Why Illinois wants to end cash bail

I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. So, I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm going to show you the next episode of Anschlach. I'm John Glenn Hill, and this is another episode of The Weeds. So, here at Vox, we work remotely, and one of the cool parts about remote work when you work on a policy podcast, is that you get to hear about the policies that are being shaped around the country where your coworkers live. Like, for instance, I'm in DC, which means I'm good for randomly talking about home rule. Our producer, Sophie, is based in Chicago, which means we've been hearing a lot about the drama surrounding the Chicago mayoral race. Lori Lightfoot has not only had trouble making friends, but she has had trouble keeping friends. It also means we've been hearing about state-level issues, too, including the state's move to eliminate cash bail. Deputy Solicer General, Alex Hemmer, for the Attorney General, the Governor, and the Legislative Leaders. The Illinois legislature is trying to make the land of Lincoln the first state to eliminate cash bail. The circuit court's sweeping decision, setting aside the safety acts, pre-trial police provisions should be reversed for two main reasons. But that's been met with opposition, and now it's in the hands of the state Supreme Court. My name is Jim Rowe. I'm the state's attorney for Kankiki County, and my oath in the interests of public safety compel me to contest the defendant's act. Today, we're going to get into the fight going on about the law, known as the Safety Act, and also get into the nitty-gritty of cash bail. But first, we wanted to talk to someone who's navigated cash bail firsthand. My name is Levette Mays. Levette was arrested in Illinois in 2015 after an altercation with a family member. We connected with her through the Chicago Community Bond Fund. I had never been a jail day in my life, so I really didn't know how the bond system worked. So when I got arrested, I was in the local jail for three days in lockup. And I was taken to the Cook County Jail. I went in my nightgown. My hair wasn't done. I just looked like I just got off the street because when I left my house, I was in the nightgown. When I went before the judge, I was in the nightgown. So you're not looking really at your best. I felt kind of all alone because I really hadn't heard from anybody. I had not got to talk to anybody. I had two kids, so I didn't get to speak to them. At that time, I didn't know that my family had hired an attorney. And before the attorney can get to the front to say, I'm here representing her. They had already hit the gavel and said, your bond is $250,000, $25,000 to walk. That's a steep bail. Even with some savings, it was too high for LeVette to post. And so she stayed in jail. The wait time was 428 days. Eventually, LeVette took a plea deal. She'd already spent over a year away from her children and wanted to get back to them as soon as she could. I always say, now I'm turning my pain into purpose. And also, when you lock up a woman, you lock up the whole family. These laws have been on books forever, but you know, you can't not want to participate and change. If you don't want to be a part of what's going on in our communities, because this continued to hurt our communities like this. And the only thing is, is that your kids are suffering, your family are suffering, and everything brings us down to, you know, the way the way things have just been set up and designed, and it has to be a chain. LeVette, Mays, thank you so much for sharing your story with us on the weeds. Thank you. Those are the personal stakes. And right now, there's a policy move to change how things work. I made another call to someone in Chicago to find out what's going on. I'm Shannon Heffernan. I'm a criminal justice reporter at WBEZ. That's the NPR affiliate in Chicago. I'm also the host of season four of the Motive Podcast, which is about incarceration in Illinois. So earlier this month, the Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments about the Illinois state law ending cash bail. Can you tell us a little bit more about the safety acted in particular this cash bail part of it? So the safety act is this pretty massive bill that was passed in Illinois, and it's the result of work that had been going on in Illinois for a long time. And it does far more than just make changes to how cash bail works. For example, it makes it easier for victims of crime to access compensation. Being a victim of a crime can be very expensive. And it also does things like in prison gerrymandering, which is when people are counted as part of the population of where they're incarcerated instead of where they're from, which changes voting things. So it does a lot of stuff. But the aspect of this bill that has gotten the most attention is that it ends cash bail statewide. And it makes Illinois the first state to do that. But as you mentioned, that was heard at the Supreme Court, the state Supreme Court. So it actually hasn't gone into effect yet. That was supposed to happen at the first of this year. But right before it was about to go into effect, the Supreme Court put it in this limbo space while it's considering legal arguments. I can just quickly break down for you what it means to end cash bail. Yeah. It sounds simple, but I think there's actually misunderstandings of that. I'm curious what it would under this act, what that would look like. Because it seems like state to state, city to city, that can mean so many different things. So quite literally it ends cash