Imagine waiting in jail month after month for your trial. A court has determined that you pose minimal threat to public safety, but still you sit in pretrial incarceration. And while you wait, you lose your job, your home, in some cases even your family, all because you simply don’t have the money to post bail.
Nationwide, more than 450,000 people are sitting in local, state and federal jails while they await trial — in essence, serving time before they’re even convicted. The cost is estimated to be as high as $14 billion per year.
Money bail contributes to overcrowding in our jails, has a disproportionate impact on ethnic minority communities, and, yet, has not been shown to improve criminal justice outcomes.
Here in Los Angeles County, our bail system is in serious need of reform. Currently, the county’s primary method of determining whether someone can be released before trial is through money bail. Rather than assessing an individual’s likelihood of appearing in court or relative risk to the safety of the public, we decide if individuals sit in jail or get to go home based solely on their ability to pay.
The L.A. County sheriff estimates that nearly half — 48 percent — of individuals in county jails are being held while they await trial, most often due to the inability to pay bail.
[For more of this story, written by Sheila Kuehl, go to http://www.dailynews.com/opini...iciency-sheila-kuehl]
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