Texas Bail Reform Improves Public Safety, According to New Report

Press Contact: Jeremy Cherson, Director of Communications

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

(HOUSTON, TX) — On March 3, the independent monitor for the O’Donnell consent decree released its seventh report analyzing the impact of cash bail reform on Harris County. The Bail Project offered the following statement in response: 

“These new findings underscore the resounding success of cash bail reform in Harris County – findings which are consistent with the nearly one dozen other jurisdictions that minimized the use of cash bail and found a similar result. The latest O’Donnell Monitor report affirms what we have long known – that reducing reliance on cash bail benefits public safety. Now, we have an even more robust body of evidence that serves as a powerful testament to how communities are safer and better resourced when we move away from this unjust system of cash bail. 

Cash bail systems are un-American and unconstitutional, subjecting people to lasting harm that includes job loss, unemployment, residential instability, and a worsening of physical and mental health conditions. Prior to these reforms in Harris County, there was a two-tiered system of justice for people charged with misdemeanors, where rich people could pay bail and go free and poor people would have to remain incarcerated. The playing field is now more even, and countless Texans have been spared from the dangerous, debilitating conditions ever-present inside county jails, and given instead a chance to defend their innocence from a place of freedom. What Harris County demonstrates is we can have accountability and safe communities even while curtailing the use of cash bail and pretrial incarceration. Other jurisdictions would do well to look towards Houston as a model.”