Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money
Injustice in New Orleans
Jon Wool, Alison Shih, and Melody Chang
June 2019

The following organizations endorse this report
and its recommendations:
ADL South Central Region

New Orleans Safety and Justice Challenge

ALAS

	

American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana

New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice

ATD Fourth World Movement

	

and its projects Stand with Dignity,

by DeSign (formerly BAR NONE)

	

Congreso de Jornaleros, and

Converge

	

Alianza de Trabajadores de Marisco y Pescado

Daughters Beyond Incarceration (DBI)

Operation Restoration

Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated

Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition (OPPRC)

	

Orleans Public Defenders

Children (FFLIC)

Community Advisory Group

Foundation for Louisiana

Promise of Justice Initiative

Free-Dem Foundations, Inc.

Southern Poverty Law Center

Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center

Urban League of Louisiana

Greater New Orleans Louis A. Martinet Society

Welcoming Project

Holy Cross Neighborhood Association

Women with A Vision

Hope House
Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO)
Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana
Justice and Beyond
Kabacoff Family Foundation
Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights
Navigate NOLA
New Orleans Alliance for Equity and Justice
New Orleans Safety and Freedom Fund

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Vera Institute of Justice

From the Director
Two and a half years ago, Vera published Past Due:
Examining the Costs and Consequences of Charging for
Justice in New Orleans. For the first time, researchers
captured the staggering burden of bail, fines and
fees—a dynamic we’ve come to refer to as money
injustice. This report updates those findings, describes
the progress that’s been made and the harms that still
flow, and offers a blueprint for ending money injustice
once and for all—recommendations that, if followed,
will keep hard-won dollars in the pockets of lowincome New Orleanians and could decrease the local
jail population by 56 percent, or even more.
Right now, residents with little money to spare, the
majority of them black, pay to help keep a broken
justice system running to the tune of almost $9 million
annually, not even including what people pay for minor
municipal and traffic offenses. That’s for those who
can pay what the system demands. For the others,
reliance on money bail in particular leads to unfair,
unnecessary, and harmful incarceration. Again, black
New Orleanians are overwhelmingly shackled—a deep
affront in a city that desperately needs to invest in
racial equity, not undermine it.
Poor and low-income black people and their families
suffer most. But jailing people unnecessarily—a misuse
of resources that all New Orleanians subsidize with
tax dollars—impacts everyone. It leads to more, not

less, crime in the city because even short periods of
detention destabilize people’s lives, increasing the
likelihood they will commit crimes in the future.
Money bail also jeopardizes public safety when people
who pose a significant danger to others are able to
buy their way out of jail. In New Orleans, 65 percent
of people arrested for the most serious crimes or who
are flagged as high risk for other reasons avoid jail by
paying bail. Although only a small number of them
pose an imminent threat, the current system lacks the
capacity to reliably identify and detain those who do.
	
Money injustice is not unique to New Orleans—it’s
pervasive nationally—but it is particularly acute and
pernicious here, where revenue from bail, fines and
fees is used to fund the court system. Judges therefore
face an untenable conflict of interest that’s baked into
the institution in which they work: how can they
follow the law when the court as a whole depends
on following the money? Last August, two different
federal courts said they cannot; no matter a judge’s
efforts or intentions, the institutional conflict violates
defendants’ right to due process of law.
The shadow that money injustice casts over New
Orleans is lightened by the extraordinary opportunity
for reform before the city today. Historically, one out
of every four dollars in the Orleans Parish Criminal
District Court budget came from overwhelmingly

poor defendants and their families. Then last year,
at the urging of Criminal District Court judges who
recognize the injustice of the status quo, the mayor
and city council provided additional funding for 2019
designed to replace this “user-generated” revenue. This
shift in funding policy is a watershed moment for
justice reform in New Orleans. With direct funding
for justice, the court, which is the lynchpin of deep
and lasting reform, can take money out of the equation
when making decisions about pretrial release and
detention and also when sentencing people.
At the center of this report is a plan for doing just that:
pragmatic changes in court practice that are fair to
all and truly promote public safety. And the cost for
greater safety and justice? Far less than what the city
and its taxpayers are paying now, primarily because
people who pose no danger to anyone will no longer
be jailed simply because they can’t pay bail. The dollar
savings resulting from reduced incarceration can be
used to provide stable replacement funding going
forward for the district attorney and public defender,

as well as for the court, so that all three agencies are
fully funded to focus on safety and justice.
With the system Paid in Full, there’s nothing standing in
the way of transformative change except the challenge
of change itself. New Orleans Criminal District Court
judges, the mayor, and other city officials are poised
to become trailblazers within Louisiana and leaders
nationally by implementing the first comprehensive,
locally grown approach to ending money injustice.
We at Vera hope this report serves as a helpful guide.
Whether you’re someone who cares most about public
safety, justice, racial equity, or the fiscal accountability
of government, that new path is a far better one.

Jon Wool
Director of Justice Policy, New Orleans office

Contents
1	

I. Introduction: Challenging money injustice

	

2	

The national landscape

	

3	

New Orleans on the path to change

	

6	

The final steps to reaching the goal

8	

II. Legal challenges to money injustice

12	
	

III. Pursuing safety and justice instead of money: A 		
blueprint for action

	

12 	

Direct funding for justice	

	
15	
		

Shifting the focus away from money to make fair and 		
safe decisions about whom to release pretrial

	
29	
		

Lifting the burden: Eliminating fines and fees imposed 		
at conviction

32	

IV. Impact of the recommended reforms

	
32 	 Preventing unnecessary, unfair, and harmful 			
		incarceration
	

38 	 Generating savings for all New Orleanians

	
41	
		
	

Keeping hard-earned dollars where they belong:
At home

44 	 Enhancing safety

45 	 Conclusion
48 	 Appendix A
54 	 Appendix B
55 	 Appendix C
56	Endnotes

I. Introduction: Challenging
money injustice

T

he role that money plays in criminal justice systems across the
country has come under increased focus in recent years, a level of
scrutiny that shows no signs of abating and is appropriate to the
depth and breadth of the problem. State and local systems are extracting
money, or trying to, from people who by and large are already struggling
economically. Steep costs are levied early on in the process in the form of
money bail, which becomes a requirement for release pretrial, and later on
through the imposition of fines and fees that accumulate as debt. People
who cannot pay are jailed while their cases proceed, as are those who
make the difficult choice to support their families rather than pay what the
system demands.

Money injustice is deeply unfair and
harmful to those directly impacted,
exacerbates poverty and racial inequality,
wastes scarce taxpayer dollars, and does
not deliver the safety all people value.

The result is a de facto system of money injustice. That system is
deeply unfair and harmful to those directly impacted and, on a broad
scale, exacerbates poverty and racial inequality; it wastes scarce taxpayer
dollars; and it does not deliver the safety all people value and want. Those

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

1

with a vested financial interest often claim that money bail protects
public safety. In fact, the opposite is true. In the rare cases in which people
pose a credible immediate danger, the outsized role of money in making
pretrial release decisions allows many of those same people to buy their
freedom. At the same time, the focus on money sends a steady stream of
people to jail who pose no danger to anyone, where their lives are often
turned upside down in ways that might even cause them to commit future
crimes—all because they can’t afford the price of freedom.
These practices have long plagued New Orleans, driving unnecessary
and harmful jail incarceration, pulling millions of dollars out of the
pockets of struggling families, grounding the legal system in fundamental
unfairness, and costing the city’s taxpayers more than if the system were
funded directly through general tax dollars. Building on activism and
policy changes over the last few years—and the city’s significant decision in
the past year to provide increased direct funding to the Criminal District
Court—this report sets out the steps necessary to replace money injustice
with a justice system that functions for all New Orleanians.

The national landscape
Resistance to money injustice in all its forms is mounting—from grassroots
opposition to decisions at the highest level of government. Community bail
funds across the country are paying bail for people who would otherwise
be detained just because they are poor.1 Along with freeing people, these
funds provide further evidence that money does not keep us safe and is
not necessary to get people to come to court—arguments that are changing
public opinion. The majority of Americans now oppose incarcerating
people solely because they can’t pay bail.2
Other advocates are appealing to the courts in a wave of litigation that
challenges blatantly unfair uses of money bail and “debtors’ prisons.” When
these lawsuits succeed, they restore fundamental rights and protections
the U.S. Supreme Court first clarified nearly 70 years ago yet are denied
in practice to people every day.3 In its recent unanimous decision in Timbs
v. Indiana, for example, the Court recognized that the 14th Amendment’s
due process protections include the right to be free from “excessive
fines,” which historically have been a tool of racial subjugation.4 Writing

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for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg connected today’s abuses
that fall disproportionately on people of color with post-Reconstruction
Black Codes—laws intended to convict black people for dubious offenses
and saddle them with fines they could never pay in order to extract
involuntary labor.

Resistance to money injustice in all its
forms is mounting—from grassroots
opposition to decisions at the highest
level of government.

In some jurisdictions, reforms to curb money injustice are already
underway. State legislatures in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, and
New York have taken action to eliminate or significantly reduce the use
of money bail.5 A number of cities and counties are also undertaking
bail reform, often ahead of their state legislatures, and at least one city,
San Francisco, has eliminated the use of fees levied at conviction to the
extent possible within existing state law.6 A relatively new nonprofit
organization—the Fines and Fees Justice Center, launched in April 2018—
is solely dedicated to helping communities and their representatives in
government address the pervasive problem of money injustice.7

New Orleans on the path to change
The Vera Institute of Justice’s (Vera’s) work on bail, fines and fees spans
multiple jurisdictions, but runs especially deep in New Orleans, where it
has partnered with government and community-based organizations for
more than a decade. Vera’s previous report Past Due: Examining the Costs and
Consequences of Charging for Justice in New Orleans crystalized the problem of

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

3

money injustice, laying out what is at stake for people and the city as
a whole.8
Extensive data analysis conducted for that report showed that over
the course of one year alone, poor and low-income families paid millions
in money bail—mostly in the form of premiums to bondsmen but also
in significant fees to justice system agencies—coupled with financial
charges imposed at conviction. At that time, nearly a third of everyone in
jail in New Orleans on any given day were incarcerated simply because
they could not pay bail or pay debt from conviction fees.9 The report
also showed alarming disparity by race, with black New Orleanians
bearing a hugely disproportionate share of the financial burden and the
unnecessary incarceration.10 Analysis conducted for this report shows
the situation is much the same today. (See “Impact of the recommended
reforms” at page 32.)
State laws that encourage and incentivize judges to extract money from
poor people to fund the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court perverts
justice itself. There is no reconciling the current system with one that
upholds people’s basic rights and promotes public safety. And that system
is actually losing money. Incarcerating people who cannot pay bail and
conviction fees costs the City of New Orleans and its taxpayers far more
than all the “user-generated” revenue that flows to the court and, more
modestly, to other justice system agencies. Reliance on poor people to fund
the court is especially acute in New Orleans because, as the only judicial
district in the state with separate criminal and civil courts, the Criminal
District Court cannot tap revenue from filing fees paid by corporations and
other civil litigants.
To its credit, New Orleans is actively responding to the crisis of money
injustice. In 2017, the city council, exercising the full extent of its legislative
authority, passed an ordinance that virtually eliminated the use of money
bail for people arrested for municipal offenses. Later that same year, the
Criminal District Court, which handles all felony cases, launched an
initiative to increase the number of lower-risk arrestees released without
money bail. More recently, the court implemented a new process for
determining who should be released and who must be detained, and has
somewhat reduced the use of money bail as a result. In December 2018,
the Juvenile Court announced it would abandon money bail altogether and

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stop imposing conditions of release, such as programs or drug tests, that
people must pay to access.11
There has also been some progress in reducing the unfair and
burdensome monetary costs imposed on people convicted of a crime. In
response to a lawsuit filed in 2015, the Criminal District Court recalled
some outstanding warrants for failure to pay and expunged over $1 million
in conviction fee debt.12 As with money bail, the Juvenile Court went even
further: in July 2018, judges stopped imposing conviction fees, except those
mandated by state law.13
The city and its Municipal and Traffic Court collaboratively took a
substantial first step toward ending money injustice. Although judges
continue to impose and collect fines and fees, they now turn over the
revenue to the city—diminishing any financial incentive that might
influence their decisions in this regard.
Community-based organizations stimulated many of these reforms
and implemented some of their own. Community bail-outs were held,
and a revolving bail fund was established to facilitate the release of people
who can’t afford bail of $5,000 or less—efforts that have been undertaken
as temporary fixes on the path to eliminating money bail altogether. The
Greater New Orleans Funders Network has made replacing bail, fines and
fees one of its central priorities, and there has been a steady stream of
opinion pieces in local newspapers. A September 2018 column penned by
two New Orleans Saints football players concludes, “Money bond has never
made New Orleans safer, and it never will. It’s time to end money bail.”14
Grassroots activists are also tackling fines and fees. In 2017, with buy-in
from the Municipal and Traffic Court, a group of community organizations
held a pair of “warrant clinics” where people with outstanding arrest
warrants and debt from fees could plead their cases to a judge in a
community setting. The clinics served over 2,500 people—most had some
debt waived and more than 500 had arrest warrants lifted.15
Beginning in spring 2018, 24 organizations banded together as the
Alliance for Equity and Justice, which actively opposes all forms of money
injustice in New Orleans and helped shape the recommendations in this
report. Also reflecting the collective will, New Orleanians elected a new
mayor with a history of supporting criminal justice reform as a city council
member and for whom money injustice is a priority issue. Mayor LaToya
Cantrell’s transition plan identified the current flawed approach to funding
Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

5

the justice system as a serious concern and included a recommendation
to “[i]mprove public safety by eliminating the practice of detaining people
pretrial because they are poor” and “by eliminating the practice of charging
fines and fees to people who are unable to pay due to poverty.”16
All of these reforms are situated within a broader effort to reduce local
incarceration. In March 2016, city officials began ramping up efforts in
this area through participation in the MacArthur Foundation’s nationwide
Safety and Justice Challenge. Ahead of schedule, the city met its target
jail population of 1,277 by May 2018—an impressive 24 percent reduction
in less than two years.17 However, with an average daily jail population
of 1,172 people in the first quarter of 2019, New Orleans still puts people
in jail at a rate 30 percent higher than the national average.18 To approach
the national incarceration rate, which in New Orleans would be 895
people incarcerated on any given day, the administration has committed
to reducing the jail population to under 1,000 by May 2020.19 That’s an
enormous shift from a post-Katrina high of 3,400.

