The jail population, overall, has declined from 2007 to 2009.

According to Michael Hough, a public safety fellow through the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC stated, “This latest study disproves the myth that the use of bail bonds increases the number of people in jail. We now know that this connection cannot be made. The increased use of commercial bail can actually help to alleviate overcrowding in jails.”

An earlier study conducted by the Department of Justice, revealed that the number of individuals who were released from jail on a commercial bail bond, since 1992, increased by 100 percent.

Currently, over 40 percent of individuals released from jail are bailed out via a bail bondsman.

In 2009, the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies, a lobbying association for the elimination of commercial bail bonds, released a report that claimed the pretrial jail population was increasing at a high rate because of commercial bail bonds. A similar argument was made in a three piece report called “Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed with Inmates,” by National Public Radio.

That information revealed that the number of individuals in jail decreased from the years of 2007-2009, but that the number of inmates in prison continues to grow.

Hough further stated, “Commercial bail is more widely used by local governments and judges because bondsmen are able to quickly free individuals from jail while holding them accountable to return to court to face justice. It is important to note that other factors like a declining crime rate also factored in to the lower jail population, put clearly the anti-private sector bail lobby will have to find something other than jail overcrowding to howl about.”

This morning, I read a blog post correcting some of NPRs “facts”. Here’s an excerpt quoting Dennis Bartlett, of the American Bail Coalition:

“The NPR story is fallacious in that it gives the impression of a great mass of unfortunates stuck in jail, like some medieval black hole in Calcutta. This is far from the case. The cohort of 500,000 non-convicted defendants is not static. Over a year almost the entire cohort turns over by people coming into the system on new arrests and people exiting on bail, going back to freedom after case closure or getting on the Department of Corrections bus to head for the penitentiary after conviction.

Some will not get out on bail. Why? Some further facts which are all supported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

• Half of those arrested were already on probation, out on bond or parolees
• Seven-out-of-ten arrested had prior convictions
• Four-out-of-ten had served three or more sentences
• Over 60 percent were on regular drug usage, 40 percent were intoxicated at the time of the offense and 42 percent were current enrollees in a substance abuse program
• Jails are also the largest repository for the mentally ill”

The blog promises more on correcting NPR. I look forward to reading that.