Bernie Sanders Goes After The Cash Bail System [View all]

Posted on July 25, 2018, at 1:17 p.m. ET

Excerpt:

In the recent past, Sanders’ support for a given issue — like single-payer health care — has moved conversation around that within the Democratic Party, especially for prospective presidential candidates.

The Poverty Is Not a Crime Act, introduced by Sanders on Wednesday, would effectively end the use of cash bail as a condition for release before trial and amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to create a grant system to incentivize states to end their cash bail systems and create alternatives to cash bail.

Calls for changes to the cash bail system reached a crescendo in recent years after the death of Kalief Browder, who had been accused of stealing a book bag and spent three years in jail on Rikers Island because he couldn’t afford his $3,000 bail. Browder’s death offered a poignant example of the criticism of the cash bail system. Criminal justice advocates have long pointed to the cash bail system as disproportionately affecting working-class Americans who can’t afford bail.

“We have a broken criminal justice system,” Sanders told BuzzFeed News. Sanders added that in the midst of that, the country has a cash bail system that’s essentially “criminalizing poverty.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryancbrooks/bernie-sanders-goes-after-the-cash-bail-system