Judiciary- House Corrections & Criminal Law Subcommittee
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We are going to call this meeting of the Corrections and Criminal Law Subcommittee to order. Chair Rebecca Petty, Representative Petty, is unable to be here today. She has a family emergency, so she is certainly in our thoughts, as is her family. In the meantime, I am going to step up and fill in today. Today we are going to hear from Representative Collins about an interim study. And unless there are any other opening remarks, I will go ahead and recognize Representative Collins to present.
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
0:30
I guess they tied these up in the interim. Thank you, Madam Chair. When I spoke with people about what an interim study looked like, they basically told me it can be anything you want. So I've used this as an opportunity to jump off from the bill that we filed as an interim study representative gasway and i did earlier in this interim period which is about bail
transparency and data and we'll talk about that but i wanted to use this as a time to discuss bail reform more generally as it's being used across the united states it's a major trend it's part of criminal justice reform as a whole and it's something that we need to discuss as a state this is being a subcommittee i wanted to also make sure that we were using this as a working opportunity to gather your questions and ideas this isn't formal this isn't final this is just
a discussion so hopefully we if you have questions that i can't answer we can bring those forward and integrate those into a future presentation perhaps at the full committee so with that said I wanted to start with three numbers, and this is where this presentation will be here, and at least members of the committee have this as well. $100 million is the estimated cost to Arkansas of pretrial detention. That is a very steep number, even in the world of numbers we live in.
It should be eye-popping. The average felony bail amount is $10,000. That's nationwide. That is an amount that many defendants cannot make. Even with the bond, if that's 10%, that's $1,000, a lot to give up for a criminal defendant. And $5.5 million was the cost of President Trump's Super Bowl ad regarding criminal justice reform, which he touted the First Step Act, which he signed into law.
Representative Justin Boyd
Unverified
2:42
Representative Boyd, I'm sorry, he has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to clarify, when it says $100 million cost to Arkansas, do you know, is that just to the state, or is that including everything across the counties? I mean, how could
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
3:01
you explain that a little bit more? Right. So that's an estimate based on the number of people in pretrial detention and the estimated cost of jailing someone overnight. So it's a figure that is a rough estimate, and I'm not, you know, to be very clear.
But this is what BLR came up with when we looked for this information when we filed
Representative Justin Boyd
Unverified
3:20
the bill last session. Representative Boyd, for a follow-up? Just one follow-up. Sure. So then since it's pre-trial, then presumptively that's really money that's costing the counties rather than the state. Sure. I'm trying to... Right. It
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
3:30
includes the counties as well as the state. Okay. Thank you. Right. Subdivisions of the state as well as the
state itself. So before we get into it in more detail, it's helpful, I think, to look at the foundations of bail in our state.
and across the country when it comes to the U.S. Constitution. Bail must be available. It may not be excessive. Monetary bail is really only to be used as a last
resort in Arkansas. And the purpose of bail is to ensure the appearance
of the accused in court. The rules of Arkansas criminal procedure lay out considerations, all of which relate to appearance in court. this is an overview of the process um so when someone gets arrested there are really three
things that can happen they can be released they can be detained if it's a capital crime or something very serious they're likely to not be released no matter what bail is or a conditional release which could be released with monetary bail or it could be a release without monetary bail Now, whether or not there is a monetary component, there may be conditions of release. Within monetary bail, as you can see, there are secured and unsecured types.
