By Center For American Progress
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Washington, D.C. — Across the country, thousands of people who cannot afford to pay their cash bail are forced to choose between sitting in jail for weeks or months without trial and entering into a predatory commercial bail agreement that they will be paying for years to come. Charitable bail funds provide a more just alternative. However, state and local legislators have restricted the operations of these funds by imposing unnecessary and onerous requirements at the behest of the commercial bail industry. A new Center for American Progress issue brief analyzes the critical role that charitable bail funds play in making criminal legal systems more just and communities safer and highlights the profit-motivated attacks on their operation led by the commercial bail industry.
According to the brief, charitable bail funds improve safety and justice by:
- Removing profit motives from the pretrial process. Unlike the commercial bail industry, which extracts more than $2.4 billion in profit from legally innocent people each year, charitable bail funds provide bail payments to the court with no financial strings attached.
- Providing free services and resources that can help improve people’s financial security and make communities safer. Charitable bail funds connect people to valuable supportive services—such as housing relief programs or employment services—and address the underlying issues that led to arrest, reducing the likelihood of future arrest.
- Reducing unnecessary pretrial incarceration, saving jurisdictions money. Commercial bail industry-supported policies contributed to the 433 percent increase in pretrial detention from the 1970s to 2009.
“State and local leaders must not let the commercial bail industry’s lust for profit get in the way of charitable bail funds’ efforts to help improve safety and justice in the pretrial process,” said Allie Preston, senior policy analyst for Criminal Justice Reform at CAP and author of the brief. “Charitable bail funds have been an invaluable resource in local communities, helping ensure that pretrial freedom is not dependent on how much money a person has. But what is ultimately needed is long-lasting pretrial reform that centers safety and justice rather than wealth.”
Read the issue brief: “3 Reasons Why Charitable Bail Funds Are Safer, More Just, and More Beneficial to Communities Than Commercial Bail Companies” by Allie Preston
The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
