People have been citing to our History of Bail paper that's contained on the PJI website. That's okay, but that document was just designed to give an overview of the history, which was needed back in about 2010.
If you need to know bail's history in a bit more detail for any reason (or for some better reflection concerning historical trends and what they mean), but especially if you're writing a court opinion or brief or something, look at the history sections in my Fundamental's paper, my Money paper, and my Model Bail Laws paper, which are all on my website.
The history of bail shows that "bail" equals release, that "no bail" equals detention, and that if anything interferes with these two notions, bail reform happens. Secured money bonds interfere with both bail as release and no bail as detention. That's why I started telling people in about 2007 that bail reform in America was inevitable.
