Opinion

Opinion: Bail Bond System is Fundamentally Unjust

Published

9 years ago

August 15, 2017

Oakland Post

By Paul Clermont

“Innocent until proven guilty” is a fundamental principle of decent societies worldwide.

So is the idea that people who cause harm should be held accountable.

But what if you are innocent of the crime? Shouldn’t that mean you receive no punishment? Of course, but that’s not always how it works in the real world, thanks to our country’s money bail policies.

What’s wrong with them? Simply put, they’re unjust.

Here’s why.

Suppose you’re arrested, perhaps only for a minor or non-violent crime. For whatever reason, the court decides not to release you on personal recognizance until the trial date, so it sets a cash bail amount.

Your choice is to post the bail or sit in jail.
If you’re unemployed or have one of the many millions of poorly paid jobs, raising cash bail poses a major problem. But if you can come up with 10 percent of the bail amount, a bail bondsman will put up the rest so you can be released while your case moves forward.
Then your case comes to trial or charges are dropped. Had you not needed the bail bondsman, your money would be returned in full minus a few administrative fees.
But if you couldn’t raise the bail money yourself, the bail bondsman gets to keep the 10% you did put in; no crime but you’re punished nevertheless.

If you don’t like that deal—who would?—you stay in jail awaiting trial. In the meantime, you probably lose your income while you’re there and perhaps your job.

Again no crime, but punishment anyway.
Unsurprisingly, the impact of these policies is greatest on the poor and those with moderate incomes, because if you have enough money (California’s median bail amount is $50,000.) you post your own bail and go about your business, with at most only travel restrictions, getting your money back when you show up for the trial, or sooner if charges are dropped.
Now suppose you are found guilty.

If you’re wealthy enough to have posted the full bail, you get your punishment but your bail money is returned. If you needed the bail bondsman, you get the punishment plus the equivalent of a fine—10 percent of your bail. Guilty or innocent, this hardly constitutes equal treatment before the law, and if it seems frighteningly un-American, that’s because it is.
We still have serious injustices that need rectifying, and our system of money bail is one of them.

The theory behind bail is that the court wants to guarantee that a defendant who doesn’t need to be detained as a public safety risk will show up for trial.

Yet despite its substantial bail requirements, California has the lowest court appearance rates in the country. Other states have passed reforms with great success.

For example, Kentucky releases about 70 percent of the people awaiting trial, and 89 percent of them make all their court appearances. What’s more, 92 percent of them are not re-arrested while they’re on pretrial release.

So if a practice is fundamentally unjust and also doesn’t accomplish what its supporters claim, isn’t it time to get rid of it? This is not a left versus right or a partisan issue, nor is it a soft- versus tough-on-crime issue. It’s the righting of a basic unfairness that has lingered far too long.

In the next month, our Legislature votes on a bail reform bill that addresses these injustices without compromising the ability to protect against flight risk and keeping our communities safe.

If bail reform sounds like a common-sense reform that is long overdue, let your Assembly Member know where you stand and that it’s time to act.

California has long been a leader on reforms that make our society more just and fair; let’s keep it that way by changing the way we approach money bail.

Paul Clermont is from the Bay Area chapter of Bend the Arc Jewish Action.

Oakland Post

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.