Bail Bonds and Pretrial Release: When are the Facts not the Facts

The Pretrial Service Agency people have finally, despite their cover-ups and dismal performance, found an ally in the ultra-liberal Obama Justice Department.

For twenty-two years the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (a division within the U.S. Justice Department) has published several bail indsutry research reports comparing the performance of unsecured pretrial release (PTS) to secured release (commercial bail bonding). Every single time secured release dramatically outperformed unsecured release.

The private sector bail bond industry has used this information to show how Pretrial Service Agencies (aka local "free bail" shops) is a public safety danger and a terrible waste of taxpayer money. And the campaign is being successful. So successful, in fact, that it has driven the Pretrial Service Agency folks to take drastic measures by whining to Obama’s Justice Department that BJS information is hurting them and should therefore be retracted.

Consider this statement from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, State Court Processing Statistics, 1990-2004; “Compared to release on recognizance, defendants on financial release were more likely to make all scheduled court appearances.”

Compare that to this remark from a Data Advisory that was just issued from Bureau of Justice Statistics: “Evaluative statements about the effectiveness of a particular program in preventing pretrial misconduct may be misleading.”

What happened? Can anyone honestly imagine that pressure from above was not put upon the Bureau of Justics Statistics to issue this “Data Advisory” whereby they are made to contradict their own findings?

If we are surprised, we shouldn’t be. The socialist philosophy of Pretrial Service Agencies that the individual is not responsible for his behavior because society has failed him fits hand-in-glove with the “social justice” mantra of the current administration.

Pretrial Service Agencies will not give its own statistics or reports showing its dismal failure to appearance rate performance, and it cannot stand the truth as revealed in the Bureau of Justice Statistics studies. So it is forced to resort to deceitfulness.

Fortunately for them, they have a cover-up ally in the current administration. But that won’t last – elections come around on a regular basis.  Stay tuned for more on this extremely important topic.

Your thoughts on the subject?

Jerryism # 162

“What we need is less government in business and more business in government.”