bail. And what that means is it takes money outside of the equation when we're deciding who is incarcerated while they await trial and who's not incarcerated while they await trial. So judges in Illinois would still be able to hold someone in jail while they're waiting for their trial. But they would have to do it based on considerations like safety risk. Do they pose a risk to the community or to specific individuals? And they would look at things like their criminal background, the circumstances of the crime, what they're accused of. And then if they are at risk of fleeing, so not showing back up to court again. But people would no longer be able to pay a cash amount to be released from jail while they're awaiting trial. And this may seem like an obvious thing to folks, but I think it's really important to emphasize because I think it's missed sometimes. Keep in mind, when we're talking about bail, we're talking about people who are pre-conviction. So they have not been found guilty yet. Why is Illinois Supreme Court looking at this law now? So a group of states attorneys from across the state, so prosecutors filed lawsuits basically saying this law was unconstitutional. And those lawsuits were bundled together and a judge in Kinky Kiki, a county here in Illinois, sided with them, said, yeah, you're right, it's unconstitutional. State officials here in Illinois still think it is constitutional, so it moved up to the state Supreme Court. And there have already been oral arguments in the case, so now it's in the hands of the Supreme Court to decide. You asked about the timing of why now? I think that's an interesting question, because this law was actually passed when into effect January 13th, 2021. And because it's a big bill, there's different start dates for various aspects of it. That's why you saw that bail portion going to effect in 2022, but it was controversial when it passed. That is very clear. There were people who had feelings about it, but it didn't really catch fire as a major issue that was getting a lot of attention. Until the governor's election. So in Illinois, we had an election and crime as often happens in elections really caught fire as an issue. So this question of cash bail was put front and center. And there were these political documents that were disguised to look like newspapers and they did a good job of looking like newspapers. That spread misinformation about the safety act essentially said that judges weren't going to be able to hold people in jail who were accused of all kinds of super serious crimes. And you saw that rhetoric spread like wildfire. People were talking about this law as if it were the purge. This is not a test. This is a wake up call. Chicago is living the purge. When criminals ravage it will and the cops are told to stand down. It was nicknamed the purge law. Oh. After that movie, do you know the movie I'm talking about? Oh, I know the purge, which is like, that also makes me think the people who said that did not watch the purge because the lesson we were supposed to get from it was not that. I've actually never seen the purge. I feel like I've heard enough clips and heard enough rhetoric around it. I have like a vague understanding because of this. Yeah, you probably, there are enough clips online and probably with everything going on. You basically probably know the plot of all of the purge movies by now. Well, basically my understanding is that like there's a period of time when people are able to commit whatever crimes they want to commit. This is your emergency broadcast system announcing the commencement of the annual purge at the siren. All emergency services will be suspended for 12 hours. And essentially they were saying, you know, this is what this law is going to do. And all of that, let me just be very clear, is straight up this information. Judges can hold people while they're awaiting their trial. If they're if they're a risk. This is not changing punishments or deterrence for people. It's only about the pretrial piece of it. But you did see that fear kind of get ignited in people and it was a major conversation. And I think it's, you know, it's important to know that these conversations, I think when you talk about crime anywhere and I find this particularly true in Chicago, you're also talking about race. I think that we can't ignore that these reforms are happening after the uprisings across the country. Right. And so I think in addition to what may be earnest, genuine fears about crime and safety, you're also having this backlash against the Ford movement of civil rights for black people in the state of Illinois who are disproportionately affected by bail. Can you talk a little bit about that constitutional question? What's the argument these prosecutors are making about not enacting this portion of the law? So in terms of the arguments that actually made it to the Supreme Court, there's two big things. The first thing is, what does the word bail actually mean? So in the Illinois Constitution, most defendants, some offenses are exempt, are guaranteed the right to bail with sufficient sure of these. And the state's attorneys who want the law to disappear say, well, that means cash bail. That means that you have to have the option of using money in order to show the court that you're going to show back up and behave well while you're awaiting your trial. On the other side, they say, no, bail means that people have the right to freedom while they're awaiting their trial. And there can be all kinds of ways the court may ask them prove up that they're going to show back up to court