PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — President Donald Trump is not a fan of cashless bail. Earlier this week, he signed an executive order threatening to withhold or revoke federal funding to local and state governments that offer it.
Cashless bail allows people to be released from pretrial detention without paying any money. Trump wants to do away with this system, saying it allows dangerous individuals to be released, threatens public safety, and allows defendants to flee before trial.
But according to Sarah Rose, deputy legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, that isn’t necessarily the case.
“The executive order makes it seem like cash bail is how we protect people from people who have been charged with crimes, but that’s not actually true. The way we protect people from people who have been charged with crimes is by denying bail,” she said.
Pennsylvania law already limits bail for dangerous individuals.
Although the purpose of cash bail is to ensure that somebody shows up for a future court proceeding, Rose said it is ineffective in ensuring court attendance, often leading to unnecessary incarceration. And oftentimes, public defenders aren’t assigned until people are far down the process at their preliminary hearing, which can be continued for many months.
“What we see in our state is that people are assigned unaffordable cash bail, and they don’t have a lawyer, so they have no way of challenging the bail that’s been assigned,” she explained. “People end up being incarcerated for weeks, months. They lose their jobs; they might lose their housing.”
According to the ACLU, Trump’s executive order does not override constitutional protections against imprisonment for inability to pay fines or bail.
The ACLU plans to monitor the executive order’s impact before considering legal action.