Don't Let Pretrial Services Attack the Bail Industry
- September 22, 2009
- by Collateral Staff
- In the News
The National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies has released the first issue of their "Advocacy Brief." Entitled "The Truth About Commercial Bail Bonding in America," this article is filled with specious claims that spin facts and figures to support the abolition of commercial bonding. The 10 page document, available online, paints the commercial bail system as a money-hungry monster who cares little about community or justice. Labeled "Facts & Positions," this paper consistently falls back on the argument that were it not for false perceived value created by lobbyists, the commercial bail industry would cease to exist. Collateral Mag, on the other hand, knows the truth and supports the surety bail industry in their struggle with pretrial release options.
NAPSA states that the study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics entitled, "Pretrial Release of Felony Defendants in State Courts" does not provide enough data for the bail community to cite the study as "proof" that commercial bail works. NAPSA points out that "the data do show a 4% lower failure-to-appear rate for those defendants that the bondsmen chose to do business with... These very same data show lower rearrest rates for those supervised by pretrial services programs and identical appearance rates for commercial surety (nonrefundable) and deposit (refundable) bond to the court." NAPSA does not comment further on this data, ending with the factual nugget that the agency who administered this study was going to review and revise their methodology, a commonplace practice when doing studies over time. The biggest proposed change to this study? Expanded data collection to create a more thorough sample. NAPSA would like their readers to believe that the smaller sample size negates the findings in this study, and a larger study population will change the data. No one, however, can know how a larger sample population will affect this study.
As for NAPSA claims that the bail industry ignores the statistics in the Bureau of Justice Statistics study that supports pretrial release, private individuals support the findings of the bail industry. According to American economists Dr. Eric Helland and Dr. Alexander Tabarrok, in their study "Public versus Private Law Enforcement: Evidence from Bail Jumping," "[d]efendants released on surety bond are 28 percent less likely to fail to appear than similar defendants released on their own recognizance and if they do fail to appear they are 53 percent less likely to remain at large for extended period of time." While many may argue that comparing ROR to surety bond is not an equitable argument, Helland and Tabarrok also compare surety bond releases to cash bond releases, nothing that "[r]equiring defendants to pay their bonds in cash can reduce the FTA rate to a similar rate than that for those released on surety bond. Given that a defendant skips town, however, the probability of recapture is much higher for those defendants on surety bond. As a result, the probability of being a fugitive is 64 percent lower for those released on surety bond compared to those released on cash bond (emphasis added)." As Helland, Tabarrok, and readers of the study can conclude, surety bail is the most effective way of ensuring defendants appear in court to face the justice system.
If NAPSA truly cared about the state of the criminal justice system, they would not be going after the commercial bail industry, but rather the archaic laws and practices that land such a percentage of the U.S. population in jail. If they focused on rehabilitation of drug offenders instead of incarceration, there would be a lower recidivism rate of repeat offenders. As it currently stands, over 67% of the current jail population will be rearrested within three years of their release. With better rehabilitation programs and community assimilation programs for released prisoners, recidivism will decrease, reducing jail populations and amounts of arrests. While this may not seem important to pretrial release programs, NAPSA claims that failure to appear rates vary greatly by those released on their own recognizance by the suggestion of pretrial services and those released on their own recognizance without the support of pretrial services. However, with jails so crowded due to mandatory drug sentencing and harsh 3-Strike Laws, judges may be more apt to release defendants to free up beds in the jail despite recommendations of pretrial service programs. With less people being arrested each year, there will be adequate resources for the government to oversee pretrial release and fugitive recovery. In the meantime, the cost to the taxpayers both monetarily and in community safety will continue to increase and the need for pretrial services grows beyond budgeted means. With counties, cities and states nationwide struggling to pay teacher salaries, children's medicare and unemployment benefits, is the added burden of an adequate budget to oversee everyone who will need pretrial services fair or even ethical?
NAPSA that is painting the bail industry as the enemy. Dr. Salvador Rivas and Dr. Diana Wilson recently wrote an article for the Florida Surety Agents Association outlining how pretrial programs and the commercial bail industry could work together to create an effective form of pretrial release that benefited all parties involved. In their plan, bail agents would continue to write bail as always, giving defendants the opportunity to choose who supervises their release and increasing the likelihood a defendant will appear in court. Pretrial agents would be able to supplement surety bail by providing counseling for at-risk defendants with multiple arrests, defendants with substance abuse problems and families of defendants, which in the long term would reduce recidivism rates. In addition, pretrial agents can oversee pretrial release of indigent defendants who cannot afford even low bail. Commercial bail agents know writing bail is about more than just receiving a paycheck - every bond an agent writes puts his or her livelihood on the line. Writing bail is about ensuring defendants get a fair day in court and keeping the community safe. If pretrial advocates could stop seeing the commercial bail industry as an enemy and instead as a partner in the battle for justice, perhaps both sides can reach an agreement to keep communities safe and hold defendants to their responsibility to appear for their day in court.
