09x27 - Bail reform

[bunniefuu]

LAST WEEK TONIGHT
WITH JOHN OLIVER

Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!

I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us.

It has been a busy week, from massive
protests still ongoing in Iran,

to the fact that Tom Brady
suddenly has one less ring.

But we are going
to start tonight in the U.K.,

where there has been
a major change in leadership.

After just 45 days on the job,
Liz Truss is out.

Her very brief stint at Downing Street,
chaotic from the start.

This meme taking over the internet,
the challenge from a tabloid here,

which will last longer, this head
of iceberg lettuce or Liz Truss?

There was even a lettuce live stream,
and last night it was projected

on the walls of Parliament,
the victorious head of lettuce.

Pretty good, right?

From the challenge itself, to the
phrase "victorious head of lettuce",

to the googly eyes
and the adorable blonde bob,

every step was well thought
out and beautifully ex*cuted.

From one leaf vegetable lover
to another, you have my respect.

And incredibly, the run-up to all that
was even more chaotic.

Very basically,
Liz Truss' chancellor was fired,

becoming the second-shortest-serving
chancellor in British history,

right after this guy, although at least
he had the good excuse of, he d*ed.

Then her home secretary,
Suella Braverman,

was forced to resign
after "breaching security procedures"

by using her personal email
to send a government document.

Then, her own party tore itself apart
in a chaotic vote over fracking,

prompting one party leader
to give an incredible quote,

perhaps best delivered
by this German news outlet.

And if you don't speak German,
don't worry,

they switch to English
for the important part.

I'm f*cking furious
and I don't f*cking care anymore.

Perfect. And so much better
with a German accent, right?

It makes everything sound


If someone said to you, "Nice outfit",
you'd be delighted.

But if they said, "Nice outfit",
you would k*ll yourself.

At that point,
all decorum was basically gone.

But perhaps the nadir of all of this
was after this contentious interview

between a reporter at Downing
Street and MP Steve Baker,

one of the last Truss supporters.

The reporter's mic was left on
after the interview had ended,

and you could hear him
respond to Baker

claiming that he'd asked him
a stupid question.

Thanks a lot, Steve.

It wasn't a stupid question, Steve,
you know it.

I'm very happy to go up against you
on Truss any day.

What a c**t!

I know that sounds bad
to American ears.

But you need to understand, there is
nothing more quintessentially British

than politely thanking someone
for a disagreement,

then cheerily calling them a c**t.

It wasn't in the U.S. version,
but it is how "Paddington 2" ends.

So, long story short, Truss is out,
and this man, Rishi Sunak, is in.

And he inherits an even bigger mess
than the one that Truss did.

Because he's about to make
severe cuts to public spending,

which will be especially difficult
to take coming from him,

because he is incredibly wealthy.

Sunak ranks
among the U.K.'s richest,

and has been labeled out of touch
with ordinary voters.

This 2001 BBC documentary clip
when he was still at university

later went viral,
and it didn't help.

I have friends who are working class,
but… well, not working class,

but I mix and match and I go to see
kids from an inner city state school

and tell them to apply to Oxford.

Great strategy there, Rishi.

"My elite education has taught me
that you're mere victims

of a complex web
of systemic inequity,

but also,
what if you just weren't?"

It is not
like Sunak's gotten much better

at displaying
a common touch since then,

he once tried to promote
a cut in fuel prices

by being photographed filling up
a car that it turned out, was not his.

Which, to be fair,
I could've told you straight away.

That car is a burgundy Kia Rio.

The closest Rishi
would get to a car like that

is to tell it to consider
becoming a Rolls Royce.

And his tenure as prime minister
is already off to a questionable start,

given that one of his
very first moves

was to re-appoint Suella Braverman
as home secretary,

despite the fact that she'd been
forced out of that job in disgrace

just six days previously.

She is a hard-liner, known
for both her anti-immigration stances,

and statements like this
on U.K. welfare recipients.

There is still a stubborn core
of our population

that sees welfare as the go-to option
and is not motivated

for financial or other reasons
to get out there and work.

And I think the stick,
we've got lots of carrots,

we've got lots of carrots
to get people into work,

but we've got to actually
add more conditionality

to the way we administer welfare

a bit more stick to ensure that it pays
for people to get off welfare.

