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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Cash Based Bail System

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The cash-based bail system has few perceived advantages and significant disadvantages. The cash-based bail system though overall is systematically flawed, keeping it from serving its intended purpose of public safety and ensuring defendant’s appearance in court (Pretrial Justice Institute, 2012). While some people may view it as a necessary system, it should be evaluated to determine if it is serving its intended purpose. I believe it is serving a much different purpose than it intends to. Rather than providing safety for the public and causing defendants to have a financial incentive to appear at court, the cash-based bail system has created a justice system that systematically incarcerates the poor. Despite what I believe the cash-based …show more content…

A major disadvantage of the cash-based bail process is that the rate of pretrial detainees in jail has increased. Existing laws have established that the least restrictive means necessary should be imposed on detainees when releasing them from incarceration while maintaining community safety and assuring their appearance in court. The least restrictive means, non-financial conditions, are not utilized nearly at the same rate as money bonds. Money bonds are the most restrictive conditions that could be imposed on a detainee. While laws have established that the least restrictive conditions should be imposed, a majority of detainees have money bonds imposed. Fifty-three percent of felony cases in 1990 had money bonds imposed, this figure increased to seventy percent by 2006. As the rate of using money bonds increased pretrial release decreased. Sixty-five percent of felony detainees were released pretrial in 1990, while only fifty-eight percent were released pretrial in 2006. As a consequence of increasingly imposing money bonds on detainees and therefore increasing the detained pretrial population, county spending on jails has risen drastically. County spending rose over five hundred percent between 1982 and 2006. This five hundred percent rise means that county jails went from spending twenty-one billion dollars to spending over one hundred billion dollars. Therefore, the reliance on the cash bail system, which increased the detained pretrial population, has created a significant financial burden on taxpayers (Pretrial Justice Institute,

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