Cameron Redfern, Law & Public Policy Scholar, JD Anticipated May 2019
There are currently 6,700 people in Philadelphia’s jails. Of those individuals, 30% are being held pre-trial – one in four are being held on a cash bail amount that they are unable to pay. 8.1% of Philadelphia’s jail population is being detained because they cannot afford to pay $5,000 or less. The cash bail system is purported to serve the purpose of ensuring the reappearance of defendants and keeping dangerous offenders off the street until they can be permanently detained after trial. Instead, Philadelphia’s cash bail system is a systematic attempt to place the city’s defendants in a financial trap that they cannot escape from.
According to Philadelphia City Council at a November 3, 2017 Bail Fund Hearing, the city collected $2.95 million in 
fees assigned to individuals who posted bail in the past year alone. Many of these individuals were required to pay a fee of 30 % of their posted bail, even after their case was dropped or they were acquitted. The foundation for this fee lies in a combination of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia laws. Section 234 of the Pennsylvania Code, Rule 528(c) provides that a 10% deposit of one’s full bail requirement can be paid by a criminal defendant if that amount is “sufficient to ensure the defendant’s appearance and compliance.” This 10% rule is fairly standard throughout the country. If a criminal defendant fails to appear after posting their required 10%, the entire amount may be forfeited even if charges are eventually withdrawn. If a defendant uses a bail agency to post their 10%, as many do, they will automatically lose 10% of the amount posted, regardless of the outcome of their trial, as the “cost” of the agency putting up the remainder of the fee.
This 10% statewide rule, is compounded by Philadelphia’s additional 30% fee. Following state procedures, when a person is accused of a crime in Philadelphia they must pay the Court Clerk 10% of their overall bail assessment. Under Philadelphia’s Rules of Criminal Procedure 528(A), the defendant will th
en be accessed a “fee” that is at a minimum 30% of their deposit paid for release. This accessed fee is between $10 and a maximum amount of $1,500. The remaining 70% of the defendant’s deposit will be returned to them if they appear, however, the 30% fee they paid for their freedom will be kept regardless of the outcome of their trial. Philadelphia’s 30% fee allows a person to be found innocent of a crime but spend months in jail and, forced to pay for the privilege of being wrongly accused.
There are currently no clear guidelines outlining where the money taken from these individuals is funneled. It is speculated, based on conversations with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, that the $2.95 million in fees collected in Philadelphia may be going to the general fund.
According to the open budget of the city of Philadelphia, the fourth largest portion of the city’s general fund goes towards the city’s prisons. The proposed budget for the prison system in the Fiscal Year 2017 is $258,831,670. This means that at least a portion of money being collected from individuals who have been acquitted or whose case has been dropped is going directly back into the system that wrongfully detained them.
The current cost of maintaining 6,700 people in Philadelphia’s jails has taken its toll. Due to the broken cash bail system, the city pays roughly $40,000 a year per inmate, including those who are simply being detained due to their inability to pay. The Philadelphia City Controller estimates that the city would save $75 million annually if the cash bail system was ended.
If the City of Philadelphia passes Bill 160868, a ballot measure will be provided to amend the City’s Charter in order to create a Criminal Justice Reinvestment Fund. This would allow the savings from a reduced prison population to go towards criminal justice reform programs. Reform measures could include the creation of day reporting community service centers. Having day reporting centers would allow the city to increase the number of people it releases with no cash bail posting while still ensuring that they are being monitored for reappearance.
In the interim before this change can be made, the new District Attorney, Larry Krasner, should set an office-wide policy that the use of cash bail should be limited to the most extreme of cases based, on the accused’s criminal history or the nature of the offense for which the defendant is charged. According to District Attorney Krasner’s campaign platform, it will be a goal of his office to implement alternatives to cash bail for those charged with nonviolent offenses. D.A. Krasner has also commented that the success of ending cash bail in Washington D.C. will be the touchstone for Philadelphia’s changes.
America’s system of bail is designed to ensure that defendants reappear and that the most dangerous of defendants cannot be released to commit further crimes before their current trial. The imposition of a 30% fee that does nothing more than take money from citizens with no substantiation of where the money goes is unjustified. The use of cash bail and the application of a 30% fee must be ended in Philadelphia.
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