Bail is a monetary payment made to secure your appearance in court. Upon payment of bail, you are released from pretrial detention. On your appearance in court, your bail money is returned to you.

No. Bail is supposed to...

No.

• Judges in Utah are not required to consider a person’s ability to pay bail when setting the bail amount. In October 2020, HB 206 is enacted and requires courts to “consider” an individual’s ability to pay, but the law does not require more than consideration.⁵
• Monetary bail is currently assigned without regard to how much the accused can pay and disproportionately affects those from low income ZIP codes.⁶ Even with relatively low bail amounts ($500 or less), 40% of people remain in pretrial detention for the full term.⁷

No.

• 78% of people currently held in Salt Lake County jails have not been convicted of a crime.⁸ They are presumed innocent under the law, but remain in jail solely because they are unable to afford their bail.
• Current pre-trial detainees have been in jail for an average of 158 days, 5.2 months.⁸
• No jury trials are currently being held due to COVID-19. This means that people may await trial for many months, or longer. Some have already been waiting for more than a year.

• There is a statistical connection between serving pretrial detention and being convicted/sentenced to incarceration.⁹
• Multiple studies show that a detention stay of three days or longer put the defendant 13-26% more likely to be convicted.^6,10
• Guilty plea rates can be much (up to 25%) higher for those detained pretrial than those released pretrial. A plea deal can be the quickest way for people to get out of jail and return to their lives.⁴
• People who spend time in pretrial detention receive harsher sentences than those who are at liberty pretrial.Those detained for the entire pretrial period are 4 times more likely to receive a sentence that includes incarceration. Those detained for the entire pretrial period serve 2 times longer sentences.¹¹
• Most people spend more time in jail due to the pretrial process than they would if they had been released pretrial and sentenced to incarceration.¹²
• Time in jail limits a person’s financial resources in securing a proper defense due to loss of income.⁴
• Pretrial detention also prevents people from participating in measures that would increase likelihood of their acquittal, such as paying restitution, seeking treatment, and pursuing educational/employment opportunities.⁴

In 2019, Salt Lake County jails spent $95,418,656 — 28% of the entire county’s expenditures in 2019.¹³

Spending time in jail can threaten a person’s well-being and their livelihood. Not only is jail a hazard to physical and mental health, being detained can put a person’s job, education, housing status, and the custody of their children at risk. Families suffer too. Having a primary caregiver or provider in jail can be devastating for dependents and partners.

Communities of color are are jailed at higher rates.

• Black people are currently overrepresented in Salt Lake County Jails by a factor of five.⁸
• Indigenous people are overrepresented by a factor of three.⁸
• BIPOC are less likely to be released pre-trial than white defendants.¹⁴
• Black people, when assigned monetary bail, receive significantly higher bail amounts than white people.¹⁵

Women are disproportionately affected by monetary bail.

• Women are less likely to afford bail when it is set.¹⁶
• Women are more likely than men to have lacked employment pre-arrest and generally make less than men when employed.^17,18
• Women are more likely than men to absorb the financial burden of a family member’s incarceration (bail, court fees, attorney fees, etc.). This deepens their family’s financial strain in most cases.¹⁹
• Women are more likely to render a guilty plea with a “time served” credit than their male counterparts. Authors postulate due to the overwhelming need for single mothers to return to their children.²⁰

There is an alarming lack of information available about the impacts of pretrial detention on queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people. Gathering this data is made more difficult because jails rely on the information printed on official IDs when processing inmates, which may not be representative of a person's gender identity and does not address their sexual orientation. Despite that these factors may put a person at increased risk when incarcerated, Salt Lake County jails make no attempt to gather this data. We acknowledge this gap in research and will work to bring attention to the harm that cash bail and pretrial detention can bring to these groups.