60% of the people sitting in jail as you read this newsletter are innocent.
To expand on the above “clickbait" sentence, this 60% represents the 465,000 people confined in pretrial detention that have not been convicted of a crime. It costs $35M a day to detain these people. In 2009 the median detention time before trial ranged from 50 to 240 days.

Even with the use of a bail bondsman, the nonrefundable premium (typically 10% of the bail amount) is out of reach of many defendants, who have a median income of $16,000 a year.
Defendants who can afford neither the bail premium nor the 2-8 months away from their family responsibilities are left with a third option: pleading guilty to the crime they’re charged with. Although statistics of who is actually guilty out of those who merely plead guilty are not available for obvious reasons, the economic reality of the bail situation should make us wonder how many such people are walking around with undeserved criminal records.

Many jurisdictions have either moved away from the cash bail concept long ago (Washington, DC, and Kentucky), or have just completed/are currently reviewing alternatives to cash bail (New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland, and counties in Colorado, Oregon, Wisconsin, California, and Illinois). Typically these alternatives are a combination of risk assessment algorithms (although algorithms have their own biases, to be covered in a future newsletter) and pretrial monitoring ranging from regular contact follow-ups to GPS bracelets.

Things you can do:
- Donate to one of the following regional bail funds:
- https://www.nwcombailfund.org/ (NW Community Bail Fund--currently operating on a waitlist due to lack of funds)
- https://blacklivesseattle.org/bail-fund/ (BLM Seattle-King County--currently showing a surplus that will be used for future arrests, according to the website)
- https://fairfightbondfund.org/ (Washington Immigrant Solidary network—supports ICE detainees)

- Contact local government and let them know how you feel about NWCBF’s proposed bail reforms, described at this link: https://www.nwcombailfund.org/act-now/

- Watch the documentary Trapped: Cash Bail in America on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNzNBn2iuq0

- Read the following for more information:
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/ending-cash-bail/

After all, the point of bail is to ensure appearance at court, not levy a punitive fine.

Lenore

Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels