N.J. needs to reform its bail system: Editorial

Bail bonds businesses across from the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack. (Frances Micklow/The Star-Ledger)
on December 08, 2013 at 5:59 AM, updated December 09, 2013 at 12:28 PM

It’s past time we fixed the serious flaws in New Jersey’s broken bail system. First of all, it’s deeply unfair. Our county jails are jammed with suspects who can’t afford even a nominal bail, which means the poor get nailed and the rich do not.

Second, by law, judges setting bail are only supposed to consider the risk that a person will flee before trial; not the risk to public safety. In practice, judges will sometimes consider public safety, but do so with a wink and a nod.

The end result is that we are detaining crowds of low risk suspects at a high cost to taxpayers, while letting more threatening people go free — simply because they have the cash to post bail.

We need to build a better system, one that protects the public by allowing judges to order the confinement of dangerous suspects, and one that treats rich and poor equally.

That discussion is underway in New Jersey. The state’s chief justice, Stuart Rabner, has appointed a committee to study bail reform. Assemblyman John Burzichelli has proposed a bill modeling the federal system, and Gov. Chris Christie sensibly wants to give judges more power to deny bail for repeat violent offenders.

Our hope is that New Jersey looks to states that have already fixed this problem. Kentucky is among them. Low-risk defendants are released without bail; under supervision, if necessary. Those who pose a moderate risk of flight are released after posting bail with the court, which is refunded if they show up to trial. And the highest risk people are simply kept behind bars.

This saves big money in the long run. It costs about $70 a day to hold a person in jail, but only about $7 a day to supervise that person under pretrial release. Now consider the average length of time someone sits in our jails awaiting trial: 10 months — with a bill to taxpayers of about $30,000 per inmate.

Sure, we’d pay more to hold dangerous suspects in jail, but that is a solid investment in public safety. Monitoring those at moderate risk would cost money as well, but not much. We’d save overall by releasing the flood of low-risk defendants who would otherwise be warehoused in our jails, solely because they can’t afford bail. A study in April found that 40 percent of the people in our jails fall into that category. It’s the modern version of debtors prisons.

The push-back is coming from bail bondsmen, who typically post bail in return for a cash payment from defendants of 10 percent, or less. If the suspect fails to show up at trial, the bondsman loses his money, and has a powerful incentive to track down the defendant. They argue that this is an effective way to ensure that defendants show up at trial. But in this system, defendants lose the 10 percent payment even if they do appear in court.

In Kentucky, suspects must pay bail to the court itself, not to a middle-man, and they get the money back if they show up at trial. If they do not, law enforcement officials track them down.

The point is that we need a system that treats rich and poor alike, and one that better protects the public safety. This discussion is long overdue.