- [Narrator] Bail is a simple concept.
You put up money as an incentive
to show up to your court date.
But the cash bail system in the United States
is riddled with problems.
- The average savings of an American is under $400.
So when you're given typically a bail amount that's over
that, you're not gonna be able to afford it.
Bail is a right, release before trial is a right.
When a person's not guilty,
they have the right to be free until they're found guilty.
- [Narrator] For too many, the difference between
incarceration and freedom,
can literally be a few hundred dollars.
- [Shima] It's simply unconstitutional
for people to be held because they can't afford bail.
- [Narrator] But there are proven ways to incentivize
people to show up to their court dates,
without taking away fundamental freedoms
or risking public safety.
States and cities across the country are turning
to these new alternatives.
Many aren't perfect, but if they catch on nationwide,
it could be a game changer for the criminal justice system.
There are almost 750,000 people in jails
across the United States.
Two thirds of them have not yet been convicted of a crime.
They are legally innocent.
The majority are there
simply because they're too poor to pay bail.
- The brief period of incarceration that bail presents
is a devastating life force for people.
- [Narrator] The median felony bail is $10,000.
For the typical detained defendant.
that's equivalent to eight months of income.
- Nowadays we're treating misdemeanors a lot more like
felonies and so we're seeing a lot of bail amounts
that are upwards from 5,000 to $20,000
for a misdemeanor crime.
- [Narrator] Serious research has shown that excessive bail
is especially debilitating for poor communities of color.
- The whole bail system disproportionately
impacts minorities.
Blacks are two times less likely to make their bail amounts.
They're also two times more likely to pay higher bail
amounts for the same crime.
- [Narrator] And the impacts of pre-trial detention
on cycles of poverty and mass incarceration are enormous.
- If you're incarcerated,
you're three to four times more likely to receive a sentence
three times more likely to serve a longer sentence in jail.
You lose your job often, you lose your home,
you lose your childcare.
- [Narrator] Studies show that excessive bail
and pretrial detention are actually worse for public safety
and cause more crime in the long term than those who are
able to obtain release before their trial.
- Even four days in jail is going to make you 35% more
likely to recidivate, to be charged again with a crime.
There are massive life consequences.
- [Narrator] So what do we do about it?
There are a few key methods
that can help avoid the impacts of cash bail.
First arresting fewer people.
- The best thing we could do for criminal justice
and for defendants is to avoid them going to jail
in the first place.
And if they have to go to jail,
keep them in there for less than 24 hours.
- [Narrator] One thing police can do is issue a citation,
instead of arresting somebody a certain low level offenses
or misdemeanors, citations avoid the costs of imprisoning
someone and save them from the financial burdens of bail.
So far citations are helping reduce arrest rates
across the country.
Beyond reducing arrests,
a number of States and cities across the US have eliminated
cash bail for certain low level offenses
and many have turned to risk assessment tools.
These are typically point based tools designed to help
judges and prosecutors predict if a defendant has a low,
moderate, or high risk of failure to appear
or committing another crime if released.
- A risk assessment basically goes through
a bunch of questions.
Have they ever committed crimes before?
How many crimes?
Some of them ask, do you do own a home?
Do you have a cell phone?
Have you failed to appear before?
- [Narrator] In 1992, Washington DC eliminated
the use of cash bail.
Judges rely on risk assessment tools instead.
As a result, courts released 94% of defendants
before their trial.
Pretrial services monitor or supervise
many released defendants.
And notify them of court dates
with texts and phone calls.
And while electronic monitoring and drug tests can be
invasive, the cost of supervision rather than incarceration,
saved DC taxpayers over $1 million every day.
Across the country, new reforms have shown
that it is possible to grant more people their freedom
while ensuring public safety and court
appearances at the same time.
But these tools are not without
their fair share of criticism.
- All of them have some racial bias.
A lot of them say, do you own a home?
Do you have a cell phone?
They ask about renting versus owning property.
That's a problem.
When you have black individuals that have
10 times lower household wealth than white individuals.
And so that's not fair, right? To say,
do you own a home? Well a black person
is unlikely to own a home.
Does that mean they shouldn't be released on bail?
And so risk assessments in their intentions to be
more fair and more just,
they actually end up discriminating against the people that are
poor and often minorities.
- [Narrator] But Shima says there's an even bigger problem
with risk assessment tools.
Virtually none of them distinguish
between misdemeanors and felonies.
- Somebody that has a previous misdemeanor driving offense
gets the same risk quotient as somebody that
has a felony for rape.
I mean these people should be treated very differently,
but they're often not.
- [Narrator] Advocates for bail reform helped
to create a system where pretrial release is the norm,
rather than the exception.
- We need to have a goal, a percentage goal of release.
So let's make a benchmark of,
let's try to release 90% of people that we can.
So we detain 10% of people who are truly unable to
be released safely.
Aside from those people I think everyone else
can be released and supervised appropriately.
Without that we're never gonna get better.
(upbeat music)
Right now there's probably 200 pending bills on bail
all across the country.
And everyone's trying to figure out how to make
the system better.
Judges and prosecutors need to be reminded that
look bail is a right,
at no point should a judge ever give a bail amount to
somebody without considering can they afford to pay this.
Really respecting that would be a culture shift.
That's good, that's really the way the system
was intended to be.
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching.
If you want to see more videos on reforming
the criminal justice system,
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