and that they're going to behave well while they're awaiting their trial. For example, they could just make a verbal promise. You know, this could be on your word, right? Or they could go on electronic monitoring, which would show where they're located. They could agree to certain conditions about where they will and will not go while they're awaiting their trial. And so they're basically saying, yeah, no, we still have the right to bail in the state. We're just taking cash out of the equation. So that's the first big thing that the Supreme Court is going to make a decision about. The second thing comes down to separation of powers. So think back to our Middle School civics class. For those of you who are old like me, think back to schoolhouse rock, there's three branches of gun violence. Bring one executive to his legislature that's Congress. Bring three judiciously. See, it's kind of like my service, my service. And these states attorneys who want to overturn the law say, well, those have to be separate powers. There's clear boundaries between them and they can't blur the line. And this law blurs the line because it's legislators telling judges what to do. On the other side, you have them saying, yes, there's three branches of government. Yes, they're separate. But that doesn't mean that there's not times that they interact or overlap. And you have all kinds of times that legislators are setting guidelines or conditions under which judges are making decisions. So think about mandatory minimums, for example, we have mandatory minimums. That is the legislature telling a judge, here's the sentencing. That's your minimum. So they're telling judges what to do in that context. So the question that the Supreme Court will have to consider is on which side of the line does this issue about bail lie? Is it one of those issues where the legislator is just setting guidelines that are appropriate? Or is it blurring those lines between the separations of the branches of government too much? I think one thing that's interesting to me is that people are kind of seeing the end of cash bail as like, oh, it's going to be so dangerous. People are going to be on the streets. Because I think there is a flip side where you say, you know, I mean, the resources would not be available. There would definitely be political repercussions. But if they wanted to, judges could say like, all right, everybody's staying locked up. You're all in danger. Like, you know? Not quite. They'd have to still meet certain standards. But I think the larger point of what you're getting at is true and really matters. And I'm glad you mentioned this. There are some offenses that I think it's actually possible we'll see an increase in incarceration for under this new law. DuBastic violence, for example, right? Because right now, you say, you mentioned this like, people are afraid that people will go out on the street while they're awaiting trial. Well, that's happening right now, all the time, because people can pay money to leave. And in fact, a lot of people do spend at least some portion pretrial out on the streets. They just may, there may be a period of time while they're gathering bail money before they're released. So, I mean, I do think that there's a little bit of a logical fallacy that you have to pay attention to. You know, judges are going to be forced on to make these decisions based on safety as the primary concern. So, that's the argument you hear from supporters of this law is actually like, this is going to make us more safe because we're empowering judges to make the decisions based on safety. They also make the argument that safety is about stable communities. And when you incarcerate people pretrial, you open them up to all kinds of vulnerabilities, losing their job, for example, not being able to care for their families. And that instability makes communities less safe in all kinds of ways. So, I think that it would be a false dichotomy to say, one side's arguing for safety and the other side's arguing just on the basis of leniency. I think both sides are talking about safety, but what safety means to them and how they think we get to safety, I think that's where you see the differences. I think that's really interesting. And I think, I think one thing that's really interesting is that, you know, this is happening on the Illinois state level, but you're in Chicago specifically. And, you know, we've talked before, and I know you've mentioned that it's hard to say like, who is quote unquote back on the streets doing things because, you know, crimes and don't always get solved. We don't know who did things. This is an excellent point. Thank you for bringing that up. Both sides like to point to data and there is lots of research that shows you don't necessarily see crime rates increase with the end of cash bail. But when we're talking about like the crime we're concerned about, I think most people are concerned with violent crime, especially shootings. And in Chicago, we have a really low clearance rate. So whenever I hear people talking about like pointing to data, I always have like my ears a little perked and I think we got to be a little careful. Because that data is, you know, we solve about half of murders homicides in Chicago. Without low of a clearance rate, we don't really know who is committing these crimes. So I'm very wary and very careful when I think about crime data for that reason, but also because, and I think this applies to more than bail. And this is like one big like criminal justice lesson I think people should think about is like criminal justice data is