There's wide agreement that something needs to be done about bail. The question is what. Several bills before the state assembly this year would further restrict defendants' access to bail. In the wake of publicized cases of bailed defendants committing heinous crimes, some legislators think New York State needs to follow other states' example and adopt a form of pretrial detention designed to protect public safety.
On the other hand, the Bronx Defenders, an indigent defense organization, is launching a Freedom Fund to pay low bails and release defendants. Meanwhile, court systems like Washington, D.C.'s use a "release under supervision" program that keeps tabs on defendants, making sure they show up for court without charging them a fee for their liberty.
Skeptics say that approach wouldn't work here; the system is simply too large, they argue, for anything other than bail to work. "Is there any other way?" asks Bar Association President Barry Kamins. "If there is, I don't think they've found it yet. Other than financial obligations, I don't know of another way to ensure that someone will come back. I wish there were another way, but that's the system."
A major obstacle to reforming bail is the lack of public understanding about what it's for. Cases like this summer's murder of three Newark college students, in which an illegal immigrant who was out on $150,000 bail has been accused, triggered familiar complaints about soft judges setting bad people free on bail. "I tell the judges, 'Any bail a defendant can make, in the press, that's a low bail,'" jokes David Bookstaver, spokesman for the New York State court system. Bail, he repeats like a mantra, is for one purpose: to secure the defendant's appearance in court.
But there is a disconnect, critics say, between what bail is supposed to be for and how it really works. "Bail is a form of preventive detention for poor people," says Robert Gangi, executive director of the jails watchdog Correctional Association of New York. "They're mainly detained because they're poor. That's an important understanding to have: Whatever the theoretical justification for bail, that's what it really is."
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