It may be pocket change to you, but it’s enough to keep a poor man in jail. Bail is one of those dirty little secrets of the system, especially on the lowest end of the spectrum for trivial offenses. A disheveled guy walks up to the table, his rap sheet with a few prior trivial charges and a kid prosecutor arguing that nothing short of $10,000 will secure his appearance in court.
There is no family in the courtroom. He’s got no job. His address is different on each arrest, and may even be a shelter that changes from month to month. On paper, he’s a lousy bet, and there’s little he can promise that will bring much comfort that he’s a trustworthy sort of fellow. So the judge, with almost nothing to work on, mumbles a pro forma $500 or $1000 and sends him back to the bench.
And the jails are full of defendants who will sit for months, maybe even a year, because they can’t make bail.
Is it really necessary to keep this poor guy, whose life on the street tends to bring him onto the cops’ radar on a regular basis, behind bars? Before, the answer would have likely been, “who knows?” Now, we have an answer.
The Bronx Freedom Fund, a pilot program in the Bronx, is a charitable endeavor bailing out the poor and giving them a chance to make good on that whispered promise that if they’re let out, they’ll be back.
The Bronx Freedom Fund is a revolutionary program designed to help poor Bronx residents avoid the costs of short jail sentences. We work with clients and families represented by The Bronx Defenders, a holistic public defenders office in the South Bronx. Our fund makes loans to family and community members so that they can post bail for their loved ones. Defendants assisted by the bail fund are connected with services and support for the duration of their cases, ensuring that they not only meet their court obligations but also get assistance to stabilize their lives in the long term.
Since we opened in late 2007, 93% of the defendants assisted by our fund returned to make all of their court appearances, a compliance rate higher than those defendants released outright by judges. In addition, more than 50% of time, their cases were dismissed or resulted in a non-criminal disposition and not a single person released with the help of our fund received a jail sentence. Fighting from a position of freedom matters.
The last line is critical, as there’s little reason to fight when the sentence offered has already been covered by pre-trial incarceration, and the ability to fight, to work with a lawyer, engage in the defense, do much of anything, is severely hampered when a guy sits in a cell. It’s akin to losing before you start, and it’s why so many poor people have a string of offense on their rap sheet. It’s starting from a position of hopelessness.
With a 93% success rate, this program is huge, and proves that bail set for the poor in overwhelmingly unnecessary. The incentive of bail, to return to court rather than lose the money posted, doesn’t really apply here, as it’s not their money and why should they care about the Fund? And yet they do return, and do comply. And as outcomes show, with a 50% dismissal or non-criminal disposition rate, that’s an awful lot of innocent (or at least non-criminal) people rotting in jail on the taxpayer’s dime for nothing.
While there’s been no media report as yet about it, the pilot program has made it’s way into law. From Bronx State Senator Gustavo Rivera’s website :
“For far too long, the poorest of the poor have been held in jail without a conviction for any crime because they couldn’t afford even small amounts of bail,” said David Feige of the Bronx Freedom Fund. “Allowing charitable organizations like the Bronx Freedom Fund to post that bail is a giant step towards evening the scales and recognizing that pretrial justice shouldn’t be about the size of your wallet.”
“We thank and congratulate Senator Rivera for his tremendous leadership on legislation whose positive impact will be felt not only by thousands of Bronx residents but throughout New York State,” said Robin Steinberg, Executive Director, The Bronx Defenders.
This is a huge step forward in making the system a little bit less unfair toward the poor, who endure a hugely disproportionate amount of police “attention” and suffer for it in ways that are, and always have been, outrageous.
Not only does this open the door to the formation of charitable organizations throughout New York to posting bail on behalf of the poor, getting them out of pre-conviction punishment that’s often longer and more harsh than anything they would suffer by way of sentence, but it gives them a fighting chance to defend where before there was none. Whether other organizations will come forward and do what Robin and David have done has yet to be seen, but hopefully others will come forward to give the poor a chance.
Of course, with the numbers reflected by the Bronx Freedom Fund, there’s a possibility that another group, a very small group, could make an even bigger difference without requiring the formation of charities and infusion of money.
Judges, given the 93% return rate and 50% dismissal/reduction rate, are you really putting anything at risk by releasing poor people on their own recogizance? Are those $500 bails truly needed, or just another way to make the lives of the poor that much more miserable? Did you really put on the robe to be another person beating the poor into submission? Cut them loose. There’s just no reason to jail them over chump change.
H/T Dan Arshack
The show “Raising the Bar” really did its best to show how bad that problem is in NYC, where the courts are clogged and it can take a year to get a trial.
Florida has a speedy trial rule that requires the state bring the defendant to trial within I think 40 or 60 days of a demand. Without a demand, they have to bring it within 185 (the bigger problem in my view is that filing charges on the last day of the speedy trial period and not notifying the defendant for another year).