There is so much wrong with that,
but Suella, if you want

a portion of the population
to believe that you respect them,

maybe don't refer to them
as horses.

And that is coming from me,
someone who, arguably,

respects horses a little too much.

I just want to make you feel good.

But ultimately, Sunak's incredibly
lucky that he's following Liz Truss.

Because the bar
is so low right now.

All he has to do is not personally
throw the economy into a tailspin,

and deliver a speech without
leaving a weird pause for clapter

after saying "pork markets".

But he's not even off
to a good start there,

because this was how
he ended his first public address.

I will work day-in, day-out,
to deliver for the British people.

What are you doing?

He looks like he was reading
a teleprompter

that malfunctioned
by replacing his speech

with the command,
"Have a panic att*ck. Now".

Despite Sunak's many shortcomings,

he'll probably
last longer than Liz Truss.

But maybe not much longer. Because
the British people are justifiably,

to quote
my new favorite broadcaster,

"f*cking furious
and they don't f*cking care anymore".

And now, this!

And Now:
Unnecessary Full Disclosure.

Full disclosure,
I'm not a finance guy.

Haven't studied it,
don't much understand it.

In full disclosure, I was a very
amateur national anthem singer.

Full disclosure, I used to be a waiter
at the Olive Garden back in the day.

Full disclosure,
I have never been to a drive-in.

I always wanted
a Boston Whaler.

I had a Q-Tip in my ear
last night.

I have had enough shrimp and grits
to last me for the next four years.

Full disclosure, the oysters we ate
were not from the East River.

Full disclosure, I crushed a Kind bar
about 10 minutes ago.

- I'm a cookie guy.
- Go Gators!

Full disclosure, it's not the best
corn-related job I've ever had.

There's an action figure of me
in my office made out of fondant.

Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns crime.

Batman's adversary,
and also, his kink.

Come on, you think
someone dresses in a rubber suit

just to avenge their parents?

He's a furry with a gadget belt.
Grow up.

With the midterm elections
fast approaching,

tough on crime rhetoric has been
a key feature of Republican att*ck ads,

often highlighting one policy
in particular: bail reform.

Do you feel safe?

Mandela Barnes
would eliminate cash bail,

setting accused criminals free
into the community before trial.

Landsman wants to end
cash bail,

putting dangerous criminals
back on the street.

Beasley supports ending cash bail,
letting criminals out of jail.

Using cashless bail
and his own lawless policies,

Bragg has put violent criminals
back on our streets

and has turned neighborhoods
into danger zones.

Of course everything seems scarier if
you end it with a sh*t of a body bag.

For instance, Doc McStuffins?
Not a scary show.

But if they did an episode set
in the McStuffins morgue,

your kid's going to have
nightmares for a while.

Now, these att*ck ads
come at a critical juncture

for the movement
to reduce the use of cash bail.

Because since 2011,
at least 19 states

and dozens of local jurisdictions
have adopted bail reform policies.

But many places have recently
begun rolling back those reforms,

because amid the recent spike
in certain categories of crime,

critics are pointing at bail reform
as the major cause of it.

Liberal lawmakers ended
the bail for most offenses.

They created
a revolving door of criminality.

It's almost impossible to get arrested
and then put in jail

unless you k*ll somebody.

It is baffling to me
that we have politicians

that aren't supporting policies
that are gonna make things better.

They're doing the opposite…

And still supporting bail reform
and defunding the police.

There's a correlation
between the bail reform

and what's happening
in our city.

It seems so clear that it is,
and to destroy

the country's finest police department
is a crime, I think, on its own.

I'm surprised anything seems clear
to a man with resting concussion face.

He honestly looks like he's studying
a full-body mirror,

desperately trying
to find his penis.

And it's now to the point where
any crime mentioned on Fox News

gets linked to bail reform,
whether it is relevant or not.

Even after Nancy Pelosi's husband
was att*cked with a hammer

on Friday morning
by someone who was not out on bail,

they had a Republican congressman
on to say this.

When you let dangerous criminals
out on the streets,

you know, with bail
and not put them in prison,

you're just asking
for this sort of incident to happen.

He's wrong about a few things.
The suspect was not out on bail.

Also, no one gets bailed out of prison,
that is where convicted people go.

Finally, choosing a narrow tie knot
when your head is that big

makes it look like a birthday balloon
sailing over the Capitol dome.

