States – not Washington D.C. – are meant to govern their criminal justice systems. It’s a principle enshrined in the Constitution. Yet, in recent weeks, the White House and Congress have sought to intrude on how states like California run their courts, pushing a bill and an executive order that would punish jurisdictions for curbing or eliminating cash bail.
This kind of federal overreach is a mistake. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of legally innocent people are jailed before trial simply because they cannot afford bail. In California, bail amounts are among the highest in the nation – far beyond what most families can pay. As a result, working-class people, disproportionately people of color, are jailed pretrial while wealthier defendants buy their freedom.
President Trump’s executive order, and the legislation following his lead, directs federal agencies to identify states and cities that have curtailed or eliminated cash bail, with an eye toward withholding funding or imposing new restrictions. The order signals a broader effort to punish jurisdictions that chart their own course.
California is an example of a state making incremental progress towards a more sensible bail system. To be sure, the state voted in 2020 to repeal a legislative effort to end cash bail (Proposition 25). But that defeat reflected rejection of a flawed reform alongside a lopsided campaign fueled by the bail bond industry. Prop. 25’s outcome was not a broad rejection of cash bail reform itself.
In the years since, reforms have continued to progress at the local level. San Francisco prosecutors have abandoned cash bail in many instances and instead weigh pre-trial incarceration on a case-by-case basis based on risk. Los Angeles County has a zero-dollar bail schedule for most low-level offenses. Statewide, a California Supreme Court decision now requires judges to consider ability to pay and alternatives before setting bail.
This is the kind of progress that Trump is now trying to stop.
Instead of supporting solutions, the Trump administration threatens to roll back decades of progress from jurisdictions reforming this broken system. It’s a political powergrab and an unprecedented interference in state authority based on a fundamental misinterpretation of bail reforms’ success.
The evidence paints a very different picture of how cash bail is always necessary than the White House suggests. Years of research in California and across the country show bail reform makes communities safer and courts fairer. In Illinois, crime did not rise after cash bail was eliminated; in New Jersey, jail populations dropped nearly 40 percent with no increase in crime or missed court dates; and in Harris County, Texas, ending cash bail for low-level cases reduced jail populations without harming public safety.
At The Bail Project, we’ve provided bail assistance to nearly 35,000 people with a 93 percent return-to-court rate and one in three cases dismissed. These results prove reform works.
That’s because cash bail has never guaranteed safety. It only guarantees jail time awaiting trial for somebody who cannot pay.
Under reform, judges retain the power to detain people when it is truly necessary for public safety or flight risk. What changes is that release decisions are no longer based on wealth, but on fairness and evidence. That is what keeps communities safer.
If federal officials were serious about public safety, they would invest in what communities need: mental health care, housing, jobs, and schools. Instead, the Trump administration has cut crime-prevention funding, slashed Medicaid, and now seeks to strip additional resources from states. That is not about safety – it’s about power.
Californians know our system best. We don’t need politicians in Washington using fear to score points, while undermining reforms that make our courts fairer and communities safer. Bail policy belongs where it always has belonged – with the states, accountable to the people they serve.
Image: Xavier Mascareñas
This op-ed originally appeared in The Sacramento Bee.
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Josh Mitman (he/him/his) is the Senior Policy Counsel at The Bail Project. Before joining The Bail Project, Mr. Mitman served as Director of Federal Legislative Affairs at Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), where he advocated for federal sentencing reform and decarceration alongside families of incarcerated loved ones. Prior to joining FAMM, Mr. Mitman was an Equal Justice Works fellow for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, where he focused on reforming state parole systems and securing the early release of those given extreme sentences in their youth. Mr. Mitman received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. in political science and philosophy from the University of Maryland.
