The American Bail Coalition just posted a piece on Facebook saying, "Over 100 Community and Advocacy Groups Across New York Reject the Basic Precepts of the No Money Bail Movement." You can read all about that particular letter to New York's Governor here. ABC even has a nifty "Bail Reform" sign with a big red slash through it, as if to say these people don't want bail reform.
Well, before you like, share, or otherwise believe that particular headline, read this from the same letter: "New York must eliminate pretrial detention and money bail for all misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies." And, "For profit bail bonds must be eliminated." For everything else, the money can't detain. Does that sound like a letter that's rejecting the "no money bail movement?"
Really, if you read this entire letter by these advocates, you'll discover that they're pushing a type of bail reform that is far more radical than even I have pushed over the years. And they are justified in doing so; indeed, even though I presented a model release and detention system last Spring, I specifically took that model out to its edges and wrote that anything more limited than what I presented would be acceptable and perhaps better justified by the law and the research.
ABC knows the letter advocates the elimination of commercial sureties. ABC knows this letter presents a sort of bail reform far beyond what even I have promoted. So why mislead people by acting like it somehow goes against bail reform? Really. Why even post it?
The answer seems to be that ABC hopes that people (and especially bail agents) will only read its headlines, and not dive too deep into the substance of things. In short, ABC wants to make its agents think ABC is winning, when ABC most definitely is not. ABC wants agents to read the headline, share and like it, and then move on -- after sending the insurance companies all of their money, of course.
Get this straight. The basic precept of the "no money bail movement" is no money bail or, at least, no money bail that detains, and the letter fully embraces that. What it rejects is the for profit bail industry.
Read the letter.
Really, just read it.