Secured bail means that there is some sort of a either collateral or deposit, something that is going to the court to ensure that the defendant shows up to court. that can be cash and in Arkansas it can be only cash it's an option that the judge can set it can be property which would amount to a lien on the property it can be a court bond where the defendant deposits 10% of the total amount of the bond with the court directly or it can be a commercial or
for-profit bond and if you know that's the bail bond signs that you've seen probably around the jail and it can be unsecured in that case there is no security deposited,
but if someone doesn't make the court appearances, then the court can collect the
amount of the bail. And I won't go through all of these, but these are considerations according to Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure that a court should consider in assessing and setting
bail, all of which pertain to whether the accused defendant will appear in court. And bear in mind, again, I think it's worth noting throughout this, this is not someone who's been convicted. This is someone who's been accused. Should is an important word here because it leaves discretion to the judge. It's not shall, it's should. So bail has some problems, especially monetary bail, and these
have been well documented and pretty well researched across the country, less so in Arkansas because we don't have the data but in a lot of other jurisdictions it's been studied extensively and i think that the issues can really be grouped into three buckets fairness cost to taxpayers and public safety and i'll just go ahead and read these quotes i have quotes from each of these three buckets that i think are relevant i would say the criminal justice system is the biggest failed big government program it's a pay-to-play system and if you're rich and guilty you get a better
deal than if you're poor and innocent. That's fundamentally unjust. And as you can see, and you will during this presentation, this is really not a partisan issue, and it's not an ideological issue. I think it's something that people from left and right have come to agreement on. Not everyone agrees, of course. So as I mentioned earlier, $10,000 is the median felony bail in the States, and roughly half of felony defendants who have bonds set remain
jailed because they can't make bail. They don't have the money. So that to me, and to many others, amounts to a jail sentence for being poor. Again, before conviction. Another issue is false guilty pleas to avoid paying bail or forced guilty pleas. Even if they did it, the guilty plea might not be their best course of action and that's as a result of a choice either a long pre-trial detention or an expense they can't make a guilty plea is commonly a way out and a guilty plea has consequences
it hurts career prospects personal prospects there's also research on the fairness point that bail decisions are biased they can be longer for people of color that is mixed research some have not found that, so I wanted to make that clear. Cost. And this is a picture of the governor, Phil Bryant of Mississippi. He was recently finished his term, and they passed major criminal justice reform in Mississippi. Here's what he said about that. I had legislator after legislator come
into my office, and we had a counseling session, and we had prayer, and they just said, Governor, I can't vote for this and go back to Jones County. I'm just going to get killed over it. And I said, I'm going to call your sheriff right now because his jail is
full and he's having to pay for everybody in that jail. That reform bill, by the way, passed closely
unanimously in both the House and the Senate. And that is really the crux of the issue when it comes to bail and the cost to our state. It is very expensive to detain people in jail.
You have to pay for their meals. You have to pay for their lodging. You have to pay for all kinds of things. Health care. this is the incarceration rate not all of this is pre-trial this is the general incarceration rate but the pre-trial incarceration rate tracks with the general incarceration rate united states probably won't surprise many of you is off the charts when it comes to the amount of people we jail and the rate at which we jail them arkansas is actually off the charts compared to the united states and as we know when defendants are remained detained before trial arkansas
taxpayers foot that bill we spend 100 million the united states 140 billion per year pretty huge expense and safety counterintuitively perhaps if you think about bail reform it actually would would make us safer, because bail is not making us safe in its current form. And the quote here is, the defendant's place in the community becomes more destabilized as the number of days of pretrial detention increases. The destabilization is believed to lead
to an increase in risk for both failure to appear, the purpose of bail, and new criminal activity. This is someone who studied it. And these are some of the results of the study. A person who spends even a short period in jail more likely to commit a future crime by the fact of being in jail. This is controlled for other factors. 40 percent more likely if they're detained for two to three days versus less than 24 hours and 51 percent more likely to commit a crime within two years after the case completion
8 to 14 days versus less than 24 hours. And I think those numbers shouldn't surprise you when when you look at what detention is. Pre-trial detention, like all forms of jail, causes destabilization.
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
11:08
Representative Doppi, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Collins, I want to go back and look just real quickly on your problem on public safety and that 40% and 51%. Yes. Are you looking, are you delineating between your misdemeanors and your felonies?
Or are we looking at more felonies than misdemeanors? Yes, thanks for asking. Because I can see possibly on a felony side, but not on a misdemeanor side. So could you please tell me if you delved into
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
11:37
that? Sure, and this is in the small print that is on the slide, and I should have gone into this in more detail. This is in a study of low-risk defendants only, and this is in Kentucky when they had a tool that allowed them to assess risk. And so they have risk categories in Kentucky.