noisy crime goes up and down for all kinds of reasons. And I think you can reach lots of false conclusions by looking at week to week month to month numbers. You have to look in bigger chunks when we're talking about crime to actually get your brain wrapped around it at all. So no matter who's arguing about crime and pointing to data, I would encourage listeners to be a little skeptical about what that data is actually showing and what it actually means because it's not, it's not simplistic. Is there a consensus among prosecutors throughout the state about this law? I know that this has been challenged by those states attorneys, but, you know, is there is there a consensus among them? Right, that is, that's an important thing to note, Cook County, which is where Chicago is located and also one of the suburban counties did not join this lawsuit and in fact, Kim Fox, who's the prosecutor here in Cook County has actively spoken in support of this law. And Cook counties by far the most populous county in the state. So, yes, it's a large number of states attorneys. But when you think about the population, it's not necessarily this gigantic population represented coming up against this law. So that's an important nuance to think about when you think about how the law is being challenged. What are we hearing as this case unfolds? Do we have any sense of how the court is leaning? I don't know if I have a sense of how the court is leaning. I try to be careful about making guesses, but what I will say is the lower court that made this decision, the Kankakey County Judge, was a Republican judge. And the balance of our Supreme Court, our judges who were put on the Supreme Court as Democrats. So, I do think that you have a more liberal higher court here than you do a lower court. That said, we have a handful of really new justices on the court. There's not a super long record to look at here. So, I'll be watching it closely, but I do think it has a better chance than it did in the lower court. Shannon Heffernan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It was wonderful. Okay, so that's the view from Illinois. But how exactly did we end up with cash bail in the first place? That's next. This episode of The Weeds is brought to you by Wondrium. Wondrium is an online education platform that offers documentaries, lessons, how-tos, and more, covering basically any subject you might want to explore. Their new series, The Vietnam War, offers an overview of, you guessed it, the conflict in Vietnam. 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We're going to be working on online and online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. We're going to be working on online business. Welcome back to The Weeds. We're talking about cash bail, and I wanted to delve deeper into the history of bail in America. I'm Insha Rahman, and I'm the Vice President of Advocacy and Partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice. Insha got her start as a public defender in the Bronx. Now, she's an advocate working on what she calls pre-trial justice. Bail reform is just one piece of this puzzle. I call her up to learn more about how bail actually works in the U.S. And there are actually seven different types of bail. They include surety bonds, property bonds, citation release, recognizant release, immigration bail bonds, and federal bail bonds. But the most popular is cash bail. In this country for at least the last century, if not longer, the predominant kind of bail, what people think about when you talk about bail is money. And actually putting down a full amount before you can be released. And for people who are wealthy, who can say put down $5,000 or $10,000 to the court, no problem. Most people don't have that kind of money. In fact, we know that over 40% of Americans would really struggle to meet a $400 emergency. That's a statistic that we know from the Federal Reserve. And so that just tells you that even when bail gets set at $500, which tends to be the sort of the lowest bail amounts that I saw as a public defender, that's an amount that's beyond most people's reach. So the concept of bail goes back all the way to medieval Europe. But what is the history of bail in this country in particular? So when this country's legal system started many centuries ago, the idea of bail was actually personal sureties. And what that means is that I myself, if I were arrested and accused of a crime, could say, I will be on the hook for this amount of money if I don't show up to court or my mom, my cousin, whoever else I could get to say, I will be good for that money. If that money, if Insha doesn't show up to court, they would vouch for me. It's basically an IOU that I'll be on the hook for that money if I don't show up. The idea was, if you have a financial stake, at risk, you will show up. Now, the bail bond industry really started to take hold in this country as we saw the sort of great migration and people moving west, people moving north, people just moving in this country in the late 1800s, early 1900s, where personal sureties were no longer as easy to come by because people didn't live right next to their parents or their relatives or their family members. And that's where we saw the bail bond industry step in to say, I will be a surety for this person that they have to pay me and then I will put down the IOU to the court. And what we saw is increasingly that became the default. It took over from the personal sureties. I'll make a promise to becoming the default way of people getting released and being able to make bond. Now, in the 1960s, 70s, we