“This is a waste of public resources and a threat to public safety,” the president said of the bail reform policy on Monday.
President Donald Trump has signed a pair of executive orders aimed at eliminating cashless bail in Washington D.C. and nationwide.
“Our great law enforcement officers risk their lives to arrest potentially violent criminals, only to be forced to arrest the same individuals, sometimes for the same crimes, while they await trial on the previous charges”, one of Monday’s directives read. “This is a waste of public resources and a threat to public safety.”Why It Matters
These orders are the latest chapter in the administration’s crackdown on what it perceives as lax law enforcement in the nation’s capital and across the country. Branded “Making America Safe Again”, this push began with the declaration of a “crime emergency” in D.C. and the temporary federal takeover of the city’s police powers. However, the scope has now expanded to Democrat-led cities and states, pitting the administration against local officials who view this as both unnecessary and an example of executive overreach.What To Know
Cashless bail is a shorthand term for pretrial release policies in which defendants are allowed to await trial outside of jail without first having to put up money. In recent years, a number of jurisdictions have enacted reforms effectively abolishing cash bail, including Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C.
D.C. was among the first to do so in 1992, and has since relied on judges’ assessments of whether a defendant poses a public safety threat or flight risk when determining their eligibility for pretrial release.
