When Public Safety Becomes the Excuse to Strip Our Rights

Indiana and Tennessee voters will both go to the polls on November 3 and decide whether to rewrite their state constitutions to take away the right to bail. Both proposals are being sold as public safety. Both are dangerous.

I want to speak plainly about something I am seeing. There is a trend across this country, pushed by forces I cannot fully identify, to lock people up before they are found guilty. Different states, different bills, the same direction. Strip away the rights of the accused and call it public safety. I have been in this profession for 35 years, and I have never seen a push quite like this one.

Look at what Indiana is being asked to approve. Today, the Indiana Constitution allows bail to be denied only in murder and treason cases where the proof is evident or the presumption strong. Public Question 1 would extend that to any offense other than murder or treason, as long as the state convinces a judge that no release conditions will protect the community. Read the ballot language closely. It is not limited to violent crimes. Tennessee’s Amendment 1 would let judges deny bail for more than 70 felonies. Once a right is written out of a constitution, it does not come back.

Innocent until proven guilty is the foundation of our justice system and a basic right of every American. An arrest is an accusation, not a conviction. So I have to ask, how many people are found not guilty once their day in court finally comes? How many cases are dismissed, reduced, or never prosecuted at all? More than the supporters of these amendments are going to admit. Every one of those people would have sat in a jail cell for a crime they did not commit, and no one gives them that time back.

Then ask how many will plead guilty just to get out. Put a man in a cell for weeks or months, let him watch his job disappear and his bills stack up, and then offer him a plea deal that sends him home today. Many will take it, guilty or not. That is not a fair system. That is pressure, and it produces convictions that have nothing to do with the truth.

So how is this about public safety? Jailing the innocent does not make a community safer. Coercing pleas does not make a community safer. And how does this protect a system that is supposed to be fair for all? Equal justice under law means the same presumption of innocence for the man with resources and the man without them, for the well-connected and the unknown. These amendments hand the government more power over the accused and ask the public to trust that it will be used wisely. Our constitutions were written to protect citizens from that kind of power, not to expand it.

There is a better answer, and it already works. Surety bail keeps the accused free while holding them accountable, with a licensed professional who has a financial stake in making sure they appear in court. Accountability protects the community and protects the rights of the accused at the same time.

To our friends in Indiana and Tennessee, read the amendment before you vote. Protect the presumption of innocence.

— Mike Morrison, President, Mississippi Bail Agents Association