Dear Editor:
In the Sunday, Oct. 29, 2017, edition of the Hamilton County Reporter there appeared in the Views section, on page 5, a purported “op-ed” entitled “Judicial Officer issues recommendations on bail reform.” While this article has a “The REPORTER” byline, it indicates at the end of the article that it was provided by Media Vista Public Relations. In this instance, Media Vista’s client is the American Bail Coalition which is a trade association for insurance companies that underwrite bail bonds in the $13.5 billion dollar commercial bail bonds industry. Clearly the intent of this purported “op-ed” article is to promote the interests of the bail bonds industry and not the interests of the citizens of Hamilton County. In fact, the article does a disservice to our residents by misrepresenting the basic tenets of a pretrial release program as “an either/or system with no human judgement involved.” Nothing could be further from the truth as the risk assessment process involves multiple trained individuals looking at a person’s likelihood of returning to court, committing a new offense, and risk of harm to themselves or the community. Criminal and driving records are checked and a judicial officer remains the final authority in making release or detention decisions taking into account recommendations based on risk-assessment information. The article cites the New Mexico case of Michelle Martens as someone who would have been released based upon a risk assessment and implies that she was a violent felon. However, the facts are that before the murder of her daughter she had no prior criminal record and, had she been arrested for some lesser offense, she could have just as easily gotten out of jail on a bail bond. Public safety is another issue misrepresented by the article’s alluding to “evidence of an increase in violent crime” and citing as proof of this allegation an incident in New Jersey where someone was shot by a “career criminal” who had been released just three days after being arrested on a weapons charge. The questions left unanswered by this example are would this result have been any different if the “career criminal” had completed a bail bond to get out of jail within three days or less of his arrest? And, how would a bail bond have made the public any more safe? Lastly, the article implies that the bail bond system provides some sort of unexplained cost benefit to taxpayers by eliminating the need for a “free government-operated bail system.” However, the simple fact is that pretrial release is not a bail system and it does not replace the existing bail bonds system. What pretrial release does is to maximize public safety by releasing and monitoring low risk individuals and ensuring that high risk individuals are supervised or in jail. Judicial officers retain their full discretion to set an appropriate bail bond under a pretrial release program. If “The REPORTER” would like to know about the Hamilton County Pretrial Services Program, from someone in Hamilton County, this office would be more than happy to oblige.
Orval P. Schierholz
Administrator of Courts
Hamilton County Circuit & Superior Courts
I honestly cannot tell you why the Hamilton County Reporter ran the OpEd to which you refer. It may be they felt their readers might be interested to know Hamilton County has elected to go to great expense to hire “multiple trained individuals” to determine if someone arrested on probable cause of committing a criminal offense can be released from jail pending trial, at no expense to themselves and supervised by county employees paid for by the very taxpaying citizenry of which the offender is accused of victimizing. Perhaps when the editorial refers to “free government-operated bail system” they mean, when counties like Hamilton release an individual without requiring bail, it is “free” to the defendant though not free to the taxpayers of that county.
The purpose of bail is ensure a defendant appears for court, not to create a jobs program for county employees whose sole purpose is to release criminal offenders on free bail. It would not surprise me if you’ve already prepared a request to add to your staff of “multiple trained individuals”.