And so this is a study of low-risk
defendants. I'm not sure if it's broken down by felony or misdemeanor. I can look into that. But it's
all for low-risk defendants. So the pretrial detention itself causing destabilization, that really is the issue. It is true that you can learn criminal tactics in jail, but really it's all these other things, risk of loss of job, home, child custody, these things strain lives that are often by definition
already destabilized and leads people to trouble, whether additional trouble or new trouble. Which leads us with those three problems defined to look at forms of reform. And there's a wide spectrum of ways that the bail system can be reformed. This is laid out from most incremental to the most extreme. Look at the bottom two, because that's important. If we were to reduce
the reliance on monetary bail, that would not just be done in a vacuum. There would need to be something put in place to make sure that we're getting people to court. That can be done in several ways. Supervised release, which involves more court engagement in released individuals, lives, reminders, and algorithmic risk assessment tools. We'll talk about these in brief. This, the first item, data and transparency, that's actually the bill that Representative
Gadsway and I filed last session, and that's the ISP before you. What this
bill would have done and what the interim study proposes to study is having the courts
gather data regarding bail within its existing case management software. So it would adjust the software to accept data regarding bail and then have courts use that software to record the data regarding bail. This would allow us to study what works and then we would report it quarterly to ALC.
The purposes are twofold. Data means better policy. If we know what works, what doesn't work, what's net harmful, we can decide better as a body how to proceed.
And transparency itself can actually improve behavior. When people know that someone's looking, they're likely to behave a little bit differently. Another reform relating
to bail is clearer forms. These are forms summoning people to court. The idea again would be able to get people to appear and so if
you are if you have an opportunity to make your form better it's
been shown in studies that you can have a decrease in failure to appear based on principles of behavioral science. We won't go into this in detail but this is actually a pilot program that showed a 13% reduction in failures to appear. It takes the defendant where they are and stresses negative consequences which have been shown to have better results, makes certain things more clear, and also
personalizes it. It says you
are charged. These little differences actually have a big impact in getting
people to court. Another reform a little bit now down the line in terms of having a significant impact would be considering ability to pay. Many states require that a court considers ability to pay in setting bail. Arkansas doesn't. As I mentioned earlier, we have that should language in there. Courts should consider certain things. And it
also doesn't specify ability to pay. It specifies financial condition relating to whether or not they will appear or not. And that's a big difference because our judges do not need to consider whether they can actually pay the bail, just whether or not their financial condition is related to their willingness to appear or ability to appear. And again, it's not mandatory. I will point out that on this and a couple others, we have court rules regarding this. And to the extent the court rules conflict with the law, the court rules control.
So it becomes a question of interpretation of whether or not the rules prohibit the
passage of a law. I don't believe this one would, but that's certainly a
consideration. Another is to presume release. This is something that other states have done. Other states are recommending and moving toward it. It provides that the expectation is that a defendant will be released, but the court still had discretion to use forms of bail other than release. We don't do it that way. We say that the judicial officer shall set money bail only after he determines that no other conditions will reasonably ensure the appearance. So it becomes a shall, a must, on money bail.
this is one that was done recently and you may have seen this this is in new york they eliminated monetary bail but only for certain types of crimes lower level crimes most misdemeanors most non-violent felonies but they kept it for violent felonies and they've run into a little bit of difficulty in new york and i would just propose that there may be a challenge when you do something like this where do you draw the line to the extent it's an arbitrary line it's subject to pushback and that's what's happened in New York there have
been some crimes that are not covered and I think people have wanted to move that line and so that's the risk with this particular type of reform and then the last two would be the most dramatic I think they'd have the biggest impact but they'd also be perhaps the most difficult they both would require amending our Constitution eliminating cash only bail where a court says that you cannot post bond you have to post actual cash and this can be a lot of cash be three hundred
thousand dollars that was an actual case in arkansas but the court the supreme court allowed it so that is currently the law of the land and the big one would be to actually eliminate monetary bail this is not as extreme as it sounds a lot of states have done this and we'll see at the the end what other states are doing, but this would be the way to really get at the big problems, the uneven justice, the high costs that we're paying as a state, and the threats to public safety. Also, I think the case has been made pretty compellingly that monetary bail doesn't
work well enough to justify the high costs. Representative
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
18:42
Dobby. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Collins, looking at your eliminating monetary bail, so what would be your proposal and the alternative? Just let everybody out? I'm very glad you asked that,
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
18:54
actually, because that's my next four or five slides. I'm going to talk about the alternatives that I would suggest. And I think that comes down to more supervised release, which would, of course, require more funding, and reminder systems being set up.
