“New Jersey’s current rules for bail determinations for defendants awaiting trial are illogical, dangerous, and fiscally irresponsible,” the Governor says, calling for bail reform in New Jersey. “They allow violent criminals back on the streets while defendants who pose no risk to their communities are stuck in jail simply because they cannot afford bail.”

Governor Christie has proposed commonsense reform to refocus New Jersey’s bail system on assessments of risk and would allow New Jersey courts to keep dangerous criminals off the streets and in jail until trial.

· The federal government allows for violent criminals, who pose a danger to their communities, to be held without bail, while New Jersey law does not.

· A study by the United States Department of Justice found that one-third of defendants released before trial ended up being charged with some type of pre-trial misconduct. One-sixth were arrested for a new offense – and one-half of those were felonies.

· According to the National Conference of State Legislators, 28 states enacted new legislation addressing bail policy in 2011 alone.

This commonsense proposal represents the next step in the Governor’s call to reform the State’s judicial system to better protect New Jersey’s communities from violent offenders, particularly those with a demonstrated record of violence.

In a letter to the Legislature yesterday, Governor Christie wrote: “We must act now, in the public interest, to protect our children and our communities from the most serious criminals who, under current law, must be set free if able to post even a fraction of the bail set by a judge. Together we can take action on this crucial matter of public importance. The security and stability of our communities demands that we take this action now.”

TLS received the following Op-ed from Brick’s Police Chief regarding the bill.

To the Editor;

Please allow me to provide some perspective on the bail reform movement in New Jersey as a member of the New Jersey State Chiefs of Police Association. I have been involved in this process and testified at several hearings in opposition to both Senate Bill 946 and Assembly Bill 1910.

I, along with my brother chiefs and officers, see great problem with the reforms posed by these proposed bills from an infrastructural, budget and public safety concern. As first responders and individuals who see what happens in the bailing of a defendant first hand, we know that a great majority of the people charged with crimes are able to secure their release from custody within hours of their arrest. Many of these people are folks charged with low level crime in Municipal Court where bail is an effective tool at ensuring these people return.

The proposed reforms are well intended. They allow my fellow chiefs and I to work with prosecutors to seek detention of those who pose the highest risk to public safety and officer safety as well. We support the concept of preventative detention. However, the companion legislation causes every person charged on an arrest warrant to be detained, transported to the county jail and then to be held for a period not to exceed 48 hours after they arrive at the county jail to receive a risk assessment. Public safety and our departments cannot afford the resources to accomplish this goal.

Officers would be removed from patrol duty to transport detainees on a regular basis and our local holding facilities would become quickly overrun with defendants who await transport to the county jail, requiring more officers to be removed from patrol duty and put into an administrative capacity. With our police budgets already stretched thin, we do not have the resources to provide for the infrastructure of this bill.

We are not insensitive to the concern that there may be persons who are being held prior to trial due to their indigent status, and we believe the appropriate response is an automatic bail review hearing for those people so that they can be judicially determined to be indigent and can have a judicial officer tailor a release mechanism that suits the individual circumstance of the defendant, monetary or non-monetary.

However, we cannot support a system that will further distract officers from enforcing the law and protecting the public. Nor can we support a system that creates a new government agency when the existing agencies that seek to protect the public are underfunded, and understaffed. We can make the system better, but my brother Chiefs and I do not believe the details of this bill as written can be workable.

The bill is to be voted on tomorrow.

[TLS]