Bail is money paid as collateral to ensure your appearance in court. After you are arrested, you will be held in jail until your initial appearance in court, where a judge or magistrate will review your charges and set an amount of bail. If you pay bail, you agree to appear at a later date for court, and after your case is closed, the full bail amount is returned to you.

If you cannot afford the set bail amount, you can pay a bail bondsman a nonrefundable fee of 10% of the set bail, and you must include some other collateral (typically your home or car).

No. Bail is supposed to...

• 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

Read our blog post about how HB206 changes bail process in Utah.

If you miss your court date, the bond company has legal claim on any assets you put up as collateral. Companies can take your home, your car, your driver’s license, and more. Bail bond companies profit from 10% nonrefundable fees as well, and have lobbied Utah judges to set higher bail amounts so that people are more likely to use a bondsman and the 10% fee is automatically increased. This predatory behavior is expected to become less prevalent under HB206.

• 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.

Every bail request is reviewed by SLCBF and prioritized according to the harm a person may experience in jail. SLCBF prioritizes requests for individuals who:

• Have exhausted all potential sources to pay bail, including family and community members connected to the incarcerated individual.
• Have an advocate who is willing to commit to providing assistance to ensure the arrestee can make their court dates.
• Are transgender, gender non-conforming, or LGBTQI+.
• Have disabilities.
• Are under 18 years of age or over 60 years of age.
• Do not have immigration documentation or whose immigration status is not protected.
• Are marginalized by their race/ethnicity, such as those whoe are Black, Indigenous, or of color.
• Are immunocompromised.
• Are pregnant.
• Have HIV-Positive status.
• Are currently undergoing mental health treatment.
• Are at risk of experiencing severe drug or alcohol withdrawals.
• Have dependents or other family members who may be harmed by their detention, including the risk of custody loss or Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) involvement.
• Have employment at risk of being terminated while they are incarcerated.
• Have housting at risk of being terminated while they are incarcerated.
• Have education at risk of being severely negatively impacted or delayed while they are incarcerated.

Unfortunately, not ever request can be fulfilled due to the limited dollars available to the Community Fund at any given time. Your donations are crucial for us to post bail for as many requests as possible!

SLCBF will absorb any lost bail as an expense. SLCBF works with community partners to provide simple court date reminders to help people remember to appear in court. If someone is arrested again after failing to appear, the judge will likely not set a bail amount for them and they will be forced to await trial in jail.

• We communicate regularly on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Follow @decarcerateutah and help us spread the word!
• We post flyers around town.
• We appear from time to time on KRCL's Radioactive.