Embedded Files
Abolish the System as a whole for those who have committed minor offenses. According to the Bail Project, Freedom should be free. Legislation and court rules have attempted to make bail fees more affordable for those who are in poverty. But in doing so have proven unsuccessful and difficult to enforce. The reality is that for most American families, any amount of bail will be a financial hardship. Four out of ten Americans cannot cover even a $400 unplanned expense. So what could be the solution? Just abolish it as a whole! Abolishing the Cash Bail system would immediately fix a very racially biased system in our current court of law.
Make Pretrial Detention the rare and limited exception. Many Americans are taught that in the court of law, you are innocent until proven guilty, but Pretrial Detention skips all that and goes right to the punishment, persuading people to forfeit then and plead guilty to the charge. Making it so that this is a Rare and Limited Exception would greatly reduce the number of hearings, therefore also reducing the prison population
Release most people pretrial: The bill allows courts to detain a person pending trial only after a judge finds by clear and convincing evidence that no pretrial release conditions will suffice and detention is necessary to keep the community safe from violent physical force against another person or conduct that will cause another person significant bodily harm. Under all circumstances, the judge is required to use the least restrictive conditions possible and waive all fees for people who are unable to pay. If there is evidence that the defendant will not return to court in an effort to avoid prosecution, that risk can be addressed through appropriate pretrial conditions. The EMBA rests on two coequal goals: ending money bail and lowering jail populations, both of which are consistent with increasing public safety.
Provide checks on detention: This also includes requiring that all defendants are represented by counsel, are only detained after a hearing in front of a judge, can take expedited appeals of a detention decision, and receive periodic reviews of all detention orders.
Create an independent Review Committee - made up of national experts to help local systems design and implement effective pretrial release systems and to evaluate and report on the success of those systems.
Maintain and provide case-level data - to the National Pretrial Reporting Program, to be maintained by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, so that experts can understand what works, what doesn’t, and what might be keeping people incarcerated unjustly. The bill also requires the creation of a public dashboard, so that anyone can analyze data from participating jurisdictions.
Below is listed Party Identification on whether they are for or against ending cash bail.
courtesy of https://www.dataforprogress.org/end-money-bail
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