LISTEN: The Georgia Senate recently passed a bill expanding cash bail and restricting the ability of organizations and individuals to pay bail on behalf of others. GPB's Amanda Andrews reports.

 

Senate Bill 63 expands the list of bondable crimes and limits individuals and organizations from paying cash bail on behalf of others.

The Georgia House and Senate have voted to approve Senate Bill 63, which would expand the list of bondable crimes and limit individuals and organizations from paying cash bail on behalf of others.

Under the new legislation, no person or group could pay more than three cash bonds per year. Several misdemeanors like trespassing and unlawful gathering would also become bondable offenses.

National nonprofit The Bail project paid bail for over 1,500 Georgians since 2019. Jeremy Cherson works with the group and said SB 63 doesn’t make Georgia more safe.

“You know, regulating charitable bail organizations is like trying to close food pantries and claiming that you're solving the problem of hunger,” he said. “It's counterproductive, it’s counterintuitive, and it's unnecessary.”

Supporters of the bill said it will discourage repeat offenses and encourage people to show up for court. Cherson said 90% of their Georgia clients already make court dates.

Sen. Josh McLaurin said during the Senate hearing before the vote on the bill that it was clearly a response to the public safety training center protests.

“It's very thinly veiled targeting of the type of speech that the majority doesn't like,” the Democrat said. “It also is just so prohibitive that it frustrates basic access that's not even about protests and police, that's just about churches trying to do the right thing for people who are hard up.”

In late May of 2023, Atlanta police arrested three organizers with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a group raising bail money for protesters in the “Stop Cop City” movement. They were charged with money laundering and charity fraud and ultimately released on bond.

People opposed to the bill expressed concern that in addition to targeting protesters, the bill will lead to more overcrowding in the Fulton County Jail.

Sen. Randy Robertson, a sponsor of the bill, said bonds aren’t causing the overpopulation.

“Once we started looking into the jails, what we found out is a lot of the individuals — the vast, vast, vast majority, based on the statistics that we receive from the jail — are violent felonies or those trafficking in drugs or participating in gang activities,” he said.

In contrast, a 2022 study from the ACLU confirmed that Fulton County overcrowding could be relieved by: releasing people held because they can’t afford bond, indicting people within 90 days as required by law, and using diversion programs.

Cherson said the bail system routinely places poor people at a disadvantage and this new law will only keep them incarcerated.

“Their lives will be destabilized, he said. It starts to reduce the possibility that they can get the wheels turning again, get themselves in the situation that they need to to have successful jobs and careers and homes and families.

The bill is now headed to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for a signature.

Tags: Georgia Politics  Georgia  Bail Reform  bond  Jails  general assembly