Kamala Harris and Rand Paul: To Shrink Jails, Let’s Reform Bail
Meanwhile, black and Latino defendants are more likely to be detained before trial
and less likely to be able to post bail compared with similarly situated white defendants.
But research has shown that low-risk defendants who are detained more than 24 hours
and then released are actually less likely to show up in court than those who are detained less than a day.
People awaiting trial account for 95 percent of the growth in the jail population from 2000 to 2014,
and it costs roughly $38 million every day to imprison these largely nonviolent defendants.
In drafting the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive bail, the founders sought
to protect people from unchecked government power in the criminal justice system
