No, I didn’t say this – a bail
insurance company lobbyist did. The quote, in full, is actually, “The issue of
bail had nothing to do with this person’s suicide, in my opinion. The amount
was not significant and the family was working with a bondsman to post bail.”
This gives you a bit of
insight into the people behind our traditional money bail system. Bail insurance
company lobbyists could really care less about the humans who bear the brunt of
a broken system of bail in America. Let’s break this quote down.
“Not significant?” Well, it kept her in jail, so I think that’s pretty significant. The
most interesting conversations I have with commercial bail people happen when
they talk about amounts that are “significant” or “reasonable.” Some time ago,
a commercial bail guy came to our local county justice meeting and, with a completely
straight face, said, “The other day I saw a judge set bail at $50,000, which is
reasonable, but another judge set another bail at only $500, and that’s just
wrong.” To a bail insurance company lobbyist, amounts are reasonable when they
can make money off of them, and they’re unreasonable when they can’t. And only an
overpaid lobbyist could ever say that a $5,000 financial condition isn’t
significant.
“Working with a bondsman?” Well, there’s an article out there saying that some
bondsman actually called Sandra’s mother, but that was it. I assume the phone
call went something like this: “Your daughter’s bail is $5,000, so to get her out
of jail you’ll have to come up with a $500 non-refundable fee for me and then
put up some collateral to cover the rest.” These kinds of conversations happen
every day across America, and they’re why it takes an average of 10 days for
people to bond out through commercial sureties. And in those ten days, research
has found, a lot of really bad things can happen.
“The issue of bail had nothing to do with [Sandra’s]
suicide?” The bail insurance guy says
that “there were clearly other issues [going] on in this person’s life.” What kind
of issues? Everybody has issues going on in their lives, and no matter how
significant those issues are, you can bet that if the person is stuck in a
cage, incarceration is issue number one.
This is the problem with bail
insurance companies – the groups who lobby hard to keep the commercial money
bail system alive in America – they simply don’t have any compassion or common
sense. It’s a problem that we’ve had with this industry ever since we created
it in 1900. And it’s a big problem in Texas, which is kind of an enclave for
bail insurance companies and the lackeys that these insurance people hire to
try to muddle and spin the tragedy of money bail.
Let’s face it. There’re at
least three big issues that need to be addressed concerning the death of Sandra
Bland: (1) her arrest; (2) the nature of her detention; and (3) the money bail
that kept her in jail. Because bail insurance companies make money on number three,
they’ll be hoping that everyone – including you – will focus only on numbers
one and two.
Don’t do it.
