If you have seen the Kalif Browder documentary, then you know why it was important to make changes to the bail system.
Across the country, thousands of people, like Browder, sit in jail because of cost. The price of bail makes it hard for many to ever get out of the system.
The city of Atlanta faces the same problems. In Black Hollywood, there are many who can’t afford even $100 bail.
A change has come. The Atlanta city council voted unanimously to put an end to the cash bail system.
Per AJC
Over the objections of the bail-bond industry, the Atlanta City Council unanimously adopted a proposal designed to ensure that impoverished suspects accused of mostly nuisance offenses such as urinating in public or trespassing are not left in jail while their cases are pending simply because they lack the means to pay bail.
The change, approved Monday, was Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ first initiative to ensure that low-level offenders would not sit in jail for days, weeks or months because they cannot afford bail amounts as low as $100.
The change, which will take effect 30 days after the mayor signs it, will give the Atlanta Detention Center the authority to release people on their own recognizance if they are charged with nonviolent misdemeanors or city ordinance violations while they wait for their case to be heard in court.
The change would require, however, that those accused of violent offenses continue to come before a judge for bail to be set and posted before they can be released from custody.
Late last year, the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Civil Rights Corps wrote then-Mayor Kasim Reed about the constitutional problem of poor people being jailed because they lacked money for bond. The civil rights groups said the city could be sued if the practice continued. The groups later sent a similar letter to Bottoms after she became mayor.
Mayor Bottoms’ plan, which she proposed during her first week in office, sailed through a City Council committee in late January, but bogged down for a while Monday afternoon when it came before the full council.
The council debate got testy right up to the 13-0 vote six hours into the meeting in favor of the changes.
“Some of the things you are saying are very naive,” Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd said to her colleague, Jennifer Ide, who proposed adding to the list of offenses that did not require a cash bond.
At times it became a debate over crime and what residents should endure.
“I think we need to be careful in our zeal for civil liberties,” said Councilman Michael Julian Bond. “This becomes more than just a romantic exercise in delivering personal freedoms to the community. … There are victims of these crimes, even if they (the offenses) aren’t violent.”
This is a national issue. Cities including Chicago; Nashville, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; and New Orleans have already abandoned pre-set cash bonds for crimes such as public drunkenness, panhandling and driving without a license. Yet federal lawsuits are pending against Harris County, Texas, and Calhoun, Ga., because of their cash bond systems.
“This was a win for fairness and equality in our legal system. Our City Council members saw through the bail industry propaganda and did the right thing,” said Sarah Geraghty, managing attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights.
The Municipal Court judges are working on a new bail schedule that they plan to adopt to complement the new ordinance.
Controversy in Atlanta arose last year, when 10 men were not allowed into the courtroom to ask for bail before a Municipal Court judge sent their cases to Fulton County State Court. The men — accused of crimes such as darting into traffic, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and failure to maintain auto insurance — spent two weeks in jail before they were released.