Should the U.S. Follow California’s Lead and End the Cash Bail System?

Update - August 29, 2018:

• California will become the first state in the nation to end the cash bail system.
• Instead of defendants being required to pay in order to be released before trial, local courts will decide which individuals to keep in custody and whom to release as they await trial.
• Sen. Robert Hertzberg, a co-author of the California Money Bail Reform Act, tweeted:

• "Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly," Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said in a statement, moments after signing the bill.
• The American Civil Liberties Union of California, however, expressed disappointment over the bill, saying it's "not the model for pretrial justice and racial equity that California should strive for."

"We are concerned that the system that's being put into place by this bill is too heavily weighted toward detention and does not have sufficient safeguards to ensure that racial justice is provided in the new system," the ACLU's Natasha Minsker told NPR.

Countable's original story appears below.

What’s the story?

• Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has introduced a bill to the end the practice of cash bail, which he says creates “modern day debtors’ prisons.”
• The No Money Bail Act of 2018 would prohibit the use of money bail in federal criminal proceedings while also encouraging states to move away from the use of cash bail by offering them grants to implement alternate pretrial detention systems. 
• “As part of this broken criminal justice system we have an outrageous cash bail process, which if you can believe it results in 400,000 people being in jail today for the crime of being poor,” Sanders said in an interview.

“This brings us almost back to Charles Dickens’s era of the debtor jails where people were in jail because they were poor. That’s what we’re looking at now.”

• But the Federalist Society, an organization of conservatives and libertarians, has argued that the cash bail system is constitutional, and any reforms should be focused on state policies:

“Bail remains on as firm a constitutional footing today as when the bail clause was written into the Bill of Rights… The question that states ought to ask, therefore, is not whether the Constitution needs to be radically reinterpreted, but whether bail remains an effective means of ensuring appearance at trial, and if equally or more effective means now exist, is some change in order?”

What do you think?

Is it time to end the cash bail system? Does it create a “modern day debtors’ prison”? Or should reforms be focused on state policies? Hit Take Action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: baona / iStock)