That is three big mistakes
from that very grumpy balloon.

But given that you're hearing
the misleading att*cks like that

absolutely everywhere right now,
there's a real chance

of all the progress
we've made being undone.

So, tonight,
let's look at bail reform.

This is our second story on bail,
we first covered it back in 2015.

But maybe you didn't see
that particular episode

because you were too busy watching
the 69th Annual Tony Awards,

where Kristin Chenoweth
and Alan Cumming

opened the show by highlighting one
particular celebrity in the audience.

And the producer of "Finding
Neverland", Harvey Weinstein.

Here!

Smile though your heart is aching,

smile even though it's breaking,

you'll find that life
is still worthwhile

if you just count

your over a million dollar a week
box office receipts

for the last three months.

Smile!

Yeah. My point is,
it's been a minute since then.

So, if you missed our first story,
here's a brief recap:

if you are arrested,
in order to be released awaiting trial,

you're often required to leave
a certain amount of money,

or bail, with the court,
as collateral,

with the idea that it'll help
ensure that you return.

And there are plenty of issues
with this system

starting with the fact that bail
hearings can be arbitrary, at best.

'Cause while you might assume
a judge would carefully weigh

someone's charges
and circumstances

to decide whether there is any reason
that they should not be released,

the reality can look very different.

Take this hearing in Dallas.

We're going to bleep
the person's last name here,

but I'm going to show
you her hearing in its entirety.

Penny…

you're here on state jail felony,
theft, with previous convictions.

Bond is $5 000.

That's it.
That was the whole thing.

And I don't know
exactly how long it should take

to put a price
on someone's freedom,

but it probably shouldn't fit neatly
into an Instagram story.

And the thing is,
that is not an outlier.

Overall, it is common for bail hearings
to last only a few minutes,

with no defense counsel present.

And they can be conducted
with incredible pettiness.

Just watch this hearing from 2016,
in Harris County, Texas,

where a woman had been charged
with a misdemeanor

of possessing
less than two ounces of marijuana.

There's probable cause.
Bond is $1,000.

Are you requesting
a court-appointed lawyer?

I guess, sure.

- Give me a yes or no.
- Yeah.

- Give me a yes or no.
- Yeah.

I asked a question
that calls for a yes or a no,

I don't expect anything
but a yes or a no.

Not a mm-hm, maybe so,
or a yeah, or anything else.

- I said yeah.
- I heard what you said.

Your bond just went up
to $2,000.

Okay, first, f*ck all the way off.

Second, "yeah" means yes.

It's not like she gave you
a thumbs up and winked.

You knew what she meant,
you just wanted to be a d*ck.

If you cannot afford a bail that
a judge felt like dishing out to you,

you might be forced
to turn to a bail bondsman.

The way their business model works is
that they will post your bail for you,

in exchange for a fee that's
normally around 10% of it,

money you don't get back, no matter
what the outcome of your case.

It is a lucrative business, which
rakes in about $2 billion per year,

almost none of which goes into
their spending on ads like these.

They say I broke the law,
police are on my tail.

Looks like I'm going
to the county jail.

Gotta go, gotta go,
call Gotta Go Bail Bonds.

Boys Bail Bonds is who I called,

and their courtesy
and services topped them all.

They worked it all out
with a call on the phone,

and before I even knew it,
I was free to roam.

Lipstick Bail Bonds!
Kiss jail goodbye!

It's not the direction that I would've
taken for the Barbie movie,

but I trust Greta Gerwig's vision
on this.

Although, credit to all three
songwriters there…

You can find those tracks on
"Now That's What I Call Songs Written

by the Nephew of a Guy Who Owns
a Bail Bond Agency: Volume 25".

But if you can't afford to pay a bail
bondsman to get you out, you are stuck.

And many, many people
are in that situation,

which has led
to a truly staggering statistic.

This graph shows local jail inmates
in the United States.

In the past 20 years,
that population has sh*t way up,

and there's something surprising
about that rise.

You can see it only if you look
at inmates with convictions.

Around 1999,
that population leveled off,

meaning most of the rise came from
this group: non-convicted prisoners.

Every day in the U.S.,
nearly half a million people

sitting in local jails
haven't been convicted of anything.

It's true. In fact, right now, roughly
two-thirds of our jail population

on any given day are people
who haven't been convicted of a crime.

