You bail agents are certainly
getting a lot of stuff handed to you through the various bail insurance
websites and Facebook pages. If that’s all you end up reading, you’re probably
going to think that they’re winning their battle to keep the status quo. But here's a link to an event those insurance company lobbyists probably didn’t
blog about. It’s the Washington Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Committee’s
hearing called, “Pretrial Justice: Reducing the Rate of Incarceration.”
This takes a bit of time to
watch – over 3 and a half hours – but if you do, you’ll start to get a feel for
how this whole reform business is going. Think about who was in the room:
Supreme Court Justices. Think about who wasn’t in the room: bail insurance
lobbyists lamely trying to push their various “research studies” concerning money
bail. I suppose if those studies were any good, someone else might have
mentioned them, but that didn’t happen. Instead, if you watch the video you’ll hear
some interesting quotes, like:
“Money bail clearly does not
work.”
“I do not believe in money
bail. It does not work.”
“Although it may be possible
to design a money bail system that does not regularly violate the constitution,
we haven’t seen it yet.”
These types of
investigations, hearings, and exploratory educational efforts are popping up
all around the country. So many that I’m having a hard time keeping up with
them.
