One of a variety of bills related to criminal justice reform in Texas this session.
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A lot has changed in Texas and the country since state lawmakers failed to pass a bail reform law in 2017.
There have been a number of largely successful lawsuits against Texas counties over their bail practices. Two of Texas’ largest counties — Harris and Dallas — have been at the forefront of those lawsuits — with federal judges calling their practices unconstitutional.
Those cases, along with recent jail deaths and the governor’s recent involvement on the issue, are expected to be front and center this year as state lawmakers renew a fight to reform the Texas bail system.
State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and state Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, announced Monday at the Capitol that they have again filed legislation that would implement a risk-assessment tool for judges to use when making bail decisions, among other proposals. Joining them in support of the legislation were the state’s two top judges, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht — who has publicly called for a change to Texas’ system for years — and Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen anything more broken in the criminal justice system than our current bail bond process,” Whitmire said. “If we do not fix it, ladies and gentlemen, the federal courts will.”
Bail is a legal mechanism to ensure defendants appear in court for their hearings after being charged with a crime. The most common practice is money bail, in which judicial officers set a bond amount that defendants must pay in order to be released. In the last few years, lawsuits have popped up all over the country — including in Texas — arguing that the system wrongfully detains poor defendants until their case is resolved while similar defendants with cash are allowed to go free.
In a speech to the 2017 Legislature, Hecht argued for reforms by noting that 75 percent of people in Texas jails have not been convicted. To illustrate what he considers a flawed system, he cited the case of a grandmother who was kept in jail for about two months on a $150,000 bond after allegedly shoplifting $105 worth of clothes for her grandchildren.
As with most legislation, vested interests are involved in it.
Whitmire blamed his 2017 bill’s failure on the powerful bail bond industry, which includes companies that front the full cost of a bail bond at a fee of about 10 percent. (A defendant being held on a $1,000 bond, for example, could pay $100 to a bail bond company to be released.) He said last session that bail bond companies opposed the bill because it would cut into their cash flow, but those in the industry have argued the measure would lessen a judge’s discretion and threaten public safety by letting more people out of jail.
The Texas Alliance for Safe Communities, a nonprofit organization that's opposed to bail reform, issued a statement after the bills were filed, claiming risk assessment tools lean too much toward letting people leave jail, even if it’s unsafe. The group cited multiple crimes committed by those who were out on bail bonds, including an Austin murder where the suspect was out on bond on robbery charges at the time.
“Algorithm-based bail policies remove these critical decisions from our elected judges, in some cases needlessly endangering law enforcement and Texans, and do nothing to support and provide accountability to defendants to ensure they don’t spiral into a cycle of crime,” the statement said.
The lawmakers acknowledged there will continue to be strong opposition from the industry this session, but Murr said elected officials and the general public have learned a lot more about the issue since 2017.
"Sometimes it takes more than one swing of an ax to chop a tree down," he said.
