“Everyone deserves a second chance”: How bail reform changed Houston’s criminal justice system

“The scale was unprecedented,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and deputy monitor of the ODonnell settlement, the agreement Harris County signed in 2019 that eliminated bail for most misdemeanors in one of America’s most populous cities.

“This is the third largest county in the country,” says Guerra Thompson. “It affects a lot of people.”

Before ODonnell, two people in Harris County could be charged with the exact same offense. One was released immediately because he could afford bail. The other had to stay incarcerated for several days or even weeks because he could not afford bail.

“It’s unfair,” says Guerra Thompson. “To punish someone not for what they did, but because they don’t have the money to get out of prison.”

Defendants were often so desperate to get out of the overcrowded prison that they would plead guilty to charges that had a good chance of being dismissed. Five years later, the O’Donnell settlement has fundamentally changed an important part of Houston’s criminal justice system.

“One of the most important findings is that virtually no one is held in jail for misdemeanors because they cannot afford bail,” says Guerra Thompson.

Part of the monitor’s job is to keep an eye on the data, and the reports show consistent trends. The number of misdemeanors in Harris County has dropped sharply – from 61,000 in 2015 to 50,000 last year.

And according to the monitor, the number of people arrested for misdemeanors who were given new charges within a year decreased.

The real The problem is keeping people In Prison, says Guerra Thompson.

“It’s traumatic. It can cause people to lose their jobs or their homes,” she says. “So many destabilizing things can happen to people that can lead to more crime later on.”

A different prison population

This argument resonates with supporters of criminal justice reform.

On a muggy August morning, workers with the Texas Jail Project wait near the Harris County Jail complex in downtown Houston, a building with well-documented overcrowding problems.

Krish Gundu and her colleagues stop people who have spent the night at the prison reception centre as they leave the prison. The team distributes plastic bags containing cereal, a bottle of water and hand sanitiser.

Some people ask for a cigarette or a bus ticket home.

It wasn’t long before Gundu’s team found a woman who had been arrested for failing to appear in court on a previous prostitution charge. Thanks to O’Donnell’s plea agreement, she had been released on no-cost bail.

Misdemeanor bail reform has made the system fairer, Gundu says. In Harris County, about 20 percent of the population is black, but black residents make up 40 percent of misdemeanor arrests, according to Observer data.

“Before O’Donnell, many black and brown people were stuck in jail because they couldn’t pay their bail,” Gundu says.

ODonnell has not fixed everything. Fewer people are now in prison for crimes, but the number of serious crime Cases have led to an increase in the jail population, according to Harris County reports. People are staying in jail longer.

The prison complex’s overcrowding has many causes, including a backlog of cases after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and the COVID-19 pandemic a few years later. But Gundu also blames pressure from political and economic forces that benefit from a crackdown on crime.

Due to the reform of bail conditions for misdemeanors, “the unintended consequence is that excessive sentences are being imposed. That’s why there are now many more crimes,” says Gundu.

The prison complex is understaffed and dangerous. Seven people have died in the Harris County Jail this year.

Bail bond industry in trouble

One of the biggest critics of misdemeanor bail reform is the state’s powerful bail industry.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect all of us,” said Mario Garza, president of the Professional Bondsmen of Harris County Association. “My profits were cut in half.”

His bail bonds office is located next to a busy Houston freeway, with the phone number posted in large letters across the building.

The industry does have political and financial influence in Texas. Garza’s group filed a lawsuit challenging the ODonnell settlement, arguing, among other things, that it negatively affected business.

“We knew that from the beginning,” says Garza. “But because we are guarantors, the message was always, ‘You’re just greedy. You’re only worried about your profit.'”

Bail bondsmen make their money by charging their clients a fee. If a judge sets bail at $10,000, the family typically pays 10 percent to cover the bail.

After O’Donnell, many of the public service offenses that were important simply disappeared, and the consequences affected the entire industry, Garza says.

This summer, dozens of people associated with a local bail bonds company were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges that they used false information to try to get people out of jail who did not qualify.

“Because they were desperate,” Garza says, “they started doing things that were wrong. They lied to people and promised them payment plans that weren’t true. It’s like when things get tight – like when you drain the swamp – then you see the bodies floating ashore.”

Garza says he is all for second chances, but he is less generous toward people who commit multiple crimes. Misdemeanor bail reforms do not provide an incentive for change, he added.

“When people call my office, they say, ‘Well, can’t they just get a PR bail?’ I’ve been in trouble myself. I’ve been in prison for minor offenses, but when I look back on those years, I’ve always gotten better because I’ve been held accountable,” he says. “I probably served more time than I should have for a minor offense. But in the grand scheme of my life, it worked out.”

A “second chance” with the family

However, a prison sentence is not suitable for everyone.

Back at her home in Houston, Terranisha Collins says her life could have been very different if she had spent longer in prison for threatening her neighbor in 2019.

Ultimately, she was not convicted. The case was dismissed last year.

Now she watches six of her children doing somersaults and flying through the air on the trampoline in the garden.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she says. “As long as it doesn’t harm anyone or society, I think everyone deserves a second chance. Thank God for prison reform, because without [it] many people would be in prison serving a punishment they do not deserve for their crimes.”

This reporting was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Peter O’Dowd and Wilder Fleming produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Ciku Theuri. O’Dowd also adapted it for the web.