But I'll get into it if that's all right with you.
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
19:13
Are you aware of the case in Houston in which there were a couple of folks that were planning on committing a crime outside of the district there but decided let's best go to Houston because they'll let us out? Are you aware of that? And would that not be, and here's my question, twofold question, and would that not be setting Arkansas up as to a place where people could say, well, let's just go to Arkansas and we can commit the crime there because we're going to get
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
19:39
let out? I'm not sure that that's been shown to be the case.
You know, they have these in other states, and I don't know that a single instance really makes it a proven behavioral path. But there's always going to be one-off cases of someone doing something, and they can be used as an example one way and another. So I just have tried to make this focused
on what the studies have shown on a consistent basis, on a provable basis and reproducible basis. um it's
possible i suppose that someone would come to arkansas if the bail laws were different
in order to commit crimes is that likely i don't know
but i think that we just have to look to the research and what is shown the other thing is this is one reform of many it's a reform that if we went
this direction it would be a big change in our law i think we'd have a lot more conversation before we
got to that point. But as for the alternatives, here's the beginning of this discussion of some of the alternatives. And this is something that other states have done as well. In the federal system, this is closer to what they do. This is supervised
release, conditions of release, rather than monetary bail. This is something we already have non-monetary conditions in our court system, we, of course, also allow for monetary bail. Relying on this would require more funding for the courts, and I know that the courts, and we'll talk about it in the full committee today, they'll talk about their lack of funding. We discussed it last
session. But, again, we're spending $100 million on this per year. There are savings to be realized from less reliance on monetary bail, which results in
more pretrial detention and I would propose that some of that go toward beefing up our supervised release pretrial
programs we also if we're looking at and again the purpose of bail in Arkansas is not dangerousness because a judge can retain someone behind bars for dangerousness without having it be done through bail the purpose is getting people to court and and to that end reminders are effective as a substitute for bond so we have studies here
showing 26 reduction in failure to appear with texts 52 in scottsdale and a significant drop elsewhere phone calls work similarly that's that last bullet 29 to 16 failure to appear These are inexpensive. They have programs set up. You can contract as a county or as a
municipality and get these programs to automatically send texts. And then, again, we won't go through this, but these are, for your reference, these are the actual texts that go out.
Seven days, three days, one day before court. They use behavioral science consequences if they don't appear. and again this had a this one had a 26 percent reduction in failure to appear lastly and
this is also to your question most states that have reformed bail particularly the ones that have eliminated monetary bail have added algorithmic risk assessment tools so they look at past practice past history whether or not someone is likely to appear unlikely to appear what the risk
factor is, and they use that as part of the process. There are issues with these. I think it's important to highlight that there's risk of racial bias because you have the past practice. Whatever bias was in there is baked into the algorithm, so you have to control for that. And there's also
an issue of over-reliance on these, and those both can be mitigated and have in some
states. Also, kind of shifting gears, so those are the alternatives. These are some
arguments, and I know we have some representatives from the bail bond industry today, and
they may make their own arguments, but there are some arguments against reform that you may hear from constituents that I have heard,
and there are also responses which exist. The for-profit bail bond industry is argues itself to be indispensable um because courts can't
get people to appear they are out there doing the work of getting people to appear sometimes that's true and i
wouldn't dispute that courts are underfunded but often they don't do all that much work to get someone to appear and even when they do perform a service there are other alternatives out there which are just as effective or more effective that don't cause the harms that we discussed. There is the issue of violence on the streets. There is the one-off person who was released from bail and committed a crime. It's something nobody wants. It's a nightmare, but it's going to happen.
It's going to happen under any system because we're always going to release some people pre-trial. To do otherwise would actually be in violation of the federal constitution. We cannot do that. We cannot lock up innocent people. They're innocent until proven guilty across the board. So the best way to do it is to not rely on their wealth, but to look at other factors and work with them in the process to get them to appear. There are examples of states which have done this.
D.C. is one that was an early adopter. It did away with monetary bail in the 90s, and it has a 0.28% re-arrest rate for a violent crime. The risk of a pretrial crime, again, is lower, I would argue, when you're looking at actual factors that affect likelihood to commit crime, not wealth, which really doesn't. Another argument, cost. That'll be common pushback on anything. I would say some of these reforms don't cost.
