A Breakthrough Year for Bail Reform
For decades, money—and therefore wealth—has been at the crux of the American bail system.[]Timothy R. Schnacke, Fundamentals of Bail: A Resource Guide for Pretrial Practitioners and a Framework for American Pretrial Reform (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections, 2014). Money Bail serves to unjustly punish people who cannot afford to pay for their liberty and acts as leverage to exact pleas from people who face the empty choice of pleading guilty in order to go home or insisting on their innocence and staying in jail. In 2017, judges, defenders, advocates—and even prosecutors and law enforcement—took up bail and other pretrial reforms in an unprecedented way.[]One of the early catalysts of recent momentum was the National Symposium on Pretrial Reform, convened a half-decade earlier by the Department of Justice and the Pretrial Justice Institute, which featured prominent leaders including then Attorney General Eric Holder. Pretrial Justice Institute, “National Symposium on Pretrial Justice: Summary Report of Proceedings,” (New York: Pretrial Justice Institute, August 11, 2011). Reform came from external forces, such as litigation, grassroots organizing, and media attention; and from official system actors, including the judiciary, legislators, and policymakers.
Numerous lawsuits were filed challenging the money bail system, both in large cities that process tens of thousands of arrests each year, and small towns and municipalities that handle a fraction of that volume.
The highest courts in several states issued new rules requiring the bench to consider alternatives to bail designed to end detention based on a person’s finances. Grassroots organizations and advocates created charitable bail funds and used strategic “bail out” campaigns to shine a light on the harms of money bail, especially as it impacts poor communities and communities of color. Celebrities, including football players Malcolm Jenkins and Anquan Boldin, took up the cause of ending cash bail. And at the state and federal level, new legislation was introduced to reform bail practices and pretrial justice in local courts across the country.
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Best of 2017
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Criminal (In)justice with David A. HarrisPodcast exploring full range of criminal justice issues, from police body cameras and racial biases to use-of-force policies. Standout Episode: Attorney Whitney Tymas discusses how local elections can be used to reform prosecutors’ offices.
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Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in AmericaBook on how fees, fines, cash bail and strictly enforced laws affect the poor.
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Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real ReformLaw professor examines data gathered over a decade, arguing that conventional wisdom on mass incarceration misses a number of key factors, such as the simple fact of rising crime through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, as well as the unconstrained power of prosecutors.
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Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black AmericaA book seeking to understand the role played by African American leaders across the country in supporting the war on crime that began in the 1970s. Many of these policies were supported and even championed by black leaders of the time.
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Time: The Kalief Browder StoryThis series traces the tragic case of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teen who spent three horrific years in jail, despite never being convicted of a crime.
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Policing the Black ManExplores and critiques the many ways the criminal justice system impacts the lives of African American boys and men at every stage of the criminal process, from arrest through sentencing.
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Vera Staff
External Reviewers
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Alec Karakatsanis
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Pilar Weiss
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Cherise Fanno Burdeen