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NC Council of Churches

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Cash Bail Reform

As part of the N.C. Bail Reform Working Group, the Council has created a network of faith leaders (lay and clergy) across the state who are taking a dual approach to cash bail. While working to educate the public and mobilize for policy change, they are also posting bail for those who qualify in order to mitigate the deleterious effects of the current system.

Overview

“The presumption of innocence—the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty—is a key tenet at the heart of the U.S. criminal legal system” (americanprogress.org) . While references to “mass incarceration”, “school to prison pipeline” and “criminal justice reform” are often associated with United States prisons, the criminal legal system in America contains many steps, starting with the arrest. 

Before a person can be sentenced to prison, they are first charged with a crime. They then have to report to court for their case to be heard before a judge. Before the trial, many people spend time in jail having only been accused of a crime, not convicted. Why? Because they are poor.

Wake County Detention Center

Prisons are facilities under state or federal control where people who have been convicted (usually of felonies) go to serve their sentences. Jails are city or county run detention facilities where a majority of people locked up are there awaiting trial (still legally innocent), many because they can’t afford to post bail. Some people wind up serving their sentences in local jails, either because their sentences are short or because the jail is renting space to the state prison system.

Cash bail is the system set up in the United States with the sole purpose of ensuring that a person appears in court. To guarantee court appearance, a person is required to pay a bail amount, which allows them to return to their community prior to the court date. However, if a person lacks financial resources to pay bail, they have no choice but to be detained in jail, pretrial, until their court date. So a person of means can buy their pretrial freedom, but a person of low wealth who can’t is locked up until their court date. 

In NC’s for profit cash bail system, the accused can contract with a commercial bail agent to help them with the bail amount. The cost of this service is a non refundable fee (typically 10% to 15% of the bail amount). So for a $5000 bail bond, the fee would be $500, but according to a US Federal Reserve study, 40% of Americans are too poor to pay that amount without going into debt and the bottom 12% cannot afford it at all. So the bail agent then looks for collateral (like ownership of a house) to secure the loan, often through the family of the accused. People can be stuck paying off this debt, at high interest rates, for years, even if the charges are dropped and the person has been released from pretrial detention.

Millions of Americans are at risk of being trapped in a cycle of debt and detention

“Innocent until proven guilty” is not actually the way by which the criminal legal system operates. The cash bail system undeniably favors those who have resources and disadvantages the poor. Someone charged with a serious felony and given a $1 million dollar bail can walk out the door while someone else who missed a court date and can’t afford a $1000 bail for a minor, non violent crime, is stuck in jail awaiting trial.

Each day, around 730,000 people sit in county or city jails in the United States, (at taxpayer expense), representing about one third of all people incarcerated. Every year, 7 million people spend time in jail, often for days, weeks, or months while they await trial. Seventy (70%) of those detained pretrail are classified as minimum security nonviolent. . At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested again within the same year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration. Currently, our nation spends far more to incarcerate people than it would cost to provide programs which would help them address health or economic challenges. Many in jail are unhoused.

We want a pretrial justice system that is safe, fair, efficient and effective. A fair and effective system for people accused of a crime, but not convicted and presumed innocent, that makes deliberate, informed decisions throughout the process to ensure the system is working as intended. The components of such a pretrial justice system must include the expansion of the issuance of citations versus indiscriminate arrest, the utilization of a validated risk assessment instrument to determine the need for incarceration, an evidence based detention hearing, and a community-based pretrial support system. Done right, this leads to decisions that make detention the exception (only when the public would be at risk), not the norm. Phone and text court date reminders are efficient and very effective at helping people remember when they need to be in court. Many counties in NC do not do this.

The cash bail system in the United States is a bipartisan, multifaceted issue that affects all U.S. citizens. This system’s primary objective is to certify that a person appears in court after being charged with a crime. However, it is costly, unjust, and harmful. 

The for profit cash bail system is designed to ensure court appearance of the accused, but it has become a burden for those unable to pay. This system discriminates unjustly on the basis of class, which often disproportionately affects people of color. For two people accused of the same crime, the person who has money can walk free and go back to their community as they await their trial while the person who can not afford a bail amount is forcibly detained behind bars until their court appearance, which can become days, weeks or even months in jail. This system is not only discriminatory, it is immoral. 

Our system of justice is a competitive system that pits the accuser against the accused in a court of law. When one side has more power and resources than the other, justice may not be served. It’s important that each side competes on a level playing field and there’s often an imbalance in power between the district attorney and the poor defendant. The imbalance is so great that often poor people plead guilty before trial just to be released from pretrial detention. This is well illustrated by these videos: A Typical Scenario and DA Time.

