ELECTION PREVIEW: Proposition 102, Bail bonds
The number of people eligible to get out of jail without posting bail would nosedive under an initiative before voters this November.
Proposition 102 would allow only people arrested for their first offense and for non-violent misdemeanors to be eligible to be released from jail under a pretrial services program without posting bail.
Judges could still release people on unsecured bonds — defendants would only owe the court money if they miss their court date — but they would not be eligible for the pretrial services.
The initiative has received strong support from bail bondsmen, who have labeled the bill a savior for their industry.
“We banded together as fellow bail bond agents because we really know what does work and what has worked,” said Colorado Springs bail bondsman Bobby Brown, noting that bondsmen help ensure people out on bail show up for court.
But a slew of government agencies ranging from sheriff’s offices to county commissions and the American Civil Liberties Union have joined in opposition against the measure.
Proposition 102, opponents say, is nothing more than a money-making venture for the bail-bond industry.
“The bail bonds industry sees pretrial service programs … which have been very efficient at managing pretrial defendants, as a direct competition to their business,” said Stefanie Clarke, spokeswoman for the opposition group Citizens To Protect Colorado Communities. “Its not about public safety, it’s about profit.”
Ten Colorado counties, with 70 percent of the state’s population, have pretrial services programs, according to the non-partisan Legislative Council. El Paso County does not have a pretrial services program, which supervises people released from jail, offers judges detailed defendant information and monitors defendants with GPS devices. Drug and alcohol testing has also been offered by the programs.
The Legislative Council said the proposal would cost taxpayers $2.8 million a year in increased jail costs. About 30 percent of those required to post bail to get out of jail never do, the council said. If more defendants are required to post bail, the council said, jail populations would inevitably increase.
The council added, however, that a portion of the funding for increased jail beds could come from money currently being used to fund pretrial services programs.
Brown said the notion that the initiative was meant to drive profits for the bail bonds industry was “a total fallacy.”
“It’s not a situation that this initiative is something that was dreamed up in order to increase the monetary gain” of the industry, Brown said. “It’s just to keep bonding alive in the state of Colorado.”
Clarke, however, said the poor would be the ones who suffer because they wouldn’t be able to post bail.
“The diversity and the bipartisan opposition to this really shows that this is an abuse of the ballot process — that this is for the benefit of one industry,” Clarke said.
