I can go to rehab. I can get my job back. And when I go to court, my lawyer has something to work with."
Defense lawyers and Justice Department statistics back this up: simply, those who get out on bail do less time. In Currington's case, local defense lawyers say that if he were in rehab, had a job, and paid restitution, he'd likely get probation. Instead, prosecutors offered him a plea whereby he'd serve 5 years.
The third inmate is Raymond Howard, who was arrested for forging a check. His bail was set at $500, while as of the story's writing taxpayers had paid a little over $5,000 to house him. Local defense lawyers say he would probably get probation if he could make bail and show his life was improving, whereas prosecutors offered him 7 years. Eventually, he took a plea bargain for 3.
It's important to remember that none of these men have histories of violence...after all, they were considered low-risk enough to be granted such low (relatively) bail amounts to begin with.
Prison overcrowding is a huge problem, and the inability to make bail has exacerbated it dramatically. There is one alternative: pretrial release. This is a government-run (usually by the local county) program whereby non-violent offenders are allowed to leave jail while under supervision (e.g. an ankle bracelet, phone calls to an officer, drug testing, etc.).
The cost savings to governments can be dramatic. Broward County, Florida, is a place where pretrial release met with resounding success. Three years ago, the jail was so full that a judge ruled it unconstitutional. Rather than spending $70 million on a new jail, county commissioners expanded pretrial release. The program grew so fast the current jail was able to close an entire wing, saving the county $20 million per year. Moreover, the cost per inmate is dramatically lower: in Broward, it's $7 per day per inmate on pretrial release, versus $115 per day per inmate in jail. And, according to court records, defendants still showed up for their trials.
Two years after doubling the program's funding, the county commissioners gutted it. No one is entirely sure why, but there are some suspicious circumstances: the year before, private bailbondsmen spread $23,000 across the commissioners, including $5,000 to then-commissioner (and now mayor) Ken Keechl just five days before the vote. This is not unique to Broward; bondsmen across the country have lobbied heavily to cut funding for pretrial release programs.
It's not like they don't have the money, either. In many places, bondsmen have what amounts to a license to print money. Here's how it works: a defendant is arrested and is granted bail. If they can't afford it, they pay a bondsman a non-refundable fee, usually equal to around 10% of the bail amount. The bondsman guarantees the bail money. If the defendant shows up for court, the bond is returned, so the 10% payment is pure profit for the bondsman. If the defendant doesn't, the bondsman is supposed to go find them (think Dog the Bounty Hunter). This is rare, however; most people who skip bail are recovered by local law enforcement. If the person doesn't show, the bondsman is supposed to pay the whole cost of bond as a punishment for not keeping an eye on the defendant.
The reality, however, is that most don't: counties often settle for as little as 5% of the original bond, meaning the bondsman can make a profit doing nothing. Bondsmen owe California $150 million for clients who didn't show; they owe New Jersey $250,000 over the last 4 years. One county in Pennsylvania stopped collecting for awhile, because it was too much work to get bondsmen to pay up.
Even those public officials who recognize the problem are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one side, they have the lobbying efforts of the bondsmen, and on the other, they have the inevitable election, with the opponents cries of being "soft on crime" for advocating more pretrial release rather than bond.
In the meantime, the taxpayers foot the bill.
