Shelby Co. initial bail costs higher for violent offenders since new system began, data shows

The average bail amount defendants with violent charges are being assessed when they are booked at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar has increased since the system swapped over to the reformed bail system in mid-February, data shows.

The bail hearing room — a product of a threatened lawsuit from the criminal-justice reform group Just City, the ACLU, Black Lives Matter and local attorney Alex Wharton and months of working towards a more equitable, and constitutional, bail system — was agreed upon by former Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich and representatives from the Shelby County Government. The hearing room first started hearing cases Feb. 17 of this year with DA Steve Mulroy's administration in charge.

The data from the Shelby County Criminal Justice Portal, which was pulled by Just City and reviewed by The Commercial Appeal, looked at bail information a year prior to the bail hearing room opening, from Feb. 17, 2022, until Feb. 16, 2023. It also included data from Feb. 17, 2023, until May 19, which is the time the bail hearing room has been open.

Just City also noted that, since the bail hearing room opened, bail amounts for non-violent offenses have decreased.

"This data provides concrete evidence that bail reforms can yield tangible improvements to our legal system that contribute to public safety and provide a better opportunity for those accused of crime to secure their release," said Josh Spickler, the executive director of Just City. "We are creating a fairer system that respects the presumption of innocence and ensures the safety of our community."

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The data looks at the bail amounts set when someone is initially booked, not including any hearings in the bail hearing room, which gives defense attorneys and prosecutors a chance to argue for, or against, pretrial release.

Although the data does not show the outcome of those bail hearings, or distinguish between people who have been arrested multiple times and those who have not, it offers insight into the indirect effect the opening of the bail hearing room might have had on judges and judicial commissioners that set bail when someone is booked at 201 Poplar.

In the wake of officials criticizing the bail process, specifically citing the case of Chase Harris, who posted bail multiple times, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said on May 22 that he would explore judicial commissioners setting higher bail for repeat offenders.

"The only adjustment I would be inclined to explore right now, because this new system has been in effect for only a couple of months, is to encourage the judicial commissioners to lean more into unaffordable bail amounts early on if the person has a repeat criminal history," Mulroy told The Commercial Appeal at the time. "They can be secure in the knowledge that the defendant will have his or her day in court within 72 hours."

Before the reformed bail system opened up, average bail for people facing violent offenses was $84,385. Average bail for people charged with violent offenses since the bail hearing room opened was $92,182, according to the data, a 9.2% increase over the first three months of the new system being active.

People charged with non-violent offenses saw their average bail drop by over 12.8% since the new bail hearing room opened, averaging $10,574 under the reformed system compared with $12,127 under the old one.

Just City, in its press release, said the changes reflect "a more equitable approach, reserving pretrial detention resources for people accused of more serious, violent offenses and giving others a chance to continue their employment and remain with their families, regardless of financial ability."

Raw data also showed decreases in bail not being set for both defendants in nonviolent and violent criminal cases. There was an 11.2% drop in bail not being set for violent offenders, and a nearly 14% drop in bail not being set for nonviolent offenders.

There has also been a shift in the percentage of initial bails people were able to post. Since the new bail hearing room opened, people were able to post 54% of bails set for them when charged with nonviolent crimes, a 4.8% decrease from how many bails people were able to post under the old system.

Those booked on violent offenses have also been less likely to post bail under the new system. Almost 37% of bails have been posted by defendants in the three months since the bail hearing room opened, a 5.2% decrease from the old system.

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Ryan Carroll, Just City's data scientist, said the numbers from the reformed bail system are likely to change as the year continues, noting the small, three-month sample size used for this data set compared to the year-long sample used to illustrate the old system.

Shelby County Commissioners at Wednesday's Shelby County Commission Law Enforcement, Corrections and Courts Committee continued discussions over the new bail system, including a call for increased transparency. Commissioners sent a resolution requesting three months of bail data from the Shelby County General Sessions Court to full commission with a favorable recommendation.

The resolution, citing "reporting on numerous cases [indicating] there are individuals committing additional crimes after being released on bail" and "the [Shelby] County Board of Commissioners is concerned that public safety and flight risk are not being adequately assessed by judicial commissioners and/or judges when determining bail amounts and conditions of release," requests "immediate data" from the court.

The resolution was sponsored by County Commissioner Mick Wright, who has been vocal in calling for transparency in bail amounts, saying that public data, allowing people the ability to easily follow a case and its disposition, would be a step forward in that effort towards transparency.

"I believe citizens would welcome any indication that violent crimes were resulting in more restrictive measures, and that those being released outright or on bond are not drawing subsequent charges," he said. "We need authoritative, granular data that shows what each defendant, and each charge, is resulting in what outcome. We need to know what rulings are being made, and how it compares with the previous process, and if there are trend variations between individual commissioners, or between judicial commissioners and judges."

Wright added that the commission needs the information to assess "the effect of the court's standing bail order."

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"These are the kinds of numbers we expect to gather directly from the court," Wright told The Commercial Appeal in a text message Thursday. "By resolution in August [2022], a baseline was due to us by March 30, and that hasn't happened. So while these trends, presumably recorded by Just City, appear to be favorable, we are asking for this and more information to come to us directly, so that we can adequately measure the effect of the court's standing bail order, the county's costly investment in the hearing room, and the judicial commissioner program."

Part of the problem with public transparency rests in the way that the court clerks record bail, and bail changes, Carroll said. People updating the criminal justice portal will override the bail amounts when a new one is set instead of posting a change in the bail, making it impossible to quickly see what, if any, changes to a defendant's bail have been.

Carroll, who is responsible for pulling data from the publicly available criminal justice portal, is able to pull that data for those initial bail amounts by looking through the system's metadata, located in the source code, which is not readily available to the average citizen.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has also been vocal about bail, focusing on low bail amounts and saying the system is "broken." Strickland has not cited direct data, but has focused on specific anecdotes of people being charged and posting bail.

"None of this data changes the fact that the system is broken," Strickland said in an email response when presented the data cited in this story. "Too many criminals are not punished for their criminal activity due to low bonds, long delays in trials, and weak sentences. As a result, the word is out to thousands of criminals that they can continue to victimize Memphians without much consequence."

Other critics of the reformed bail system include State Senator Brent Taylor, R-Memphis, who has called the reforms "controversial," and joined Wright at a press conference Thursday afternoon outside of the Shelby County Bail Hearing Room. Taylor's office did not respond to a request for comment regarding the data, but the freshman senator said during the press conference bail should be high enough to act as "collateral to ensure that the defendant shows back up to court."

"If bail is too low, then the defendant — they're willing to give up that money to stay on the lam and just wait to get arrested again," Taylor said. "The bail needs to be high enough that they're not willing to give up that amount of money, and they'll show back up for court so they can remain free pending their trial. That's what we're working for."

Taylor later said he was not sure what the proper formula to balance the presumption of innocence a defendant has, preventing bail from being punitive and keeping the public safe is, but pointed to Wright and said getting data is a way to find out.

"I don't know what the magic formula is," he said. "I know is isn't in what we had before. I know it's not what we have now. But we need to find that, and the only way to get to it is with the data that the county commission is asking for. And the only way we can make good decision in Nashville, in the Senate and House, about bail reform is if we get the information from the county commission."

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Shelby Co. bail higher for violent offenders under new system, data shows