Race, Poverty, and Bail in Los Angeles
I’ll never forget the first time a bonds agent called me to discuss bailing out a family member. It was late one Thursday evening, and I was driving home after a long day of work. The voice on the other end of the phone calmly let me know that a person I loved had been picked up on alleged drug and property offenses, and was eligible for bail. Real simply, they explained, my family member would be released if I could pay either the entire bail amount in cash- and have it refunded at the conclusion of their court proceedings- or pay a bonds agent 10% of the total bail in exchange for a surety bond- with one caveat; I would never be refunded that 10%.
The bail amount was set at $25,000.
I had neither the capacity to pay the bail in full nor the non-refundable amount required for a surety bond. As a result, my family member sat incarcerated pretrial simply because I did not have the financial means to purchase their freedom.
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”- James Baldwin
Money bail is perhaps the most obvious feature of a justice system that routinely reacts more punitively towards poverty than affluence. A new report at UCLA highlights just how common an inability to purchase pretrial freedom is in The City of Los Angeles. The research shows that communities in Los Angeles with the highest unemployment rates are the same ones being levied the largest sums of bail.
With nearly half of the individuals incarcerated in LA County Jail still having never been convicted of any wrong doing, incarcerated pretrial simply for being poor, it is incumbent that we begin to question the economic sustainability of such a wide net of pretrial incarceration, the morality of this inherently punitive system reaction to poverty, and the disparate racial impacts associated with the current money bail system.
Isaac Bryan is a criminal justice expert in Los Angeles California. He has worked on reentry policy for LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, speaks frequently on issues of racial and social justice, and is a leading member of the UCLA Million Dollar Hoods Team.
