Bail set “without meaningful consideration of an individual’s indigence and alternatives . . . violates the Fourteenth Amendment,” the department wrote.
“There’s a public perception that [bond hearings] are detailed hearings, that they’re well-founded decisions,” says Sharlyn Grace, a criminal justice policy fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, a court watchdog group. “But the decision about whether they’re going to be incarcerated for that time is happening in 37 seconds, 25 seconds.”
In addition, county records and interviews with experts suggest that bail amounts have skyrocketed over the decades. Though there is no floor or ceiling to bond amounts in the county, one class of common bonds, D-bonds, rarely dip below $10,000 (or $1,000 needed to leave jail). In the 80s and 90s, D-bonds were sometimes in the low hundreds of dollars.
According to Smith, the sheriff’s office is drafting legislative proposals to address the problem of poor, low-level offenders awaiting trial in jails due to their inability pay bonds.
The county is in the process of implementing a new system for evaluating a defendant’s risk, which the chief judge’s office says will help judges make more calculated bail decisions.