saw both a very real increase in crime in this country and a real increase in the fear and the fear-mongering about crime. And we all remember Nixon getting up there and saying, America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. And declaring a war on drugs, tough on crime, truth and sentencing, all of these what I would call scare tactics measures that really drove mass incarceration as we know it today. And with that increased fear of crime and increased fear-mongering about crime, we saw another purpose to setting bail seep into the criminal legal system. That was in addition to having bail be a guarantee that somebody comes back to court, it could be used to guarantee that the person would not be a risk to public safety. Now, that actually makes sense to me. I would say if we were to take away somebody's liberty, it should be only for one purpose, which is to make sure our communities and people are safe. But what doesn't make sense is then to have money actually be the determinant, not just a straight up analysis of are you a danger or not. And so that's the problem with what happened, both honestly the roots of how we got to this risk to public safety formulation, the dog whistles in it, we all know. And I'd say we also can't talk about bail and pretrial without talking about race. But there were all of those sort of undertones and overtones that were part of this debate as well. And so that's how we've ended up with a system where as we saw risk to public safety be an additional factor that was added to bail statutes across the country in the 1980s, we saw the jail population and the prison population in this country go up exponentially and the two are very much connected. So bail, which is essentially the front door of the system. It's how people end up in jail and often end up in prison. It's very much related to the increase that we saw in the incarcerated population and the driver behind mass incarceration. Why are advocates targeting cash bail in particular? I mean, you've touched on the costs, but can you dig a little more into that? Well, you would say advocates are targeting not just cash bail, but a real transformation of the system that after an arrest, there's an expectation that people should be detained and not released. Because that's actually how the system works in most courthouses in this country. And that fundamentally is a problem because it is based on this fallacy that we will be safer if people are in jail or prison. And if that were true in this country right now, there's about 2 million people behind bars. About 500,000 of them are in local jails where they're predominantly because they can't afford the bail amounts that in their case, they can't afford their freedom. But if it were true that more jail in prison actually made us safer, this country would be the safest country in the world. And we know that's simply not true. And so what advocates are fighting for is actually a system in which we recognize that you can release people after an arrest pending trial. And in fact, we will be safer for it. And people will be saved from the devastating consequences of having to put up money that they otherwise likely can't afford. Or remaining in jail where the effects of jail, which are so destabilizing, you lose your job, you lose your housing, you oftentimes have your children taken away from you, your family ties are frayed. All of that is actually what's known in the business as quote unquote criminogenic, meaning it actually has an effect where you're more likely to be arrested in the future. You're more likely to engage in conduct that is criminal because the fact of being in jail or prison is so destabilizing. So this might be really counterintuitive to most people, but jail and incarceration is actually a poor investment in public safety. Can you talk a little bit about how judges set bail? What are the factors that are, you know, taken into account when setting it? The legislature passes a bail statute in each and every state. And we've got the federal system as well. And in that bail statute, it's some combination of these factors. What's the person's prior history of arrests and convictions? What are their circumstances? Are they working? You know, what are there? Are they in school? Do they have community ties, meaning where do they live? Do they have family members and relatives nearby? And then what are the nature of the charges in front of the court? And what's the exposure, meaning the potential jail or prison sentence this person could face? That's the sort of, you know, set of factors that a court is supposed to consider. In many bail statutes across the country, they're also supposed to consider what are the person's financial circumstances? Could they afford bail if bail were to be set? And are there other non-monetary conditions, meaning program services, reminders to come to court that would ensure that the person comes back to court and ensures that the person remains arrest, free, and safe if they're released? And what I've seen time and time again is that the only thing a judge looks at are two of those many factors. One is how serious is the case in front of them and these charges, and the other one is what is their prior history of arrests and convictions. And, you know, if you are judged by only what you have done in the past, it misses a lot of who you are today and what your circumstances are today. And we all know this. We all know this is just what the allegations are written on a document which was drawn up by an arresting officer or a prosecutor. Without much in the way of