Earlier this year the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on bail reform consistent with the progressive drive to reduce or eliminate bail. I abstained and wrote a statement disagreeing with most of the report.
Much of the progressive rationale for eliminating or reducing bail is based on alleged racial disparities in pretrial detention. These disparities are utterly predictable and have little or nothing to do with invidious racial discrimination (if only progressives were equally concerned about racial disparities related to the victims of individuals out on bail or pretrial intimidation of witnesses by individuals out on bail).
Blacks commit crimes at dramatically higher rates than their percentage of the population and at higher rates than other ethnic groups. Blacks, therefore, will be more likely to be arrested and detained pretrial. It’s not because a racist system keeps them in jail.
The disparities are not small. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2019 ( the most recent report available at the time of the commission’s hearing on the matter), law-enforcement agencies that contribute to the UCR made 6,816,975 total arrests for the covered crimes. Approximately 69.4 percent of arrests were of non-Hispanic whites and Hispanic individuals and 26.6 percent of arrests were of black individuals.
The racial difference is even more stark when one examines arrest statistics for individuals under 18. In 2019 the contributing jurisdictions made 475,371 arrests of individuals under 18 for the covered crimes. Of those, 296,881 were white (again, including most Hispanics) and 161,149 were black–i.e., 62.5 percent were white/Hispanic and 33.9 percent were black. This suggests black offenders begin their criminal involvement at a younger age than whites. Therefore, at any given time when blacks are arrested they’re likely to have a lengthier criminal background than whites of the same age and be considered (by algorithms, judges, and the average citizen) at greater risk of failing to appear and recidivate if released.
Nor are black arrests concentrated among less serious offenses, which might lead to greater similarities in rates of pretrial detention. Blacks are overrepresented in every crime category except for “drunkenness” and “driving under the influence.” (Interestingly, whites constitute a huge majority of those arrested on “suspicion,” which likely would be an easy catch-all charge if police were truly intent on invidious racial discrimination.)
Here’s a sample of black percentages of other crimes (blacks constitute approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population):
Murder: 26.7 percent
Robbery: 52.7 percent
Aggravated assault: 33.2 percent
Burglary: 28.8 percent
Larceny-theft: 30.2 percent
Motor vehicle theft: 28.6 percent
Fraud: 30.5 percent
Embezzlement: 36.5 percent
Weapons; carrying, possessing, etc.: 41.8 percent
Prostitution: 42.2 percent
Drug-abuse violations: 26.1 percent
Offenses against family and children: 28.3 percent
Speaking of disparities, blacks are disproportionately victims of crime. And most of those crimes are committed by other blacks. At the commission’s bail-reform hearing, witness Rafael Mangual noted that Chicago’s bail reform led to — you guessed it — more crime. Researchers at the University of Utah found that Chicago’s more generous release procedures led to a 45 percent increase in the number of pretrial defendants being charged with new crimes, including a 33 percent increase in violent-crime charges.
So, progressive “bail reform” produces more overall crime, more violent crime, more black victims of crime, and does nothing to address alleged racial disparities. What a great deal.