The Bail Project helps change lives but Kentucky HB 313 endangers it: Opinion
As a Kentucky state representative for 28 years and a psychotherapist for even longer, I have spent much of my career examining the ways public policy affects mental illness and addiction.
Observing the current legislative session unfolding in Frankfort, I’m concerned about Kentucky House Bill 313, which would restrict charitable organizations from providing bail assistance and necessary wraparound services to the poor.
This ill-conceived legislation does not address the questions of when or if bail should be set. It’s not doing anything to ensure that bails are fair or reasonable as the U.S. Constitution requires. Instead, it’s just looking at who pays the bail.
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Today, if a well-off person is arrested, they can make bail immediately. But the financially struggling person can be incarcerated in our city’s troubled, dangerous jail for weeks or months on the same charge while awaiting trial. That’s not because the poor person is necessarily been deemed a threat to the community. They qualified for bail, but they cannot shell out five hundred bucks to spring themselves.
According to the American Psychological Association, over 60% of people in jails report mental illness and/or addiction. Awaiting trial, their mental health can deteriorate further, and their family may become even more destitute if the detainee is a breadwinner. Assuming the incarcerated troubled accused are found guilty, they are even less likely to turn their lives around when they are eventually released, having deteriorated behind bars.
There are a few ways to address this outdated and unjust system, all of them, acts of kindness. Sometimes a family member or friend can bail a loved one out. Sometimes a group of friends can get together and bail someone out. And sometimes a charitable organization – a church or a dedicated nonprofit – can do so.
In Louisville, one outstanding organization that addresses the issue in an enlightened way is The Bail Project. This is not to be confused with the group that recently posted bail for the accused in the recent assault on mayor candidate Craig Greenberg. The Bail Project is a national organization that has provided bail resources for nearly 4,000 economically fragile people in Louisville with an impressive 90% returning to their court dates. The group offers assistance in ways that a grandparent or friend is unlikely to be prepared for, connecting people to mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, food pantries and other resources to address immediate needs and root causes of aberrant behavior.
Help like this can transform a personal and community tragedy into a positive turning point in the defendant’s and our city’s life. Isn’t that what we all want, productive, community-minded, thriving citizens?
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As a psychotherapist, I know that people literally carry the trauma of their past in their bodies. It affects both their mental and physical health. Psychotherapy and appropriate, proven, medications can help heal. Each year, hundreds linger in jail cells, without professional care, awaiting action in the courts precisely because of the past trauma in their lives that has led to dysfunctional behavior.
There are times when incarceration is absolutely necessary for the security of the community. But for the majority who are arrested, it is not the ideal solution. If they are mentally ill when they go into jail, they are going to come out even sicker.
If they were struggling with substance abuse disorder when they go into jail, they are likely going to come out at higher risk for an overdose, the underlying physical addiction not having been treated. We all, in the end, pay the price for not treating mental illness and addictions.
We are better off as a society when we give people a chance to succeed – to connect to resources to address mental illness and substance addiction. Today in Louisville The Bail Project is one of the organizations doing this good work. Legislators in Frankfort should not restrict their efforts.
Jim Wayne served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1991 to 2019 from Louisville. He is the author of "The Unfinished Man” and is the founder of The Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy at Loyola University in Chicago, formerly at Bellarmine University.
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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky HB 313 endangers organizations providing bail assistance: Opinion
