American Bail Agent Coalition Part II

One thing I like about Facebook is that if you get up before the guy operating some Facebook page, you can read the comments to a post before they get deleted. I read the comments on the post announcing ABC's upcoming agent conference (they're gone now), and there were a bunch of them, mostly in three categories: (1) I have to choose between yours and and the one by PBUS; (2) you didn't give me enough time (it's only a month away); and (3) how can I know what to do if you don't have an agenda?

So this thing looks a lot like last year, which I wrote about here. Mostly chaotic.

ABC will likely do the same thing this year by trying to convince you that everything is turning around, and that you need to keep fighting everyone. But really, do you think things got better for the for-profit bail industry in America last year? Plus, they'll leave a lot out. For example, they might tell you that they talked DOJ into stopping any funding for pretrial stuff, but guess what? We replaced all that money and a lot more with both conservative and liberal private donors.

By the way, I also followed a link provided by ABC to the "AGENT ONLY Private Page on Facebook" for the ABAC, and guess what? It wasn't exactly private, and there's a whole bunch of people listed as members who are insurance-only people. ABC's afraid of a truly "agent only" page, so it's characteristic of ABC that it would say it's "agent only" when it really isn't.

The conference, the new agent group, the strategy, and even the Facebook pages are what I've come to expect from ABC. Just remember, bail agents, because the solution to the issue of bail in America doesn't involve insurance companies, those companies will fight everyone and everything that represents any change to the status quo. But states don't want the status quo. And until ABC can provide an answer to states who truly want something different, they'll fight the states, turn them against commercial bail, and take you all down with it. 

The American Bail Agent Coalition?

Yep, that’s right. ABC is starting the American Bail Agent Coalition. Remember when I wrote about the new communications guy they hired? Well, this same guy’s job description is also to try to build a bridge between agents and the insurance companies. And for that reason, you should really look at this thing with some hefty skepticism. Because he’s not really a bail agent anymore – he’s now on the insurance payroll.

I’ve been telling agents for years that the insurance companies aren’t doing their agents any favors. And think about it – they never have. Over the decades these companies have made sure agents take all the risk and cover all the losses. As I’ve often said, it’s like the mafia, with agents dropping bags of money on the porches of the insurance companies. The insurance companies are now spending all that agent-earned money to fight everything, because when a company makes money for doing literally nothing, any change to the status quo means losing money (and that money probably isn’t just sitting in a pile waiting to be used; it’s probably going to some pretty cushy insurance executive salaries). But, really, what has all the fighting gotten you so far?  

I’ve checked out the ABAC Facebook page, and you really don’t have to bother. The same guy running the US Bail Reform page is obviously doing this one and ABC’s, and so it’s got all the same posts. Mostly it has the usual – “Look at this dangerous guy RELEASED ON A PINKY PROMISE!” stories.

It’s also got a funny picture that repeats the words “public safety” over and over. Really, the inherent lack of concern over public safety is the one thing doing the most damage to your industry, and saying the words “public safety” over and over won’t change that. Once people look into it and see that you can’t forfeit money for new crimes, they quickly see that whatever the industry says about public safety is disingenuous. ABC, PBUS, ABAC, and all the people behind those other bogus websites and pages out there would gladly release that really dangerous guy if he only had a few hundred bucks, and so it’s clear that the bail industry and public safety aren’t even really a thing. No wonder the ABAC page has to repeat it so much – even it doesn’t believe it.  

Look, the guy that ABC hired used to be an agent, but now he’s an insurance guy being paid insurance money to convince you to agree to the insurance company strategy. And don’t be fooled. PBUS isn’t here for the individual agent, either. If it were, it would’ve figured out a long time ago how to keep from sending the insurance companies all that money so that they can do absolutely nothing. And it would’ve pretty quickly seen that fighting literally everyone on every single issue will only come back to bite you. PBUS may not be “all bail insurance, all the time,” but it’s infested with insurance dudes and it has the bail insurance mentality. I don’t see that changing without some really serious adjustments at the top. 

But now, aligned as they may be, it’s clear that ABC has grown weary of the really whacked out strategy of PBUS, which has brought in some pretty nutty people and super-weird ideas (suing on products liability?). But ABC’s really no better, and it’s all the uninformed fighting that both groups do that will ultimately kill the industry in any event. That’s because neither ABC nor PBUS has any strategy that doesn’t involve fighting to the death. In short, they have no solution for the states. We do.  