The final steps to reaching the goal
The city’s accomplishments and the current appetite for reform bode
well for the key challenge confronting New Orleans—to break free from
a statewide system deeply grounded in money injustice. Statewide law,
policy, and culture have rendered the Criminal District Court, district
attorney, and even the public defender in New Orleans reliant on revenue
generated from mostly poor people and their families.
What makes the status quo especially perverse in New Orleans is the
inherent conflict of interest for judges. In August 2018, two federal courts
ruled that judges cannot make impartial decisions about what someone
can afford in terms of bail or fines and fees—which the law requires—
when their own institution stands to benefit financially from these same
decisions. (See “Legal challenges to money injustice” at page 8.) These
rulings, combined with the reforms that the city and courts have already
made, could be the catalyst for ending money injustice once and for all.
Although statewide reform—at least regarding bail—appears politically
out of reach in Louisiana at the moment, New Orleans is poised to become
the first city in the nation to replace both money bail and conviction fees

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with a system that adequately funds and promotes safety and justice.20 This
report outlines a pragmatic plan of action for reaching this goal.

New Orleans is poised to become the first
city in the nation to replace both money
bail and conviction fees with a system
that adequately funds and promotes
safety and justice.

Focused on the Criminal District Court, where change is needed most,
the blueprint presented here features sustained city funding for the court
above the historic baseline and a targeted slate of recommended changes
in court practice to complete the transition away from money injustice.
The plan is the product of collaboration with many local community
organizations and has broad support. Leaders in the mayor’s office, city
council, the court, and other justice system agencies provided crucial
information and guidance during the process of shaping this plan. And,
because the crisis of money injustice is a nationwide problem, the plan
also benefits from some extraordinary work by people and organizations
who are bending everyday practice in courts around the country closer to
justice. This report begins by explaining why current legal challenges to
the status quo require a significant shift in practice. The report then offers
a clear plan to achieve such change and describes the many benefits of
implementing that plan.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

7

II. Legal challenges to money
injustice

J

udges in New Orleans frequently express frustration at having
to fund the court partially on the backs of defendants—nearly all
of whom are poor and the majority black. “The court’s gotta eat”
was one judge’s justification for imposing a discretionary conviction fee
in a particular case, speaking apparently without irony or animus, just
resignation in the face of a longstanding reality.21 And money bail and
conviction fees indeed generate significant revenue for the Criminal
District Court. In 2017, that income constituted a quarter of the court’s
operating budget.
Although the offices of the district attorney, public defender, sheriff, and
clerk of court also benefit financially from these same practices, generating
revenue for the court itself in this way is particularly problematic. The
central function of judging is to make neutral and impartial decisions that
respect fundamental rights, including what the Supreme Court has defined
as the fundamental right to pretrial liberty.22
When financially strapped court systems are made to rely more and
more on revenue from criminal defendants, judges face an inherent
conflict—between following the rule of law and following the money.
In August 2018, two federal judges ruled that the institutional conflict
of interest under which Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judges
operate makes it impossible for them to apply basic laws and protections
governing the use of money bail and conviction fees.
In Caliste v. Cantrell, the federal judge ruled that the local magistrate
judge of the Criminal District Court—as a matter of law applicable to any
judge—could not set money bail without first considering nonfinancial
alternatives and, if requiring payment of money, determining that the
arrested person is indeed able to pay.23 This is because when money bail
is set at an amount a person cannot pay, it is no different than an order of
preventive detention, which must be justified through a stringent process
applying heightened legal and factual standards.24 But the federal judge also

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Conflict of interest in setting money bail and imposing fees

??

from
75% of court budget
city and state sources

25% of
court
budget
from bail
bond and
conviction
fees paid by
families

Court budget (2018): $7.9M

ruled that because the court depends on revenue from bail bond fees, the
“institutional incentives create a substantial and unconstitutional conflict
of interest when [the judge] determines [arrested people’s] ability to pay
bail and sets the amount of that bail.”25 In other words, a judge’s hands are
tied by the money injustice on which the system is grounded.
A different federal judge issued a parallel ruling regarding conviction
fees in Cain v. City of New Orleans, holding that the court could not order
a person to be jailed for failing to pay conviction fees without first
determining whether he was in fact able to pay.26 As in Caliste, the court
held that judges of the Criminal District Court face a significant conflict of
interest and thus cannot lawfully make the ability-to-pay determination.
These rulings prohibit the court in New Orleans from setting money
bail as a condition of pretrial release or coercing payment of conviction
fees by threatening or using jail. Yet to date, the federal court has not yet
ordered any particular fix, and the Criminal District Court is appealing
the portions of each ruling that found a due process violation rooted in an
inherent conflict of interest. (They are not appealing the restatement of the

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

9

basic law pertaining to bail and fees.) In the meantime, notwithstanding
some modest change in practice, judges continue to set money bail as an
unattainable condition of pretrial release for many people and to impose
conviction fees under the threat of jail for nonpayment.

These rulings prohibit the court in
New Orleans from setting money bail
as a condition of pretrial release or
coercing payment of conviction fees by
threatening or using jail.

Although the legal battles are not yet settled, these twin rulings
present an opportunity for the city and the court to collaboratively forge a
better system that ends longstanding injustices.27 Cain and Caliste are not
the first higher court rulings to challenge the status quo. (See “Twisting
and breaking the law to keep the money flowing” at page 11.) In essence,
the court needs what many judges have long asked for: sufficient and
sustained city funding to replace the money that the involuntary users of
the system supply at great sacrifice. And, in turn, city officials need the
full collaboration of judges to replace unfair and economically oppressive
practices with money-free alternatives that promote safety and justice.

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Twisting and breaking the law to keep the money flowing
The Louisiana Legislature has gone to great lengths over the
years to sustain the use of money bail and the revenue it
generates for the district courts. As discussed earlier in this
report, while bondsmen profit the most—which is typical of
state bail systems—courts in Louisiana take a percentage of
each bail amount, which is not at all typical. Requiring mainly
poor and low-income people to buy their freedom pretrial is
part of what keeps the state’s courts running.
In August 2018, when a federal court ruled in Caliste v.
Cantrell that the money-based bail practices in Criminal
District Court are unconstitutional, it wasn’t the first time.
Twenty-seven years earlier, in 1991, a federal court held
similarly: “the need to raise revenue to run the criminal
justice system is simply not a compelling enough reason
to allow the deprivation of a fundamental right,” which the
court identified as the conditional right to pretrial liberty.a
As in Caliste, the 1991 ruling also stated that defendants’
due process rights are violated because the court benefits
financially when judges require upfront payment of money
bail.b Importantly, the 1991 ruling noted that bondsmen were
not actually paying their own 2 percent fee required under
the law, but were passing on this cost to defendants and their
families.
So why is a federal court ruling on the same issue nearly
three decades later? It all stems from a legislative sleight of
hand. In the wake of the 1991 ruling, Louisiana lawmakers
passed the Bail Reform Act of 1993.c But it wasn’t much of a
reform. The act eliminated the 2 percent fee families were
required to pay and imposed that fee on bondsmen instead.
But, it also increased the premium families had to pay to
purchase a bond by the same 2 percent. In practice, nothing
changed except the route that money from defendants and
their families took to eventually reach the coffers of the court
and other justice agencies.
That 2 percent fee—money from individuals and families—
was originally distributed evenly among the court and
three other agencies, after the first $150,000, which went

exclusively to the court. In 2001, the legislature increased
the cut of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court to 0.8
percent, leaving the other agencies with 0.4 percent each.d
When that produced insufficient revenue, the court in 2005
asked the legislature to increase the bond fee from 2 to 3
percent, only in New Orleans and with the court reaping the
full additional 1 percent. The legislature complied.e Today in
New Orleans, the Criminal District Court collects 1.8 percent
of every bail bond paid, whereas district courts in the rest of
the state are allotted 0.5 percent.f
But because the legislature did not increase the mandatory
bail premium amount to accompany the additional 1 percent
fee that bondsmen were required to pay, the bondsmen were
left having to chip in to fund the court. This arrangement
apparently didn’t sit well with bail bondsmen. As the
Louisiana Department of Insurance recently found, most
bondsmen simply began charging an unlawful premium of 13
percent, passing on their costs to families who post bail, just
as they were doing in 1991. The department’s February 2019
directive reiterated what has been clear in the law since 1993:
premiums are fixed at 12 percent and the additional 1 percent
for the court cannot be tacked on.g The department ordered
bondsmen to refund an estimated $6 million in overcharged
premiums taken from New Orleans families over more than
a decade.h
If the recent federal court decision in Caliste v. Cantrell holds
(the Criminal District Court judges are appealing the conflict
of interest portion of the ruling), it should prompt genuine
reform of state law, not another legislative sleight of hand.
That would mean all Louisiana taxpayers, not just the families
of arrested people, fund the state’s courts, prosecutors,
and defenders. In the meantime, judges in New Orleans can
achieve real bail reform locally by changing their practices
within the outlines of existing state law, as the plan set out in
this report recommends.*
* Endnotes to text boxes can be found at the end of
this report.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

11

III. Pursuing safety and justice
instead of money: A blueprint
for action

E

nding money injustice in New Orleans requires eliminating the
unfair costs imposed on people at both the beginning and end of the
criminal court process. At the front end, judges in Orleans Parish
Criminal District Court need to adopt a process for making pretrial release
decisions that is fair to all and actually promotes community safety, instead
of relying on money bail, which siphons money from struggling families
and leads to unnecessary and costly incarceration. They also need to take
the much simpler step of eliminating burdensome fines and fees imposed
at conviction. The following plan describes the specific steps needed to
accomplish both. The plan emerged through extensive discussions with key
stakeholders in government and the growing number of community-based
organizations pushing for deep and lasting reform.
These recommended changes in court practice are not feasible, however,
without funding to replace the revenue from bail, fines and fees that the
court and, to a lesser extent, other justice system agencies stand to lose.
Fortunately, that replacement funding, and more, will come from what the
city saves by no longer incarcerating people simply because they cannot
pay what the system demands. Because the city has already significantly
increased funding for the court, in anticipation of future cost-savings, this
plan begins by describing direct funding for justice as the foundation of
deep and lasting reform. (See Blueprint for Change at https://www.vera.
org/blueprint-for-change.)

Direct funding for justice
The City of New Orleans and many judges recognize the essential
unfairness of the status quo, and the city in particular is motivated
to prevent unnecessary and costly incarceration. For this reason, the
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administration and city council have taken a critical first step toward ending
money injustice by providing additional funding to the Criminal District
Court. At the judges’ request, the city committed an additional $1.4 million
for the final three months of 2018 and an additional $3.8 million above its
prior year baseline appropriation for calendar year 2019 to offset anticipated
lost revenue in the wake of the August 2018 federal court rulings.28

For their part, judges must break with
convention and embrace new practices.

