Unsurprisingly, white men have the highest incomes before incarceration while Black women have the lowest incomes before incarceration. Percentage difference between the median pre-incarceration annual incomes for people in local jails unable to post a bail bond and non-incarcerated people, ages 23-39, in 2015 dollars, by race/ethnicity and gender.
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The median bail bond amount nationally is almost a full year’s income for the typical person unable to post a bail bond.įigure 3. The incomes in red fall below the Census Bureau poverty threshold. Median annual pre-incarceration incomes for people in local jails unable to post a bail bond, ages 23-39, in 2015 dollars, by race/ethnicity and gender. 12 People in jail are even poorer than people in prison 13 and are drastically poorer than their non-incarcerated counterparts.įigure 2.
11 Using Bureau of Justice Statistics data, we find that, in 2015 dollars, people in jail had a median annual income of $15,109 prior to their incarceration, which is less than half (48%) of the median for non-incarcerated people of similar ages. We find that most people who are unable to meet bail fall within the poorest third of society. This report aims to stimulate a more informed discussion about whether money bail makes sense, given the widespread poverty of the people held in the criminal justice system and the high fiscal 10 and social costs of incarceration, and offers recommendations for how states and counties can move beyond unnecessary pretrial detention. 9 Building off our July 2015 report on the pre-incarceration incomes of people in prison, this report provides the pre-incarceration incomes of people in local jails who were unable to post a bail bond.
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This report will focus on one driver of pretrial detention: the inability to pay what is typically $10,000 in money bail. Detention of the legally innocent has been consistently driving jail growth, and the criminal justice reform discussion must include a discussion of local jails and the need for pretrial detention reform. has grown substantially since the 1980s, the number of convicted people in jails has been flat for the last 15 years. This report focuses on this important population: those who are detained pretrial because they could not afford money bail. Nationally, in 2009, 34% of defendants were detained pretrial for the inability to post money bail. The only national data on pretrial detention that we are aware of comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties series. Almost all defendants will have the opportunity to be released pretrial if they meet certain conditions, and only a very small number of defendants will be denied a bail bond, mainly because a court finds that individual to be dangerous or a flight risk. 8 This chart illustrates the possible paths from arrest to pretrial detention. Since the 1980s, there has been a significant, nationwide move away from courts allowing non-financial forms of pretrial release (such as release on own recognizance) to money bail, although this does vary substantially depending on jurisdiction. 4 If the defendant is unable to come up with the money either personally 5 or through a commercial bail bondsman, 6 they can be incarcerated from their arrest until their case is resolved or dismissed in court.
With money bail, a defendant is required to pay a certain amount of money as a pledged guarantee that they will attend future court hearings. is so large is because our country largely has a system of money bail, 3 in which the constitutional principle of innocent until proven guilty only really applies to the well off. One reason that the unconvicted population in the U.S. More data on jails Our other work on pretrial detention, arrests, and more