Some cost minimally. If there are costs, they should be offset. But bear in mind that our existing system is expensive. We just don't pay a price tag for it specifically. We pay it when we fund our jails and overfund, well, I wouldn't say we overfund our jails. We overfund our criminal justice system. The jails don't get that much funding for what they're doing. And finally, the bias of the algorithms. That is a legitimate issue and something we should be mindful of. these issues have been discussed ad nauseum in other states because bail reform is not just
coming, it's now here. This was a quote from a D.C. judge, and this was a few years ago before this wave of reform has really taken hold. We've proven it can work without money, meaning the bail process, but the whole country continues as if in a trance to do what we know does not work. He was talking about the ineffectiveness of the monetary bail system. And as I mentioned, D.C. gets high appearances and low pre-trial violent crime. A point on the for-profit bail bond industry, it's illegal across the world except the United States and the Philippines.
And not even everywhere in the United States is it allowed. There's four states that have banned commercial bail bonds. And pre-trial detention as a whole is also fairly unique to the United States and how much it's used. this is a partial list of some states that have implemented bail reform dc as i mentioned did it early they use risk assessments some successes of of this list here new jersey is known to be a
significant success story they eliminated most monetary bail in 2017 they added risk assessments those algorithms I mentioned. They have a
very high appearance rate, no change in the pretrial crime rate, and of course their jail population declined by 44 percent. That's the pretrial jail population. So that means they're spending far less, and
especially over time, on jail, but they are not seeing this increase in crime that's been feared and discussed. Not all of these have been
totally successful. I think Kentucky is seen as something that was a partial success at first, but they didn't actually eliminate monetary bail. They just added the risk assessments. They're looking at
going back this session and doing significant bail
reform. Maryland is one that is really not been that successful. They created a presumption of release, one of those other mid-level reforms. But what happened was the system adjusted. So you would have fewer people detained because
they couldn't post bail, but what judges would do is that they would just hold them without bail. And so the system does have a way of adjusting to whatever outcome its status quo is apt to seek. But then again, New Mexico has been a success story. In New York and California, really too early to set. These are some other ones. Won't go into detail here, but this gives you a sense of how common this is becoming, these reform efforts across the country. There's a lot of different ways to do it. This isn't even a complete list. There's
other things that states are doing, but at least 27
states have studied this in great detail with the Judicial Commission. Monetary bail is being curtailed or ended in 14 states, and it's just It's something we're going to
need to grapple with sincerely, because we have these problems as a state. We cannot afford the cost of monetary bail, much less the human cost. This would be my personal proposal.
This is how I feel. I'd be happy to entertain y'all's questions and thoughts about this. But I think as an initial step, we can make our existing system fairer, gathering data, is the subject of the interim study before you all this bill that representative gasway and i put forward uh require the use of clear reforms we saw that that increases appearance which is the whole purpose you may be able to get a little bit less reliance on bail with that court rules it's not something we can do as a legislature but to amend court rules to require consideration of
ability to pay would make sure that bail is closer closer associated with the defendant's financial condition, and establish these reminders. That's some low-hanging fruit that we can get more people showing up to court. The bigger
second step is to eliminate monetary bail. It would need a constitutional amendment, court rules. Of course, you'd have to allocate some of that savings from elimination to supervised release and beefing that up and integrate the risk assessment tool. But I think, to me, that is the way that's been shown to be least damaging to society and most
effective as far as getting the results we're actually interested in thank you and I'd be happy to take questions
okay thank you representative Collins members I think that we have one person signed up to speak so what I think we should do is go ahead and ask ask our questions members let's ask our questions representative Collins and then then we'll let Mr. Hatcher speak and then give representative Collins a chance to close so with that representative Tosh you're recognized
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
31:02
thank you madam chair representative collins and you may have covered this and i apologize if if
you've already uh discussed this in your presentation but have explain to me now you're talking about a pilot program where you're going to go out and how many counties would be involved in that and where would the cost come from and uh just explain that to me a little bit sure i mean
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
31:24
pilot program is one way to do some of these things um it really hasn't been designed I'm not sure, you know, the scope to which you would want to do something like that. It really depends on which reform you want to proceed with.
