Let’s start with this graph above, from the Hays County jail dashboard.

This is a graph of people being held at the Hays County Jail.  Notice that about 75% of the jail residents are awaiting trial. On average, they’re stuck in jail for about 2-3 months. 

This is really terrible! There are a lot of reasons why this is bad:

It’s terrible for the people being held pretrial.

You’re depriving someone of their freedom.  For a country that pays a lot of lip service to freedom, we sure play fast and loose with locking people up.  Remember: you are innocent until proven guilty.  We are literally locking up people who have not been proven guilty of anything.

It’s terrible for their family and roommates, and anyone else who depends on them.

You will absolutely lose your job.  If you are contributing to rent, your family and roommates are now crashing financially.  If you are picking your kids up from school, someone else must rearrange their work schedule to pick up your kids. Those kids are now separated from their parent.

We’re not putting isolated little Ken Dolls in jail.  We’re jailing a person who is part of a web of connectedness, and all those little interconnected strands are now pulled in behind bars. 

It’s a terrible waste of money! 

Let’s say we spend $50/day per prisoner (estimate from the Texas Comptroller’s fiscal notes). That works out to about $8 million per year. The Hays county budget for the jails was $23.5 million in 2022 (for basic operating costs). That’s a big waste of money! For a really bad cause!

“But aren’t these people dangerous?”

No, dangerous people are not offered bail in the first place. These 400 pretrial detainees are just poor.  

Let’s say bail runs you $10,000-$100,000 (based on a 2015 law review article from St. Mary’s University, “The Politics of the Bail System: What’s the Price for Freedom. The Politics of the Bail System: What’s the Price for Freedom,” by Lydia D. Johnson) 

Here’s how it breaks down:

Rich people can pay bail.  Assuming they show up for trial, they get the entire thing back.  It costs them $0. In the meantime, they keep their job and keep things stable for those around them.

Middle class people probably can’t afford bail. But they can hire a bail bondsman, who will charge 10%, or $1,000-$10,000.  You do not get your 10% back, but you can keep your job and keep things stable for those around you.

If you can’t afford $1,000-$10,000 to pay the bail bondsman, you sit in jail. You lose your job, your source of income, and trigger instability for everyone depending on you, and you’re stuck for 2-3 months.

So why? Who benefits from the existing system?  Well … just bail bondsmen.  Literally, that’s the entire lobbying group.  We should be able to build a coalition of people who will pressure Hays County to end the cash bail system.

An alternative to a cash bail system?

Ankle monitors are the most obvious choice. We already use ankle monitors for juvenile citizens and people on parole.  As noted by the American Progress and ACLU-Pennsylvania, many states and cities have already implemented some form of reform: Texas’ Harris County, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Washington D.C., and a bunch more have legislation in progress.

Look at the graphic at the beginning of this article one more time. Most of those people are in jail because they’re poor. If they weren’t poor, they wouldn’t be there. That’s gross, and we should fight to end cash bail in Hays County.

The San Marxist is a grumpy stump living in Rio Vista park just past the children’s park, as you’re heading back upstream – watching City Council meetings so you don’t have to.