Replacement appropriations are also needed for the offices of the
public defender and district attorney. They too will lose revenue from the
elimination of money bail and conviction fees, although on a smaller scale
than the court. The sheriff’s office and clerk of criminal court similarly
stand to lose revenue but, because they will experience substantial cost
savings as a result of having to care for significantly fewer people and
process significantly less paperwork, respectively, additional city funding is
not needed.
Because revenue streams decreased somewhat in the wake of the
August 2018 federal court rulings in Caliste and Cain, replacement
appropriations for all three agencies should be based on total revenue
collected in 2017. In that year, the court reaped $925,000 in bail bond fees
and more than $1 million in conviction fees; the district attorney took
in $270,000 in bail bond fees and $215,000 in conviction fees; and the
public defender benefited from $200,000 in bail bond fees and $177,000 in
conviction fees.
Going forward, an annual investment by the city of just $2.8 million
above the current baseline appropriations to these agencies would replace
all revenue lost by ending unfair money-based practices. Importantly, this
does not represent a new cost to the city and its taxpayers because the city
stands to save far more by no longer incarcerating people simply because
Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

13

A system that is paid in full

COMMITMENTS
NEEDED

INVOICE
For
Replacement
funds to end
money injustice

Funds needed
Court…....$1.95M
DA…..........$484K

ONE-TIME
PAYMENT

to: Court +$3.8M
for: 2019
from: City

OPD….......$377K

TOTAL....$2.8M

ADJUSTMENTS
NEEDED

DA…......+$484K
OPD...….+$377K

Judges
replace money bail
and end conviction
fees to prevent
unnecessary
incarceration
Mayor and
City Council
reinvest jail savings
to directly fund
the court, DA, and
OPD going forward

they cannot pay bail. (See “Impact of the recommended reforms” at page
32.) And it is less than the city’s $3.8 million additional investment to the
court alone for 2019. As a whole, the system is paid in full.
Financially, New Orleans is poised to end money injustice, and the
city’s increased investment in the court is a good foundation on which real
collaboration can be built. Going forward, there are responsibilities on all
sides: the mayor and city council must commit to sufficient and sustained
funding for all three criminal justice agencies beginning with the 2020
budget. For their part, judges must break with convention and embrace
new practices.
There is much to gain for everyone. The court finally can have what
many judges have been pleading for—an alternative to funding their
operations on the backs of poor residents. They, along with prosecutors and
public defenders, can concentrate on doing justice without the competing
need to raise revenue to cover their own operating expenses. And together,
the city and its core criminal justice agencies can truly promote public safety
by having a system that detains the small minority of people who present
an unmanageable danger instead of the great majority who are merely poor.
All of this can be accomplished while saving taxpayers’ money.
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Shifting the focus away from money to
make fair and safe decisions about whom
to release pretrial	
Although the most sweeping bail reforms to date have taken place at the
state level, many localities could end the harmful use of money bail and
simultaneously enhance public safety, even within existing state laws.
New Orleans is one of those cities. Although the vagaries of Louisiana
law require setting money bail in some cases, Criminal District Court
judges could do that in ways that allow most people to be safely released.
They can use their discretion within the confines of state law to ensure
that the small number of people who pose a severe and imminent risk to
others are detained instead of using bail in ways that allow them to buy
their freedom. And with full replacement funding for the court, there is
no longer an economic incentive to continue the unfair and unsafe use of
money bail.
The decision-making tree on page 17 shows how judges could eliminate
the central role of money bail and focus instead on safely releasing and
supporting most people, while detaining those who present a clear
and imminent danger. The process leads to three possible outcomes: (1)
unconditional release for people whose risk of re-arrest is low; (2) release
with some degree of support and/or supervision tailored to the person’s
needs for those who fall in the middle range of risk for re-arrest; or (3)
preventive pretrial detention when a finding is made that no combination
of community support and supervision can mitigate an individualized,
fact-based determination of significant danger.
Much of the infrastructure required to support this shift in court
practice is already in place. New Orleans has had a pretrial services
program since 2012 and, in 2018, the court adopted the Public Safety
Assessment (PSA), a risk assessment process designed to reduce reliance
on money bail and instead make release and detention decisions based on
actuarial predictions. Drawing on a database of over half a million criminal
cases nationwide, the PSA gauges the risks of failure to appear in court and
re-arrest—both in general and specifically for violent crimes—during the
pretrial period.29

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15

Using the PSA and a locally constructed decision-making framework
(DMF), staff assess every person arrested for a felony offense and forward the
resulting risk level to the judge, district attorney, and public defender prior
to the person’s initial appearance in court. (A copy of the DMF, as developed
and used by the court and other system actors in New Orleans, is included
as Appendix B at page 54.) This provides the information judges would
need to safely release the vast majority of people, including some with
support and supervision, while also helping to identify those who require
closer scrutiny before a fair and reliable release decision can be made. As
an established part of the court system in New Orleans, full and proper use
of the PSA can support a money-free approach to pretrial decision making
that will enable many more people to remain with their families and in
their communities pending the resolution of their court cases.

The infrastructure to support this shift in
court practice is already in place.

Vera does not endorse use of the PSA or any other risk assessment tool
lightly. Debate happening nationally among researchers, advocates, court
system stakeholders, and others highlights the use and misuse of risk
assessment in the criminal justice system, including in the pretrial context.
The potential for exacerbating racial bias and using these tools to justify
the expansion of detention is real. (For more information, see “Benefits and
limitations of the Public Safety Assessment” at page 28.)
For this reason, certain safeguards are essential. They include only
using transparent risk assessment tools where the factors and scoring are
easily identifiable (as they are with the PSA), independently validated, and
the results can be examined or challenged as needed in court. In addition,
although a risk assessment finding on its own can justify releasing a
person, if detention is a possibility the court must conduct a full hearing to
give individualized consideration well beyond the simple risk score, as this
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Release and detention decision tree

DECISION
POINT:

Arrest

Release or consider detention?
Distinguish between the vast majority of people who can be safely
released and the few who present a clear and imminent danger.

DECISION
POINT:

Initital court
appearance

Release

Consider
detention

For a crime of
violence that
requires prison
or risk level 5.

Using a risk assessment instrument, determine
whether the person requires support and/or
supervision to return to court and avoid re-arrest.

Without
supervision

Risk level 1 or 2.

At a formal detention
hearing, present
evidence of a person’s
likelihood of posing a
clear and imminent
danger and consider
the pretrial supervision
options that would
mitigate that danger.

With
supervision

Risk level 3 or 4.

within three
days of
initial court
appearance

Detain or
release with
supervision?
Release with
enhanced
supervision

If pretrial supervision
can mitigate any
potential danger.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

DECISION
POINT:

Formal
detention
hearing

Detain

If the judge finds by
clear and convincing
evidence that detention
is the only safe option.

17

plan recommends, before taking away someone’s liberty. Finally, routine
review and discussion about the efficacy of the tool, including through
ongoing data collection and analysis, should be built into the infrastructure
that supports its use.
There are clear and successful precedents for adopting the pretrial
decision-making process outlined in the specific recommendations below.
Both New Jersey, which has fully moved away from money bail, and New
Mexico, which is on that path, follow these steps.30 The outcomes in New
Jersey are especially encouraging: a 30 percent decline statewide in the
total number of people held pretrial, while preventively detaining roughly
two out of every 10 people for reasons of public safety.31 These gains
happened in the first two years post-reform and during that time both
violent and nonviolent crime decreased in New Jersey.32
A number of counties and cities have begun to address money
bail ahead of statewide reform. Some of these efforts have been led
by prosecutors. In Philadelphia, for example, the district attorney has
identified 25 offenses (about 60 percent of all arrests) for which prosecutors
should consider not asking for money bail. Follow-up research shows that
the people released on their own recognizance under this initiative did not
fail to appear and were not re-arrested any more frequently than people
who were made to pay money to get out of jail.33 Dallas’s District Attorney
also recently took action, explaining, ”My own moral compass does not
allow me to sit and wait for others to decide to act when I also have the
power to do so. I am proposing an approach that makes public safety, not
wealth, the determining factor in bail decisions.”34
Judges, meanwhile, took the lead in New York City, before the state
legislature enacted changes significantly eliminating the use of money bail
for the vast majority of people charged with less serious and nonviolent
crimes. New York City judges have released 76 percent of people without
requiring the posting of money bail, and with good results: 86 percent
return to court as required and the city jails fewer people per capita than
any city in the country.35 In Houston, newly elected judges who support
bail reform took the first step in eliminating money injustice in pretrial
detention. Working together with prosecutors and the sheriff’s office, these
judges implemented a new system to eliminate money bail in misdemeanor
cases.36 In New Orleans as well, Criminal District Court judges can and
should take the lead.
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Bail and money bail: A brief history
Bail in New Orleans, as in most other cities and states,
has come to be understood as money one must pay to be
released pretrial. Bail and money are so closely linked at
this point that the more precise term “money bail” sounds
nonsensically redundant to most people. Yet for the first
hundred years in this country, and for hundreds of years
before that in England, this is not at all what bail meant.a
Historically in America, every state constitution—and
Louisiana was no exception—included the right to bail,
reflecting the presumption of innocence and upholding
the more general right to liberty. The right to be “admitted
to bail” in all but the most serious cases guaranteed an
individual’s pretrial release under reasonable conditions. An
upfront payment was not one of those conditions. In practice,
when a judge set a monetary bail amount, that was the
amount the arrested person, or someone vouching for that
person, would have to pay if they failed to come to court.
Edward Livingston, a foremost legal scholar at the time
of Louisiana’s first constitution, explained: “As it would be
oppressive in most cases to deprive the accused of his
liberty before trial, if he can give sufficient pledge for his
appearance at the trial, the law restores him his liberty on
his giving such a pledge. This pledge is called bail. When bail
is given, the prisoner must be discharged without extracting
from him the payment of any fees.”b
Things started to change in the late 19th century, as courts
began requiring up-front payment to release some people
out of concern that otherwise they might not return to court.
In many places, the change was purely pragmatic: the
frontier was vast and people more transitory. In the postReconstruction South, making people pay money to secure
their freedom was used like poll taxes to keep black people
from exercising newly won rights.c
Then, beginning in the 1890s, in a uniquely American way,
bail was commercialized. A change that began incrementally
is now in full flower. Bail was largely turned on its head—
from a presumptive right to be released on no more than
a promise to pay if one fled to a barrier to release for
anyone who cannot pay up front. Bail is now a revenuegenerating practice that benefits, first and foremost, the bail
bond industry and, in places like Louisiana, justice system
agencies, rather than the broader interests of justice.

The facts are clear: having money at stake—either a lump
sum or being on the hook to a bondsman—doesn’t make
people more likely to come to court or less likely to commit a
crime. Nearly everyone released on their own recognizance,
with appropriate support and limited supervision when
needed, voluntarily returns to court—for example, 88
percent in Washington, DC, and 83 percent in the entire
state of Kentucky.d Furthermore, 88 percent of people
released in each of these jurisdictions—which abandoned
or marginalized money bail years ago—were not re-arrested
during the pretrial period.e
Those with a vested financial interest continue to claim that
money bail protects public safety, when actually it does just
the opposite. The perverted form of bail now in use allows
people with money to buy their freedom even if they present
a significant and imminent danger. And the bail bond itself
does not promote safety; under Louisiana law, a bail bond
cannot be forfeited if the released person commits a crime.f
Indeed, courts have ruled that making people pay money as
a condition of release as a way to promote public safety is
irrational and thus unlawful.g
At the same time, money bail leads many people with
fewer resources to languish in jail. As an added negative
twist, pretrial detention itself has been shown to have a
criminogenic effect, increasing the chances that someone
detained today will commit a crime in the future.h The reasons
why are obvious: time spent in jail is incredibly destabilizing,
undermining family and community ties and often causing
people to lose their jobs and accumulate debt.
Public safety is a valid concern, and the legal concept of bail
has evolved in ways that could promote safer communities.
In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that bail can be withheld
in the rare cases in which the person poses an objective and
credible danger.i Importantly, the Court noted that money
bail has no meaningful relationship to ensuring safety. But
the widespread practice of requiring up-front payment of
money bail, and the false security it provides, creates an
impediment to making good decisions about whom to release
and whom to detain. The modern day use of money bail has
become a habit that is very hard to kick, propped up by false
narratives about crime and safety—and millions of dollars
in revenue.

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Recommended changes in Criminal District
Court practice
Recommendation 1
Although release pretrial is common under current court practices, it
is often delayed while people struggle to collect money for bail and, as
noted earlier, many people are unfairly and unnecessarily detained for
the entirety of their court cases. A system that is fair to all and safe, by
contrast, would reliably identify the small number of people who present
a significant and imminent danger and immediately release everyone else.
This principle is rooted in the constitutional mandate that “in our society,
liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial… is the carefully limited
exception.”37 A judge’s first obligation, in other words, is to determine
whether there is any objective basis to consider detention.
To avoid variation in how judges interpret what constitutes a danger
and respect the presumption of release, court systems must clearly define
and sharply limit the circumstances that trigger the possibility of detention.
It would be inappropriate, for example, to consider detaining someone
simply because he might miss a court date, or she might be re-arrested for
a crime that doesn’t harm anyone. The two factors known to the court in
every case are the arrest charge and assessed risk level as described above.
In most cases, these factors will justify the person’s immediate release. In
the minority of cases in which the gravity of the charge or high risk level
makes someone eligible for detention, these factors alone are not enough
for a judge to actually detain the person; futher judicial inquiry is required.
Following that line of reasoning, this plan recommends:
1.	 At initial court appearances, judges apply the presumption
of release and only consider detaining someone who (a)
has been arrested for a crime of violence for which state
law requires a prison sentence if convicted; or (b) was
assessed at the highest level of risk (level 5 of the DMF)
and there is reason to believe the person presents an
imminent danger to someone else or the community at

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large.* Under either circumstance, further judicial review is
required before making a release or detention decision (see
Recommendations 7 & 8). Absent these circumstances,
the person will be released immediately without having to
pay money.
Based on arrest charge and PSA results from 2018, judges will be able
to immediately release an estimated 73 percent of people arrested for a
felony offense.
Recommendation 2
For that great majority of people who can be safely released at first
appearance under the criteria defined in Recommendation 1, the judge
must determine whether there is reason to impose conditions that require
certain behaviors and/or limit others during the pretrial period. Here as
well, the assessed risk level provides guidance.
People who fall into the lower levels of risk on the DMF are very likely
to meet their obligations without mandated programming or supervision.
All they need is information about the time and place of their next
hearing. Reminder calls or texts are an effective form of pretrial support.38
Imposing unnecessary conditions of release is actually counterproductive,
because raising the bar of what’s required merely increases the chances a
person will fall short.39 Imposing unnecessary conditions is also unlawful:
any restriction on an individual’s liberty may be no greater than what
is necessary to ensure the person returns to court and avoids arrest.40
Following this line of reasoning, the plan recommends:

* There are a number of ways to define “crime of violence.” This plan uses a list of crimes
produced by a working group convened by the mayor’s office, Supreme Court, and Criminal
District Court to guide implementation of the PSA and its decision-making framework. That list is
based on the definition used for the research on which the PSA is grounded: intentionally causing
or attempting to cause physical injury by use of force or violence against another person.
Because many of these violent offenses are in fact relatively minor (including misdemeanors), this
plan recommends narrowing the net to consider detaining only those people who, under state
law, would serve time in prison if convicted. The result is a set of 46 “mandatory prison violent
offenses.” See Appendix C at page 55 for a list of these offenses.

