Senate Bill AB109 was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in May, 2011which requires 30,000 of the roughly 180,000 California prisoners to be sent back to County Jails to serve out their sentences or be released and monitored.
Additionally, it requires the county jails to begin housing convicted prisoners that would have normally been sent to state prisons. The law became effective October 1st and the strain on county resources is already being felt, particularly here at the Orange County Jail and Los Angeles County Jail. With already overcrowded jails throughout our state and funding that was already stretched to the limit, this “Realignment Bill” is creating havoc within each counties criminal judicial systems.
Each county is now implementing plans to massively increase the size and scope of their probation departments who have been given the task of devising a plan to handle the additional inmates. Most of the solutions being proposed to reduce jail population involve “sentenced” inmates, or inmates that have plead guilty and are serving prison sentences. The release of these inmates will be primarily managed using government funded release programs, such as GPS monitoring or Own Recognizance release.
What is currently missing from most realignment plans I have examined is how privately funded surety bail can help in lowing the “pretrial” jail population while costing counties nothing. Bail is a system of release that has been effective in this country for over a hundred years and to exclude it from helping to solve our current problem is huge mistake.
Studies show that defendants released on bail are more likely to appear in court and less likely to commit crimes while awaiting trial than on OR release which saves lives and protects property.
Surety bail is more cost effective for reducing jail population, because it can save counties millions of dollars every year by preventing court and law enforcement resources from being wasted on the high cost of managing, tracking and apprehending fugitives released — not to mention the cost of additional crimes committed by some defendants on OR or GPS release.
Bail provides financial accountability for the defendants and helps build a support network by requiring friends and family members to co-sign and put up collateral for the bond.Bail Bond Professionals, the Orange County bail bond specialist, is committed to becoming part of the solution by encouraging the Orange County Jail, Judges, the District Attorney’s Office and other Orange County officials to use bail release instead of taxpayer funded government releases.
