Millions of people manage to pay money bond-at the cost of neglecting other critical expenses and draining their communities of billions of dollars every year. A recent study in Maryland found that people arrested in the state from 2011 to 2015 paid combined bail bond premiums of more than $256 million. More than $75 million was paid in cases that were dropped or found not guilty. Those people do not get their money back. This system perpetuates cycles of poverty for some communities and disproportionately impacts communities and families of color. 

Take, for example, the case of Demorrea Tarver, arrested in Baltimore in 2008 and charged with drug possession. Tarver’s mother paid a bail bondsman a $5,000 down payment on the $27,500 nonrefundable bond premium (10% of the full $275,000 bond amount). All charges were dropped weeks later, but the Tarvers were still required to pay $300 per month to the bondsman. When they were unable to pay that, the case went to debt collection. Demorrea Tarver currently pays $100 a month on this debt, which is less than the interest that accrues. At this rate he will NEVER 

pay off his bail debt. 

Current pretrial justice systems that result in increased crime, convictions, and incarceration contribute to mass incarceration-a problem that costs taxpayers as much as $1 trillion annually (almost 6% of the gross domestic product). 

Compared to identical people released before trial, low-risk people held longer than three days are: 

• Arrested 74% more frequently during the pretrial phase and 51% more up to 2 years later; 

• 30% more likely to be convicted or plead guilty, with resulting sentence lengths 18 months longer; 

• 4 times more likely to receive a jail sentence and 3 times more likely to receive a longer jail sentence; and, 

• 3 times more likely to receive a prison sentence and twice as likely to receive a longer prison sentence.

Even for those that do make bail and are released could face additional charges from health services in the jail, prescriptions, even room and board, furthering the financial toll taken on alleged defendants. A state-bystate survey conducted by NPR found that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required. 

For example: 

▪ In at least 43 states & the District of Columbia, defendants can be billed for a public defender. 

▪ In at least 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays. 

▪ In at least 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision. 

▪ And in all states except Hawaii and the District of Columbia, there's a fee for the electronic monitoring devices defendants and offenders are ordered to wear.

When an impoverished person fails to keep up with these payments, he has violated probation. There may be more fees and penalties. In some states, people who don't pay can lose their driver's license or benefits like food stamps. Sometimes felons have to pay before they get back their right to vote. NPR's reporting came across many of these situations, including a woman in her 60s who lost her subsidized housing for seniors and became homeless. It was discovered she still owed $500 on a conviction decades before for forging a prescription. Other examples included people who didn't pay court costs and lost their driver's license, but they kept driving-to get to work, to get kids to school-until they were caught, went to jail and were assessed thousands of dollars in more fines and fees.

The result is that people face arrest and go underground to avoid police. But this means they cut themselves off from job opportunities, welfare benefits or other programs that could get them on their feet.

Jailing arrested people before trial is the greatest expense generated by current pretrial justice practice. As noted earlier in this brief, taxpayers spend approximately $38 million per day to jail people who are awaiting trial (63% of the total jail population, or more than 450,000 individuals on any given day). Annually, this $14 billion is used to detain people who are mostly low risk, including many whose charges will ultimately be dropped.

By adopting commonsense policies that detain only higher risk people, that money could pay for a bevy of other needed services. This is, however, just a portion of the total price tag.This suggests that the true cost of existing money-based pretrial systems is closer to $140 billion per year. Jail costs vary widely depending on region, how long individuals are incarcerated, special health or accommodation needs, and other factors.

Additionally, the sudden loss of a wage-earner not only denies the community tax dollars from wages and purchases, but the community is then responsible for everything from nutritional needs to housing and healthcare for the remaining family members, many of which are young children. One of every fifty children has a parent in prison.

For example: It costs about $460 per day to house one person in New York City’s Rikers Island detention center, or more than $167,000 per year-nearly equal to four years tuition at Princeton University. In 2014, 1,427 people had been detained at Riker’s for more than one year at a cost of more than $38,309,000.

In 1990, most felony defendants who were freed from jail pending the resolution of their cases were released on non-financial conditions (comparable national data on misdemeanor defendants are not available). Nearly 20 years later, in 2009 (the latest year for which data are available), those released on their own recognizance (also referred to as ROR) made up only 23 percent of all felony defendants released pretrial.

While an additional 15 percent were released on other types of non-financial bail, the remaining 61 percent of defendants were required to post financial bail, either by providing the whole or a portion of the total amount or equivalent collateral, or by hiring a bail bondsman to post the sum in the form of a private surety bond for a non-refundable fee.Among 2009 felony cases, private surety bonds accounted for four out of five releases that involved money and close to half of all releases.93 In addition to requiring bail more frequently, judges also increased bail amounts.

