A Bad Couple of Days for the Bail Insurance Companies

Yeah, it's been a bad couple of days for the bail insurance companies.

First, they lost that big case in the Third Circuit -- you know, the one they convinced you they'd win because they spent all that money on some big shot lawyer. You know, the insurance companies keep trying to convince courts that they know what "bail" and the "right to bail" are, but they keep getting told they're wrong. I find it really interesting that bail insurance companies and their lawyers don't know what those words mean.

Then, yesterday, the Arnold Foundation mass-released the PSA to all comers. I know the bail industry doesn't know anything about all this, but take my word for it, it ain't good for the bail industry. I never could figure out why insurance companies would base everything they do on actuarial tools except bail. Oh well, all I know is the bail insurance companies don't like them, and now they'll be everywhere. Plus, wait until you see the training behind them! No more money.

Then, today, there's this in the National Review. Seems like people in America want to change the way we do bail and no bail.

Yep, things are definitely changing. Bail reform is low hanging fruit.

Bail Industry Loses in New Jersey (Again)

This is getting pretty old. When I go back into the old bail insurance Facebook posts, I see how excited they were about telling bail agents that their savior, Paul Clement, was bringing a suit in New Jersey that will put an end to this whole bail reform thing.

When the insurance companies lost in the district court, they tried to spin it, but I wrote about it here.

Well, it went up to the federal circuit court, and the bail industry lost again. Here's that opinion. I see they're spinning that decision today as well.

I don't have enough time to document all the instances in which bail insurance companies mislead bail agents by hyping their work at battling bail reform. But I can't think of a single time that a bail insurance company blazed some giant headline of "Breaking News" to announce a thing that, six or seven months later, didn't fizzle out.

There will eventually come a time when bail agents everywhere will realize that the insurance companies don't know anything about bail, have no strategy to deal with what is likely the demise of the industry (the strategy they've chosen, to fight everyone and everything, is only making judges decide not to use commercial surety bonds), and missed out on the opportunity to actually help jurisdictions with pretrial release and detention.