It is no secret that our criminal justice system needs serious overhauls. Due to the work of community organizers, academics, and restorative justice practitioners, concerns about criminal justice are gaining traction at State and Federal levels. The push for prison abolition and prison reform have led to keen examinations of every aspect of the carceral system, from interaction with law enforcement to sentencing. An important piece of dismantling mass incarceration is examining the ways in which poor criminals fare worse than wealthier criminals during the pre-trial process. Access to money means you can await your trail from the comfort of your home versus awaiting your trial behind bars. High-cost bail, coupled with backlogged cases can often mean that people are behind bars for unimaginable amounts of time, without trial. Bail disproportionately impacts communities of color and addressing unfair policies around bail is an important first step to re envisioning incarceration.

Today, U.S. Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bipartisan bail reform bill – The Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act of 2017. The bill encourages states to reform or replace the practice of money bail, the requirement that individuals awaiting trial remain in jail unless they pay for their release. Across the country, state and local governments continue to have ineffective money bail systems that force individuals to pay amounts set arbitrarily, without consideration for the ability to pay, or an accurate assessment of the person’s danger to the public or risk of not showing up to trial.

“More than 450,000 Americans sit in jail today awaiting trial and many of them cannot afford “money bail.” In our country, whether you stay in jail or not is wholly determined by whether you’re wealthy or not – and that’s wrong. We must come together to reform a bail system that is discriminatory, wasteful, and fails to keep our communities safe,” said Senator Harris. 

“Americans should be able to expect fair and equal treatment under the law regardless of how much money is in their pockets or how many connections they have,” said Senator Paul. “By giving states greater freedom to undertake reforms specific to their needs, our legislation will help strengthen protections for minority and low-income defendants, reduce waste, and move our bail system toward more effective methods, such as individualized, risk-based assessments.”

Here are a few key points of the bill:

•Authorizes a $10 million grant over a three-year period to incentivize and encourage states to reform or replace the practice of money bail.

•Sets forth principles to obtain grants, including:

•Replacing money bail system with individualized, pretrial assessments with risk-based decision-making. The risk assessments must be regularly validated on a local population, and include objective, research-based, validated assessment tools that do not result in unwarranted disparities on the basis of any classification protected under Federal nondiscrimination laws or the nondiscrimination laws of the applicable State.

•Providing for a presumption of release unless the judicial officer determines that such release would not result in the appearance of the person at trial or would endanger the safety of others in the community.

•If pretrial release requires imposing conditions, it should be based on the least restrictive, nonfinancial conditions that a judicial officer determines is necessary.

•Supervision of bail conditions should be based on evidence-based practices.

•Appointment of counsel at the earliest possible stage of pretrial detention.

•Instituting a system of data collection and reporting to show the effectiveness of system improvements.

•The bill further authorizes an additional $5 million over three years to the Bureau of Justice Statistics to implement a National Pretrial Reporting Program, which provides for data collection on the processing of defendants in state and municipal courts.

•Requires an annual report to the Department of Justice that provides for transparency and accountability for these grant programs.

You can read the full text here. 

Is this bill doing enough to reform bail? Share your thoughts below!