The American Bail Coalition was alerted early last week that legislation entitled the “No Money Bail Act” would be introduced in the United States House of Representatives. Since the filing of H.R. 4611 this week, ABC has been gathering information, working with our various partners across the country and coordinating with our member company lobbyists to campaign against this damaging legislation. ABC has issued an initial policy statement opposing H.R. 4611 which has been delivered to members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary and Appropriations Committees.
H.R. 4611 proposes an appropriations law which requires any state, local government, territory, or the federal government to ban all monetary conditions of bail. Failure to comply would result in the loss of eligibility for federal grant funds through the Byrne Grant Program. These are grants provided to state and local governments by the United States Department of Justice. The total amount of funding that could be lost by state and local governments for failure to comply with H.R. 4611 is around $250 million annually.
H.R. 4611 is not a bill against the bail industry, rather an attack on money bail generally. This bill will shut down state and local criminal justice systems, advocates of bail reform like EJUL point to as a success. For example, Kentucky is often advanced as a model of bail reform success, but that state continues to rely heavily on money bail and would therefore lose all funding under H.R. 4611 as would similar state’s using cash deposit programs like Indiana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina and Wisconsin. All forms of secured bail would be adversely impacted by H.R. 4611.
ABC is actively engaged in a comprehensive effort to stop H.R. 4611 from becoming law. This legislation is poorly thought out and attempts to make sweeping reforms which coerce state and local governments into unfunded mandates resulting in dysfunctional criminal justice systems. In particular, using the costs of New Jersey’s reforms as a metric, this proposed legislation will thrust on state and local governments billions of dollars in costs and lost revenues. Threatening to remove these grants fails to incentive state and local governments to reform their systems because the costs will be greater than the benefits. ABC remains optimistic this legislation will fail. We will keep you posted.
Image courtesy of www.loc.gov
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