NPR reports on the role of bail in filling American jails

$50 bail "is like a million dollars to me"

(NPR) [Leslie] Chew is like one of more than a half-million inmates sitting in America’s jails — not because they’re dangerous or a threat to society or because a judge thinks they will run. It’s not even because they are guilty; they haven’t been tried yet.

They are here because they can’t make bail — sometimes as little as $50. Some will wait behind bars for as long as a year before their cases make it to court. And it will cost taxpayers $9 billion this year to house them.

On this day that I met him, Chew’s bail is $3,500. He would need to leave that much as a cash deposit with the court to leave jail. Or he could pay a bail bondsman a $350 nonrefundable fee to do it for him. If he had either amount, he could stand up and walk out the door right now. But he doesn’t.

The money, says Chew, “is like a million dollars to me.”

Bail creates an incentive to keep making low-level marijuana arrests (©South Park Studios)

Please click over to the National Public Radio story entitled “Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates“.  NORML’s Executive Director Allen St. Pierre forwarded me this piece and it is a very compelling look at the perverse incentive created by the bail system that profits the incarceration industry at the expense of so many non-violent drug offenders. He continues, “NORML board member and Missouri criminal defense lawyer Dan Viets is always quick to remind cannabis consumers to, if at all possible, avoid seeking the service of bail bond companies in favor of hiring a lawyer to negotiate with the court for no bail, or a lower cost one (and without the conflict of interest and incentive to make money in the same manner as the bondsman).”

I always just figure if I’m in trouble and it’s going to cost me money, why not spend it on someone who is trained to defend your rights, someone who might even be able to get your charges dismissed, instead of dumping it on the guy with a neon sign a block away from the jail who you’ll never see again?

I know some people in the cannabis community take a dim view of lawyers.  A tiny few even think NORML secretly wants to keep marijuana illegal so its lawyers can make money on people busted for pot.*  I’m no lawyer; I’m just another toker like you who got really lucky in life.  And I can tell you, having met so many talented, intelligent men and women working as defense lawyers that every one of them vigorously defends cannabis consumers because they hate to see any citizen harassed by the state for enjoying their American hemp heritage.  They don’t need misdemeanor marijuana cases to make a living; they defend us because arresting us for marijuana is wrong, period.

Find your NORML Legal Committee attorney and keep the number in your wallet or purse.  If you get in trouble, don’t call the bail bondsman, call your attorney.  Let’s get you out of jail and keep you out of jail and hoepfully, keep your record clean.