Bail reform fails in Baltimore--people in jail awaiting trial increases

Seven years after Maryland tried to reform the cash bail system because of its disproportionate impact on the state’s poorest residents, people who get arrested in Baltimore are being held in jail before trial at a higher rate than before the change, reported the Baltimore Beat.

While the use of cash bail has dropped since the bail reform effort, nearly two-thirds of all initial appearances in Baltimore — the first hearing an arrested person has before a court official — now end in a bail denial, a rate that has surged by about 300% since the state judiciary changed the rules surrounding pretrial release in 2017.

The population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has actually risen since 2017, even as arrests have declined during the same period. People who are held in jail before trial can wait months or longer before their case concludes, even though they are presumed innocent and criminal cases in Baltimore often end without a conviction.

The biggest shift since the rule change has come from court officers denying bail entirely, according to data provided by the state judiciary and analyzed by Baltimore Beat and The Garrison Project.

The data shows: 

·         Since the bail reform rule change in 2017, the use of cash bail at initial appearances has fallen dramatically in Baltimore, from about 40% before the 2017 effort to under 5% in the first half of 2023, the most recent data provided by the state judiciary.

·         Baltimore’s overall release rate — the proportion of people freed on unsecured bond or on their own recognizance at their initial appearances — rose at first after bail reform, but then fell back below pre-reform levels.

·         In 2016, court officers in Baltimore held people without bail at their initial appearances less than 15% of the time, but bail denials quickly spiked after the rule change and have hovered around 60% since 2020.

These are not brief stints in jail. More than 60% of defendants who have an initial appearance are still in custody five days later.

The 2017 bail reform effort was designed to reduce the crushing, unequal costs of cash bail and stop judges from holding people in jail pretrial simply because they could not afford to pay — a practice that was likely unconstitutional, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said in 2016.

Yet the population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has risen from under 700 people per day on average in 2017 to more than 900 in 2023. The facility’s health care system is under intense scrutiny, and at least four people have died in pretrial custody this year, including a man who was held on $3,500 cash bail after being accused of stealing snacks from a vending machine.

Christopher Dews, a lobbyist who represents Out for Justice, a nonprofit that supports formerly incarcerated people, said the difference after the 2017 rule change was clear when he worked on the Job Opportunity Task Force’s bail fund in Baltimore. The number of people eligible to be bailed out of jail dwindled and then reached zero, he said.

The result has frustrated reform advocates who considered the rule change a victory but have since watched it backfire.

“It is quite painful, the reality that whenever we have a massive policy win for equitable criminal justice reforms, it does seem as if the state finds non-legislative, non-policy ways to thwart those successes,” Dews said. “As advocates, we prepare to defend our wins, but you can only defend wins so much from the state that has to implement those same wins.”

The pretrial system became more black-and-white after the rule change, added Nicole Belle, who was a case manager for the Job Opportunity Task Force’s bail fund from 2021 until early 2023. People facing charges were either released or held without bail.

“There was no in between,” Belle said.  

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