Brave New Films

Cash bail (pre-pandemic)

Three out of 5 people in U.S. jails today have not been convicted of a crime. This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jails each day, despite the fact that they are legally innocent of the crime with which they have been charged.

2 states have legislation that will eliminate cash bail: California and New Jersey. New Jersey is the only one that has fully implemented reform. After push back California will vote on fully eliminating again this November.

Since 2017, New Jersey has implemented cash bail reforms. According to Arnold Ventures.org, “judges, prosecutors, public defenders, private counsel, and court administrators sat with representatives from the legislature and governor’s office to find a solution. Every stakeholder in the system agreed that this change needed to happen.” Overall, New Jersey’s pretrial jail population had declined 43.9 percent from the end of 2015 to the end of 2018. Research showed that court appearance rates remained high while the rate of alleged new criminal activity stayed low.