And most of them are there
because they simply couldn't afford

to bail themselves out.
Which is terrible.

We shouldn't hold people
c*ptive in shitty conditions

simply because they can't buy
their way out.

That is what Spirit Airlines is for.

What all this means
is that a simple arrest…

even for a crime
that you did not commit…

can destroy your life.

Because even
a short amount of time in jail

can completely turn it
upside down.

And it's often not a short
amount of time.

Take Marvin Mayfield.

He was arrested for a burglary
that he insists he didn't commit,

and he got stuck in Rikers
for nearly a year.

Before you went in,
you had started a job.

You had secured in a place,
you had a car.

What happened to all of it?

All of those things, my job,
my car, and my place,

were all gone after 11 months.
I couldn't hold on to it.

It's true.
He was in there for 11 months.

And obviously,
no job is cool with you

just not showing up for 11 months,
unless you're this lazy bitch.

And all of this is before you get to
the fact that holding someone pretrial

can give a prosecutor a huge amount
of leverage in obtaining a guilty plea.

Again, Marvin Mayfield
maintains he was innocent,

but he pled guilty anyway,

and when you hear him explain why,
it makes sense.

After 11 months, they said
that if you plead guilty today,

you go home.

So, your option was to stay in
and fight this case.

- Or you can go home today.
- Yes.

But another guilty plea,
to a felony on my record.

The worst and hardest blow
of everything

was to plead guilty to something
I didn't do to stop that suffering.

And I get that. If I'd been
held in Rikers for 11 months

with no trial
and no end in sight,

I'd confess to anything
if it meant going home.

Lindbergh baby? Snatched it.
JFK? Capped him.

Zodiac k*ller? It me.
Just please let me go home.

And yes, I can see it, too.
There is a resemblance.

Except I'm kidding,
I look nothing like the Zodiac k*ller.

And you will agree with that
if you know what's good for you.

So, cash bail is arbitrary, destructive,
and basically criminalizes poverty.

That is without getting into the
massive racial disparities involved.

And when you take
all of this together,

you can understand
why so many jurisdictions

passed some form of bail reform
over the last few years.

And notably, in some places,
it was done with bipartisan support.

In 2014, New Jersey passed a bill

that has since cut the number of people
in its jails by half,

and it was championed
by a surprising figure.

No longer must you stay in jail
for minor offenses,

longer than you would have if you'd
actually be convicted of the crime

which you're accused of committing,

just because your family
doesn't have $500 to post bail.

Yeah. To his real credit,
Chris Christie supported bail reform.

And remember,
this is the same Chris Christie

who thought it was a good idea
to be pro-traffic jam,

got photographed enjoying a beach
that had been closed to the public,

and was the first major
Republican candidate

to endorse
this historic whoopsie.

The right side of history

has to be pretty obvious
if even Chris Christie can find it.

In many places, the backlash to these
reforms has been swift and ugly.

And it always takes
the same form you saw earlier,

fear mongering
about how reforming cash bail

means that violent criminals
are going to be

wantonly set loose
on the streets to reoffend.

But every part of that is much
more complicated than it sounds.

For starters, a huge amount of people
in jail are stuck there

on simple misdemeanors
or non-violent charges.

And even when it comes
to violent felony charges,

those happen
on a very broad spectrum,

from m*rder to simply
being involved in a fight.

And importantly,
being charged with something

does not necessarily mean
that you are guilty of it,

that is for a trial to decide.

Yet too many people
are only too happy

to blur the line
between charge and conviction.

Earlier this year,
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

did that when criticizing pretrial
release programs in Cook County,

which implemented
its bail reforms back in 2017.

Mayor saying judges should not allow
people charged with violent crimes

to walk free on bail
or electronic monitoring,

because if they're charged,
they're guilty.

When those charges are brought,
these people are guilty.

And of course, they're entitled
to a presumption of innocence,

of course, they're entitled
to their day in court,

but residents in our community
are also entitled to safety.

Wait, hold on!
You can't say someone's guilty

and then say they're entitled
to a presumption of innocence.

Those two ideas
just cannot coexist.

You can't be guilty and innocent
at the same time,

like you can't be hungry and full
or tall and short or British and happy.

It's one or it's the other!
Believe me.

