While I was a High School Equivalency teacher at the Shelby County Jail in 201 Poplar, I repeatedly saw people detained for months on nonviolent charges because their families couldn’t scrape together enough money for bail.

Every day, these men lost their jobs and their homes while they watched others – who faced the exact same charges and bail amounts – pay for their freedom and return to their normal lives.

Those of us with access to money would of course do the same thing if we ended up in this situation. For many people in Memphis and across Tennessee, however, this simply isn’t possible.

Shelby County DA’s Office to provide more information for bail setting

Before the implementation of common sense reforms in 2023, bail decisions were largely based on how much money someone could access at the time of their arrest — not on their risk to the community or their likelihood of returning for court.

The reforms — advocated for by Just City, where I work as a data scientist, and agreed to by former District Attorney Amy Weirich — improve that system by ensuring that bail decisions are made with individualized hearings that consider witness testimony, the accused’s ability to pay, and the risk they pose, along with other factors required by state law. These changes are now generally referred to as “the standing bail order,” or SBO.

Almost as soon as the SBO was implemented in February 2023, politicians mischaracterized its impact, using bail as a wedge issue to stoke public fear. Without any scientific evidence, their most frequent claim is that people released under the SBO reforms are making our city less safe compared to before.

New research from Just City shows that this claim is false. We recently analyzed nearly two years of data and saw that people released under the SBO are less likely to reoffend while awaiting trial compared to those released under the old system.

Just City’s findings also help clarify an earlier report from the University of Memphis’ Center for Community Research and Evaluation (CCRE), which analyzed rearrests for all people charged with crimes in Shelby County whether they were released pretrial or not. By inaccurately citing the results of CCRE’s report, critics of the SBO have painted a misleading picture. The data, however, is clear: when you focus on the people the SBO directly impacts — those released pretrial — the rates of reoffense have gone down.

New law prioritizes public safety in setting bail, officials say

Some politicians, including several state lawmakers, continue to push for dismantling the reforms, despite consistent evidence that public safety is improving. In fact, overall crime is down by 10.4 % in our community. Before the SBO, Shelby County was at risk of violating the U.S. Constitution by unfairly jailing people on the basis of their wealth. When properly supported and implemented, the SBO can simultaneously make the system fairer and our community safer.

Regrettably, a new law (HB1719) signed by the Governor a few months ago takes away a judge’s ability to consider a defendant’s ability to pay when setting bail. We can’t afford to take more big steps backward when so many lives — people who have not been convicted of the charges against them — are in the balance.

Returning Shelby County to a wealth-based system of justice that favors the affluent harms everyone else at enormous taxpayer expense. Policies like the SBO that can build a safer, smarter, fairer future deserve our support — not dishonest attacks and interference.