"Everybody knows the rates of incarceration have basically stayed the same, and the people that used to be held on unaffordable bails are just being held without bond," said Colin Starger, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Sitting in jail before trial can have devastating financial and personal consequences -- and people who are held pretrial are legally innocent. The majority of Baltimore defendants who were incarcerated pretrial were not convicted of a crime, @BALTLegal found in 2019.

.Maryland Judiciary pointed out, correctly, that arrests fell during this time period by about a third. They say that changes in policing and state law mean that the people facing charges now are generally accused of more serious crimes, which explains the rise in bail denials.

Reform advocates have been raising the alarm about the spiking rate of bail denials since 2018. Neither lawmakers nor the judiciary have done anything about it. It's a touchy issue, especially in our current political climate. Even so, it's affecting thousands of Baltimoreans.

A huge thank you to the garrisonproj, which partnered with me on this project, and to Sanya Kamidi, Ethan Brown and brandon soderberg, who each helped make this story much better after I filed it. And shoutout to Shae M., who took GORGEOUS photos of central booking.

New: In 2020, California passed a law allowing people to show that discrimination contributed to their criminal charges or sentencing+get their conviction or sentence modified. But defendants in only about a dozen cases succeeded in demonstrating bias. 1/4 calmatters.org/justice/2024/1…

The process of proving bias has been inconsistent, patchwork —and filled with bias. A San Diego judge hearing cases used the N word on the stand+once said “our Mexicans” are like Gazans who cross the border to perform agricultural labor for Israelis. 2/4 calmatters.org/justice/2024/1…

Meanwhile, cases brought under the law have exposed extraordinary bias in California's criminal justice system. In a death penalty case, an attorney used the N word to describe his client, struck jurors he thought were gay+referred to them as "queers." 3/4 calmatters.org/justice/2024/1…

As few cases brought under the 2020 law are heard, public defenders are also struggling to appeal denials from the San Diego judge who used racial epithets. The same judge has also presided over hundreds of criminal jury trials. 4/4 calmatters.org/justice/2024/1…

NEW: A judge dropped an N-bomb in court and a defense attorney told his client to not act like an N before he took the stand in his murder trial. w/ CalMatters and garrisonproj we examine how CA attempts to address biases in justice. calmatters.org/justice/2024/1…

New: post-election, Democratic pundits and podcasters say that fact-checking concerns about crime is a fool's errand because the politics of crime are all about vibes. But as John Pfaff writes, the vibes are coming from somewhere: the media. 1/5

Because crime is densely concentrated geographically and among certain people, when Ezra Klein says on Pod Save America “talk to some people who live near you" about crime, the people he’s referring to are those whose lives are *least* likely to be affected by crime. 2/5

Their perceptions of crime are shaped by the media which covered the pandemic increases in crime, but barely touched recent data from the Major City Chiefs Association suggesting we're on pace for a historic drop in homicide rates for the second year in row. 3/5

Reporting also largely excludes people affected by crime or criminal justice reform policies. "The actual subjects of policy do not matter," Pfaff writes, "This, in turn, implies that reforms have only downsides, and that we should only fear them." 4/5

The crime-as-vibes analysis from pundits is particularly problematic as facts on the ground have shifted so dramatically: a 30-plus percent decline in homicides in Oakland, a nearly 40 percent decline in New Orleans, a nearly 40 percent decline in Philadelphia. 5/5

link to piece: newrepublic.com/article/189562…

This was a mixed year for reform prosecutors. They got some key wins, like in FL/MI, but then had a really ugly loss in Los Angeles. It's a coalition that mirrors what people thought Bernie's would look like, obviously. It's progressive whites *and* the inner-city aligning.

Our latest Split Ticket work, from Armin Thomas and Ethan Brown, breaks down where & why they win and lose, and where their votes come from (mostly the poorer inner city and progressive whites). split-ticket.org/2025/01/07/who…

Criminal justice reform is just a difficult issue for Dems/progressives. The public immediately defaults to preferring tough-on-crime when there’s any rise in crime, and there’s not really a big constituency for reform. Walking the tightrope isn’t easy, although it is possible

My latest for Baltimore Beat: Pretrial defendants make up the vast majority of Maryland's jail population, a figure that has gone UP since 2017's "bail reform" effort. Why haven't state leaders solved the problem? baltimorebeat.com/bail-remains-a…