The average bail amount in felony cases increased 43 percent (in constant dollar values) between 1992 and 2009, from $38,800 to $55,400.94 As a result of these factors, more and more defendants remain in jail simply because they cannot pay their way out.

Stephen Papa, a homeless Iraq war veteran, was sentenced to 22 days in jail, not because of his original offense-destruction of property and resisting arrest after he got drunk with friends one day-but because he couldn't pay the fines and court fees. At his hearing, the judge asked for a $50 first installment on his $2,600 in court debt, but Papa, who was homeless and on the verge of starting a new job, had only $25.

Following the arraignment process a determination may be made to either refer the defendant to a problemsolving court, such as a drug court or Veterans Treatment Court that offer treatment options, or to a standard court where most anything can happen. It’s at this juncture that the pattern of suicide becomes tragically common. Financial stress on family and friends to raise bond, fees at the jail and lack of treatment options over incarceration doesn’t leave much hope for even the smallest charge.

It’s important not to reduce the act of suicide to any one precipitating cause. “Suicide is complex behavior and results when a variety of biological, psychological and environmental factors come together, and is often triggered by stressful events,” said Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice-president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

But unfortunately, imprisonment — especially sudden imprisonment — can serve as exactly the sort of precipitating event that can raise someone’s risk of suicide, particularly if they have other risk factors. “If you’ve never really been in the criminal justice system, never been locked up, never been in jail, it isn’t anything like you might imagine,” said Dr. Thomas W. White, an expert on prison suicide who works with both correctional facilities and mental-health specialists. “As a person in the free world, you don’t have any idea what it’s like to have no freedom.”

That’s part of the reason why the first few days in prison are so risky, said White. “There’s a lot of research suggesting that many suicides are pretty impulsive, that people do it within five minutes of thinking about it,” he said. “So it’s not surprising it happens in jails.” When you combine preexisting risk factors with a sudden, jarring, terrifying transition, the results can be fatal, especially given, as HarvayFriedman put it, that “Research shows that suicidal behavior often emerges quickly with as little as five to ten minutes between the thought and the action.”

This can help explain the fact that the suicide rate in jails, which are usually (relatively) short-term stops for people before and during their trial, or after they have been convicted of minor offenses, are so much higher than rates in prisons. A person’s time is jail is when they’re at their most shocked, scared, and vulnerable. By the time you’re in prison, “the shock has worn off,” as White put it.

A 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, found that 86% of employers use criminal background checks on at least some candidates, with the majority (69%) checking all candidates. In a similar 2010 survey by the same group, 31% of respondents said an arrest without conviction would at least be “somewhat influential” in their hiring decision. 

Before a background check is run, job applications often ask potential employees if they’ve “ever been arrested for a serious crime?” Not convicted, just arrested. It would not be unreasonable to assume that checking that box would dramatically reduce the chances of being considered. At some point, a job-seeker with an arrest record might just stop asking for applications altogether, resigning to the uncertain future of the informal labor market — more willing to suffer through financial insecurity than the embarrassment of continued rejection.

Of course, convictions are even worse for job applicants. A 2009 Justice Department study found that a past criminal conviction of any sort reduced the likelihood of a job offer by 50%. Moreover, the negative effect of having a conviction in their criminal history was found to be twice as large for black job-seekers as compared to their white counterparts.

Clearly there is a significant stigma attached to a criminal conviction, but the overwhelming majority of Americans with a criminal history were never convicted of a serious crime; many were not even formally charged with one.

The United States remains one of the world’s strictest nations when it comes to denying the right to vote to citizens convicted of crimes. An estimated 6.1 million Americans are forbidden to vote because of “felony disenfranchisement,” or laws restricting voting rights for those convicted of felony-level crimes. 

Our key findings include the following: 

• As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, a figure that has escalated dramatically in recent decades as the population under criminal justice supervision has increased. There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, and 5.85 million in 2010. 

• Approximately 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting age population – 1 of every 40 adults – is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction. 

• Individuals who have completed their sentences in the twelve states that disenfranchise people post=sentence make up over 50 percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling almost 3.1 million people. 

• Rates of disenfranchisement vary dramatically by state due to broad variations in voting prohibitions. In six states – Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia – more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised. 

• The state of Florida alone accounts for more than a quarter (27 percent) of the disenfranchised population nationally, and its nearly 1.5 million individuals disenfranchised post-sentence account for nearly half (48 percent) of the national total. 

• One in 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than that of non-African Americans. Over 7.4 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American population. 

• African American disenfranchisement rates also vary significantly by state. In four states – Florida (21 percent), Kentucky (26 percent), Tennessee (21 percent), and Virginia (22 percent) – more than one in five African Americans is disenfranchised.