Pre-trial bail is costly and unjust. It helps keep the poor down, making it harder to escape poverty. Those who can’t make bail, wind up serving time behind bars before their trial starts. During this period, pre-trial imprisonment is traumatic. It disrupts families and adults are put at risk of losing their jobs, cars, pets, homes, or even their children. The inability to pay bail perpetuates suffering for those who are locked up until their court date, while also increasing one’s chance of serving time in prison. Even those who have collateral to raise the bail fee amount by putting up their house to secure the bond are often trapped paying off the loan for years, sometimes losing their home for non payment. Once caught in the legal system, it becomes harder to escape, which continues to perpetuate suffering. The Vera Institute has an in depth study: “Justice Denied: The Harmful and Lasting Effects of Pretrial Detention.” 

For 28-year-old Sandra Bland, who died in a Waller County, Texas, jail, unaffordable bail played a key role in the path from a traffic stop for a failure to signal to tragedy. Bland was pulled over for a traffic violation in 2015 by Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia. The exchange escalated, resulting in Bland’s arrest and a charge of assaulting a police officer. Encinia was placed on administrative leave for failing to follow proper traffic stop procedures and was later fired from his job. At the time of her death, Bland had spent three days in jail, unable to raise $515 to pay a bail company to post bond. She was one of hundreds of people who had not been convicted that year who lost their lives in jails.

For more stories about the people affected, see our section on Personal Testimonies in Tab VI Learn More.

If a dangerous person can pay the bail amount, they can get out of jail before their trial and potentially do things like threaten witnesses. Cash bail does not guarantee that violent people are kept off the streets; judges do. A judge can deny bail to any defendant deemed a threat to public safety or likely to flee and not show up for their court date.

Time in jail pretrial disrupts lives. People unable to pay bail often plead guilty just to get out of jail, leaving them with a criminal record. They leave jail poorer and are MORE likely to commit crimes out of desperation from job loss, loss of housing or transportation, or family issues.

American taxpayers spend over $22 billion dollars per year incarcerating people who have not yet been convicted of any crime. On average, it costs between $100 and $120 per day to keep someone in jail. Over the last 20 years, counties across North Carolina have spent approximately $1.5 billion on building and maintaining their jails. As an example, Wake County, NC, is currently budgeting over $172 million to reconfigure and expand their jail over the next 3 years, even as the ability to staff the jails is getting more difficult because of the shortage of workers and in lieu of other priorities for public schools, human services and housing. Other counties of similar size in the US have been able to avoid this added expense by expanding pretrial services.Typically, the cost of building a new jail is matched by the cost of staffing and running it for 3-4 years.

Bail bond companies act as regulated agents for insurance companies and this industry has invested heavily in political contributions and lobbying the NC legislature over the last decade or more for favorable statutory changes. This is a business that extracts money from people who often can’t afford it, for a service that offers little benefit to the taxpayer, with protections against losses written into the statues. Up to now, the public has not been paying attention.

The For-Profit Bail Industry

  • Fewer than 10 insurance companies are behind a significant majority of bonds issued by as many as 25,000 bail bond agents nationwide. Wake County alone has over 1700 registered agents. (NC Courts Surety Report, Sept. 2022)
  • These insurers collect around 10 percent of the premium bail agents charge families.
  • Between bail agents and their insurance backers, the industry collects between $1.4 billion and $2.4 billion a year. The true size of the industry is hidden by opaque corporate finance reporting and varied state and local recordkeeping.
  • The bail insurers have used ALEC to promote and pass at least 12 different model bills to insulate and expand for-profit bail’s role.

What is a Surety Bond?

The “insurance” for bail is different from typical car, home, life, or health insurance. Bail is a type of “surety bond.” Other typical surety bonds include construction bonds and other contract performance bonds. With surety bonds, the insurance company guarantees to a third party that the person or entity seeking the bond can fulfill their obligations. They require the person seeking the bond to indemnify the insurer, guaranteeing payment and costs, and leaving the insurer on the hook only as a last resort.

Former Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stevens’ Assessment of Cash Bail:

“I personally think the bail bondsmen are leeches on the criminal justice system in terms of taking advantage of poor, disadvantaged people who find themselves in some situation with the law. It is almost to the point of being immoral, especially as it deals with the relatively minor, nonviolent offenses.”

“The system was never designed to operate as it presently does, but the bail industry has such influence with the North Carolina General Assembly that has allowed a corrupt system to develop that is dangerous to both those who find themselves accused and the justice system itself. The system has been made even worse by the protection which it has gained from its successful lobbying of the General Assembly.”

