Purposeful Summary: I will write my essay on how the bail system needlessly imprisons poor people, and creates further disparity in the sentencing of rich and poor people. Many people are locked up on bail for minor crimes. Some have not yet even been convicted, merely accused. This completely flips the notion of innocent until proven guilty on its head. The current conversation about bail reform is primarily focused on the effectiveness and validity of risk assessment tools. While risk-assessment is a necessary step in the bail-setting process, the effectiveness of risk-assessment tools is contested.
They Say/ I say: They say that reforming risk-assessment tools is the most important step to take in bail reform. I say that efforts need to be made to attack the structure of the bail-system as a whole, not just a single aspect of it.
Thesis: Risk-assessment tools, on top of being fine-tuned, need to combined with other methods of bail reform to reduce bail incarceration. These methods include a more litigation-intensive bail setting process, and taking into consideration the harms of a bail sentence.
First Paragraph: Current Risk-assessment methods have produced conflicting results; with some area’s finding success, and others finding a distinct lack of success.
Evidence 1 – how risk-assessment tools work – “One popular reform, addressed in at least twenty laws in fourteen states since 2012, is the introduction of statistical risk assessment tools.6 Such tools use historical data (Koepke, 1729).”
- What that means in relation to the accuracy of bail setting: “Jurisdictions often do not measure the changing landscape of actual risks their defendants face (Koepke, 1730),” and a false sense of objectivity.
Evidence 2 – Risk-assessment tools in use: Broward County – “Broward County Commission instead doubled the budget of pretrial release services, or pretrial services agencies (“PSAs”), in order to reduce the amount of prisoners in the jail through pretrial release (Billings, 1338).”
- PSA’s use of risk analysis tools: “The PSA does not rely on factors such as race, ethnicity, or geography (Smith).”
- Decreasing PSA leads to increase in incarceration: “Broward County Commission voted to significantly scale back the use of PSAs (Billings, 1338).”
Evidence 3 – Use of PSA and risk assessment in Mecklenberg County:
- Mecklenberg’s use of risk-analysis: “One reform implemented there is use of an empirical pretrial risk assessment tool (Smith, Jessica).”
- Results of the reform in Mecklenberg County: “[the report] shows that bail reform can reduce pretrial detentions without significant impacts on FTAs and public safety (Smith).”
Second Topic: Koepke is misguided with his criticism of the risk-assessment tools, which leads to the conclusion that other factors affect the bail imprisonment rate more, namely the economic interests of the bail bond industry.
Evidence 1 – His main point that “Using one jurisdiction’s data to predict outcomes in another is an inherently hazardous exercise (Koepke, 1756),” is true but not applicable to Counties creating new risk-analysis algorithms.
Evidence 2 – Conclusion of the Mecklenberg County Study – “[The study] does however suggest the limited impact of the PSA itself. Specifically, most of the changes in pretrial conditions occurred at the initial appearance before the magistrate, where the PSA wasn’t used (Smith, Jessica).”
Transition – Since the risk-assessment is proven to not be the cause, it means the root problem is different than originally suspected.
Evidence 3 – The introduction of the economics of the bail bond industry: “In the year preceding the vote to scale back PSAs, bail bond companies donated thousands of dollars to county commissioners’ campaigns.”
Conclusion: Focusing on the specific story of the Mecklenberg County reform leads to a broader view on the issue of bail. Removing the specific focus on the singular aspect of risk-analysis to the broader focus on the bail-bond industry and related policy, allows a veil to be lifted from the issue. Just as the whole prison-complex is a combination of economic interest and bias, the specific issue of bail is governed largely by economic interest and bias.
