A change this year to the cash bail system may allow lower level offenders, or those without the ability to post bail, to be released depending on their circumstances.
“There has been a movement across the country to reform the bail system. Some of them have gone so far as to seek full abolishment of it,” said Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks.
While we still have the cash bail system here, a big change in Nevada a few years back was the abolishment of the "standard bail" system, which gave specific bail amounts for specific crimes.
“If you were arrested for a burglary, no matter who you were no matter what the burglary was, it was a $10,000 bail automatically,” said Hicks.
In addition, there is now a form the courts use for each defendant called the pretrial risk assessment. Instead of looking at the crime specifically, when determining bail it is more on an individual basis.
"Safety of the community, likelihood someone is going to reappear for all of their numerous hearings, and likelihood of whether or not they are going to re-offend," said Hicks.
The form also asks things like if the defendant has a cell phone, is employed, or any prior arrests, all of which can add to a total, which asses the defendants risk level.
“That's why you get those different bails, maybe one individual is homeless and doesn’t have a job, and therefore pursuant to that opinion the court should be setting a lower bail that they could potentially make, and maybe someone has a well-paying job and therefore it might be a little higher," Hicks said. “That's a benefit to society oftentimes at large, you don't want people losing their jobs, you don’t want some of the negative impacts that come from that which actually could cause their lives to spiral further out of control."
This method has put a strain on the DA’s office, which sometimes have to investigate and present to a judge within hours of the arrest.
“We have had to take upon bring in investigators very early in the morning to start doing further investigations into cases, we have prosecutors coming in sometimes 6 in the morning or even earlier to start to prepare for the hearings."
Unfortunately, there are some downsides to this system, that see's many defendants released without bail on their own recognizance.
“Since the commission did that pretrial risk assessment tool and began to implement that in pilot programs, we did see an increase in failure to appear and re-offend,” said Hicks. “I will continue to rigorously defend the bail system because I think it's important for public safety, I think it's import for the system for people to reappear, and I think it's important to protect victims."
The ACLU tells us this change is a step in the right direction, but still has the ability to discriminate against lower income or minority communities.
Below is the Pretrial Risk Assessment form.
