What if you only showed up for work 4 out of 5 days a week? Would that be acceptable to your employer? What if you only paid 4 out of every 5 bills you received from your local utility? Would they still keep your power on? What if you only completed 79% of your tax return? Would the IRS let you get away with it? The easy answer to all these questions is ABSOLUTELY NOT!
So you are probably asking why I am asking such common sense questions. Well, the truth is what is common sense to most of us is unfortunately not common sense to others. For example, just this past weekend, an article was written in the Courier-Journal touting the incredible success of the pretrial services program in Jefferson County, Kentucky. A state that you may or may not know that does not allow commercial bail. According to a Jefferson County District Court judge, the Pretrial Service Agency in his county gets High-Risk defendants back to court “an amazing 79% of the time….” Really? Amazing? Twenty-one percent of the time, the defendant is pretty much ignoring the authority of the system and doing whatever they want, and that, according to the judge is “amazing” and defines “success?” Interesting and disturbing to say the least.
The article goes on to show some math to support the so called success of the Pretrial Services Agencies. However, if you are a common sense person, it is really hard to define these numbers as “success.” According to the article, 35,186 people obtained pretrial release in Jefferson County. Each of these individuals went through a so called evidenced based risk assessment by the local Pretrial Services Agency. Thirteen percent of low-risk defendants did not show up for court….does that sound like success? Twenty percent of medium risk defendants did not show up for court…does that sound like success? Twenty one percent of high-risk defendants did not show up for court…once again, does that sound like success? To the pretrial folks, sure, it is great. But to the community it is absolutely not. Especially when almost 20% of the high-risk defendants are re-offending…in other words, several thousand defendants who have been released under pretrial services’ imaginary veil of supervision are ignoring the authority of the courts and in the process are running free to commit more crimes and victims. And all this happens at a serious financial and social cost to the county and state. When people fail to appear for court there is a huge financial cost that accompanies that act. In Dallas, Texas that cost was found to be over $1,700 per defendant. Applying that number to Jefferson County, based on a failure to appear rate of over 21% for just high risk defendants, the cost to Jefferson County is easily in the millions of dollars.
What makes this story even more disturbing is that this ineffective and costly system of managing criminal defendants (on both the front and back end of the process) is funded 100% by taxpayer dollars. Yes, those taxpayers in Jefferson County, Kentucky are paying for a government run Pretrial Service Agency to fail 20% of the time. And just for the record, when these 20% of high-risk defendants don’t show up for court, who do you think goes and gets them? Who is held accountable and pays the court when they don’t show up? The answer is no one. Why? Because there is no skin in the game and no accountability by any party involved (pretrial services or the defendant). When a defendant fails to appear, Pretrial Service Agencies have nothing to lose. The court just issues a bench warrant and it becomes the responsibility of already overburdened law enforcement to get him…which usually happens after they have committed an additional crime.
There is definitely not a simple solution to the challenges facing criminal justice systems like Kentucky. However, there is a more effective solution. A solution that is currently in practice in 46 other states; A solution that gets defendants back to court better than any other form of pretrial release; A solution that does not cost the taxpayers a single dollar; A solution that actually generates revenue for the county and state through premium taxes and forfeiture payments; A solution that is based on a real risk assessment and is evidenced based; A solution that lowers recidivism and better protects the community; and finally, a solution that gives crime victims a chance at justice. This solution is the commercial bail bond industry. It is time for states like Kentucky to start considering ways to more responsibly and effectively maintain the accountability of their criminal justice system and protect the public interest of its communities.
Last week at the Fairplex at Pomona, the Pomona Chamber of Commerce held a special luncheon to discuss the impact that Assembly Bill 109 (Governor Brown’s Criminal Justice Realignment Bill) has had on both public safety and the community. This event was open to the public and was the first of its kind, bringing together a wide range of concerned stakeholders including law enforcement, the judiciary, public safety advocates and the commercial bail industry. The luncheon included a panel discussion among several criminal justice experts:
For purposes of background, AB109 was created in response to a decision affirmed by the US Supreme Court regarding California’s legal requirement to reduce prison overcrowding to 110,000 inmates or face the wholesale early and unsupervised release of approximately 33,000 inmates. In a little over a year, realignment has transferred over 24,500 inmates from the state prison system down to the county jails. In this process, the state has provided counties with billions of dollars in funding to handle this unprecedented shift in prisoner responsibility. This important reduction will help California end current and avoid any future costly litigation as well as an expensive receivership. In the past, all inmates released from state prisons were supervised by the state parole system. Beginning on October 1, 2011, after serving their legally required state prison sentences, inmates with a current offense (unfortunately, this doesn’t take past offenses into consideration) that were identified in a “non-non-non” (non-violent, non-serious, non-sex offense) category were to be supervised by county probation as opposed to state probation. Moving forward all new convicted offenders falling into the “non-non-non” category will serve out their sentences in the county jail as opposed to state prison.
Each panel participant provided the over 80 attendees with interesting and informative information on the impacts of AB109. The general theme across all the panelists was that AB109 was having a significant negative impact on public safety in communities all over the state. At one point in the presentation, Lynne and Dwight Brown of APS showed mug shots and background profiles of several extremely dangerous individuals that had been released through AB109. While these individuals were deemed eligible for release through AB109 because of the non-non-non designation of their current conviction, their “full” backgrounds and profiles told a much different story. In fact, many of those released were anything but non-violent, and most experts would agree pose a significant threat to the communities in which they are released.
One of the most interesting presentations was given by the representative of the commercial bail bond industry, Eric Granof. Mr. Granof talked about the collateral impact that AB109 was having on the pretrial populations within the jails. County jails were designed to house defendants that were awaiting trial or those that had shorter sentences (typically 1 year or less). Under AB109, state prisoners are being transferred to county jails and in the process are taking up valuable space traditionally reserved for pretrial populations. In response to the influx of state prisoners, county jails are finding ways to release more and more pretrial defendants on their own recognizance and through taxpayer funded pretrial services programs than ever before.
It was at this point that Mr. Granof explained the role and effectiveness of the commercial 