The national obsession over how Donald Trump would be booked at an Atlanta jail was easy to explain.
Some people wanted to see him humiliated. Others were just curious: Would he be treated the same as anyone else?
In some ways he was. There was a booking photo, which he exploited for its fund-raising advantage. He was fingerprinted. He had to make bail, a $200,000 surety bond normally requiring a $20,000 fee.
From a law enforcement standpoint, it wasn’t necessary to make him post bond. The former president, as a candidate, is hardly a flight risk. And if he were, $200,000 wouldn’t stop him anyway.
Trump was treated equally in a way that no American should be.
A national disgrace
The money bail system is a national disgrace that should have been abolished long ago.
People are rotting and sometimes dying in American jails for lack of even $250 to make bail or hire a bondsman.
Commenting on Trump’s release, a Los Angeles Times editorial told of a man named Lashawn Thompson. Charged with spitting on a police officer, he spent three months in the psychiatric wing of the same Fulton County jail because he didn’t have $2,500 to put up or the 10% fee for a bail agent.
“Thompson remained in the decrepit Rice Street dungeon for months, his already compromised mental health declining, his body attacked by bed bugs,” the newspaper wrote. “If he had even a fraction of Trump’s money, he’d have gone home to be treated and to prepare a legal defense. But Thompson died in jail, never having gone to trial. He was accused only of spitting, not undermining democracy.”
His was one of three recent pretrial deaths in that barbaric jail. The others who died were charged with burglary and shoplifting. After Thompson died, $500,000 was budgeted to deal with bed bugs, lice and other vermin and his family will receive $4 million for severe neglect of his physical and mental health.
A lack of justice
Pretrial detention gives prosecutors an unfair advantage over poor defendants. Many plead guilty, studies show, just to get out of jail faster.
The money bail system is incompatible with the fundamental premise of U.S. law that defendants are presumed innocent until proved guilty.
Until then, they should be released on their word to return, excluding those whom a judge determines to be flight risks or dangerous to the community.
Our nation is by far the world’s leading incarcerator. Some 11 million people are sent to jails or prisons every year with nearly 2 million behind bars on an average day. Black Americans account for 38% of those, nearly three times their share of the U.S. population. The bail system severely punishes poverty.
About 619,000 prisoners are in local jails, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, with about 400,000 awaiting trial, mostly for nonviolent crimes.
Many public and nongovernmental entities, but not Florida, are striving to right that wrong. There’s ample evidence that release on recognizance does not contribute significantly to new crimes or no-shows. Money and lives are wasted on often deplorable lockups for people who shouldn’t be there at all.
The Illinois example
Illinois is about to become the first state to completely eliminate cash bail. Its Supreme Court recently upheld 2021 legislation that also entailed police and prison reforms. Prosecutors and sheriffs lost an all-out litigation assault on it.
“Pretrial jailing can actually increase the likelihood that someone will be rearrested in the future because it destabilizes their lives,” a Prison Policy Initiative executive, Sarah Staudt, told NPR. “They lose their employment, their housing, sometimes custody of their children. So really, jail make us less safe. We should be using it only when it’s absolutely necessary.”
When the law takes effect Sept. 18, authorities must apply the “least restrictive” non-monetary conditions on pretrial release. Defendants considered to be flight risks or dangers to the public will be detained no matter how much bail they might afford. Judges may impose ankle monitoring or supervised home detention but must consider the defendant’s ability to pay.
Florida should watch Illinois carefully and follow its lead if things work out, but instead, our state is going in the wrong direction.
Threats from Gov. Ron DeSantis prompted the Miami-Dade judiciary to shelve a local reform two years in the making. The governor’s anti-riot legislation, temporarily blocked in federal court, requires defendants to be jailed until judges set bail, no matter how trivial the offense.
That is “sentence first, verdict afterwards,” as the Queen of Hearts says in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Playing politics with the issue, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis recently criticized the Illinois bail reform in a press release inviting business owners to move to Florida.
One might think he would have enough to do with Florida’s insurance crisis than to harp over another state’s actions. But remember, his special constituency, the insurance industry he oversees, underwrites all professional bail bonds and reaps $2.4 billion a year from it nationwide.
If Patronis runs for governor, as expected, he’ll be looking for even more insurance money than the $2.2 million that the Palm Beach Post attributed to him since 2019. His objections to bail reform should be seen in that light.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