Bail agents, I know I said I gave up on you, but I feel compelled to advise you at least one more time. So just remember that there’s no future for bail insurance companies in American pretrial release and detention. There’s no need, because even if we keep money, those really big numbers are going away. The sooner you cut those companies loose and work on your own strategy, the longer you’ll stay in business. Hey, it won’t be easy, but don’t tell me it’s impossible. If you think so, you’ve just been listening to the bail insurance companies too much.  

What’s Wrong with the PBUS Agenda?

I just received a copy of the 2016 PBUS Winter Conference Agenda, and it includes a breakout session called “Lessons from Beyond New Jersey: Understanding the Arguments and Solutions of the New Generation of Bail Reform and Pretrial Release.” More specifically, it says the panel will “inform bail agents of the threatening arguments being made against the bail industry, arm agents with the ‘new’ vocabulary to use against such arguments and most importantly, educate bail agents about what solutions can be offered to minimize threats affecting the bail industry.” A good topic, right? What could possibly be wrong with it?

Well, for one thing, the person listed first on the panel is an insurance lobbyist who used to run the American Bail Coalition, which is no friend to bail agents. In fact, when I first started working in bail reform, ABC’s main stance was that there was no bail reform movement, there never would be, and that there was no reason for anyone to worry. It got that issue pretty wrong – the PBUS agenda is now calling it a “new generation of bail reform,” something I figured out and published five years ago. Since then, ABC has been wrong about a lot of things.

This generation of bail reform, as most of you now know, is not so much a fight against bail agents as it is a fight about money at bail – which is why the statement on the agenda of all the “threatening arguments against the bail industry” is so misleading. For example, I know the people working on the constitutional amendment in New Mexico, and they rarely talk about the commercial bail industry. Instead, they find fault with the lack of public safety in a money-based system and with secured financial conditions that not everyone can pay. So if you get to the panel on lessons from New Jersey and all they talk about is how to fight to keep things essentially the way they are today – with bail agents only involved with arbitrarily inflated financial conditions, with your focus only on court appearance and not public safety, and with insurance companies making money for doing nothing – then I hope you’ll ask them to give you some other ideas.

The real lesson from New Jersey – and now numerous other states – is that when people are fully educated in bail, they automatically move toward change, and that change involves adopting a risk-informed system of pretrial release and detention (both for assessment and supervision) using less or no money. This lesson is playing out across the country, and I can’t even keep up with the states, entities, and persons who are all going in the same direction. By arguing to keep things the way they are, ABC is on the wrong side of history.  

I’m about the only one saying this, but I’m being honest. A true private/public partnership in bail is only possible through what I call “private pretrial.” Some of my public pretrial friends don’t like when I mention it, and others don’t care because they don’t think you can pull it off. But I do, and I’ve seen it work. I’ve written about it enough that I don’t have to explain it here, but realize this: because the bail insurance companies wouldn’t exist in a “private pretrial” world, they’ll tell you that it’ll never work and convince you to keep fighting for the status quo.

Last month alone I worked with the White House, DOJ, five different states (of over 20 states that I worked with last year), and numerous public and private entities trying to “fix” bail, and they all intend to make major improvements because they don’t perceive anything valuable about the existing system. Meanwhile, the current head of ABC was on some funny little radio show calling bail reform “an epic battle” and arguing that if we dare to move from the way things are, we’ll be “setting a course for planet hell” and be required to create “state and local level U.S. Marshall’s Service” to go catch all the inevitable skips. Okay, maybe talk radio is made for hyperbole, but man, that last part is just plain crazy.

Don’t be fooled, bail agents. The bail insurance companies will use the “war against you” analogy simply to get you riled up to fight the bail insurance companies’ fight. But their fight is simply not in your interest. If you only believe one thing that I say, believe this: no matter what the bail insurance companies say, most states have decided that the current system – with all of those huge amounts of money based on charge – is fundamentally flawed, and so it’s going to change. Your goal should be to see where you fit into the new system. Arguing for the status quo, which is really the only argument the insurance companies have that will continue paying for their executives and their lobbyists, will ultimately only ensure that you’re not any part of the system we create.  

So what’s wrong with the PBUS agenda?  Well, from here it looks mostly as if the panelists on bail reform are going to try to convince you to fight to keep the status quo – to “arm” you with a new vocabulary, to help you to counter various arguments and to “minimize threats” to the way things work today. But they don’t seem to be offering any advice on how you can fit in when the country makes its inevitable shift. I won’t be there, but maybe you should ask them about all that.