Bailbondsman George Zouvelos: "There is a profound injustice for the poor in this city."
When a judge opts not to release a defendant and sets bail that’s higher than he can pay in cash, a commercial bail bond agent decides, in effect, whether the guy stays in or goes free.
There are somewhere between 160,000 and 1.5 million open warrants in the five boroughs. They represent the caseload of the NYPD’s Warrants Section.
It’s rare, but it happens: A person gets arrested on multiple charges, has $1 bail set on one, clears the other counts up, but remains in jail for lack of a solitary greenback.
The long-running cops-and-courtrooms drama often brings viewers into the bail hearing.
From the Bible to the Tupac Shakur, history and pop culture are littered with references to the curious process of paying for freedom.
The city’s bail system wasn’t the same after one defendant named David Berkowitz came through a Brooklyn courthouse.
Other cities have employed new methods of pre-trial monitoring to avoid setting financial bail. Given the scale of the city’s criminal justice system, would such an approach deliver both public safety and individual justice in New York?
The decision to impose financial bail can have an impact on the city’s jail costs, the ability of the court system to establish truth and an individual’s work, family, housing and life.
Bail does serve a purpose: preventing defendants from skipping court. But in legislatures and courthouses, there’s political pressure to also use it to punish.
For the people behind the bench in New York City courtrooms, the bail decision comes loaded with technical nuance and practical consequences.
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