But even two months, or 40 days can ruin the life of a poor defendant. They’d lose any job they had and if they’re supporting a family on the income they have, well, we know what happens there. It sickens me that prosecutors use that to force a lot of the alleged small timers into a plea.
But what’s the solution — bail is so ingrained it’s even mentioned in the Constitution. A better option might be that a speedy trial demand for a serious misdemeanor starts something like a seven-day clock. If the prosecutor doesn’t bring him to trial, the defendant is forever discharged from the crime. For a non-capital felony, I don’t see why it should take any longer than 30-45 days to put a case together and bring them to trial. But it’s a double-edged sword, because if the defense isn’t ready, and they seek a continuance, they’ve waived any speedy trial claim (at least under the Florida rule, and under the Barker test, the factor would weigh against the defendant, but I don’t think any Barker analysis has ever found anything less than two years as a speedy trial violation anyway).
I discovered that a few of our jail inmates were being released on recognizance after being held for 30 or 60 days. I asked why that was happening and learned that an assistant county attorney was keeping track of cases where the wait time in jail was longer than the maximum sentence and was arranging for release on recognizance when that happened. Why this was being done by a ACA instead of a defense attorney is an interesting question.
I think it would make a bigger difference if the CA were to review cases ASAP and dismiss those where there was insufficient evidence for a conviction (I know this would hurt the cops feeling but what is so bad about that?)
I have learned that setting bond is a very complex problem in part because many of the frequent flyers are unlikely to turn up for a hearing or trial. Another set of individuals think they can defend themselves and after they sit in jail for a day or so they change their minds (that may not be just but it is pragmatic).
That’s one of the surprising aspects of this pilot program, that 93% returned to court without incident even though they had no stake in their bail. This refutes the assumption that low level offenders, if ROR, won’t come back, and prevents a defendant from serving his max sentence before he’s convicted of anything.
And why defense counsel isn’t in there arguing for release is a very good question. A VERY good question.
It may be that the linking the poor to support services is important in the very high compliance rate and dismissal rate. While ROR should be the rule in these kinds of cases, that alone might result in a fairly low return to court rate.
So very many plead to relatively short sentences because they know it will get them out of jail. “If you enter a plea, you will get out today (or in a week). If you say not guilty, your next court day will be a month from now and we will go to trial maybe 6 weeks from now.” is something every PDhas said to a poor person in jail. The decision to take another charge is really simple–and another injustice goes on the record of the “greatest justice system on earth.”
But…but…if you let them out then you don’t get to charge those wonderful “jail stay fees” that run upwards of $40 per day around these parts. You’re just not getting justice if you don’t have to pay four grand in fees to go along with your $100 fine and court costs.
Fortunately, Rikers Island doesn’t charge for room and board.
Yeah, but do they have free health care?
It depends. If it’s a pre-existing condition, then normally they have to pay for care.
I’m not sure if getting beaten senseless by a cop is considered pre-existing or not.
Health care in jails is a huge problem for any jail but for a small jail it can cause a county budget crisis. We had a prisoner that used $30,000 in medication and had to be moved to the prison hospital at $200 per day (a bargain when you consider the alternatives).
We have prisoners that are in and out of the emergency room, psychiatric hospital and jail multiple times per year. Some of the older ones have been in the system for at least 25 years.
In some respects we are operating the worlds most expensive adult day-care.
I leave you children alone for a few minutes and you devolve into tangential discussions of jail health care? Would it be completely unreasonable of me to expect the discussion to stay close to the point of the post?
Hello,
I’m a wee bit confused.
My understanding is that the Bronx Freedom Fund loans bail money to the defendant’s family and community members. Doesn’t that mean that if the defendant skips bail for whatever reason, his/her loved ones are on the hook for the money – and thus that each defendant in this program does in fact have something serious at stake?
You can’t get blood from a rock, Jeffrey. If they couldn’t put up bail, they aren’t much of a collection target later.
Hello,
As you know, I used to be a debt collector. Obviously, each situation is different; I can tell you that many families who would be too poor to tie up all that money at once in bail could be attractive targets for piecemeal collection efforts later on. Their lives could be that much more problematic over a period of months or even years.
Given that the Bronx Freedom Fund sets it up as loans, I don’t imagine they just write it off each time the defendant skips bail. Am I mistaken on that?
Jeff Deutsch
PS: Please call me Jeff (that’s how I sign off, including in the bottom part of my last comment that you cut off) – thanks!
You would have to ask Feige for details, since I’m can’t speak to their collection efforts. By the way, no need to write “hello” or sign off, as this is a blog comment, not a letter.
Something not covered in the article is how Bronx Defenders selects whom it will bail or lend bail money to. If they’re working on a first come, first serve basis, then I am impressed.
If, however, they’re doing serious vetting of potential beneficiaries, then how do they differ from a smart bail bondsman?
In other words, what’s the population being sampled here?