Bail money funds Louisiana courts. Now this powerful industry is fighting reform

Opponents of the bail system are winning reform victories
across the US, but New Orleans is resisting change that
one agent compared to Hitler’s invasion

Aviva Shen in New Orleans
Wednesday 14 December 2016 12.00 GMT

An industry built around a key feature of the American criminal justice system is ratcheting up its resistance to change. As bail reformers score legal victories throughout the US, one prominent New Orleans bail bonds agent, Matt Dennis, compared the threat posed to his industry to Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Europe.

In a Facebook post addressed to bail bondsmen and sureties, he said: “The Bail Industry must understand the level of attack facing it today. The organizing, campaigning, activating, etc is being done by our opposition ... Most recently they have adopted the tactic of Hitlers (sic) Blitzkrieg- sue everyone-everywhere all at once. Just as Hitler did- They are focusing on the small towns because they are weak, unorganized, and financially incapable of defending themselves.”

Dennis and his colleagues have based their professions on the money bail system, which requires people to pay their way out of jail after they have been arrested but before they have gone to trial. People who don’t have the money on hand have two options: pay a bail bonds agent to put up the funds, or stay in jail indefinitely.

The commercial bail industry is a powerful institution in Louisiana, thanks to the state’s unique arrangement in which every part of the criminal justice system uses bail to fund itself.

“Louisiana is an example of one of the crowning achievements of the bail industry and their control over local and state politics,” said Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the legal nonprofit Civil Rights Corps. “They managed to design a bail statute in Louisiana where every major actor in the whole system depends on the bail system now to fund themselves unconstitutionally.”

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