As fears about rising crime have escalated in recent years, a wide range of reforms to the criminal legal system have come under attack.1 These politically motivated and unfounded claims come as reforms have seen years of growing popularity in response to widespread concern that the system fails to deliver on its promises of fairness, justice, and public safety.2 No reform measure has drawn as much attention as efforts to eliminate cash bail.
The causes of the recent rise in violent crime are ambiguous and complex, leaving the door open for those who seek easy answers or to place the blame on criminal legal reform policies.3 Despite a growing body of evidence that bail reform policies are not linked to rising crime rates, they are a target for those looking to score political points.4 What these sound bites and scare tactics fail to capture is that current practices in cash bail systems undermine public safety and increase recidivism. Cash bail has been associated with a 6 percent to 9 percent increase in recidivism.5 Pretrial incarceration, which is a frequent result of unaffordable cash bail, has a “criminogenic effect,” meaning that it increases, rather than decreases, crime.6 The system further harms public safety by putting at risk individuals’ and communities’ health, economic stability, employment, familial relationships, and housing at risk—and has been doing so for decades. Cash bail reforms are the antidote to a system that is rooted in systemic racism and that...
A whistleblower that received a share of the US government’s $150 million False Claims Act settlement with Walgreen Co. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. couldn’t convince a federal court to rule ...