details or facts, hours after an arrest, can't possibly tell you very much about what happened. And so the most harmful factors are the ones that I have seen judges consider time and time again, the ones that actually really matter to the question of, is this person going to be safe if they're released, meaning are they working? Do they have community relationships, are there programs or services that they benefit from? Those factors are rarely if ever considered. I want to talk about what can happen to people when they can't afford bail and they end up in jail and, you know, whether they're guilty or not, the impact that it has. I, it is difficult for me to have a conversation about bail without thinking of and bringing up Khalif Browder. He was a young man who was arrested for stealing a backpack, could not make bail, was on Riker's Island for a very long time. And when he was finally released, he died by suicide. And, you know, it was just this national example of something that happens. But yeah, can you talk about that a little bit? Can you talk about those types of consequences? Khalif Browder was arrested, spent time at Riker's Island. He was 16 years old when he was arrested and he was accused of stealing a backpack with another young man. And regardless of whether he did it or not, and he always maintained that he did not and mind you, the charges against him got dismissed at the end of his case. That in New York State is a violent robbery. It's a violent offense because there are two people, two young people, acting together, accused of having taken something forcibly from somebody else, even though there were no allegations that the other person was harmed. So that's sort of where the problem starts. It's the overcharging and considering something very, very serious when I'm not trying to minimize the allegations, but I think most people would say, wait, this kid spent three years in jail waiting trial for stealing a backpack? I mean, that, first of all, is where we should all be horrified. The next is that he refused a plea deal time and time again, a plea deal that would have sent him home, gotten him out, and yet he said, no, I am innocent. I insist on my right to trial. He spent three years in jail, came back to court 31 times because he insisted that he was innocent and he wanted to go to trial. He didn't want to plead guilty to something he didn't do. The 31st court appearance, three years after his arrest, turns out the charges were dismissed against him and he went home. And that was it. Nothing else. Not even an apology. I'm sorry. We did this to you. No compensation for what happened to him. And mind you, when he was in jail, there's video footage of him being beaten by corrections officers. He spent most of that time in solitary confinement where he wasn't around any other people, locked in a tiny jail cell, deprived of any kind of human contact or stimulation or any of the things that make us feel human and sane. And, you know, like we're able to think and feel and experience life. Who can actually manage that trauma, especially when the injustice of it, the harm of it is never actually acknowledged. And no repair is ever made. And that happens to people day in and day out in this country. And, you know, the reason we use incarceration, we say, is for public safety, but people who are in jail and prison, they're our public too. And the harms that we perpetrate when we don't need to put people in jail and prison in the first place. But if we do, the very least we can do is make sure that we keep people safe and give people the tools and the services so that when they come home, because most people come home, that they're actually able to be productive members of our families and our communities. Like that is actually serving public safety. And yet we don't do that. What do you say to the people whose critique is that ending cash bail is going to have like more people who commit crime on the streets? Like, what is your response to that critique? My first response is every single one of us deserves to be safe, regardless of where we live, the color of our skin, how much money we have, how we vote, we all deserve to be safe. And what we also know is that the status quo, which is a cash bail money bail system, most people agree it doesn't actually work to keep us safe. People aren't happy with the status quo of how we do safety in this country. If you look at all of the polls, both Republicans and Democrats are underwater with voters and communities in terms of how well they handle the issue of public safety. And in general, people think Republicans are slightly better than Democrats at this issue, but not by much, and nobody's doing it well, right? And what people respond to is honest conversations that are about solutions and not scare tactics for what actually makes us safe and what makes the system more just. People want safety, yes, and they also want justice. And what's been fascinating, we've done a lot of public opinion research in the past year, and especially focusing on black voters and black communities, who are the folks who are saying more so than any other community that we care about crime and safety and we're very concerned about it, not just sort of as a big city problem over there, but in my very neighborhood in my community. And by that same measure, those black voters and respondents surveyed say I would prefer an approach to public safety that fully invests in the things that prevent crime in the first place, instead of just reacting after, i.e. the status quo, compared to getting more tough on crime, tightening