{"id":219,"date":"2019-06-27T12:39:46","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T12:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justtalk.blog\/?p=219"},"modified":"2019-06-27T12:39:48","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T12:39:48","slug":"muddled-bail-reform-unlikely-to-make-a-real-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/27\/muddled-bail-reform-unlikely-to-make-a-real-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Muddled bail reform unlikely to make a real difference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesunion.com\/opinion\/article\/Commentary-Muddled-bail-reform-unlikely-to-make-14015977.php\">Albany Times-Union op-ed<\/a> published June 18 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last month two NY Giants came to Broome County to support local bail and jail\nreform efforts. Expectations of change are high, for on January 1 new\nlegislation comes into effect designed to eliminate cash bail for most misdemeanor\nand non-violent charges. JustLeadership USA, and the Vera Institute which facilitated\nthe Giants\u2019 visit, expect county jail populations across the state to drop by\nover 50%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One would not know this from looking around the Southern Tier. In\nCortland County, embroiled in a battle to build a new jail, local officials bluntly\nstate that \u201crecent justice reforms will have little or no impact.\u201d The Onondaga\nDistrict Attorney predicted long ago that bail reform would do little to change\njail numbers, given existing reforms. One hears the same in Tompkins county,\nwhere a community bail fund and alternatives to incarceration are well in\nplace. A local data expert in Broome expects no more than a ten percent reduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is indeed hard to imagine approaching a 50 percent reduction. Bail\nwill remain in place for all persons charged with violent felonies and key\nmisdemeanor charges, leaving the poor still in jail. Bail reform will also not\naffect the growing number of persons in our jails due to technical parole\nviolations. Nor will bail reform rollback the growing use of jails as mental\nhealth and detox centers. &nbsp;Most of those\nin Broome\u2019s jail\u201480 percent according to our Sheriff\u2014have mental health and\nsubstance use illnesses for which we have almost no long-term treatment options.\nFor poorer counties, bail reform is unlikely to prevent the recycling of these\npersons in and out of the jail, often on escalating charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Implementing bail reform needs fierce work too: expanding pretrial\nand parole supervision and staff, hiring new county justice coordinators, getting\npolice to issue appearance tickets rather than booking persons on higher charges,\npersuading judges to release persons rather remanding more to jail, and so on.\nFor counties this is an unfunded mandate that will cost $ millions. It is\nunclear who would monitor the bill\u2019s implementation. Community organizations\nand non-profits upstate certainly do not have the resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How will the police, courts, district attorneys, sheriffs, and\nlegislators respond to reforms that challenge their practices? How will judges calculate\nrisk? Judgements based on informal criteria are likely to reproduce outcomes\nbased on the wealth and race of the defendants. Will jail for those awaiting\ntrial simply be replaced by e-shackles? How much will supervision and\nsurveillance by probation, drug court and other officers expand? We do not know.\nThere is little transparency in court and policing practices, and no real\noversight over sheriffs and county jails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reform didn\u2019t need to be so expensive or complicated. Ending cash\nbail outright, as has been developed in other states and Washington DC, would\nhave been far simpler. We now face a muddled, expensive compromise, one unlikely\nto achieve significant decarceration even as it widens other components of mass\nincarceration and surveillance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is now a worrisome pattern for criminal justice reforms. Raise the Age reforms led to an estimated $500 million in new youth jails, expanded sheriff budgets, and the increasing supervision of youth. Closing Rikers is predicated on spending at least $11 billion to build new jails in the poorer parts of New York City. As New York Giant Michael Thomas told me before the community forum, building new modern jails in order to close old ones makes no sense if we want to overcome decades of mass incarceration. It is an insight that needs to be applied to the cascade of reforms ushering from Albany. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>William Martin teaches at Binghamton University and is a co-author of  &#8220;After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Albany Times-Union op-ed published June 18 2019 Last month two NY Giants came to Broome County to support local bail and jail reform efforts. Expectations of change are high, for on January 1 new legislation comes into effect designed to eliminate cash bail for most misdemeanor and non-violent charges. JustLeadership USA, and the Vera Institute [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}