But, you know, that's really all TBD. I guess
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
31:42
I'm just curious, you know, to move forward, and you said this earlier, you have to have data to be able to do so. And I guess my question is, how are you going to obtain that data? What's your plans for that? You said something about software. Is that correct? Yes. I
Speaker 34
31:57
think that short of gathering data over
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
32:00
a period of years in our state, which I think we should do, the best we can really do is look to other states and the
data they've gathered there to see what's effective,
what's been working, what isn't. You know, I think a pilot program, obviously, if it's a pilot program, it's not going to have a full array of data. The purpose is to gather some of that data and to see if it works in those counties. But, you know, I don't have the information on how much that would cost specifically. Maybe Representative Boyd does.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
32:30
I don't know. Okay, I understand. One more question, Madam Chair, if it's okay. You're recognized, Mr. President. All
right, thank you. And I guess I'm just trying to get my thoughts around this.
Do you have a target date? I know you say you're moving forward with this interim study proposal, and you talked about in years to gather this data. I mean, what are you looking at as far as trying to have something in place? and just kind of explain to me what your goals are when you work here.
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
33:00
Well, this to me is our opportunity to discuss as a subcommittee and then maybe as a full committee what we want to do,
what we want to see. There's a lot of options laid out here.
This is really a menu, and I don't necessarily, I would say to me the impetus is on us to move as quickly as possible with some of these things to try to make this whole system fair. But these are discrete things, and some of which will take years. I mean, to try to do a constitutional amendment would obviously be a long-term project. Court rules are something we don't even have control over. But I wanted to lay out the full menu so we as a subcommittee and then as a committee can have an understanding of what the options are, what other states are doing.
And if there's a will to be exerted here, it's something hopefully we could start to work on
Representative Justin Boyd
Unverified
33:53
next session. Representative Boyd. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask a clarifying question and a follow-up, if that's okay. So I just want to make sure I understand this is, you know, I'm a pharmacist. Let's just remind everybody that this is kind of a new – so we use the monetary bail system in the state of Arkansas to help fund our court system. Is that what I understood?
Well, yes, sure. Okay, and just first follow-up, if you don't mind. So do we have any idea how much money that generates for the court system in the state of Arkansas? No, that's a good question. Okay, then final follow-up then. If we're using the monetary bail to fund the court system, would it be a conflict of interest for the courts to set the rules on monetary bail? Well,
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
34:41
I think you could argue that about a large number of things.
The courts really set the rules about all kinds of things having to deal with the courts. And to the extent it's a conflict of interest, I mean, the whole system we have set up here where courts set rules of practice and procedure is a conflict of interest.
Speaker 18
35:03
You know, maybe, yeah, I guess it would be.
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
35:12
Representative Godfrey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Claude, you talk about the need to gather data first, but I also liked your concrete examples about the text reminder system and using clear reforms.
Those seem like kind of tangible, concrete things we can put into place. Do you feel like the data, both from Arkansas, the limited data we have, as well as from other states and from across the country, is compelling enough to go ahead and make a move to put those two
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
35:40
particular reforms in place? Well, I think, yeah. I mean, there's no
question that there's been significant research on the forms and on the reminders. And those are not particularly expensive forms. Those could be put in place in a pilot project. But they also have backing through research to be, in my opinion, put forth statewide.
There's really not a big risk involved either. I mean, you're talking about clarifying forms, and you're talking about reminding people to show up to court. There's not going to be anybody necessarily released differently because of that. We're not talking about forfeiting revenue because of that. I would say that given the evidence that we do have, not from our state but from others, those would be reforms that we could put in place very soon. A follow-up, Madam
Representative Megan Godfrey
Unverified
36:28
Chair? Recognized. So to Representative Tasha's concern or question about a timeline or a pilot program,
It could be that counties, were they interested in adjusting their forms or putting this text reminder system in place, that could be something that counties would do? Or would you see that needing to be
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
36:46
rolled out statewide? Well, I think they can and should do that
now. And that's something that they have the opportunity to do. But, as you know, sometimes there are slow wheels of justice in motion. and having something done on a statewide basis might facilitate that being done a little bit faster.
