Schierholz responds to bond opinion

Dear Editor:

Wow! On Saturday, November 4, 2017, for the second time in a week a lengthy “opinion” was published in the Hamilton County Reporter. Once again this was an “opinion” that intentionally confused a bail bonds system with a pretrial release program.

This most recent article is in the News & Views section, on page 4, entitled “Opinion: Mark Zuckerberg and liberals seek to weaken the bail system that keeps us safe.”

The author of the article is David N. Bossie, the President of Citizens United, an organization made famous in a landmark Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. A decision that for-profit corporations (like the insurance companies that underwrite bail bonds in the $13.5 billion dollar commercial bail bonds industry) could advertise and broadcast messages of a political nature without limits on how much they can spend and with few limits on the timing and nature of the messages.

Apparently the bail bonds industry is now spending some of their money on a disinformation campaign directed at the citizens of Hamilton County. To convince you of the merits of the bail bonds system the article implies that anything that challenges the system (like a pretrial release program) is described as dangerous, elitist, liberal, unsafe, and endorsed by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

I don’t know how this plays in Peoria but, in Hamilton County (one of the safest counties in the country), I can assure you that there are no public officials who relate to or resemble any of the above descriptions.

Further, the pretrial release program in Hamilton County was developed by your local public officials (commissioners, council members, judges, prosecutor, sheriff, police chiefs, probation, and community corrections) with public safety as its top priority because they are committed to ensuring that Hamilton County remains one of the safest counties in America.

The article alleges that “[o]ur bail system is a place to keep law-abiding Americans safe and to ensure that a person accused of a crime actually appears in court so justice is served.” One has to wonder how allowing a violent felon out of jail on a bail bond keeps Americans safe.

It seems a no-brainer that keeping violent offenders in jail is safer. Likewise, it’s simply not true that the bail system “ensure[s] that a person accused of a crime actually appears in court.” Across the country individuals released on a bail bond routinely fail to appear in court and frequently “disappear” altogether. Without going into detail to refute all of the misinformation and misleading innuendo in the article, suffice to say that I don’t know what public officials are doing in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, or anywhere else in the United States.

I don’t know what risk assessment tools other states are using (we do not use the Arnold Foundations tool referred to in the article). I only know what we’re doing here in Hamilton County and in Indiana (Indiana has its own risk assessment tool) and I know that we’re doing it right and that it works. Perhaps that’s why the bail bonds industry is so concerned about us here in Hamilton County.

Again, if the Reporter would like to know about the success of the Hamilton County Pretrial Services Program, from someone who works for the citizens of Hamilton County and who’s not being paid by the bail bonds industry, this office is happy to oblige.

Orval P. Schierholz

Administrator of Courts

Hamilton County Circuit & Superior Courts