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When it comes to criminal justice, what was radical a half century ago is apparently still radical today. In 1961, my organization, the Vera Institute of Justice, got its start with the Manhattan Bail Project, by testing and proving that most people accused of committing a crime can be safely released from custody and relied on to appear in court—without having to post money bail or to stay in jail until trial. acme bail bonds

With strong bipartisan support for sentencing reform and re-entry supports for people leaving prison—making strange bedfellows of the likes of the Koch brothers and the ACLU—this is perhaps our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to effect comprehensive and enduring criminal justice reform. But to be successful, we need start at the beginning, at incarceration’s front door—our local jails. bail bonds garland, bail bonds santa monica Although jails serve an important function in local justice systems—to hold people deemed too dangerous to release pending trial or at high risk of flight—this is no longer primarily what jails do or whom they hold. Three out of five people in jail have not been convicted of any crime and are simply too poor to post even low bail to get out while their cases are being processed. Nearly 75% of both pretrial detainees and sentenced offenders are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses. bail bonds in fullerton

Although most defendants admitted to jail over the course of a year are released within hours or days, rather than weeks or months, even a short stay in jail can have dire consequences. Research has shown that spending as few as two days in jail can increase the likelihood of a sentence of incarceration and the harshness of that sentence, reduce economic viability, promote future criminal behavior, and worsen the health of the largely low-risk defendants who enter them—making jail a gateway to deeper and more lasting involvement in the criminal justice system. bail bond man, free bail bonds