When you're broke, cash bail is a freedom you can't afford | Opinion

Politicians talk a lot about the cost of living these days. Candidates from both parties reference everyday expenses ‒ the price of rent, the cost of groceries, what it takes just to get by. But while families are making impossible choices to make ends meet, the House of Representatives has voted to protect an entirely different, devastating expense: the cost of liberty.

With the recent passage of the Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act, a bill that passed by a vote of 243 to 179, Congress is actively targeting the few lifelines available to people who can't afford to buy their own freedom. The legislation seeks to criminalize charitable bail funds by twisting the law to pretend they are the same as commercial insurance companies.

By threatening charities, churches and community groups with federal insurance fraud charges just for pooling their money to help their neighbors, lawmakers are protecting a system that punishes people simply for being broke.

Cash bail is the cost of being 'innocent until proven guilty'

In our legal system, wealth-based punishment takes the form of cash bail. It's when a judge sets a dollar amount that arrested people must pay to go home while they await trial. It is, quite literally, the price of being "innocent until proven guilty." If you have the cash, you go home to your family; if you do not, you stay locked in a cell.

Yet, for decades, cash bail sat outside political cost-of-living conversations, treated instead as a technical or legal procedure. Reform debates focus on algorithms, statutes and court rules, but that framing misses the basic reality.

Cash bail is not abstract. It is a bill. And like any bill, it hits hardest when you already do not have the money.

For me, the cost of cash bail is not a policy question alone. It is something my family has had to live through. My brother was held in jail because the price of his release was more than we could pay.

Long before I worked in reform, I understood what it meant for a court to attach freedom to a number and then leave a family to find the money. That experience shaped the work I have done for more than a decade.

Now, as national director of policy at The Bail Project, I see the same pattern repeat across the country: People who have not been convicted of anything are forced to remain in jail because they are poor ‒ while families scramble to protect jobs, housing, children and stability from the consequences of a single unaffordable decision.

Take affordability out of the equation for freedom

According to the Federal Reserve and Vanguard's report, 36% of Americans would struggle to cover a sudden $400 expense. Into this reality, the cash bail system introduces a median price tag of $10,000 for bail.

If you are arrested, the state essentially demands thousands of dollars as assurance against flight. We tell ourselves this system keeps us safe from the dangerous, but a 2025 data analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative shows that 36% of jail admissions are for "public order" offenses – like trespassing or missing a court date – while less than a quarter of the volume consists of violent offenses.

Most people behind bars are not violent masterminds; they are the unorganized, the addicted and the broke. It is a system that catches anyone who falls through the cracks, turning a lack of cash into a crisis for neighbors and families. A few days in jail can lead to missed shifts and lost jobs. Rent goes unpaid, utilities fall behind and childcare arrangements collapse.

The long-term damage is even more staggering. Research from the Brookings Institute reveals that being jailed for just three days can lead to an average lifetime financial loss of nearly $30,000.

This is where the bail bonds company enters. For a nonrefundable fee, it vouches for your release. The logic is incoherent. We are told money is an "incentive" to return to court, but for the wealthy, it is a mere inconvenience. For the struggling, that money does not exist, meaning the "incentive" is actually a wall.

Often, payments are not made to the court but to a private industry. For a nonrefundable fee – typically 10-15% of the total bail – a commercial bail bonds agency will vouch for your release. Even if charges are dropped or a person is found not guilty, the fee is never returned.

This is not a service; it is a wealth transfer away from those who can least afford it.

The burden extends to taxpayers. Nationally, jails cost taxpayers $25 billion a year, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. We fund the detention of legally innocent people not because they are dangerous but because they are poor. It is an overpriced storage unit for the impoverished, yet we rarely question why money is a factor when judges could simply decide to release or detain based on actual risk.

This is where organizations like The Bail Project step in: at the point where everything turns on money. By simply paying bail for those a judge has already deemed eligible for release, they take affordability out of the question for freedom.

The results are consistent: People show up to court. Of the 40,000 people The Bail Project supported in 2025, nearly 35,000 received free bail assistance – along with court reminders, transportation and community referrals. These clients returned to court 92% of the time, proving that cash bail is unnecessary to ensure court appearances.

Cash bail is an expensive way to accomplish very little. Alternative approaches, like community-based support and supervision models, do not rely on wealth, cost less and achieve comparable outcomes. But they require a shift in perspective. We must stop treating cash bail as a given and recognize it as a financial barrier with devastating human consequences.

At a moment when politicians across the spectrum claim to care about affordability, cash bail remains one of the clearest examples of how poverty itself is punished in America. What is being sold is not a product or a service. It is freedom.

Erin George is national director of policy at The Bail Project.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: When you're broke, cash bail is a freedom you can't afford | Opinion

Reporting by Erin George, Opinion contributor / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 3:01 AM.