“In fact, from 2002 to 2016 the North Carolina Bail Bond Association made over $350,000 in political contributions.”

The prophetic call to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” (Micah 6:8) is woven throughout scripture and central to our identity as Christ followers. Biblical justice seeks restoration, healing, and reconciliation and is rooted in love.  “Criminal justice” is antithetical to a biblical summons to seek justice for the poor, the outcast, and the disenfranchised. In fact, the criminal legal system in the United States, as exemplified through the cash bail system, is rooted in coercion, punishment and wealth extraction rather than principles of fairness and equality of treatment. 

In a speech delivered in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged his listeners by reframing the story of the good samaritan. He said,  “On one hand we are called to play the good samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not constantly be beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” (speech delivered on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, NYC).

King’s example of addressing the conditions of the Jericho road suggest that reforming the for-profit cash bail system in America requires more than supporting bond funds for those who can’t afford bail. We should tend to the roots of the bail system which are toxic and entrenched in punishing the poor while those who have financial privilege are advantaged. 

The carceral system is too often rooted in a concept of justice that seeks to punish someone who does harm instead of biblical justice that seeks restoration, healing, and is rooted in love. Scripture consistently points to Christian ethics and morals that God created all people in God’s image, and all should be treated with dignity and fairness, especially the vulnerable who are still awaiting trial.  Biblical justice should not be conflated with “criminal justice” because the United States criminal legal system is exactly the opposite of how scripture teaches pursuing justice for the poor, lowly, and disenfranchised.

Proverbs 31:8-9 calls us to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” This wisdom literature provides a blueprint for action, instructing faith leaders and Christ followers to use their voices in the public sphere to advocate for those crushed under the weight of an unjust system, in this case, the for-profit cash bail system.

Why should this become a priority? For profit cash bail is both expensive and unjust.

In a divided political climate, it is important to note that cash bail reform is bipartisan. It should be data driven. Done right it keeps the public safe while reducing the tax burden and addressing a long standing structural cause of poverty. Those that suffer the direct consequences of the cash bail system are disproportionately poor, powerless, and people of color. However, all tax-payers are indirectly affected by an expensive and inefficient system since they fund the local jail, the courts, the police, and all the social services required when families are put under needless stress. Reform is just Smart Government. 

Christ stood in solidarity with the poor, disenfranchised, and oppressed. As followers of Christ, we are to live and stand in solidarity with our neighbors as Jesus did and taught us to do.  Given that the cash bail system discriminates and harms many of our neighbors, we are called to act. Action looks like educating ourselves and finding our allies, mobilizing together, donating to grassroots causes as well as assisting those caught up in the system, and advocating on a county and state level for reform. Other states have done it, why not North Carolina?

We cannot stand up against the for profit cash bail system without first and foremost educating ourselves on the complex realities of the system. It’s important to understand exactly how it operates, why it operates the way it does, and who is and who is not benefitting from its structure. If your church is interested in learning more about this topic, the NC Council of Churches in cooperation with the North Carolina interfaith Cash bail reform team will come to you and present on the cash bail system and help guide the conversation around our collective call as the Church.    

Action Step

Mobilization starts with talking about it. Many churches have adopted resolutions that condemn the current cash bail system. Perhaps your church already has a resolution or is interested in creating one. Here are some examples to consider. 

Action Step

Action Step

  • Start a local bail bond fund (partner with the Bail Project). Here is how one community has done this recently (add story from Greensboro / Almond Connection).
  • Join or start a Court Watch team and report to the national repository of information
  • Join or start a Participatory Defense team to work directly with Public Defenders, gathering information on specific cases

There are plenty of grassroots efforts already aiming to reshape the cash bail system and mitigate the harm that the system unjustly causes against poor people. The following are resources of partner organizations who are actively pursuing reform and systemic change:

Action Step: Donate to the following orgs/funds:

There are several ways to directly advocate for cash bail reform within your local and state governments. First, start a conversation with those in power and publicize the injustice of the system. Talk to elected officials and inquire about what is happening locally in your community. 

Action Step:

  • Publicize the injustice of the commercial bail system through 
    • Social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Blue Sky, Tik Tok)
    • Letters to the editor in your local newspaper (News & Observer, Carolina Public Press, NC News Line, Charlotte Observer, and others)
  • Call/write your state representative.
    • Call/write your NC House of Representative and ask them to support the following bills: 
      • HB90: Judicial Discretion of FTA Release Conditions
      • HB91: Create Pretrial Release Study Committee
      • HB271: Restrict Cash Bail for Class 3 Misdemeanors

You can find your NC state representatives here:  https://www.ncleg.gov/FindYourLegislators

Our Field Guide to Advocacy tells you everything you need to know about talking to legislators about these bills.   We’ve made it even easier by providing a suggested script below for each bill.

