Abolish the Cash Bail System
Ability to pay currently determines who has to stay in jail before trial and who gets to return home. It shouldn’t be this way.
Imagine being detained in jail for days, weeks, months, or even years, without having been found guilty of a crime. You might think this could only happen in some totalitarian country or Kafkaesque novel. But you would be wrong.
Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law. The vast majority of these individuals are awaiting trial but cannot afford the bail amount set for pretrial release.
Most jurisdictions in the U.S. operate a cash bail system, in which the court determines an amount of money that a person has to pay in order to secure their release from detention. The cash amount serves as collateral to ensure that the defendant will attend future court hearings. If they are unable to come up with the money — whether personally or through a commercial bail bondsman — they will be detained until the case is resolved or dismissed.
The result of this system is that a person’s ability to pay determines who has to stay in jail before trial and who gets to…
