© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. "The
prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us
and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in
Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business." Henry
Rollins
Then there are prisons with all of
the staffing. Somewhere in all of this money come bail bondsmen. There is something
aimed at them that is not a good idea.
This session in the New Mexico
Legislature a proposed Constitutional Amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 1, involving
bail reform doesn't mean what people think. The test is easy. Another bill with
the same language except for one provision, House Joint Resolution 13, is being
offered and is said to be dead.
The news media and casual observers
may not see what is happening but the attorneys in the Legislature certainly do
and they are "game-on" for this windfall. What is the one provision?
That if someone is arrested and goes
before a judge instead of having to post a bond saying they will make their
court appearance, they can be released if they are poor and are not violent.
For them no bail will be required.
The easy sell on both measures is
that Judges will have more power to keep violent people in jail without any
chance of being released before their trial. That is a big push for a safer New
Mexico. Many people are injured because a violent offender reoffends while on
bail. The second set of victims naturally feels that the offender should have
been kept in jail. So that change in New Mexico Constitutional Law is needed.
The "More money for defense
lawyers" provision in SJR1 which is missing from HJR13 involves that some
people are kept in jail when they cannot arrange bail. Sometimes bail is ridiculously
low such as one hundred dollars. Jails spend more than that per day housing
those citizens.
What is not being said by anyone but
the Bail Industry spokesmen is that most people who can get bail do so by their
relatives or friends coming up with the money and property collateral. Who
would put up their house for their child if the alternative is to refuse to do
so and their child is released for being poor and unable to afford bail?
When someone is bailed out there are
two parties that work together to make sure that person makes their court
appointments: the people who provided the money for that person's release and
the Bail Bondsman. Both have a financial interest in that person doing the
right things.
If people are just released on their
own recognizance, there is not that pressure. Further, the private enterprise
of Bail Bonds is such that the risk is weighed on each individual. Some people
cannot bond out because no bail bondsman will take the risk. That is good to
know.
Finally, the real push for this
provision is to free up resources from the parents and friends for the defense
lawyers. Right now they see the bail as taking money from them since the
friends and relatives come up with that money. With no bail required that same
money that otherwise would go to bail would be available as extra resources for
the lawyers.
With this provision in SJR1 the
lawyers see a pot of money glimmering and they assume most people will not
think this through. They will just react to the notion of a debtor's prison
where people sit behind bars because they don't even have a hundred dollars.
I would like to see HJR13 pass and
be voted on by citizens in November but not SJR1. It is making a bad situation
worse and funneling more money to lawyers while ending a private enterprise that
minute by minute in our system looks at the flight risk of each person.
Are their abuses? Of course. But
that is no reason to make the system worse.
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