Representative Carol Dalby
Unverified
37:06
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Dalby. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a kind of a little bit of clarification for Representative Boyd in your statement that it funds the courts. It's not funding the courts per se. Some of that money is being funded, used for public defenders, of which every defendant is entitled to counsel, and if they can't afford one, they get a public defender. So I think that you would need to look on how that's going to affect the public defender and the public defender commission, which is already woefully underfunded.
I think we can all agree to that. It also helps to fund domestic violence prevention programs. And so there are a lot of other things. So I think we need to be careful as a committee not to paint with a broad brush that this is just court system because we look at that as maybe just the judges. It's not. It's those other things that deal with victims and deal with defendants. So if you would look into that as part of your proposal. And the other thing, may I have a follow-up? Follow-up.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The other thing that in looking at your path forward, talking about looking at the financial ability of a defendant, I don't know how many criminal defendants you've ever worked with or represented in court or those types of things, but I think the lawyers on this committee, the two of us that are here maybe that have had some of that, I don't know, maybe you have too, lots of
folks will not tell you the truth on that form. I know that's shocking, Representative House, but they will not tell you the truth. they will become indigent in order to get indigent defense. They will become indigent in order to be let out of jail or whatever. So I think that just to say we'll just fill out that form and that's good enough. I think you need to look into some of those kinds of things because any of us who have been involved in that system know people with lots of money suddenly become indigent when they get into criminal court.
So those are just some of those issues in my opinion and I hope you would agree
Chair
Unverified
39:25
with me that those need to be looked into. Thank you. Representative Smith, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Collins, this is all interesting. Seems to be a big push across the United States to look deeply into criminal justice reform, but I'm curious. We do your studies,
and this presentation focuses on the alleged criminal but what about the victims of these crimes? I think there ought to be consideration for these individuals that have suffered at the hands of individuals that may be wrong place, wrong time, they committed a crime or they allegedly committed a crime. But by doing this, are we not sending a clear message to those that are victims that they're not as important
as the person who potentially perpetrated the crime? I
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
40:23
appreciate the question, and I think that consideration of victims' rights really needs to be at the forefront of anything we do. I would argue that this is just going to be a fairer way to do it for our criminal justice system and, in fact, for the victims. If you're releasing someone just because they have money to pay, that's not really doing justice to anybody. If it's a fair decision based on actual factors of are they a risk, are they somebody who needs to be released or are they somebody who needs to be detained, not do they have the money to get out of jail free, I think that respects what we're all trying to do here, which is keep our community safer.
The other point I'd make is, these are allegations. These are not people who have been convicted. It doesn't take anything away from a judge's right or a jury's right
to issue a very strict sentence at the time that someone's found guilty. Representative Boyd, you're
Representative Justin Boyd
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41:21
recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I have one last question, and then I should be done. I have my own ISP to present. So when we talk about victims, sometimes isn't it true that the victim is society in general,
specifically when we're talking about just drug crimes, not property crimes or crimes against individuals? So if that's the case, do you have any number or any data about how many people are jailed just specifically for crimes against society, where society is the, quote, victim? I don't have
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
41:53
those numbers, but that's a fair point, because we're talking about a large array of crimes, misdemeanors, as well as felonies that are not against the person, that are not violent felonies.
Those are all included within our current system of monetary bail. All right. Thank you, Representative Collins.
At this time, I think we'll hear from Mr. Hatcher. and I do just want to put
this warning out there a lot of committee members I know have an 11 o'clock so just be mindful
Speaker 64
42:30
of that thanks this is Rhett Hatcher I'm a lobbyist, I work at Gilmore Strategy Group and we represent the Bail Bond
Association and you know two real points I want to make, one is Representative Collins we have reached out multiple times and have said we'd like to get with you as an industry and talk about opportunities for reform. We think there should be some reform in our industry. We've not heard back from you, and frankly, for you to come in here and spring this up that goes way beyond the scope of the bill is really not how we like to do business here, and it's kind of a little
disingenuous, to be quite frank with you. I think the second thing I'd like to say is, you know, Secretary Bassett is here. I don't think you had any awareness that this was coming up or going up, and he's the secretary over the bail bond industry licensing board. You know, just generally on bail you know, cash bail is really the last resort. If somebody's arrested for a nonviolent crime or
misdemeanor, that judge is letting someone go on an OR, basically letting them walk out of the jail and just, you know, you come back when your court appearance happens. Bail is set when someone is deemed to be a risk to the community or a flight risk. In the city of Chicago, there's 2,700 people sitting in Cook County Jail right now that could not meet their cash bail requirements, and 90% of those are in there for a violent felony offense.
