newjerseynewsroom.com

BY DENNIS BARTLETT

COMMENTARY

New Jersey spends almost a billion dollars a year on its prison system. The state has about 26,000 inmates crammed into a system designed for around 17,000. It operates at 132 percent capacity. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2008, there were 12,984 new inmates cranked into the system while 13,885 were released. Of those put back on the streets, 9,068 were released subject to compliance with certain conditions.

Dry stuff for statisticians? Maybe. That is until you realize it costs the state $38,700 to house just a single inmate. How much did you pay in state taxes last year? How do you feel about paying for just part of one year's upkeep for a single convict?

New Jersey prisons are overcrowded. Is there a way to reduce the prison census and save almost $40 thousand tax dollars a year per inmate? Is there a way to do it consistent with public safety?

Fall Out

Prison overcrowding is the fruit of mandatory sentencing enacted years ago.

They did put them away. They did lock them up. They did reduce the crime problem on the streets. But this legacy has come back to bite the states in the budget. The end result has been prisons operating grossly over capacity, such as in California, where the state's 33 prisons were designed to hold 84,000 inmates but are packed with 158,000. States are being forced to release prisoners early and turn away new inmates, which is giving criminals the opportunity to become repeat offenders without much consequence. With current solutions proving largely ineffective, the commercial surety bail insurance industry is backing a relatively new answer that uses financial collateral as incentive for convicted criminals to be released: the conditional post-conviction release bond.

History of the conditional post-conviction release bond

Many people point to the late 1980s and '90s as the point where prison overcrowding began to accelerate faster than states could keep up. The commercial surety bail industry began working with the American Legislative Exchange Council on the Conditional Post-conviction Release Bond Act as another method of prison population reduction. Post-conviction bonds are based on the idea that after convictions, courts, probation department, or a designated release authority can select nonviolent offenders who meet strict criteria and allow them to post bond with private bail agencies. Benefits of post-conviction bonds include: (1) there being no cost to taxpayers, (2) that criminals have financial incentive to appear in court or for probation hearings, and (3) the final desired result that prison populations are reduced, leaving space for violent offenders to serve full sentences.

ALEC's model bill supports performance indicators wherein probation agencies monitor criminals for drug testing, maintenance of employment, recovery program involvement and other conditions. If they fail to comply, probation authorities inform the bonding agent to return the client to custody. If the bonding agent cannot recovery the principal, the agent pays a forfeiture.

Prison overcrowding spreading from coast to coast

California's struggle with its bloated prison system is representative of the plight of states across the country. In February 2009, a panel of three federal judges issued a tentative ruling that the state must quickly reduce its prison population by more than 57,000 inmates. California is examining measures such as limiting new admissions and giving prisoners shorter sentences for good behavior and rehabilitation efforts. California's "emergency release" program has created an environment where people no longer fear the consequences of committing crimes, not to mention the danger to public safety of releasing a massive cohort of convicts into a depressed economy.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, inmates let out on emergency release are the most likely to commit crimes. They know that if you commit certain crimes in California, they're just going to process you and walk you out the door two hours later. With so many criminals slipping away from the court system, many are calling for the increased accountability characteristic of post-conviction bonds. The post-conviction bond could even be used to keep people from entering the prison system at all. The judge would have the discretion to issue a sentence, decide whether the person is eligible for post-conviction bond and then send the defendant directly from the court room to a probation program. It's a win-win situation for the state because the prisons have one less inmate, and the state can collect money from the bail bondsman if the person skips and disappears.

Post-conviction bond not immune to controversy

Several groups, including prosecutors associations and district attorneys associations, have raised objections to post-conviction bonds. Their arguments vary, but many center on the idea that requiring convicted persons to post bond is unfair to indigents. Another source of resistance has been probation workers who believe post-conviction bonds might take away their job. Probation officers in Mississippi, where the statue was enacted almost three years ago, have widely accepted post-conviction bonds after realizing that help from the private sector would make their jobs easier by lessening their heavy workloads. Still others claim that post-conviction bonds are a self-serving measure by the bail industry because bail companies will profit financially. This concern is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether the mechanism works to reduce prison overcrowding.

The current state of the post-conviction bond

Three years have passed since Mississippi became the first state to adopt the Conditional Post-conviction Release Bond Act in 2007. Since then, Michigan passed a version of the bill in 2009. South Dakota passed it just last week. South Carolina introduced it last week. According to Gene Newman, Secretary of the Professional Bail Agents of the United States, North Carolina, Texas, California, and other states are in various stages of exploring similar initiatives.

Because the post-conviction bond program has only recently been implemented in Mississippi, there isn't a wealth of data available. But preliminary results are very promising. About 1,000 inmates have been released early from prison in Mississippi, and the rate of the criminals showing up to court has been about 97 percent. Financially, corrections departments would save around $24,000 to $40,000 per inmate for every year an inmate isn't in jail in jail, without factoring in medical costs and other expenses.

Post-conviction bonds could become the answer to help alleviate prison overcrowding crunch that America desperately needs.

Dennis Bartlett is the executive director of the American Bail Coalition