Beginning this summer, you will not see bail bond advertisements on Google or Facebook. In May, the tech giants announced they will no longer permit the bail bond industry to broadcast ads on their platforms. They stated that enabling an exploitative industry that preys on low-income communities and people of color is a breach of their terms of service.
The commercial bail industry and its big insurance backers hover over the American criminal justice system, siphoning wealth and opportunity from poor communities. The industry amasses approximately $2bn a year in revenue and has consistently used its significant resources to fight against efforts to reform America’s pre-trial justice system and put an end to cash bail. To pursue a just legal system that does not discriminate based on income level and wealth status, America must end its reliance on cash bail and prohibit the use of commercial bail bonds.
Currently, the majority of people held in American jails (as opposed to state and federal prisons) are awaiting trial – people our criminal justice system presumes to be innocent. Between 1999 and 2014, the number of people held in jail before trial ballooned, accounting for 99% of the total growth of America’s jailhouse population. About 65% of people on any given day in local jails are awaiting trial because they cannot afford bail.
Low-income individuals and people of color face greater difficulties posting bail and securing pre-trial release. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, black men and women ages 23 to 39 held at local jails had median earnings between $568 and $900 a month prior to arrest. The median bail for a felony arrest is $10,000, an exorbitant sum that overwhelmingly forces arrestees and their families into the clutches of bail bond agents.
America’s cash bail system forces cash-strapped people to choose between remaining incarcerated – and possibly losing their job, housing, or custody of their children – or entering an agreement with shady private lenders to pay for their freedom before their court date. Private lender agreements often require people to pay bail companies steep fees and can trigger high interest rates when a payment is late, pushing people already in financial distress further into debt.
Lending terms often translate into the ongoing extraction of wealth from black and Latinx people, who are already prone to discrimination in hiring and lending. Being at the bottom of America’s crater-sized racial wealth gap, people of color are more likely to be unable to post bail on their own. The fees they incur when entering into agreements with private bond agents are non-refundable. If charges levied against these individuals are dismissed or they are found not guilty, many of the costs they incurred to secure their freedom can never be recovered. In 2015, fewer than 5,000 New Orleans families paid a total of $4.7m in non-refundable bail premiums. Black families paid 84% of bail premiums and fees citywide.
Private bond agents, who serve as the payday lenders of American criminal justice, are able to thrive because of their ties to big insurance. Global insurance companies financially back mom-and-pop bond shops and are only ever responsible for paying bail as a last resort.
The lending terms imposed by the bail bond and insurance industries allow these industries to prosper off the backs of the poor. For example, there are 10 insurers that underwrite the majority of the $14bn in bail bonds issued annually. These companies would normally expect losses of up to 50%. However, that is not the case. Companies like Continental Heritage of Florida did not report a loss for over two decades.
There has been an increasing public recognition that America’s bail system is broken: that a system of “justice” simply cannot operate with legitimacy when the dollars in a person’s pocket dictate whether a person who has not yet been found guilty of any crime is kept behind bars or forced into financial hardship in order to secure their freedom. Efforts to reform the pre-trial justice system are being advanced across the United States through litigation, federal, state and local legislation, judicial bodies, district attorneys, and state executive branches. Such reforms are both humane and smart policy. Studies have linked the pre-trial detention of people arrested for low- and moderate-level crimes to an increased likelihood of recidivism.
It’s time the United States government pursues an agenda to work for everybody, white, black and brown. That means advancing policies – including ending the use of cash bail – to ensure no person is detained or forced into crippling debt merely because they do not have the financial means to buy their way out of jail.