And so, you know, the local judge is looking at the totality of the circumstances, and he's the one deciding, you know, how low or how the bail is. And I can tell you, as someone that spent three years as a police officer and spent a lot of time in district and circuit court, and I know Representative Tosh in his time as a state trooper, these judges are trying every which way they can to put up a bail that is both fair,
not just to the individual, but also to the community and to the victims. And, you know, the last point that, you know, I would make is the bail industry itself, commercial bail, is providing a service that our police departments aren't able to provide. When you talk to a bail bondsman, most of the time they know the person
that they're putting bail up for. The bail also is a cash deposit. That money, if they do everything the court tells them to do, that money gets returned to them, less the court fees. So if they go out on a $1,000 bail and, you know, $50 goes to court fees, and they do exactly as they're supposed to. They show back up to court. Whatever pre-trial supervision they're supposed to be under, and they do exactly what the judge says, they get that money back.
And you know, the reason we have a commercial bail system is we don't have enough police officers to go out and hunt everybody down and bring them back to court and so we're depending on the local bondsman who frankly you know unfortunately have a very deep relationship with a lot of these repeat offenders they know where their mama lives they know where their cousins live they know how to get these people back to court so that we can get them through and get them adjudicated and get them through the system but beyond all that I would just ask the
committee today, hey, we've had a lot of outreach with Mr. Collins. What he's proposing here is the proposal goes way beyond the scope of the bill, the bill that this committee voted not to pass out a committee for a good reason. And so we'd ask, hey, if we're going to do an interim study proposal, let's just do it on what the bill's about, which is how do we best gather the data so that then we can look at these reforms. And hopefully Mr. Collins will get with us and we can talk about reforms that we can all agree on.
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
47:03
Thank you. Representative Collins, you're recognized to close. Thank you. And, you know, to clarify, I heard from Mr. Hatcher in July well before any of
this happened we did discuss being in touch and this is a subcommittee presentation i don't have people who i brought in here this is me sharing information with you all
i don't feel like that's disingenuous to do but that's up to him i suppose to feel that way or not of course the bail bond industry has a vested interest in standing against reform that shouldn't surprise anybody when
the reform is specifically to go at that livelihood. But I would say that it's more important that we do right by our society, by the people who live here in this state rather than an industry that in some cases is an issue. And the existence of an industry
designed to profit off of people being in jail is, in my opinion, a problem in itself. So,
again, what we're asking here today is nothing. This is not the final hearing of this. It's not a bill. It's an interim study. Just wanted to have a discussion. The discussion has begun. Appreciate Mr. Hatcher being here. And I don't believe there's any action that would need to be taken today. This is just presentation for your information and benefit as a subcommittee.
And I appreciate y'all's time. Thank you, Representative Collins. Full committee, this is a reminder, the full committee will meet today at 1230. and also Representative Tosh has asked me to remind members that
state agencies will meet at 11 o'clock in room 151. With that we are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Opening Remarks
C. Discussion of ISP 2019-027 – An Act Concerning Bail Data and Transparency. [Exhibit C]
1. Comments by Sponsor Representative Andrew Collins
2. Committee Discussion
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — JUDICIARY- HOUSE CORRECTIONS & CRIMINAL LAW SUBCOMMITTEE, Mar 9, 2020 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| EXHIBIT C ISP 2019-027 · Discussion of ISP 2019-027 – An Act Concerning Bail Data and Transparency. [Exhibit C] | Exhibit | 4 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Handout - Bail Reform | Exhibit | 71 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Nicole Clowney Chair
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Representative Andrew Collins
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Representative Justin Boyd
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Representative Carol Dalby
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Representative Dwight Tosh
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Speaker 34
Speaker 18
Representative Megan Godfrey
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Chair
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Speaker 64