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2.	 Judges release people who fall into the lowest levels of
risk (levels 1 and 2 on the DMF) without imposing any
conditions of release, financial or otherwise.
Recommendation 3
People who fall in the middle range of risk on the DMF are likely to
benefit from some support and possibly supervision to meet their pretrial
obligations. Although judges are unlikely to have enough information at
the initial hearing to mandate specific services or levels of supervision,
they can still release the person and require compliance with a plan to be
developed by the pretrial services agency pursuant to an individualized
needs assessment.
Such a plan would identify the person’s salient needs related to
returning to court and remaining arrest free and match those needs
with appropriate community-based services and resources. The pretrial
services agency already serves much of this function. To further strengthen
its work, in 2019 the city funded the addition of two supervision case
managers, bringing the total number to four.
Separately, the mayor’s office has committed funds from the Safety and
Justice Challenge to develop a community-supported release program that
will engage community members in helping their neighbors overcome
challenges during the pretrial period. The goal is to tap the strength of New
Orleans’s neighborhoods, enlisting fellow residents to support one another.
That might include, for example, giving someone a ride to court, caring
for their children while they attend a court hearing, or simply providing
emotional support during a difficult period. Given the expanded capacity
of pretrial services, along with these promising developments, this plan
recommends:
3.	 Judges release people who fall into the middle range of
risk (levels 3 and 4 on the DMF) with the condition that
they (a) comply with requirements set by pretrial services’
supervision team based on an individualized needs
assessment; or (b) participate in a community-supported
release program once up and running.

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Recommendations 4 & 5
This plan further recommends:
4.	 Going forward, pretrial services become even more
effective by shifting emphasis from supervision to support
for the majority of people, reserving supervision for those
at the higher levels of risk and need.
5.	 Any mandatory condition of release be available free of
charge to the defendant to avoid possible financial barriers
to accessing those services and the accumulation of
criminal justice debt.
Recommendation 6
Louisiana, perhaps unique among the states, bars judges from releasing
people on their own recognizance (known as ROR) if they were arrested
for any one of a wide range of offenses involving drugs or violence. In
these situations, judges must set money bail. But they can impose a
genuinely nominal bail amount every person could easily pay (or that could
be paid for them by a standing fund). As U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance
wrote in finding that Louisiana’s statutes restricting judges’ ability to use
ROR are not unconstitutional in all applications, “If the judge agrees [that
release is appropriate], she may set bond in an amount the defendant can
satisfy, be it a hundred dollars or ten dollars or even ten cents.”41 To comply
with state law without impeding the goal of immediate release, this plan
recommends the following form of release:
6.	 Judges release people (with or without conditions) on their
own recognizance or, if the offense for which they were
arrested is “ROR-restricted” under state law, set a nominal
money bail amount of one dollar “or even ten cents” to
ensure their release without delay.

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Recommendation 7
Although the great majority of people can be safely released based on basic
information available during their initial court hearing, deciding between
release and detention for the much smaller number of people identified at
first appearance as possibly presenting a danger to others requires further
careful consideration.
The federal courts, including in New Orleans, have made clear that a
stringent judicial process, applying heightened legal standards, is required
before a person may be detained.42 Any time the government deprives a
person of his or her constitutional liberty, it must justify that denial with
the strongest demonstration of necessity. Moreover, public safety depends
on the appropriate use of preventive detention. Detaining someone without
sufficient cause is not only unfair, it is counterproductive, since the
experience of incarceration has been demonstrated to have a criminogenic
effect, increasing the chances a person will commit future crimes.43 For
these reasons, this plan recommends:
7.	 For people identified at first appearance as possibly
presenting a danger to others based on the severity of
their arrest charge or high risk level (as outlined in
Recommendation 1), judges conduct a full evidentiary
hearing centered on the likelihood, degree, and specificity
of the danger posed and exploring ways to potentially
mitigate that danger with support and supervision in
the community. Such a hearing will be held no more than
three days following the person’s initial appearance. The
arrested person will be provided counsel and be given clear
notice of the issues to be decided and a full opportunity to
be heard, including the opportunity to call witnesses and
present evidence.
To actually detain someone, the judge must make a
finding on the record, supported by clear and convincing

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evidence, that serious and imminent danger to a particular
individual or the community exists that cannot be
mitigated by applying conditions of release. That finding
will specify the facts on which it relies. Absent such a
finding, the judge releases the person with enhanced
support and supervision as specified by the pretrial
services agency.
Most people who meet this strict standard for detention are detainable
under the Louisiana Constitution. Article 18 of the Declaration of Rights
limits detention to people charged with crimes of violence and drug
distribution and who are determined to pose an imminent danger.44 This
would cover everyone arrested for a mandatory prison violent felony
offense and most, if not all, those assessed at risk level 5 for whom the
court makes the necessary finding of danger that cannot be mitigated.
However, there may be a small number of people whose charge makes
them ineligible for detention under the constitution and must be released.
They should be released with enhanced support and supervision.
Recommendation 8
Grounded in an expansive right to pretrial release, Louisiana statutes
appear to allow courts to deny release on bail to a smaller subset of people
(those charged with capital murder, domestic violence, or sex offenses) than
does the state constitution, or in limited circumstances (when the arrested
person has certain prior failures to appear or is a noncitizen charged with
causing a fatality).45 Nevertheless, Louisiana courts have determined that
people who fall outside these groups may be detained when money bail is
set in an amount they cannot afford. Therefore, the courts operate under
the assumption that an unreachable money bail is lawful in Louisiana and
should be used in situations when detention is determined to be necessary
but state statutes do not allow bail to be denied outright—assuming of
course the state constitution allows it. With these legal constraints in
mind, this plan recommends:

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8.	 To achieve preventive detention for the relatively small
number of people found to present an imminent danger
to others that cannot be managed through supervised
release (following the process defined in Recommendation
7), judges deny bail when expressly allowed under state
statute or, when not allowed by statute, set a clearly
unreachable bail amount, such as $10 million, to ensure
detention.
Recommendation 9
The above recommendations would yield substantial reductions in
unnecessary and unfair pretrial detention (see “Impact of the recommended
reforms” at page 32). However, one additional safeguard would need to be
implemented to prevent against another form of unnecessary detention—
specifically for people who are arrested while on probation. When
someone on probation is arrested for a new felony offense, it is common to
detain the person simply for the fact of being arrested, which is presumed
to be a violation of the terms of community supervision. In other words,
even if the judge presiding over the new arrest believes the person can
be safely released pretrial, the so-called probation “detainer” trumps that
judicial determination.
A recent change in policy by the Louisiana Division of Probation
and Parole addressed the same problem for people on parole.46 But the
problem persists among people on probation and is a major driver of
local incarceration in New Orleans. On any given day in August through
December of 2018, approximately 220 people (18 percent of the entire jail
population) were held in jail on a probation detainer accompanying a new
arrest. And 78 percent of those new arrests were not for a violent felony
offense that carries a mandatory prison sentence (mandatory prison
violent felony offense) or of people assessed at risk level 5 on the DMF.
If not addressed, this dynamic will mute the impact of moving away from
money bail.
The state should limit the use of probation detainers as it has done for
people on parole. Parole cases are generally more serious than probation

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cases; people on parole are serving the final part of a prison sentence, while
probation is a punishment given in lieu of incarceration. Moreover, most
people detained for an alleged violation of probation are allowed to return
to the community once the allegations are adjudicated.47 A parallel can be
drawn with people detained pretrial who are released as soon as their cases
are resolved: jailed while presumptively innocent, freed when pronounced
guilty—the exact opposite of how a justice system should operate. If the
state doesn’t act, the court should. To address this persistent injustice and
driver of unnecessary detention, this plan recommends:
9.	 The Louisiana Division of Probation and Parole ends the
unconsidered use of probation detainers through a change
in policy or, absent action by the state, judges exercise
their authority to terminate a probation detainer when it
is based solely on a new arrest and the judge intends to
release the person in that new case.
Recommendation 10
In order to have maximum impact and be truly fair, the practices described
in the recommendations above should be applied retrospectively to people
currently held in the New Orleans jail, facilitating their release where safe
and appropriate. Specifically, this plan recommends:
10.	 Judges consider releasing people presently detained
because they cannot pay the money bail set, following the
same decision-making process they apply in new cases.
And, absent a change in policy by the Louisiana Division of
Probation and Parole, judges use their authority to release
those held solely because of a probation detainer based on
a new arrest for which release is appropriate.

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Benefits and limitations of the Public Safety Assessment
Developed by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the
Public Safety Assessment (PSA), is an actuarial pretrial risk
assessment process. It draws on weighted risk factors that
include age; current charge; and criminal history, including
failure to appear in court and prior violent convictions.
Both the risk factors and their respective weights have been
validated to a high level of predictive accuracy—for both
failure to appear in court and re-arrest during the pretrial
period using a large sample of criminal cases nationwide.a
The PSA is most helpful in identifying the great majority of
lower-risk individuals who should be immediately released.

the PSA was created, the great majority of people released
pretrial make all of their court appearances, and many
people who miss a single court date come back to court soon
after on their own accord. The same data also shows that
fewer than 20 percent of people who score at the highest
level of risk are re-arrested if released, and those arrests
are typically for a minor or nonviolent crime.c Re-arrest for
a violent crime while on pretrial release is truly rare. Even
among people who trigger the PSA’s flag for potential rearrest for a violent crime, only 7 percent are in fact arrested
for a violent crime while their original cases are pending.d

The PSA scores both the risk of re-arrest and the risk of failing
to appear in court from a low of one to a high of six. Those
scores are combined in a locally constructed matrix, or
decision-making framework (DMF), made up of five risk levels
with corresponding recommendations about release and
possible accompanying support and supervision. (A copy
of the DMF, as developed and used by the court and other
system actors in New Orleans, is included as Appendix B at
page 54.) Release without money bail is recommended for
people who fall into risk levels 1 through 4 on the DMF, with
increasing degrees of support and supervision recommended
for risk levels 2, 3, and 4. For people who fall in the highest risk
category, level 5, the framework recommends that detention
be considered, but not required or even presumed. The DMF
separately considers any increased risk that someone will
be arrested for a violent offense during the pretrial period.
People flagged in this way automatically score one risk level
higher than they would absent this flag.

Like any risk assessment tool, the PSA has other inherent
limitations. Because its predictive power depends largely
on factors based on a person’s criminal history, it imports
the racial disparities of the criminal justice system into
its calculations of risk. The use of criminal history data is
inherently problematic because police enforcement practices
disproportionately target communities and people of color.e In
addition, because the PSA is based on a large body of cases
from the past, when practices supporting released people
were less refined than they are in many places today, it
overstates the risk a person poses if released with appropriate
support and supervision in a high functioning court system.

The PSA, as with all actuarial pretrial risk assessments,
has inherent limitations, which continue to be the subject
of debate.b Critical to applying the PSA and the DMF
is understanding that assessing risk is not the same as
predicting the future—something no tool can do. A person’s
risk level is not his or her fate. Based on the data from which

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For all these reasons and because the law requires an
individualized review of all of the facts, applied with a strong
presumption of release, the PSA—or any actuarial risk
assessment process—should never be the sole or even the
central basis for detaining a person pretrial. The PSA can be
used to guide the release of the majority of people arrested
for felonies in New Orleans. And it can provide an initial
indicator of whether there is reason to consider detention. But
any decision to detain someone must flow from identification
and evaluation of real—not merely actuarial—risks specific
to that person and his or her circumstances.

Lifting the burden: Eliminating fines and
fees imposed at conviction
Courts in New Orleans also extract money, or try to, at the conclusion
of a criminal case. Louisiana law requires certain fees and, more rarely,
fines be imposed whenever someone is convicted of a crime. In theory,
fines and fees have different purposes. As a type of sentence, fines can
be used to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, if levied in amounts
that are possible to pay without great hardship. Fees, on the other hand,
exist solely to raise money to support the system’s operating costs. Under
Louisiana law, however, the line between fines and fees is blurry at best
since the court and district attorney also reap the revenue from fines. The
law also permits judges to levy additional costs at their discretion, which
historically they have done routinely. But both the law and its common
application are facing serious legal challenges because of the court’s
financial conflict of interest that the law sets up. The two August 2018
federal court rulings require reform.
Burdensome financial charges, out of sync with people’s financial
resources, were created and are almost always imposed purely to generate
revenue for the Criminal District Court and other agencies and should be
immediately eliminated. Indeed, judicial practice in this regard already
seems to be changing in the wake of the federal court rulings.

