Criminal justice. Freedom isn't free

• Author: Lorelei Laird
• Pages: 16-17

16

ABA JOURNAL | WINTER 2019-2020

On the Bail Project’s very

rst day in the Los Angeles

County courts, it may have

helped to keep an innocent

man out of prison.

The 33-year-old defendant, who

asked not to be named, had recently

gotten full custody of his young daugh-

ter and moved back to the Los Angeles

suburb of Compton to be closer to his

family. But in August of 2018, police

accused him of snatching a necklace

from a teenage girl. The police found

the defendant, who happened to be out-

side his nearby home, and the robbery

victim and her friend who witnessed the

robbery identied him.

The defendant insisted that they had

the wrong man, and police never found

the chain. Nonetheless, he was charged

with felony robbery, with bail set at

$30,000—far beyond what he could af-

ford. To make matters worse, the charge

was a “strike” under California law,

and a conviction would have positioned

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Freedom Isn’t Free

The Bail Project pays defendants’ bail as part of a plan

to end money bail entirely

BY LORELEI LAIRD

him for a signicantly longer sentence if

he was convicted of any other felonies.

He languished in jail for more than a

month before his pretrial hearing.

That’s when his fortunes changed.

The Bail Project, a nonprot that pays

the bail of the incarcerated, had just

arrived in Compton, and this defendant

was the rst to benet. His case was

ultimately dismissed after the jury

hung 9-3.

Los Angeles County deputy public

defender Janae Torrez, who handled his

case, says the bail made a difference.

“A lot of clients—especially like this

particular client—who haven’t had real

experience with the criminal justice

system, their main goal is to get out,

which means that they sometimes plead

to charges they didn’t do,” she says.

“Allowing the Bail Project to come in

on these cases ... is a way that we help

ensure that the system works properly.”

Modeled after a fund started by pub-

lic defenders more than a decade ago,

the Bail Project not

only pays defendants’

bail but connects them

to social services and

makes sure they show

up to court. By doing

that—and by using

the information it

gleans to advocate for

alternatives—the organization hopes to

eventually eradicate cash bail systems.

And it’s moving fast: It currently has 19

total locations in 14 states.

Blake Strode, executive director of

ArchCity Defenders, a nonprot civil

rights law rm and partner of the Bail

Project, says he’s seen its impact.

“When you literally free someone

from a jail cell, that is a life-changing

service,” Strode says.

Bail system myths

Founder Robin Steinberg says the Bail

Project grows out of her experience as

a career public defender, most recently

at the Bronx Defenders, which handles

indigent defense in that borough of

New York City. Over three decades, she

watched over and over as clients were

jailed for months because they couldn’t

come up with the money for their free-

dom—sometimes as little as $500.

“What I knew as a public defender is

that the difference between being able

to be out … or being locked in a jail

cell, and having to make decisions from

that position, made all the difference

in the world,” says Steinberg, who now

runs the Bail Project full time.

Being jailed has a cascade of negative

consequences. Jail can mean losing jobs,

homes and custody of children. On the

inside, defendants are exposed to physi-

cal and sexual violence. For immigrants,

jail can set a deportation in motion.

Pretrial detention can also affect the

outcome of the case. One 2016 study

from economists Will Dobbie, Jacob

Goldin and Crystal Yang found that

National Pulse edited by

BLAIR CHAVIS

blair.chavis@americanbar.org

Photo courtesy of the Bail Project

Bail Project

staers stand

outside their

Marina del

Rey, Califor-

nia, oce in

January 2019.