Hi, this is _______________, I live in _____________, and I am a constituent of the (Representative/Senator).

I would like to encourage you (or him/her if speaking to the assistant) to support House Bill 271, Restrict Cash Bail for Class 3 Misdemeanors.

The current system is just so unfair to people who are accused of minor crimes and who are unable to afford cash bail. In our legal system it should never be the case that someone who has money can walk free while someone who doesn’t is jailed even before their case has gone to trial. This is the equivalent of a debtor’s prison and punishes someone just because they are poor. It is especially egregious for Class 3 Misdemeanors which are low level, nonviolent and often victimless crimes.

I urge you to become a co-sponsor of this bill and to work with your colleagues to get it passed. Thank you.

Hi, this is _______________, I live in _____________, and I am a constituent of the (Representative/Senator).

I would like to encourage you (or him/her if speaking to the assistant) to support House Bill 91, Create Pretrial Release Study Committee.

Pretrial release practices vary widely by county and because of this where you live can have a significant impact on how you are treated by the legal system. In NC in cases where the highest charge is a misdemeanor, some counties require a secured bond for pretrial release 88% of the time and others only 33% of the time. NC if filling up its jails unnecessarily and at significant taxpayer expense with people who pose no risk to the community. This bill calls for statewide standards to be developed so that taxes are spent wisely to ensure people are able to show up to court without having to languish in jail pretrial just because they are poor. Pretrial diversion programs, consistently applied statewide, would ensure citizens are treated equally before the law and show up for their day in court.

I urge you to become a co-sponsor of this bill and to work with your colleagues to get it passed. Thank you.

Hi, this is _______________, I live in _____________, and I am a constituent (of the Representative/Senator).

I would like to encourage you (or him/her if speaking to the assistant) to support House Bill 90, Judicial Discretion of Failure to Appear (FTA) Release Conditions.

Missing court dates for low level crimes (which take on average 6 months to resolve in NC) are mostly due to social factors like transportation, childcare, or work hours.  All too often low level cases are repeatedly continued, meaning people have to keep coming back to court, making it ever more likely they will miss a court date. This act will reinstate judicial discretion in setting appropriate conditions of pretrial release for a defendant that has previously failed to appear in court, as recommended by the courts commission. We should trust our elected judges to make decisions which both protect the community and do not keep people in jail before their trial only because they cannot afford bail. Punishing people before their case is heard in court is just wrong.

I urge you to become a co-sponsor of this bill and to work with your colleagues to get it passed.  Thank you.

  • Interview Officials:
    • Look into where your county elected officials stand on reform and find out how much information is available on issues related to cash bail. You may want to start with the county sheriff and district attorney. What information can they show you about who is incarcerated pre-trial, how long they stay, and how many are there only because they can’t afford bail, particularly those accused of non-violent misdemeanors. If you’ve never been there, take a tour of your county jail and get an idea of how people are processed by the current system.
    • Next, interview the chief district judge, chief magistrate, and public defender (if there is one). Note the magistrates and public defenders are not elected offices, so that may affect their sense of agency when it comes to reform. Here is a guide to help you with interviewing a judge. You can identify them using the NC Courts online directory.
    • Once you have done some interviews and understand what is going on in your county, consider sharing this with members in your faith community and crafting your next steps.

Just as the first step to being an anti-racist is educating yourself, the first step to cash-bail reform is learning about the system and its unjust roots. The following are a compilation of articles, books, and documentaries which shed more light into the complexities of America’s cash bail system.

NC Council of Churches Cash Bail Toolkit 

Link to downloadable Brochure

Articles

Websites

Documentaries

Personal Testimonies

Key Contact

Rev. Dr. Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director

Jennifer is a native of South Carolina and an ordained minister in The United Methodist Church. She loves South Carolina, but has managed to spend all but ten years of her adult life in North Carolina. Those ten years were spent pastoring United Methodist churches across the Upstate. She attended Duke University several times and in the process earned a BA, double majoring in English and Religion, a Master of Divinity, a PhD in religion, and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. Prior to coming to the Council, she spent 16 years as the United Methodist Chaplain at Duke University, where she also taught undergraduate and divinity school classes, served on committees and task forces, and attended lots of basketball games. She writes frequently for various publications when time permits and preaches regularly in congregations across North Carolina. Jennifer has two adult children, Nathan, who is a software developer in Durham, and Hannah, who is a digital marketing analyst in Charlotte. Jennifer is the overjoyed grandparent of Benjamin and Theodore.
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