This is the longest I've gone without a blog. I've simply been too busy spreading basically the same message across the U.S. The gospel according to no money bail will soon be coming to you.
A lot has happened in a month -- some good, some bad, but I really just lack the time to report on all of it. Too many airports and hotels.
California eliminating money bail is an entirely different matter, however, only because I've been warning about this happening for a long time.
In multiple blogs I have warned that the bail insurance companies' strategy of fighting everything and everyone while not offering solutions (no, keeping everything the same is not a solution) would eventually lead to the elimination of the industry. And California is simply the latest case in point.
ABC (oh, by the way, I wouldn't blame the ABC lobbyist for any of this -- he takes orders from the suits in the insurance companies) traveled to California like me and presented its information. Then, when things looked like they weren't going their way, the insurance companies started fighting -- even insulted the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Nice going, guys. When the time comes to decide whether to keep commercial bail, people remember all that animosity. So now you're gone, and the only thing that can save you is a statewide ballot initiative?
Maybe some of you don't remember, but all of this started a long time ago when a bail insurance guy came to my little county and decided to try to end our county pretrial services unit. When that didn't work, and it looked like we might start making changes to the money bail system in our county, the bail industry really ramped up the fight and even eventually tried to run a statewide ballot initiative, basically picking a fight with everyone in criminal justice. We fought back and won big. The irony? The irony is that it was a lobbyist from a California-based bail insurance company that got that whole fight started in Colorado. Again, nice going. When we end money bail in America, I'll be giving a medal to that particular bail insurance company.
Since then, though, I felt bad about what seemed to be the inevitable plight of the bail agent, and so I spent years laying out a plan that would include those agents in the future of release and detention in America. But the industry did not listen. Instead, through ABC and that other group, it fought everyone -- often personally -- and slowly burned bridge after bridge until finally what you see is everyone simultaneously tossing the industry aside like as an afterthought.
So now I see from the bail insurance companies' posts online that their plan is to -- yes, you guessed it -- keep fighting. Fight without thinking. Fight without strategy. Fight without a solution. I suppose they have to at this point. But it's too late. Even if those insurance companies win, that fight will only further sour attitudes against the industry, and in the next round there will likely be money but no commercial sureties. Count on it. And that's only if they win. Remember Colorado? I spent 6 months of my life fighting the industry and helped us win that initiative 2 to 1. Someone told me they spent millions on that initiative. We spent $10,000.
Bail agents, you've hitched your fate to the bail insurance companies and their lousy strategies. You really should have expected this.
