Rogers / 2 Senator Rasmussen

S.B._____

A BILL
To mandate that pretrial risk assessment services shall be provided for non-violent criminal offenders to ensure
informed bail decisions are made; States that comply shall receive appropriate federal funding in order to do so.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Pretrial Services Act of 2015.
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
Congress hereby finds and declares that,
1) Most of Americas jail inmates are classified as pretrial defendants, who account for about 61 percent of jail
populations in the entire nation, up from approximately 50 percent in 1996.
2) The national percentage of felony defendants detained for the entirety of their pretrial period is 37 percent. The
percentage of those defendants detained because of lack of money is about 90 percent of that number.
3) The Laura and John Arnold Foundation released a study of over 150,000 defendants finding that with all other
factors being equal, those defendants who were detained pretrial were over four times more likely to be sentenced to
jail with longer sentences and three times more likely to be sentenced to prison with longer sentences than defendants
who were not detained.
4) Kalief Browder spent three years on Rikers Island, a notoriously cruel jail, without ever being convicted of a
crime because he could not pay his bail, and the time he spent incarcerated led to several suicide attempts which
eventually culminated in him successfully taking his life.
5) The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution says that excessive bail shall not be required, nor
excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
6) In the United States vs. Salerno, the Supreme Court affirmed that it was constitutional to detain defendants if they
were proved to be a safety risk for the community.
7) The average amount of bail for detainees has increased from 39,800 dollars in 1992 to $89,900 in 2006.
8) Although the Bail Reform Act of 1984 mandates that people be released on the least restrictive conditions that
will assure that they appear at their court date as well as the safety of the community, many are not able to access
those least restrictive conditions because they are unable to pay bail.
9) At the end of 2013, the U.S. held approximately 2,220,300 persons in federal, state, and county prisons.
10) The Equal Protection Clause provides that laws are to be carried out in a way that does not differ between people
in similar situations, but the use of money bail with populations that do not have access to financial resources results
in very different treatment compared to those who can afford to post a bond.
11) Money bail is widely believed to incentivize a defendants return to court; however, despite the use of money
bail at increasingly higher amounts as time goes on, the failure to appear rates have not changed substantially: in the
1960s and 70s, the failure to appear rate in the most populous cities in the United States was 6-9 percent and the
failure to appear rate for felony cases was at 22 percent in 2006.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) The Pretrial Services Act of 2015 shall create programs and train officials in pretrial risk assessment for nonviolent crimes. The assessments must take into consideration criminal history, employment, pending charges,
residence, substance abuse, and the risk of failing to appear for the assigned court date. Judges shall be prohibited
from setting monetary bail for those defendants that are judged as a non-flight or safety risk.
B) The Department of Justice shall be responsible for ensuring these measures are carried out properly and fairly.
Funding shall be allocated out of the current budget for the Department of Justice and given to States that comply.
Any money saved through this program by each State shall be returned to their respective general funds. The use of
this money shall be voted on in the state legislatures.
C) The Pretrial Services Act of 2015 shall be enacted on January 1, 2016. It shall expire on December 31, 2026
unless renewed.