And Illinois' bail conversation
has only gotten more heated,

now that a statewide law
eliminating the use of cash bail

is set to take effect in January.

Republicans have called it
the "Purge" law,

and have att*cked it
in some pretty gross ways,

including these unusual
mailers to voters.

The papers, they've been delivered
under different names,

this one,
The Chicago City Wire.

They all claim to have real data
and real news,

but it's also a campaign message,
not a real newspaper.

There are two pages of photos of men,
mostly Black and Latino,

who, according to the paper, will be
released on bond in DuPage County.

The controversial
newspaper-like mailings

are from Republican
strategist Dan Proft,

who runs the People
Who Play By the Rules PAC.

First, that is strikingly r*cist.

And second,
those mailers were complete horseshit.

They stated the new law
"mandates" m*rder suspects

awaiting trial be released from jail,
which it does not.

They featured a list of charges that
they claimed were "non-detainable".

But the truth is that in Illinois,

as in most places
that have passed bail reform,

for serious and violent crimes,
"suspects can still be jailed pretrial

if they're considered a public
safety risk, or likely to flee".

So, those claims were basically
the most misleading thing

to appear in newsprint since the idea
that Dagwood could pull Blondie.

Come on!
Look at him, and then look at her.

There's just no way.
She's a stone-cold 10

and Dagwood's not even a catch
by funny pages standards.

She married down.
A long way down!

To see how successfully bail reform
opponents can demagogue this issue,

just look here in New York.

The big koo-koo city
that go honk-honk.

This state's bail reform law took
effect on New Year's Day of 2020,

and just eight days later, long before
there was any data on its impacts,

state legislators were out there
trying to get it repealed.

I think people are getting scared,

I think people are feeling unsafe,
and more unsafe as each day goes by.

We're going to hammer this!

I want to be clear, we're going
to hammer this every single day.

We're going to make the point that
this is what the public cares about.

That was just eight days in.

So, unless a ton of people

chose the New Year's resolution
"be scared of bail reform",

and stuck with it past January 3rd,
two equally unrealistic scenarios,

I'm pretty sure that Suffolk County
Kyle MacLachlan here

is hammering away at thin air.

And the thing is, violent crime
did rise in New York in 2020,

just like it did everywhere else
in America,

both in places that passed bail reform,
and in places that didn't.

And yet, the NYPD relentlessly
labeled bail reform the cause.

Its then-commissioner, Dermot Shea,
repeatedly took to the press

to label it a major reason for
increases in crime and g*n v*olence.

When the New York Post checked those
claims using the NYPD's own data,

they found that
in the first six months of 2020,

out of "528 sh**ting incidents",

exactly one had been committed by
someone released under bail reform.

And that wasn't the only time
that Shea was misleading.

He also went on a local morning show
here to suggest

that the suspect in a purse
snatching was out on bail.

He has 11 open court cases
right now. Think about that.

How is this allowed
to continue to foster like this?

One side will say as long
as he shows up at court

then everything is working well,

and I would say
that everything is not working well.


that you don't want to deal with,

someone you wouldn't want
to encounter on the streets.

That may sound scary to you.

But I've got some good news:
they found that guy with 11 open cases.

It was actually pretty easy to do,
because it turns out,

he was already locked up in Rikers
at the time the crime took place.

Shea accused the wrong guy entirely.

But I'm sure New York slept
much safer knowing that that guy

was safely behind the same bars
he was already behind before.

Just two days
after that interview,

Shea had to appear
before the state legislature.

And interestingly,
all the fear mongering and bluster

that he'd spread
on newspapers and TV

completely collapsed in a forum

where he was actually expected
to answer honestly.

- Were there people out…
- Yeah.

Who, you know,
with no bail, for example,

or bail being set and they made bail,
I don't know,

and then committed
another sh**ting

and were arrested again
for basically the same crime?

When you look at who we arrest for
crimes, it's going to be small numbers.

When you look at the entirety
of how many sh**ting arrests we make

and the percentage,
it's not dramatic.

I'm sorry,
"the percentage is not dramatic?"

You were constantly claiming bail
reform was driving up sh**t.

There are hermits on mountaintops
who know exactly two things:

all of reality is but the brief dance
of light across the water's surface,

and Dermot Shea says bail reform

is responsible
for the rise in crime in New York.

And you would think he'd be
embarrassed by being forced to admit

that "the percentage
is not dramatic".

