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# How Well Is Our Court System Working?
- URL: https://mike-morrison-public-safety-and-accountability.ghost.io/how-well-is-our-court-system-working/
- Published: 2026-10-21T12:36:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T13:29:28.000Z
- Author: Michael D. Morrison
- Tags: Michael D. Morrison, accountability, court accountability, Court System, Criminal Justice, data-analysis

*Mississippi taxpayers pay for every courthouse, clerk, and courtroom. They have a right to see the results.*

With the Mississippi Legislature returning in January, it is time to talk seriously about community and public safety. We elect judges to administer the law, and we place a great deal of trust in them to do that job with the public’s safety in mind. The same trust extends to the clerks and administrators who run our court systems every day. Our courts handle a tremendous number of cases each year. Yet one question keeps returning to the table, and it has never been settled: should the general public have access to court statistics, the successes and the failures alike?

Start with the most basic measure, appearance rates by release method. A traffic ticket is itself a release. The person receives a citation and a court date. For those accused of committing a crime, there are three ways out of jail and back to court: a bail bond, release on recognizance (a personal promise to return), or putting up the full face amount in cash to guarantee the defendant comes back. Each of these methods carries a different level of accountability, and each one produces a different result. The only way to know which methods work is to count who shows up. Today, the general public does not know.

That matters because the public is paying for all of it. Tax dollars fund the buildings, the staff, the equipment, the benefits, and the retirements. Every other branch of local government is expected to account for how it spends that money and what it produces. Courts should be no different. How many cases are processed each month? How many cases come to court and are closed? How many defendants are found guilty in their absence, where a case is closed on paper but no justice has actually been administered? How many cases sit open and pending? These are not hostile questions. They are reasonable questions about productivity that taxpayers should be privileged to have answered.

Lawmakers have said they cannot see these numbers either. At a September 2025 Senate Judiciary A hearing, Chairman Brice Wiggins said that when it comes to court policy, [“We’re flying blind,”](https://www.mpbonline.org/blogs/news/mississippi-senators-examine-strained-justice-court-system/?ref=mike-morrison-public-safety-and-accountability.ghost.io) pointing out that justice courts are county-run, which means 82 separate systems, many still working from paper records or outdated software. This year, House Speaker Jason White created a [House Select Committee on Judicial Operations ](https://www.wjtv.com/news/politics/mississippi-politics/mississippi-lawmakers-review-court-system-reforms/?ref=mike-morrison-public-safety-and-accountability.ghost.io)ahead of the 2027 session, with members saying they want to look at how the courts are administered and how to save taxpayer dollars. If the people writing the laws are working without the numbers, the people paying for the courts are working with even less.

We already know what happens when the numbers are put on the table. In the Fifteenth Circuit Court District, the judges, sheriffs, circuit clerks, the district attorney, and licensed bail agents adopted uniform procedures for bond forfeiture and revocation, and failure-to-appear rates dropped approximately forty percent in eight months. That did not happen because anyone passed a new law. It happened because everyone was working from the same facts and could see whether the system was improving.

When the Legislature convenes, every court in Mississippi should be reporting the same basic measures in the same way: appearance rates by release method, cases filed and closed each month, judgments entered in absence, and cases open and pending. That information belongs to the public that funds it. Good courts have nothing to fear from good numbers, and the ones that are struggling cannot be fixed until someone can see where they are struggling. Accountability all across the board.

[Guilty Before Trial: Forced Cash Bonds and the Attack on Civil Rights in Mississippi Courts. Who is protecting Mississippians now?When cash is the only way out, working defendants pay with their freedom, their jobs, and pressure to plead guilty. Defendants who are legally entitled to bail are being told that the only way out is large amounts of cash paid directly to the court. Professional surety bonds — a method![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/00/fd/00fd0d7a-5dbf-4abb-b1ce-af93b19f871f/content/images/icon/ChatGPT-Image-Jul-1--2026-at-04_00_17-PM-2-8c6f8961-b21b-458e-a560-e1f21a37fff6.png)Mike Morrison | Public Safety & AccountabilityMichael D. Morrison![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/00/fd/00fd0d7a-5dbf-4abb-b1ce-af93b19f871f/content/images/thumbnail/Guilty-Before-Trial_-Mississippi-Courts-bbfd3367-2dd4-481a-98e1-898da276c4e1.png)](https://mike-morrison-public-safety-and-accountability.ghost.io/guilty-before-trial-forced-cash-bonds-and-the-attack-on-civil-rights-in-mississippi-courts/)