the bail laws, making sentences longer. So there's actually a lot of support for the policies that end mass incarceration, like eliminating cash bail and having a new system of pretrial justice. We just need to start the conversation talking about safety first, because then it reminds people of why the status quo isn't working to make us safe. After the break, alternatives to bail and how it's shaking out in states where reform has already happened. In the past, we've been talking about the first time that the first time that the case was not in the case, is that the case was not in the case. This is the weeds and we're back. So you've done a lot of advocacy around cash bail, including authoring a report on New York City's pretrial release program. And you know, you've mentioned before New Jersey's end of cash bail. What really is the issue at the heart of cash bail at the end of the day? The problem with cash bail is that it's a really poor substitute for making the decision about who stays in jail and who is released. And so the effort to end money bail, I would say, is certainly about taking money out of the equation, but it's also about more pretrial justice. And that's a phrase that I prefer over bail reform, especially as we've watched bail reform get fear-mongered as it has been in New York. And you mentioned New York City and research and reports that we've written about the pretrial system in New York City. You mentioned New Jersey as well. And what people often don't know is that there's been an experiment in this country for the past five, seven years to actually move away from money bail and have public safety be the real determinant of how judges and magistrates make these pretrial decisions. And what people also don't know is that it is working. It's actually really effective to take money out of the equation and to have a different system. And here's what it looks like. And I'll go to New Jersey as an example, because it's been around for over six years now and is statewide. What New Jersey shows is that bail reform and pretrial justice can work, certainly in big cities like New York, but also in more rural communities where I think there's often a lot of skepticism around criminal justice reform. And statewide in New Jersey, since bail reform went into effect in 2017, we've seen a number of really impressive results. First of all, the jail population has dropped by almost one half. And to the point we were talking about earlier is that jail and incarceration doesn't actually make us safer. New Jersey is exhibit A that you can have far fewer people in jail and still be just as safe. And so the rates of crime and rearrests have not been impacted by having fewer people behind bars. So let's take that apart and be like, how did they actually do this? First of all, oftentimes people don't know that the vast majority of arrests that happen in this country are actually for a minor low level offenses that have no concerns about public safety. It can be a driving offense, low level drug possession, other things like that, where sure, there might have been a lot of problems. There might have been criminal conduct involved, but there actually aren't concerns about public safety. Then for the more serious offenses where there are concerns because the person has an open warrant because they missed another court date or another court obligation or the charges are serious, they bring them in. A prosecutor makes a determination, is this a case in which we're going to seek detention? So not bail, but actually we can just keep you in jail without any bail amount. Or is this a case in which we'll consent to release? And the vast majority of cases, the prosecutor, consents to release and the judge usually goes along with that recommendation, but the consent to release might be with conditions. Like, well, I'm concerned about the substance use issues that have led to this arrest. So we're going to connect you to a program or it's clear you're struggling with some basic stability issues around housing and getting medical and mental health care will connect to the police. And so, if you're in a health care, we'll connect you to services, or it might be, well, we'd want to know where you are because we have concerns about you going to a particular location or place. So electronic monitoring. And then for a small number of cases, there's a decision made to hold a hearing. Say, should we detain this person during the pendency of their case? And then they're remarkable because they look nothing like what I described before, if like the quick, you know, 30 seconds, you make a decision that is life changing for that person. These hearings actually have like the full evidence. You know, the prosecutors required to turn over what's called discovery, which is information about the case to the defense attorney. And judges are really hearing things well beyond a risk assessment instrument, well beyond a sort of like quick, you know, I don't know much, but I'm going to make a really important decision. So we're actually making those decisions with a lot of information in front of them. And, you know, for people who are then detained, there's also a speedy trial clock. So what happened to Khalifa router being in jail for three years won't happen. And speedy trial means that your case has to be brought to trial or resolution within a certain amount of time and in New Jersey, it's about six months, 180 days. So that's the system that works. And not as if everybody's out, it's not a free for all, but far fewer people are jailed and remain in jail during the pendency