Recommended changes in Criminal District
Court practice
Recommendations 11 & 12
The recent substantial increase in city funding for the Criminal District
Court is intended, at the judges’ request, to eliminate the court’s need
for revenue from conviction fines and fees (as well as bail bond fees).
It provides both a financial incentive and a clear message of support to
the court to end this unfair and counterproductive practice. Given the

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

29

demonstrated commitment of the mayor and city council in this area, this
plan recommends:
11.	 Judges immediately stop imposing any type of monetary
charge at conviction.
12.	 Applying a retrospective lens, judges: a) expunge existing
conviction fees; and b) recall outstanding warrants issued
for failure to pay or appear in court for a payment hearing.
Both recommendations are in fact necessary to comply with the federal
court ruling in Cain v. City of New Orleans and the U.S. Supreme Court and
Fifth Circuit decisions that ruling is based on. Cain addresses “court debt,”
whether from fines or fees. Although the ruling distinguishes debt owed
to the court from debt owed to other agencies and does not bar the latter,
it restates decades of constitutional law in holding that in no instance
can someone be jailed or threatened with jail for failing to pay what they
cannot afford.
Because the vast majority of people convicted are too poor to hire
a lawyer, it makes little sense to continue the practice of imposing and
collecting conviction fees from the slim minority who might be able to
afford them and only to benefit agencies other than the court. Moreover,
the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Timbs calls into question the
lawfulness of state-mandated fines and fees, whomever they financially
benefit, as they inevitably are constitutionally “excessive” for those who
cannot afford the mandatory amount.
These simple changes in practice could free thousands of New
Orleanians from having to choose each month between paying off their
debt to the system and meeting their own and their families’ basic needs.
Those stripped of the right to drive because of unpaid fees—a common
practice—could apply for new licenses, giving them access a broader range
of jobs. The trauma that comes from living under constant threat of arrest
and incarceration would end. And, instead of spending hours trying to
collect unpaid fees from poor people, judges and court staff could focus on
their core responsibilities of advancing justice and public safety.

30

Vera Institute of Justice

Bail, fines and fees in municipal court
This report focuses on people arrested for felony offenses
whose cases are heard in the state Criminal District Court,
where money bail still has a central role in determining
pretrial release decisions and where burdensome fines and
fees are routinely imposed at conviction. Owing to recent
reforms, these dynamics are somewhat less pervasive and
onerous in the city’s Municipal and Traffic Court. But even
there, injustices persist.
Bail: Gaps in reform. In January 2017, the city council passed
a municipal bail ordinance intended to eliminate the use of
money bail as a condition of pretrial release and prevent
people from being detained simply because they cannot pay
bail. The ordinance requires municipal court judges to “make
an inquiry into the person’s ability to pay and a finding that
the person has the present ability to pay the amount set.”a
Although it appears that judicial practice does not always
match what is required under the ordinance, the law itself
provides a basis for enforcing compliance and is a model for
additional measures to encourage fair court practices, which
the city should do.
More problematic, the municipal bail ordinance does not
cover people arrested for state misdemeanor crimes, even
though their cases are also adjudicated in municipal court.
The most straightforward way to close this gap in fairness
and efficiency would be for police to use the municipal code
rather than state statute whenever making a misdemeanor
arrest that involves booking the arrested person into jail.b
On any given day in 2018, approximately 77 people arrested
for state misdemeanor crimes were in jail because they were
unable to pay bail. (See Appendix A for a description of the
data sources used and analyses conducted for this report.)
There are parallel municipal crimes for every state
misdemeanor crime, with the same definitions and similar
penalties. The city council should equalize the penalties, and
the mayor’s office should direct the police department to rely
exclusively on the municipal code when making custodial
arrests for misdemeanor offenses. These simple reforms
would extend the protections offered by the city’s own bail
ordinance to everyone adjudicated in municipal court. And
they would free district attorney staff to focus solely on
felony crimes in Criminal District Court.
There is one caution: Vera found that nearly a quarter of
the people held pretrial for a state misdemeanor arrest
(19 of the 77 people) were arrested for domestic abuse

battery. Additional precautions may be necessary to
protect alleged victims in these cases. Present law already
provides an option. Municipal court judges may detain a
person without bail for up to five days if the misdemeanor
arrest involves domestic violence. During this period, the law
envisions holding a full evidentiary hearing to determine
whether the person can be safely released and, if so, under
what conditions, or whether preventive detention—which
is expressly allowed for domestic violence offenses—is
necessary.c With careful use of this authority, municipal court
judges can actually make more fair and safe decisions about
pretrial release and detention than they would if relying on
money bail as the determining factor in whether an arrested
person is released.
Conviction fees: Reduced incentive but still commonplace.
In conjunction with the merger of the Municipal and Traffic
Courts in 2017, the city and municipal judges agreed that any
revenue from fines and fees imposed at conviction would go
directly into the city’s general fund. In turn, the city began
funding the municipal court at a level consistent with the
court’s needs. This is a major step; it eliminates any overt
conflict of interest and reduces the incentive to levy these
financial charges.
However, these practices continue to be a source of injustice.
Although the financial burden and potential debt is far
lower than the costs imposed on people prosecuted in state
court, the municipal court’s use of conviction fees poses a
significant financial burden and does so unequally. In the
past, these fees have led to thousands of arrest warrants
being issued annually for failure to pay or failure to appear
in court to make a payment (4,004 warrants in 2015). Their
use thus raises the same concerns about equal protection
under the law and due process articulated in Cain v. City of
New Orleans, which addresses unconstitutional practices
in Criminal District Court. Also troubling, the reach of fees
levied in municipal court, even on a reduced scale, is much
wider: many more people are arrested for misdemeanors
than felonies, not even counting people charged with traffic
offenses, which the municipal court also hears.
The judges of the municipal court should end the use of all
conviction fees not mandated by state law, as the Juvenile
Court recently did, and only impose fines when the person
can pay without hardship. In turn, the city should sustain its
increased funding for the court despite the loss in revenue
from fees.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

31

IV. Impact of the
recommended reforms

E

nding the two biggest drivers of money injustice—bail and conviction
fees—and replacing lost revenue with direct funding from the city
makes sense and is a winning proposition for everyone other than
the for-profit bail bond industry. It refocuses the use of jail to actually
promote public safety, reducing the overall jail population significantly;
treats poor and low-income people fairly; and is a far better use of public
resources. Using the tax dollars in hand—and with some money to spare—
New Orleanians can have more safety and more justice. These impacts are
discussed below.

Preventing unnecessary, unfair, and
harmful incarceration
Despite significant reforms undertaken over the last few years—and a
steadily declining jail population—money injustice continues to cause
significant unfair and unnecessary incarceration. In a city in which 85
percent of people arrested are too poor to hire a lawyer, the cost of bail
or a bail bond is more than many can afford.48 Some people sit in jail for
weeks or months even before being formally charged. And those who are
prosecuted often plead guilty to get out of jail, whether they committed the
crime or not.49 In 2018, 1,756 people—encompassing roughly a third of all
cases resolved in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court that year—were
detained from the moment they were arrested, then released when their
cases ended. And the research is clear: people detained pretrial for any
length of time have much less favorable outcomes in their criminal cases
and in their lives overall.50
The bigger picture: in 2018, fully 37 percent of the entire jail population
on any given day—448 people—were locked up simply because they
couldn’t afford bail. And this excludes people with bail set at an amount

32

Vera Institute of Justice

Unnecessarily detained while legally innocent—then released

In 2018, 1,756
people were
detained from the
moment of arrest...

...because they couldn’t afford bail...

X

X

X

X

X

…just to be released back to the community when their cases ended.
refusal

dismissal

acquittal

EC
CA S

LOSE

time served

probation

D

That’s one third of the cases that ended in 2018.

exceeding $100,000, which would require paying more than $12,000 to
purchase a bond. When a judge sets such a high bail amount, the presumed
intention is to prevent the person’s release.51 This count also excludes
anyone held for an alleged probation or parole violation or for extradition
to another state—that is, people who wouldn’t get out even if their money
bail were paid.
“He wound up sitting there [in jail] four months, and they wound
up just dropping it because they didn’t have proof. So, this is like a
countdown.”*

* Quotations used in this report were collected during focus groups conducted in 2018, see
Appendix A at page 48 for details.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

33

Wealth determines who’s in jail

On any given day,
more than one third of
people in jail are locked
up because they can’t
pay the price of bail.
X

It is easy to get swept up in the numbers and overlook the people
involved and common hardships of being incarcerated. There is the
separation from loved ones and loss of a job and money your family
depends on. There are the endless hours without anything productive to
do in an environment that is painful: harsh lighting, constant noise, every
surface either metal or concrete, lack of fresh air and sunlight, unappetizing
or even inedible food.52 There is the physical insecurity, including fear
of being attacked by others who are locked up or by staff. Illnesses
and injuries are often misdiagnosed or left untreated, sometimes with
devastating consequences. People’s mental health deteriorates, pushing
some to take their own lives. In jails nationwide, suicide is the leading
cause of death.53 And more than a third of all deaths, whatever the cause,
happen in the first seven days of admission, so even very short jail stays
can end tragically.54
“The dehumanization. . . . If you’re an intelligent person who reads
and talks to people, and you care, it’s like you think you know how
horrible it is, but you don’t know.”
For the past six and a half years, the New Orleans jail has been
under federal court oversight because conditions fail to meet minimal
constitutional standards. Although conditions may have improved
somewhat, spending even a day in jail is still a harsh experience with
real risks. And yet the vast majority of people in jail today haven’t been
convicted of any crime and are mainly held because they can’t pay
money bail.
34

Vera Institute of Justice

Disproportionate burden on black New Orleanians

8 out of 10 people jailed because they’re too poor to pay bail are black.
X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

…and for those who managed to pay

$
$

$

$

$

$
$

$

$

$

$

$

$
$

$

$

$

black
families.

$
$

$

were paid by

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

69%

and
of conviction
fees...

$

$

88%

of money
bail...

$

Racially disproportionate arrest practices and economic inequality
mean that the jailing of people who can’t afford the price of freedom is
concentrated among black New Orleanians. In comparison with whites,
black people between the ages of 15 and 64 are arrested two and a half
times more frequently relative to their share of the city population, and
black families in New Orleans earn only 37 percent of what white families
earn.55 In 2017, eight out 10 felony defendants who spent more than two
days in jail simply because they couldn’t pay bail were black. Together,
these black New Orleanians spent a total of 52,657 days in jail—the
equivalent of 144 years—all in the space of a single year. A system that
concentrates its inherent harmful effects among black people, families, and
communities is doubly unjust.
“During my father’s incarceration the lights got cut off. . . . my mom
was going through a lot of stress and though she was compensating,
Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

35

you know, trying to help, but still it caused a lot of strain between
the entire family . . . emotional strain and especially financial
strain. Because, I mean, if you’re renting, you know, not all of us
own homes, you are scrounging to pay the rent and then also, you
know, pay the lights, and you know, eat.”
Releasing the vast majority of people while detaining the small
minority who pose a significant imminent danger would result in
hundreds fewer people in jail on any given day. The exact decrease depends
on how often Criminal District Court judges actually detain people
flagged at first appearance as presenting a potential threat—a judicial
finding that depends entirely on each person’s circumstances, measured
against a heightened legal standard as discussed in the previous section
of this report. Vera’s estimate, based on the recent composition of the jail
population, yields a range of possible decreases in the number of people
who would be jailed.
A quarter of people arrested for a felony-level offense are accused of
committing a violent crime that carries a mandatory prison sentence or are
assessed at risk level 5—the two circumstances that trigger consideration of
detention as discussed in Recommendation 1. Even if judges were to detain
all of them, there would be an estimated 304 fewer people in jail at any
one time, producing a 25 percent reduction of the current jail population.
Instead of roughly 1,200 people in jail on any given day, there would be
around 900.
This is the smallest possible decrease under the recommended reforms,
and it easily could be surpassed. Why? Because no system should detain
everyone eligible for detention, for that would mean the necessary
individualized review is meaningless. Even now, well under half of the
people who fall into these categories are detained because they can’t pay
bail: 29 percent of people arrested for a mandatory prison violent felony
and 42 percent of people assessed at risk level 5 on the PSA, based on jail
admissions in the latter part of 2018. If, for example, judges detained people
in these two groups at the same rate, albeit through the fair judicial process
recommended in this plan, the average daily jail population would drop by
an estimated 516 people—a 42 percent reduction. Although even greater
reductions are conceivable, it is also possible that some people in these two
groups who are currently released on money bail should in fact be detained
36

Vera Institute of Justice

to protect public safety. At least initially, the actual reduction is likely to lie
somewhere between 304 and 516 people.

Releasing the vast majority of people
while detaining the small minority who
pose a significant imminent danger would
result in hundreds fewer people in jail on
any given day.

If judges also immediately release everyone initially detained because
of an alleged probation violation accompanying a new arrest (excluding
people arrested for a mandatory prison violent felony offense or assessed as
risk level 5), the jail population would decrease by an estimated additional
171 people. Many of these people would be released eventually anyway to
continue serving out their terms of probation in the community.
The total projected incarceration impact of replacing money bail with
the fair and safe court practices outlined in this plan is likely to range from
a minimum of 304 fewer New Orleanians in jail every day up to 687—a
jail population reduction of between 25 and 56 percent. This projection
is based on jail data from the second half of 2018 when the average daily
population was 1,225 people.
“It seems to always be about just making that financial
compensation off of a person. And sometimes these people can’t
give that, you know. So, they end up getting warrants. They end up
getting put in jail, you know.”
Failure to pay conviction fees does not lead to incarceration nearly as
frequently or for as long as does money bail. Based on the data analysis
Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

37

Incarceration impact of implementing the plan

Status quo
1,225 people in jail

Resulting in:

Plan implemented

(second half of 2018)

People
detained
pretrial
only if they
present a
clear and
imminent
danger
to others

...at
least
304…
…up to
687 (or
possibly
more)...
...people no longer in jail.

published in Past Due, eliminating conviction fees would decrease the
average daily jail population by 10 people. But it would remove the
debilitating threat of arrest and incarceration from thousands of people.
The emotional weight of the debt, coupled with the threat of jail—even if
jail can be avoided by paying a little something on demand—marginalizes
and undermines people who already have a hard time making ends meet.
That kind of pressure and constant life disruption can, at the extreme, lead
people to commit new crimes.56

Generating savings for all New
Orleanians
Jailing people is expensive, and jailing people unnecessarily is a waste
of money. In 2018, the City of New Orleans spent $5.4 million to detain
people who could not afford to pay their way out. As already discussed,
the city alone bears this expense, while revenue from bail bond fees and
conviction fees supports the Criminal District Court, which imposes
these costs, along with four other state agencies. But even if all of the
revenue were channeled into the city’s coffers, the cost of this unnecessary
detention would exceed the revenue collected by nearly $2 million.