But just two months later,
he was back on TV, saying this.

Is bail reform
what is leading to more sh**t…

And more g*n possessions
happening on the streets?



Which is it, Dermot?
Are the numbers "not dramatic?"

Or is bail reform "100%"
leading to more sh**t?

Because those things
are mutually exclusive.

The only place where "not dramatic"
and "100%" can exist

at the same time is in
Kristen Stewart's whole general vibe.

She's giving it her all, but she's
also giving us absolutely nothing.

It's totally amazing.

And the problem is, all of this,
the exaggerated claims

and the sensational headlines,
have made a real impression on people.

Public approval of bail reform
in this state has plummeted,

and the state legislature has now
rolled back portions of the law, twice.

And that is the thing. It's hard
to overcome the emotional impact

of the claim that bail reform
harms public safety.

And I'm not saying
that you can't find isolated instances

of individuals who've been rearrested
for new crimes

while out awaiting trial.

You can do that.

At any time someone is a victim
of a crime, that is terrible.

But if public safety
is genuinely your priority,

cash bail has never
fundamentally been about that.

For all the ads currently claiming that
people charged with violent crimes

are now walking the streets,
they always were,

as long as they had enough
money to make bail.

Under too many places'
current systems,

a person facing a marijuana
misdemeanor who doesn't have $2 000

is going to get stuck inside a jail.

But a serial sex offender who makes,
I don't know, hypothetically,

a million dollars a week
in "Finding Neverland" receipts

gets to stay at home.

And when you pull back
and look at the overall figures

of whether bail reform has any
statistically significant link to crime

the answer, so far,
has been pretty conclusively, "no".

One analysis looked at studies
in seven different jurisdictions,

and none of them found
that bail reforms

"lead to a meaningful increase
in crime".

And research has even shown that if you
can avoid unnecessarily jailing people,

you can reduce
the likelihood of future arrests,

which does make sense!

Because if you don't upend
people's lives

by needlessly
locking them up pre-trial,

they're in a much better position
to stay out of trouble.

In Harris County, Texas, the place
where you saw that judge earlier,

researchers found that,

after cash bail was drastically reduced
in their misdemeanor courts,

there was actually a 6% decrease
in new prosecutions of people

over the three years
following their arrest.

So, it works out better
for absolutely everybody.

But I do get that those stats

don't sound nearly as flashy
over footage of a crime scene.

You can't make a crime ad
that looks like this.

Do you feel safe? You should.

Study after study shows bail reform has
not been linked to an increase in crime

and re-arrest rates
pre-and post-reform

have either remained identical
or slightly dropped.

And this dead body?

It's just 70 pounds of ham
in the shape of man.

It's honest, but it doesn't pack
quite the same punch, does it?

For all the fears of letting someone
who's a danger onto the streets,

again, bail reform doesn't take away
judges' ability to detain someone

that they genuinely believe
to be a thr*at.

In 49 states,
all except New York,

judges are allowed to consider
both risk of failure to appear

and public safety
in pretrial decisions.

Even in New York, it was generally
accepted judges did it anyway,

as "potential dangerousness"

has been the de facto
use of bail here for decades.

Reasonable people could disagree on
how to make those determinations,

but one place that some experts
point to as a model

is New Jersey,
whose system now looks like this.

Judge Sybil Elias is weighing
whether to free or detain

a man who appears from the county jail
by closed-circuit.

Notice there is no mention
of money for bail

because the new system
eliminates that.

Instead, it uses information
such as convictions,

not arrests, not socio-economic
factors, punched into a computer.

The trial court administrator
will give each defendant a score

of one to six for risk of reoffending
and risk of skipping court.

Even if a defendant
has a high score,

prosecutors must ask for a detention
hearing within three to five days,

and must present clear and convincing
evidence to detain someone.

And that seems pretty good, right?
Although, it is by no means perfect.

For one, assigning people
a "crime score" sounds

like something Robocop does before
he punches you out of a window.

And it's worth noting,

computer algorithms
are not immune to bias themselves.

One such system
in Broward County, Florida,

"was likely to falsely flag Black
defendants as future criminals,

wrongly labeling them at almost
twice the rate as white defendants."

It was basically a r*cist computer.

Which I realize is probably Elon Musk's
next billion-dollar idea.

