Indiana accepts gun deaths while cracking down on bail, columnist James Briggs writes.
in getting out of jail while they await trial. The Bail Project is a nonprofit organization that provides bail assistance to people who can’t afford it. The law putting restrictions on the Bail Project will reduce access for poor people to a right that is spelled out in the Indiana constitution: “Excessive bail shall not be required.”
The Indianapolis police union and the commercial bail bond industry made a cynical pitch to lawmakers that it is necessary to restrict charitable bail because too many dangerous people are getting out of jail. But a“Reporters examined the 225 murder cases filed in Marion County since the nonprofit’s inception in December 2018. IndyStar could identify just 37 people, or 16%, who were out of jail in a pending Indiana case prior to the homicides. And of those? Three were linked to The Bail Project.
Those findings suggest that lawmakers and Holcomb did not save lives by weakening the Bail Project’s work in Indianapolis, though they likely exacerbated the hardships of some people who might have otherwise received help. It is a double standard for Indiana to put up hurdles for the Bail Project while letting for-profit bail bond companies gloat over their arguably worse track record and lack of accountability.
The existence of bail, as well as its enshrinement in the state constitution, indicate a collective tolerance for the risk that some people will do bad things while out of jail. We accept that chance because the alternative is destroying the lives of anyone accused of crimes, a societal framework that is obviously incompatible with liberty.