38

Vera Institute of Justice

The sheriff’s office spends $76 million a year to operate its jail. That’s an
average cost per person of $169 per day. Because many of those costs are
fixed and not subject to fluctuations in the jail population, the marginal
daily savings of keeping one person out of jail is around $33. But even at
this modest amount, the aggregate potential savings is enormous. Based
on the range of possible decreases in the jail population outlined above,
the city could save between $3.7 million and $8.3 million over the course
of a year by eliminating the unnecessary incarceration that results from a
reliance on money bail and unnecessary probation detention at the higher
end of the range.

The city could save between $3.7 million
and $8.3 million over the course of a
year by eliminating the unnecessary
incarceration that results from a reliance
on money bail and unnecessary
probation detention.

Achieving the full savings would require a reduction in the number of
housing units and accompanying jail staff to reflect the reduction in the
average daily population. However, because the jail and its budget are under
federal court oversight, reducing the facility’s budget is somewhat more
complicated than it would be otherwise. The city will need to demonstrate
to the federal judge overseeing the consent decree that any lingering
deficiencies in jail conditions are not the result of insufficient funding.
There is strong evidence to support a proportional reduction in the jail
budget as the population continues to decline. The sheriff’s office’s spending
to operate the jail has increased from $57 million in 2012, the year the

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

39

A reduced jail population is an opportunity to reduce the jail budget

Jail expenditures
per person

Jail expenditures

Jail population
3,500

$110M

2,645 people

$76 Million

$57 Million

1,284 people

201

2018

304 to 687 fewer
people in jail on
any given day

$10M

2012

2018

Reduced jail staffing
and costs will reduce
the overall jail budget

Replacing money bail

2012

Replacing money bail

500

275
$21

201

Vera Institute of Justice

2

,55

consent decree went into effect, to $76 million in 2018. During that period
the number of people in custody declined from 2,645 to 1,225. In other
words, spending increased by 34 percent while the number of people
that investment supported decreased by 54 percent. So, jail expenditures
per detained person nearly tripled. Ideally, the sheriff and the plaintiffs
in the case (the U.S. Department of Justice and the MacArthur Justice
Center) will support the city’s effort to gain the federal court’s approval
of a proportional reduction in spending on incarceration to support the
considerable expansion of safety and justice outlined in this plan.
If the jail population were to decrease by an additional 304 people,
the bare minimum estimated under these recommended reforms, it is
reasonable to expect the city to reduce its investment in the jail and
redirect a portion of those savings to the Criminal District Court, district
attorney, and public defender, replacing revenues from bail bond fees and
conviction fees in future years. And even with additional appropriations
totaling $2.8 million annually to replace those lost revenues, there is a
net savings to the city as a result of incarcerating fewer people: $900,000
at the lowest end of the range (304 fewer people in jail) and up to $5.5
million a year if the higher jail reductions forecast under this plan were to

40

8

$59
,190

0

%

be achieved (687 fewer people in jail, not including the small number now
jailed for inability to pay fines and fees).

Keeping hard-earned dollars where they
belong: At home
The cumulative financial savings for people who are arrested and convicted
and, by extension, their families, is even greater than what the city stands to
save. Consider what people currently sacrifice to pay bail. Fully 81 percent
of people arrested for a felony offense in 2017 were required to pay bail as
a condition of release—decisions made in the course of hearings lasting
a few minutes or even less. The median bail amount in these cases was
$5,000. To avoid being jailed pretrial, people with at least some financial
resources purchased a commercial bail bond. Even a cost of just a few
hundred dollars is a real financial hardship for low-income people and their
families. And the money isn’t temporarily out of pocket, it’s gone forever.
“It just goes on and on and on and on. . . . Even if everything goes
the way it’s supposed to go, you’re still stuck in this never-ending
cycle of all of the costs that people don’t even ever talk about.”
State law sets the bond premium at 12 percent of the entire bail amount
and allocates 9 percent to the bondsman. The remaining 3 percent is
split among four agencies, with the court receiving the lion’s share at 1.8
percent. The district attorney, public defender, and sheriff take the rest.
Across thousands of cases annually, the dollars add up. In 2017, residents of
New Orleans purchased their pretrial liberty at a cost of $6.8 million. Bail
bondsmen walked away with $5.1 million, $925,000 went to the Orleans
Parish Criminal District Court, and three other justice agencies split the
remaining nearly $700,000.
“It financially broke me . . . I’m the type of person, I didn’t want to let
him go in there and rot. I just wasn’t going to do that. . . . I was the
one who put up their house to get him out of jail.”

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

41

Millions taken from New Orleans families

fines
m o n and
e
feesy b a il

$

m

m o on
n e
baey bya
il il

$
$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$
$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$5.1M

in bail bond premiums

$

$

$

$

$

$

$

$1.6M + $1.9M

in bail bond
fees

in conviction
fees

Sheriff
$542,000
Bail bondsmen

Court
$1,954,000

DA
$484,000
OPD $377,000
Clerk $185,000

Moreover, a cruel irony of the focus on money is that people who
are able to pay bail often lose their public defender. The ability to scrape
together the cost of a bail bond is taken as a sign that the person can afford
to hire a lawyer, despite a Louisiana statute stating, “Release on bail alone
shall not disqualify a person for appointment of counsel.”57
While the total amount extracted in the form of conviction fees is less
than the total extracted through money bail, it is still significant and in fact
sends more money to government than bail bond fees. In 2017, residents
sentenced in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court who paid off at least
a portion of their conviction fees channeled $1.9 million to government

42

Vera Institute of Justice

agencies, including more than $1 million in revenue to the court itself.
By comparison, the sheriff’s office took in $322,000, the district attorney
$215,000, the clerk of criminal court $185,000, and the public defender
$177,000. (Following an August 2018 federal court ruling, described at page
13, revenue from conviction fees appears to be declining.)

The bulk of the savings will benefit
black families, as they pay the lion’s
share of money bail and conviction
fees. Fully, 88 percent of money bail
paid in felony cases in 2017 came from
black families.

By replacing money bail and eliminating fines and fees, families who by
and large are already struggling financially will save $8.7 million a year. The
bulk of the savings will benefit black families, as they pay the lion’s share
of money bail and conviction fees. Fully 88 percent of money bail paid in
felony cases in 2017 came from black families. As documented in Past Due,
the precursor to this report, 69 percent of conviction fees imposed in all
types of cases were charged to black defendants. Although mostly black
men are arrested, women bear most of the financial cost of money injustice.
They pay for the bail bonds to free their loved ones or, if they can’t, they pay
all the costs of keeping families together while the men are jailed.58 Now
is a critical time to unburden struggling black New Orleanians. Economic
disparity by race has been growing.59 This plan will take a huge bite out of
the money injustice that undercuts racial equity citywide.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

43

A better alternative
A better
alternative
begins
here

Resulting in
savings to the
city of $3.7M
to $8.3M

$

$

$

T

$

Resulting
in 304 to
687 fewer
people in jail

$

Savings to New
Orleans families of
$8.7M by not paying
money bail and
conviction fees

Allowing
for reduced
jail staffing
and costs

Enhancing safety
The ways in which the status quo undermines public safety are clear.
Money bail results in the wholesale detention of people because they are
poor, not because they present a significant danger to anyone, and research
shows that spending time in jail, even just a few days, is associated with
future criminal behavior.60 Also troubling, money bail allows the small
number of people who might cause serious harm to buy their way out
of jail; it is the key to release for 65 percent of all people arrested for a

44

Vera Institute of Justice

MEN

$

Judges
to replace
money bail and
end conviction
fees

E ST

$

INV

Full funding
ends conflict
of interest

$2.8M of which
can be passed on
to the court and
other agencies

RE

Mayor and City
Council to directly
fund the court,
DA, and OPD

mandatory prison violent felony or assessed at the highest level of risk.
Although the full impact is impossible to quantify, replacing money bail
with a system that reliably detains people who present a serious and
imminent threat will undoubtedly help build a safer community.

Money bail allows the small number of
people who might cause serious harm to
buy their way out of jail.

And at the tail end of the criminal justice process, fines and fees
imposed at conviction financially burden and undermine people precisely
when they need to focus on putting their lives in order. Eliminating
them will end the destabilizing impact they have on people’s lives. Money
injustice puts all of us at risk. Ending it will produce the gains in public
safety we all want.

Conclusion

E

veryone wants to live in a safe community and one that is
thriving economically—and the two are connected. The criminal
justice system should be one force among many that strengthens
neighborhoods citywide. But when the system extracts money from people
who are struggling economically and unnecessarily jails those who can’t
pay, those decisions drag down families and whole communities and
ultimately undermine public safety.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

45

The city can make transformative changes within existing state law that
will benefit all New Orleanians. The tools to support such change are in
place. The city has a court-operated pretrial services program, a record of
success in reducing the jail population without compromising public safety,
a commitment to lifting up struggling communities and building racial
equity, and a budget that removes the financial barriers to ending money
injustice. That budget can also serve as a moral document—a statement of
the city’s priorities, its vision of justice, and its commitment to spending
public money wisely. And the budget can be mechanism for holding city
officials and those the city funds accountable for operating a justice system
that is fair and safe for all New Orleanians.

The budget can also serve as a
moral document—a statement of the
city’s priorities, its vision of justice, and
its commitment to spending public
money wisely.

It is critical for the mayor to take a leadership role with strong support
from the city council. On the court’s part, strong and clear leadership by the
chief judge and others on the bench is essential. As for when the various
pieces of this approach should be implemented, it should be remembered
that the court already has full replacement funding, indeed significantly
more than it will lose. The court can immediately stop imposing fines and
fees, clear all existing debts, and release anyone jailed for failure to pay—
actions that would answer the federal court’s order in Cain.
As for replacing money bail with a decision-making process focused
on safety and justice, it will take some months to put these new practices
in place. Planning and early implementation should occur concurrently

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Vera Institute of Justice

with the formation of the mayor’s proposed 2020 budget to ensure
commensurate city investment going forward: fully supporting the
operation of the court, district attorney, and public defender without
extracting money from poor defendants and their families. With help from
the justice system leaders, the city can then turn to right-sizing the jail
budget and reinvesting the savings accrued by eliminating the costly and
unnecessary pretrial detention of poor people—a correct response to the
federal court’s ruling in Caliste.
By taking these actions, Criminal District Court judges, the mayor,
and city council members will fulfill their obligations as local leaders and
provide an inspiring model of local collaboration. They will make New
Orleans the first city in the country to replace money bail and conviction
fees—the twin pillars on which money injustice stands—with a fair, safetypromoting, and financially stable system of justice.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

47

Appendix A: Methodology
This appendix provides detail on Vera’s data sources and methods for the
administrative data, budget, and focus group analyses.

Administrative data analysis
Data sources. Vera used four data sources to estimate the impact of the proposed policy
changes: (1) five jail population “snapshot” tables that include booking, charge, release, and
disposition data for people held in the jail on August 2, 2018, September 10, 2018, October
9, 2018, November 1, 2018, and December 3, 2018; (2) Public Safety Assessment (PSA) tables
that contain risk scores for all people who were booked into the jail on new felony charges
and were administered the PSA from August through December 2018; (3) booking tables that
contain information about release terms (such as bail amounts) set at first appearance for
people admitted to the jail between August and December 2018; and (4) release tables, which
contain data for the dates of and reasons for release for people who were discharged from jail
between August 2018 and March 2019.
The Orleans Parish Criminal District Court began using the PSA in July 2018. The
assessment is administered to people with new felony arrest charges as they are booked into
the jail. August 2018 was the first month for which risk-score data was available. People
who were in jail on the snapshot dates but who did not have risk scores, either because they
were not assessed or were assessed with the previously used risk assessment, are included in
analysis and their risk scores coded as “null” (an average of 145 people each month).

Table 1

Average number of people in jail, August–December 2018*
Arrested for MPVF, no probation or parole holds, no out-of-state warrants
Assessed at risk level 5, no probation or parole hold, no out-of-state warrant
All others with felony arrest charges
Subtotal all new felony arrests
Felony probation holds with no MPVF, no risk level 5
All other felony probation holds

All others (people arrested for misdemeanors, municipal charges, etc)

* Totals may not sum due to rounding

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Vera Institute of Justice

610
171
48

Subtotal all felony probation holds

Average number of people in jail

280
25
304

220
395
1,225

The analysis includes people who were in jail custody because they were arrested on new
felony charges and had no out-of-state warrants or parole holds. People who were admitted
to the jail with new felony arrest charges and out-of-state warrants and/or parole holds were
excluded from analysis because, even if they were to make bail, their holds would prevent
their release.
The sample was further categorized into two groups: those without a probation hold and
those with a probation hold. Within each category, the analysis counts the number of people
in jail who were arrested for a mandatory prison violent felony (MPVF) charge and those
assessed at risk level 5 on the PSA’s decison-making framework (DMF). People with both an
MPVF and a risk level 5 were included in the MPVF group. The results were averaged across
the five months.
Estimating jail population reduction. As part of this analysis, researchers calculated the
rate of release before final case disposition for people who were arrested for an MPVF or
assessed as risk level 5 from August through December 2018. In that period, 146 people were
admitted to the jail on an MPVF arrest charge with no probation hold, parole hold, or out-ofstate warrant. By mid-March 2019, 81 of these people had either been released pretrial and/or
their cases had reached disposition: 38 people (47 percent) had been released pretrial, while 43
people (53 percent) had remained in jail until their final case disposition. For people assessed at
risk level 5, 113 entered the jail and 47 people (42 percent) remained in jail until their final case
disposition.
Vera researchers estimated the likely impact of the recommendations made in this
report on the jail population. To do so, researchers used the average jail populations from
August to December 2018, described above. The minimum impact estimated is a reduction
of 304 people—the number of people in jail on a felony arrest charge with neither an MPVF
nor assessed at risk level 5—out of a total jail population of 1,225. These people would be
automatically released as they are not eligible for detention under the plan.

