Montgomery County Takes Step To Institute Bail Reform

NORRISTOWN, PA — Montgomery County has taken a step towards instituting bail reform, long a controversial issue in the local area and around the nation.

The county announced recently the creation of a new Pretrial Services Unit, which aims to determine the release and incarceration status of victims based on a more holistic set of standards, including risk factors. The current system, based on financial conditions, disproportionately punishes the poor, officials say.

“The reality is that too often if you can make bail, you are set free, and if you are too poor to make bail, you are punished prematurely,” Montgomery County Commissioner Ken Lawrence said in a statement. "No one should be held in custody awaiting trial solely because of their inability to pay bail."

The news comes following the February firing of the county's top two chief public defenders, who were vocal advocates of bail form. The move came shortly after the office filed an amicus brief arguing against the county's practice of holding bail hearings without lawyers of the accused present, and citing "systemic failures" in the existing system.

Elected officials, national nonprofits, and others condemned the firings as a punitive measure.

"Their work has made them leaders in the effort to ensure that equal justice is a reality in this country," Jonathan Rapping, the founder of Gideon's Promise, a non-profit which supports public defenders around the nation, said at the time. "Any effort to chill a public defender's zeal to correct unconstitutional practices cannot be tolerated."

The county did not give a reason for the firings.

In their recent statement, county officials said that creating the new Pretrial Services Unit has been in the planning phase for more than a year.

The Unit will be charged with gathering and reporting information on individual cases so that judges are more fully informed in the early stages of a criminal case process. The hope is to eliminate "unnecessary detention" before trial. The Unit will interview defendants, perform drug and alcohol testing and treatment, and will have further options including electronic monitoring at their disposal.

The county has also developed several metrics to monitor the performance of the new Unit, such as the rate at which defendants released before trial return for their court date, and the percentage of these individuals who do not commit another crime in the interim.

The county is also monitoring the average length of stay in jail for those who are detained before their trial.