And New Jersey's approach
isn't the only one that can work.

Bail reform has looked different
in Harris County and in New York,

but in each of those places,

it's resulted in fewer
people behind bars

and no negative impact
on public safety.

The point here is, if we wanted to,
there are multiple ways

to design a system
that truly prioritizes "public safety",

but if you count the accused as part
of the public, which you really should,

we should be considering
their safety, too.

Because terrible things happen
when you are locked up pre-trial.

And it's not just that you can lose
your job and your home.

You can lose your life.

An investigation of over 500 U.S. jails
found that between 2008 and 2019,

they saw over 7,500 inmate deaths,

and of those people,
nearly 5,000 were never convicted

of the charges
on which they were being held.

Here in New York, at Rikers,
where most people are held pre-trial,


have d*ed this year, so far.

And I know
this conversation gets heated.

But it's important to remember why bail
reform was so important to begin with.

And in thinking about this story,

I'd like to share something
that has really stuck with me.

Because when we did
our bail segment seven years ago,

until the last minute, we were going
to include a clip of Kalief Browder.

Now, if you're not familiar
with his story,

at 16, he was wrongly arrested
for stealing a backpack.

Now, this was the clip
that we were going to use of him.

The guy comes out of nowhere,
says I robbed him.

And the next thing I know
they're putting the cuffs on me.

Browder's family couldn't make the
$10,000 bail on the robbery charges.

Months turned into years. He tried
to commit su1c1de several times.

In June, he was suddenly
freed with no explanation.

No apology, no nothing.

They just said "Case dismissed.
Don't worry about nothing",

like, what do you mean,
"don't worry about nothing?"

Y'all just took
over three years of my life.

I didn't get to go to prom,
graduation, nothing.

Those would have been years, I'm never
gonna get those years back. Never.

Never.

We pulled that clip out of the show
just before taping,

when we found out he'd k*lled himself
the night before.

And his death isn't even included

in any of the tallies of people
who were k*lled by Rikers,

despite the fact
it sure feels like it should be.

The collateral damage of locking so
many people up pre-trial is enormous.

To defend this system is to defend
a people-wrecking machine.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, if we're not very careful,
we're going to go backwards.

Which would be a huge mistake.

And I would argue
that any future system

should be built
on a few very basic principles.

First, for someone
charged with a low-level offense,

we should prioritize
letting them remain free pretrial,

instead of defaulting
to keeping them in jail.

Second, whenever
any bail hearings do happen,

they should be
longer than 10 seconds.

I cannot f*cking believe
that has to be said out loud!

Also, people should have counsel
with them at bail hearings.

I honestly can't believe
that has to be said either.

And finally, if someone is detained,
we should be expediting their trial,

so they are not waiting years
for a court date.

And I'm not saying
that reform is easy or simple.

There are going to be disagreements,
even among advocates,

about best practices here.

But right now, we can't even have
those important conversations

because the air in the room is being
taken up by bullshit fearmongering ads,

fake newspapers, and confidently-
delivered lies from men in uniform.

And look, even after convictions,

we are clearly locking
far too many people up in this country.

But to do it before they've even
been convicted of anything

is proof that civil liberties only
apply tangibly to the privileged,

and for everyone else,
they are entirely theoretical.

And anyone even trying to defend
a system like that

is basically morally bankrupt,
isn't that right, Dermot?



Yeah. For once,
I cannot argue with you there!

And now, this!

And Now:
Unnecessary Full Disclosure:

All Tamron Hall Edition.

Full disclosure, my dad
was 25 years older than my mom,

and growing up, people
would think he was my grandad,

and that my mom was his daughter.

Full disclosure,
I cannot stand push-ups.

Full disclosure, I do dye my hair
and I will dye it tonight.

Full disclosure, my name is Tamron
and I suffer from really dry feet.

Full disclosure, in my home,
we eat maybe two burgers a week.

I have not eaten all day.

Full disclosure, I drink wine,
champagne, prosecco, and vodka.

Full disclosure,
I do not have a secret talent.

Full disclosure,

I don't know how comfortable I am
talking about sex on TV.

Full disclosure, I have a Peloton.
Full disclosure, I have a tattoo.

Full disclosure, I know nothing
that's happening in this show.

That's our show, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next week. Good night!

I will work day-in, day-out,
to deliver for the British people.