of their case and we have much better outcomes for public safety, but also for people's lives. For the first time a couple weeks ago, I did jury duty for the first time. And it was very funny because I was like, I don't want to do this. My mom was like, it's your civic duty. Like, yeah, you have to. And with your mom on that one, it's super important. And I was there. And, you know, I saw all the bureaucracy, all the red tape. And it, I will say with DC court, it did move like a well oiled machine. But the changes that you're talking about making, especially for New Jersey, like those are things that take time and effort and work and resources. And, you know, I am curious how, especially state to state, different states with different priorities, different resources, how to sort of overhaul these systems this way. It's really interesting. It's fascinating. It seems like a brand new frontier, but the switch doesn't necessarily seem like the easiest to make, especially when you think of how convoluted the court system can be. Yeah. No, you raised a really good point, which is really about political will. And there is no price to public safety. I know I sound like a mastercard, but there's truly no price to public safety. We all care about being safe. And yet in this country, we spend 260 billion a year on police, courts, jails, prisons. And like I said before, people actually don't think we do safety well. And we can take that money and spend it in a different way. Sure, building out pretrial services, what costs money, but it costs far less money than keeping somebody in jail. And it's a far better investment in public safety than keeping somebody in jail. It's just about having the political will to say what we're doing right now isn't working. And yes, money is hard to come by, but yet we're spending a lot of money and it's not working. And I actually think that's a motivating factor for a lot of elected officials, a lot of government leaders, and certainly a lot of our community members who think, well, what we're doing certainly isn't working. Why not try something else? Cash bail is in the news in particular right now because of the Illinois law going before the state Supreme Court. But there are 50 states. Is this is this momentum or is this just a few states? I would say five years ago, it felt like momentum and mind you, yes, we hear a lot about New Jersey, New York, Illinois. Those are all what we would think of as blue states. But a place like Kentucky has actually been on the forefront of bail reform. And so I don't want people to think that this is only a sort of blue or Democrat sort of priority. That said, there's also been a tremendous amount of backlash to this issue. And you know, it really comes from both increased fear about crime and increased fear mongering about crime. And we saw just in the last election cycle in 2022, we saw especially Republican candidates spend a lot of money, 157 million to be exact on ads depicting their democratic challengers as quote unquote soft on crime and fear mongering around things like defund the police and bail reform. And what I think is really fascinating if we're looking at the other side of the midterm elections is by large that fear mongering didn't work in places where people are like, well, that just feels like campaign and election rhetoric. But where I think it did work is in places like in New York where we did bail reform in 2019 people have been hearing for the last three years about bail and the sort of fear mongering about it from politicians and the daily headlines and the New York Post and the the daily news, which highlights isolated incidents tragic incidents, it makes people think, oh, that's what's happening because of bail reform, as opposed to what the numbers actually are which is even in New York where there's been so much controversy around the border reform, all of those outcomes that I talked about in New Jersey, fewer people behind bars, protecting and maintaining public safety, all of that has happened in New York you certainly wouldn't know it from the headlines right. And so what we need to do as an advocacy community and about people and people who care about justice, it's a double down and lean in and we've got some serious voter education to do on this issue. And so we have an advocacy to do with politicians to say, don't fear monger and play with issues of public safety because that serves nobody. But you can actually win, you can win the narrative, you can counter the fear mongering, you can actually, you know, come out on the other end, succeeding and maintaining your win. And so we're going to call and defend it. We're definitely in a moment of backlash but we're also in a moment of seeing we can overcome the backlash and come out solid on good policy and win the politics if we just stand firm and that's where I think the movement for bail reform and pretrial justice is going. Let's talk five years from now. Right. But that's where I think it's going. In Shahrahman, thank you so much for coming on the weeds. Thank you so much for having me. Great to have this conversation. That's all for us today. Thank you to Levent Mays for sharing her personal story with us. We also heard from WBEZ Shannon Heffernan and Insha Rahman of the Vera Institute for Justice. Our producer and unofficial Chicago correspondent is Sophie Lalon. Krishnayala engineered this episode. Elizabeth Crane and Kim Edgleston fact checked it. Our editorial director is Am Hall and I'm your host, John Quillan Hill. The weeds is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. ♪♪♪♪ ♪♪♪♪