Table 2

Estimated jail population reduction
Average
population

Percent
reduction

Jail
reduction

Felony arrests with neither MPVF nor risk level 5

304

100%

304

MPVF

280

71%

198

Risk level 5 with no MPVF

25

58%

15

All probation holds with no MPVF, no risk level 5

171

100%

171

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49

However, not all people held in jail on an MPVF or who are assessed at risk level 5 are
detained throughout their pretrial period. If, in addition to the 304 people identified above,
people in jail on an MPVF or assessed at risk level 5 were released by a judge at the same rate
that those people are currently being released on bail, an additional 198 people on MPVF
charges and 15 at risk level 5 would be released. This would result in a total reduction of
516 people. However, this number is not intended to be either a recommended or maximum
reduction, but rather is presented as a point of reference. In Vera’s sample, an additional
171 people who were neither arrested for MPVFs nor assessed at risk level 5 were detained
because of probation holds. If those people were also released, the total reduction would be
687 fewer people in jail.
Estimating number of people in jail because they cannot pay money bail. To
estimate the number of people held in jail because they cannot afford to pay money bail, Vera
calculated how many people were held in jail because their bail was set at $100,000 or less,
drawing on snapshot tables for August to December 2018. The figure is averaged over the fivemonth period for people with no probation or parole holds and no out-of-state warrants and
excludes people who were released on recognizance (ROR).

Table 3

Average number of people held on bail set at $100,000 or less

Average number held on bail set at $100,000 or less
People with felony charges

Number

Percentage

448

37%

358

29.2%

People with state misdemeanor charges

77

6.3%

People with municipal charges

11

0.9%

People with traffic charges

4

0.3%

Average jail population, August–December 2018

1,225

Budget analysis
The budget analysis was conducted using data from reports called “budget templates,” which
each agency provides to the city council with their annual budget request. Vera obtained
budget templates from the Criminal District Court (CDC), District Attorney (DA), Orleans
Public Defenders (OPD), and the Clerk of the Criminal District Court for 2017, and the Orleans

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Vera Institute of Justice

Parish Sheriff’s Office for 2016 (the template for 2017 was unavailable). These five agencies
received $3.5 million in bail fee and conviction fines and fees revenue, with $2.8 million in
revenue to the Criminal District Court, District Attorney, and Orleans Public Defenders alone.

Table 4

Total collected bail fees and conviction fines and fees by agency

Bail fees

Conviction
fines and fees

Total of bail
fees + conviction
fines and fees

Criminal District Court

$925,000

$1,028,700

$1,953,700

District Attorney

$269,569

$214,599

$484,168

Orleans Public Defenders

$200,000

$176,500

$376,500

Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office

$220,000

$321,500

$541,500

$185,000

$185,000

Agency

Clerk of the CDC
TOTAL

$1,614,569

$1,926,299

$3,540,868

Subtotal (CDC, DA, OPD)

$1,394,569

$1,419,799

$2,814,368

The Criminal District Court collected $925,000 in bail fees in 2017. Because the court
receives a 1.8 percent fee on all bonds, researchers estimated that total bonds in 2017 were
$51 million and that the commercial bail bond industry collected $5.1 million, based on the
knowledge that the commercial bail industry retained a 10 percent premium in 2017 rather
than the statutory amount of 9 percent.

Table 5

Estimated total bond amounts assessed and court and bond agent’s profits, 2017
CDC bail bond revenue (1.8% of total)
Estimated total bond
Estimated commercial bail bonds share (10% of total)

$925,000
$51,388,889
$5,138,889

Estimating cost savings. Vera estimated annual cost savings by multiplying the anticipated
reduction in the jail population by the marginal cost of incarcerating one person per day—
$33.21. This value was then multiplied by 365 days. The predicted loss of revenue from bails,

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

51

fines and fees was subtracted from the estimated savings in jail spending to reach a net
cost saving.

Table 6

Estimated jail population reduction and savings

Estimated
population
reduction

Jail savings

Bail fees and
conviction
fines and fees
to CDC, OPD,
and DA*

Total (minimum reduction)

304

$3,684,982

$2,814,368

$870,614

Total (further reduction)

516

$6,256,420

$2,814,368

$3,442,052

Total (further reduction plus
probation)

687

$8,329,222

$2,814,368

$5,514,854

Net cost
savings

* Figures in this column are calculated based on 2017 budget figures

Focus group analysis
In August 2018, Vera researchers conducted two focus group sessions with 18 purposively
sampled, self-described personal acquaintances (e.g., spouses/partners, parents, children,
friends) of defendants in the New Orleans court system. Respondents were recruited from the
general public using a variety of methods: advertisements posted to online platforms such as
Craigslist and Facebook and at various legal aid organizations within New Orleans, as well as
through in-person canvassing at the Orleans Justice Center’s visitation facility.
All prospective focus group participants were screened using an online survey to assess
their inclusion eligibility based on a series of selection criteria. These criteria were: (1) type of
relationship to the defendant; (2) whether the defendant’s case was adjudicated in New Orleans
criminal and/or municipal court; and (3) the length of time since the respondent’s last contact
with the New Orleans court system. In total, 25 qualified people were invited and scheduled to
participate in the two focus groups, and 18 appeared and participated on the day of the focusgroup sessions. All 18 participants provided informed written consent to voluntarily take part
in the focus groups, and they each received a $100 prepaid gift card as compensation for their
time and participation in the research study.

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Vera Institute of Justice

The first focus group included 11 respondents who indicated that they been asked to
contribute financially to obtain money bail for a defendant in the New Orleans court system.
The second focus group comprised seven respondents who self-reported that they had been
asked to financially assist defendants with making payments associated with post-convictionrelated fines and/or fees assessed by a New Orleans court.
The focus group discussions centered on the respondents’ experiences with the decisionmaking process and the various ramifications of financially assisting someone they knew
who was assessed money bail or post-conviction fines and/or fees in either of the courts. In
addition, participants in both groups were asked about their thoughts on how the city’s justice
system is currently funded, as well as on how this system of funding could be improved in the
future. The focus group sessions were audio recorded, and the audio files were subsequently
transcribed by an external vendor. The research team coded and analyzed the transcripts using
the software application MAXQDA for qualitative and mixed-methods data analyses.

Table 7

Total collected bail fees and conviction fines and fees by agency

Respondent
characteristics
Gender

Defendant’s adjudicating
court

Type of financial support
provided to defendant
Respondent’s most recent
interaction with the New
Orleans court system

Category

Focus group one Focus group two
(money bail)
(fines & fees)
respondents
respondents
n = 11
n=7

Male

3

3

Female

8

4

Orleans Parish Criminal District
Court

7

5

New Orleans Municipal Court

0

1

Both courts

4

1

Paid pretrial money bail

6

0

Paid post-conviction fines/fees

0

4

Paid both

5

3

Within the past year

8

5

1–2 years ago

3

2

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

53

Appendix B: New Orleans decision-making framework
New Orleans Public Safety Assessment Model
Decision-Making Matrix and Release Recommendations
Step 1: Pretrial Services completes PSA and provides FTA and New Criminal Activity (NCA) scores
Step 2: Apply the scores from Step 1 to the Decision-Making Matrix to determine the risk level
Step 3: Use the risk level in Step 2 to determine release and supervision recommendations
Decision-Making Matrix
New Criminal Activity (NCA) Score
Risk of
Failure to
Appear
(FTA)
Score

NCA 1

NCA 2

NCA 3

NCA 4

NCA 5

FTA 1

Risk Level
1

Risk Level
1

FTA 2

Risk Level
1

Risk Level
1

Risk Level
2

Risk Level
3

Risk Level
4

FTA 3

Risk Level
2

Risk Level
2

Risk Level
3

Risk Level
4

Risk Level
5

FTA 4

Risk Level
2

Risk Level
3

Risk Level
4

Risk Level
4

Risk Level
5

FTA 5

Risk Level
3

Risk Level
3

Risk Level
4

Risk Level
5

Risk Level
5

Risk Level
5

Risk Level
5

Risk Level
5

FTA 6

NCA 6

Release & Supervision Recommendations
Risk Level I

Release
Recommendation:

Court Date
Reminder Texts**

Risk Level II

Risk Level III

Risk Level IV

Release
Release
Release
Release
(ROR if eligible) (ROR if eligible) (ROR if eligible) (ROR if eligible)
No
Supervision

✓

Administrative
Supervision

✓

Standard
Supervision

✓

Intensive
Supervision

✓

Risk Level V
Detention
Hearing
If released:
Maximum
Supervision

✓

New Arrest Checks

Monthly

Monthly

Monthly

Monthly

Face to Face
Contact

Initial

1x/month

2x/month

At least 3x/month

Phone Contact

1x/month

1x/month

2x/month

2x/month

*Note: the presence of a Violent Activity flag increases a defendant’s risk by one level, e.g. from Risk Level I to
Risk Level II
**Court date reminder texts will be sent by the City to defendants 48 hours in advance of upcoming court dates

Source: City of New Orleans, Office of Criminal Justice Coordination, https://perma.cc/GRN5-REMH.

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Appendix C: Mandatory prison violent felony offenses
In this report, Vera uses the term “mandatory prison violent felony offenses” to refer to a set of Louisiana
offenses that carry a mandatory prison sentence and are classified as violent according to the definition
used for the Public Safety Assessment (PSA). The complete list of offenses is presented below. The definition
of violence used by the PSA includes offenses in which a person intentionally causes or attempts to cause
physical injury through use of force or violence against another person; as such, an attempt to commit any of
the listed offenses is also considered a mandatory prison violent felony offense. Note that many crimes have
subsections that include misdemeanors as well as felonies, and subsections that allow sentences other than
prison in addition to those which carry a mandatory prison sentence. Only the specific subsections below are
mandatory prison violent felony offenses. All offenses are found in Title 14 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes.
28.1 – Solicitation for murder
30 – First degree murder
30.1 – Second degree murder
31(B) – Manslaughter if victim is under 10 years old
32(C)(2)(a) – Negligent homicide when victim under 10
years old
32.1 – Vehicular homicide
34(B) – Aggravated battery when victim was armed services
member and battery committed because of that status

46.3(A)(3) – Trafficking of children for sexual purposes when
permitted by a parent or guardian
46.3(D)(1)(b) – Trafficking of children for sexual purposes when
victim is under 14
46.3(D)(1)(c) – Trafficking of children for sexual purposes with
prior conviction for sex offense
51 – Aggravated arson
60 – Aggravated burglary
62.8 – Home invasion

34.1(C) – Second degree battery when victim was armed
service member and committed because of that status

64 – Armed robbery

34.2(2) – Battery of a police officer while in jail or other facility

64.2 – Carjacking

34.7(C) – Aggravated second degree battery when victim was
armed service member and committed because of that status

81.2(B)(3)(a) – Molestation of juvenile when victim is 13 years to
under 17

34.9.1(D) – Aggravated assault on a dating partner when minor
child is present

81.2(D)(1) – Molestation of juvenile when victim is under 13

64.1 – First degree robbery

35.3(E) – Domestic abuse battery third conviction

81.2(D)(2) – Molestation of a person with physical or mental
disability

35.3(F) – Domestic abuse battery fourth conviction

89.1 – Aggravated crime against nature

37.1 – Assault by drive-by shooting

93.3(E)(2) – Cruelty to persons with infirmities, subsequent
conviction

37.7(D) – Domestic abuse aggravated assault when child
present
40.2(2)(a) – Stalking when, after trial, victim was in reasonable
fear of bodily injury or death
42 – First degree rape
42.1 – Second degree rape
43.2(2) – Second degree sexual battery when victim is under 13
43.3(C)(2) – Oral sexual battery when victim is under 13
44 – Aggravated kidnapping
44.1 – Second degree kidnapping
45 - Simple kidnapping
46.2(B)(3) – Human trafficking with victim under age 18

94(C) – Illegal use of weapons second offense as long as 94(D)
does not apply
94(E) – Illegal use of weapons by discharging firearm from
motor vehicle on a street in order to harm or frighten another
person
94(F) – Illegal use of weapons by discharging firearm during
violation of controlled substances laws
113 – Treason
128.1(A)(1) – Terrorism coupled with intentional killing of a
human being
128.1(A)(4) – Terrorism coupled with arson of a structure,
watercraft, or movable

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55

Endnotes
1	

See Community Justice Exchange, “National Bail Fund Network:
Directory of Community Bail Funds,” last updated May 3, 2019,
https://perma.cc/AN3N-QHDT.

14	 Demario Davis and Benjamin Watson, “Jailing People Just Because
They Can’t Afford Bail Doesn’t Make Us Safer,” Times-Picayune,
September 30, 2018 (opinion), https://perma.cc/7S9Z-A9RL.