[How Do We Fix Mississippi’s Court System?The Laws Exist. The Accountability Is Missing. Courts across Mississippi are unhappy with their failure-to-appear rates, and they have reason to be. Names are called to empty chairs, cases stall for months and sometimes years, and victims wait on a resolution that never seems to come. Right alongside![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/00/fd/00fd0d7a-5dbf-4abb-b1ce-af93b19f871f/content/images/icon/ChatGPT-Image-Jul-1--2026-at-04_00_17-PM-2-c1207a3f-24ce-4394-8752-c55ea076381d.png)Mike Morrison | Public Safety & AccountabilityMichael D. Morrison![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/00/fd/00fd0d7a-5dbf-4abb-b1ce-af93b19f871f/content/images/thumbnail/Mississippi-Court-System-Accountability-04035297-d595-4d11-a947-628ce6e7fe4d.png)](https://mike-morrison-public-safety-and-accountability.ghost.io/how-do-we-fix-mississippis-court-system/)

[When Courts Deny a Lawful Bail Option "Forced Cash Bond"Mississippi law is clear that professional surety bail is a lawful method of securing a defendant’s release. Article 3, Section 29 of the Mississippi Constitution says that persons entitled to bail before conviction shall be “bailable by sufficient sureties.” Rule 8.1 of the Mississippi Rules of Criminal Procedure![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/00/fd/00fd0d7a-5dbf-4abb-b1ce-af93b19f871f/content/images/icon/ChatGPT-Image-Jul-1--2026-at-04_00_17-PM-2-db6111ef-b584-47e6-9337-1ded404f1f7e.png)Mike Morrison | Public Safety & AccountabilityMichael D. Morrison![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/00/fd/00fd0d7a-5dbf-4abb-b1ce-af93b19f871f/content/images/thumbnail/ChatGPT-Image-Sep-19--2026-at-10_54_39-AM-c0d50f8b-ded4-4a38-8474-d9e15bcbbd8c.png)](https://mike-morrison-public-safety-and-accountability.ghost.io/when-courts-deny-a-lawful-bail-option-forced-cash-bond/)

About the Author

Mike Morrison is the 2026 PBUS National Bail Agent of the Year, President of the Mississippi Bail Agents Association, and a nationally recognized bail educator, speaker, and criminal justice commentator. With more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a licensed Professional Bail Agent and owner of Mike Morrison Bail Bonding Company in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he brings a practical, real-world perspective to discussions involving American legal history, institutional accountability, constitutional rights, public safety, technology, and public policy.

Morrison is recognized as a bail trainer by the Mississippi Judicial College and is a sought-after guest speaker for judicial, prosecutorial, and industry conferences across the country. He has presented before state judges, justice court clerks, prosecutors, attorneys general staff, and bail professionals nationwide, and he travels to state bail association conferences to speak on bail and on social media strategy for the profession. He also leads professional education and ethics programs for bail agents through the Master Class Bail Agent Series and other national training initiatives.

At the national level, Morrison works with the Professional Bail Agents of the United States (PBUS) Board of Directors and supports its committees on national initiatives. He also works with the boards of directors of other state bail associations, sharing the strategies behind Mississippi’s successes so they can be put to work across the profession.

He has published nearly 200 articles examining the institutions, policies, and decisions that affect working Americans. His writing is grounded in decades spent inside courtrooms, jails, communities, and the criminal justice system, and his commentary has surpassed 1.75 million views across social media in 2026.

Independent, plain-spoken, and focused on accountability, Morrison writes and speaks about the intersection of government, liberty, public safety, professional responsibility, and the real-world consequences of public policy in Mississippi and across the nation.

© 2026 Mike Morrison. All rights reserved.