2	

Charles Koch Institute, “New Survey: With Increased Understanding
of Current Practices, Americans Support Reforms to Pretrial and
Money Bail Systems,” https://perma.cc/VAM6-E65F.

3	

Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (1952); United States v. Salerno,
481 U.S. 739 (1987); and Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983).

15	 Email correspondence between the authors and a communications
consultant at New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice,
dated March 15, 2019, on file with Vera; and Helen Freund, “A
Chance at a New Life: Warrants, Some Court Fees Slashed at
Second ‘Warrant Clinic’ in New Orleans,” New Orleans Advocate,
September 30, 2017, https://perma.cc/JM9J-W4RZ.

4	In Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. ___ (2019), the “fine” at issue was
the seizure of the defendant’s car. The Court reiterated that the
Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment applies to all
economic sanctions that are at least partially punitive, such as
conviction fees as imposed in Louisiana.
5	

6	

See Youngjin Choi, “Lessons from California and New Jersey Bail
Reform Legislation,” New York Law Journal, December 7, 2018,
https://perma.cc/7JR3-Q7ZB; David Iglesias and Brett Tolman,
“New Pretrial Release Rules are a Positive Step,” Albuquerque
Journal, October 4, 2018 (opinion), https://perma.cc/N55C-KJ89;
and New York State Office of the Governor, “Governor Cuomo and
Legislative Leaders Announce Agreement On FY 2020 Budget,”
press release (Albany, NY: Office of the Governor, March 31, 2019),
https://perma.cc/PF7Z-8UWH.
Joshua Satatini, “SF Abolishes Criminal Justice Fees,” San
Francisco Examiner, May 22, 2018, https://www.sfexaminer.com/
news/sf-abolishes-criminal-justice-fees/.

7	

Fines & Fees Justice Center, “Home,” https://perma.cc/WJG5-VPV7.

8	

Mathilde Laisne, Jon Wool, and Christian Henrichson, Past Due:
Examining the Costs and Consequences of Charging for Justice
in New Orleans (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017), https://
perma.cc/J7QF-3JZS.

9	

Ibid., 10.

10	 Ibid., 18.
11	 “Eliminating bail is as much about reducing the youth detention
population and addressing racial disparities in juvenile justice as it
is about financial issues,” Chief Judge Anderson wrote in the court’s
press release. See Heather Nolan, “Bail will No Longer Be Used In
New Orleans Juvenile Court as a Condition of Pre-Trial Release”
Times-Picayune, January 4, 2019, https://perma.cc/6ZSQ-EDJK.
12	 Cain v. New Orleans, No. 2:15-cv-04479-SSV-JCW (E.D. La, December
13, 2017) (Order and Reasons), 24-25, https://perma.cc/Y778-XX5B.
13	 Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, “Standing Policy on Juvenile
Administrative Fees,” effective June 20, 2018, https://perma.cc/
AU53-L7E8.

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16	 Mayor-Elect LaToya Cantrell, Transition Report, (New Orleans:
Forward Together New Orleans, 2018), 59. https://perma.cc/5RQSPEBQ.
17	 For data on the New Orleans Parish Jail population dating back to
2010, see New Orleans City Council, Criminal Justice Committee,
“Consent Decree Dashboard: New Orleans Jail Population
Snapshot,” https://council.nola.gov/committees/criminal-justicecommittee/.
18	 For national jail data, see Zhen Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2017
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2019), https://perma.cc/R7LE-FPQP.
19	 MacArthur Foundation, “MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice
Challenge Grant Renewal for the City of New Orleans,” public
presentation, January 15, 2019, on file with authors.
20	 In 2017, the state legislature passed Act 260, which mandates
an ability-to-pay determination before courts may impose fines
and fees in felony cases, allows for waivers for those who are
unable to pay, and restricts the extension of probation due to
nonpayment. Louisiana HB 260 (2017), https://perma.cc/Z7YT4K8N. In 2018, however, the legislature delayed implementation
of the law and may do so again this year. See “Court Cost Relief
for Exiting Prisoners Could Be Delayed Again,” nola.com, April 23,
2019, https://perma.cc/6HZ3-AUQH. The Louisiana Supreme Court
is preparing recommendations for additional ways to mitigate
the harms of fines and fees. Supreme Court of Louisiana, “2018
State of the Judiciary Address to the Joint Session of the Louisiana
Legislature by Chief Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson,” Press
Release (New Orleans: Supreme Court of Louisiana, April 23, 2018),
https://perma.cc/4WB7-ZPMM.
21	 Cain v. City of New Orleans, No. 2:15-cv-04479-SSV-JCW (E.D. La,
September 17, 2015) (Class Action Complaint), 26, https://www.
clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/CJ-LA-0011-0028.pdf.
22	 Salerno, 481 U.S. at 750; and Caliste v. Cantrell, No. 2:17-cv-06197EEF-MBN (E.D. La. August 6, 2018) (Order and Reasons), 14, https://
perma.cc/S2XE-QDMK.

23	 Caliste v. Cantrell, Order and Reasons, August 6, 2018; and ibid.,
Declaratory Judgment, August 14, 2018, https://perma.cc/WN5DZVVJ.
24	 Caliste v. Cantrell, Order and Reasons, August 6, 2018; and ibid.,
Declaratory Judgment, August 14, 2018, https://perma.cc/WN5DZVVJ.
25	 Caliste v. Cantrell, Declaratory Judgment, August 14, 2018, 2. For a
comprehensive study of the conflicts, see Micah West, “Financial
Conflicts of Interest and the Funding of New Orleans’s Criminal
Courts,” California Law Review 101, no. 2 (2013), 521-552.
26	 Cain v. New Orleans, Order and Reasons, August 2, 2018, https://
perma.cc/Y497-7K2N; and ibid., Declaratory Judgment, August 3,
2018, https://perma.cc/4SVY-NDYG.
27	 The local court is appealing the parts of each ruling that hold that
the conflict of interest is unconstitutional. They are not appealing
the parts that hold what judges must do in order to set money bail
or to seek to collect a conviction fee.

Cash Bail,” George Mason Legal Studies, Research Paper No. LS
19-08 (February 17, 2019), https://perma.cc/H3SA-TBT3. Despite
the prosecutor’s efforts, the magistrates’ bail-setting practices
didn’t change sufficiently to forestall a recently filed lawsuit in the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court challenging money-based pretrial
detention. Philadelphia Community Bail Fund et al. v. Bernard, No.
21 EM 2019 (Pa. March 12, 2019) (Class Action Complaint), https://
perma.cc/3SNK-6SLJ.
34	 Letter from John Cruezot, Criminal District Attorney, Dallas County,
Texas to the People of Dallas County, April 11, 2019, https://perma.
cc/GYX9-PHQ8.
35	 Aubrey Fox and Stephen Koppel, Pretrial Release Without Money:
New York City, 1987-2018 (New York: New York City Criminal Justice
Agency, 2019), 2 & 9, https://perma.cc/S5X5-5GLW; and New York
State Office of the Governor, “Governor Cuomo and Legislative
Leaders Announce Agreement on FY 2020 Budget,” press release
(Albany, NY: Office of the Governor, March 31, 2019), https://perma.
cc/2CLP-VRRS.

28	 For 2018 figures, see Orleans Parish Criminal District Court,
Revenue and Expenses (Unaudited) 6/30/2018-12/31/2018, on file
with authors. For 2019 budget figures, see City of New Orleans,
2019 Annual Operating Budget (New Orleans: City of New Orleans,
2018), 698, https://perma.cc/9VSX-F6KX.

36	 After an entirely new pro-bail-reform bench was voted into
office, the judges withdrew the court’s appeal of a federal court
decision holding their former bail practices unconstitutional. Scott
Shackford, “Harris County, Texas, Flashpoint of Bail Reform Battles,
Will Mostly Eliminate Cash Demands in Minor Cases,” Reason,
January, 17, 2019, https://perma.cc/NV4R-QRYR.

29	 Public Safety Assessment, “Criminal Justice Data Used to Develop
the Public Safety Assessment,” https://perma.cc/X5VC-RMQ4.

37	 Ibid., 755.

30	 In 2017, New Jersey implemented legislation that virtually eliminated
money bail and addressed concerns about public safety through
targeted increases in supported release and a modest expansion
of preventive, no-bail detention for people who pose a clear and
significant risk to public safety. See New Jersey Criminal Justice
Reform Act, New Jersey Legislative Statutes § 2A:162-15 et seq.
(2014), https://perma.cc/82KZ-ADXG; and New Jersey Judiciary,
Jan. 1 – Dec. 31 2018 Report to the Governor and the Legislature
(Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts, 2019),
https://perma.cc/UU2M-MTRH. Also see Youngjin Choi, “Lessons
from California and New Jersey Bail Reform Legislation,” New York
Law Journal, December 7, 2018, https://perma.cc/C9VV-NC24.
New Mexico did much the same, beginning with a constitutional
amendment in 2016. New Mexico Denial of Bail Measure,
Constitutional Amendment 1 (2016), https://perma.cc/5Z3K-5KCG.
31	 New Jersey Courts, Criminal Justice Reform Statistics (Trenton,
NJ: New Jersey Courts, 2019), Chart C: Nonsentenced Pretrial Jail
Population, December 31, 2018, & 9. https://perma.cc/CM7Q-LGZA.
32	 State of New Jersey, Department of Law and Public Safety, Uniform
Crime Reporting Unit, 2017 and 2018 reports, available at https://
perma.cc/A5L7-LENU.
33	 Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, “Prosecutor-Led Bail Reform:
Year One Transparency Report,” Medium, February 19, 2019, https://
perma.cc/DU67-2TW2; and Aurelie Ouss and Megan Stevenson,
“Evaluating the Impacts of Eliminating Prosecutorial Requests for

38	 See generally Brice Cooke, Binta Zahra Diop, Alissa Fishbane, et al.,
Using Behavioral Science to Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes:
Preventing Failures to Appear in Court. Chicago (Chicago:
University of Chicago Crime Lab & Ideas 42, 2018); Léon Digard and
Elizabeth Swavola, Justice Denied: The Harmful and Lasting Effects
of Pretrial Detention (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2018), 8
https://perma.cc/C7SA-W5T4; and Timothy R. Schnacke, Michael
R. Jones, and Dorian M. Wilderman, “Increasing Court-Appearance
Rates and Other Benefits of Live-Caller Telephone Court-Date
Reminders: The Jefferson County, Colorado, FTA Pilot Project and
Resulting Court Date Notification Program,” Court Review: The
Journal of the American Judges Association 48, no. 3 (2012), 86-95,
https://perma.cc/GW7K-TX89.
39	 See generally Christopher T. Lowenkamp and Edward J. Latessa,
“Understanding the Risk Principle: How and Why Correctional
Interventions Can Harm Low-Risk Offenders,” Topics in Community
Corrections (Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections,
2004), 3, https://perma.cc/96Q3-WXQY.
40	 Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. at 5.
41	 Faulkner v. Gusman, No. 2:13-cv-06813-SSV-KWR (E.D. La. May
9, 2014) (Order and Reasons), 9-10, https://perma.cc/NPM6XUBD. Article 334.4 is now codified at Louisiana Code of Criminal
Procedure, art. 321(C)(2).
42	 Caliste v. Cantrell, Order and Reasons, August 6, 2018, 16-21.

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43	 Christopher T. Lowenkamp, Marie VanNostrand, and Alexander
Holsinger, Investigating the Impact of Pretrial Detention on
Sentencing Outcomes (Houston, TX: Laura and John Arnold
Foundation, 2013), https://perma.cc/9UHH-BNYC; and Megan
Stevenson, “Distortion of Justice: How the Inability to Pay Bail
Affects Case Outcomes,” Journal of Law, Economics, and
Organization 34, no. 4 (2018), 511-42,.
44	 Louisiana Constitution, art. I, § 18, https://perma.cc/E6PH-A4TB.
45	 Timothy R. Schnacke, Louisiana Criminal Pretrial Laws—Legal
Analysis (South Easton, MA: Justice System Partners, 2018).
46	 State of Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections
(DPSC), Probation and Parole Supervision, Parole Detainer, Policy
No. SUP 635 (Baton Rouge, LA: DPSC, 2017), on file with authors.
47	 Mathilde Laisne, Stephen Roberts, and Jon Wool, Detention of
Alleged Probation and Parole Violators in Orleans Parish Prison:
Technical Report (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2015), 17,
https://perma.cc/RK43-9MRY.

58	 Gina Clayton, Endria Richardson, Lily Mandlin, and Brittany Farr,
Because She’s Powerful: The Political Isolation and Resistance of
Women with Incarcerated Loved Ones (Los Angeles and Oakland,
CA: Essie Justice Group, 2018), https://perma.cc/M8RY-29Q2; and
Joshua Page, “I Worked as a Bond Agent. Here’s What I Learned,”
The Appeal, April 4, 2019, https://perma.cc/4YQX-76AP.
59	 Plyer and Gardere, The New Orleans Prosperity Index, 2018, 19-20.
60	 Lowenkamp, VanNostrand, and Holsinger, Investigating the Impact
of Pretrial Detention, 2013; and Stevenson, “Distortion of Justice,”
2018.

“Twisting and breaking the law to keep the money flowing”
p. 11
a	

Augustus v. Roemer, 771 F. Supp. 1458, 1465, 1468 (E.D. La. 1991),
https://perma.cc/S26L-2AEX. The bail bond fee at issue was first
put in place by the legislature in 1988. Louisiana Revised Statutes §
13:1384.

b	

Augustus v. Roemer, 771 F. Supp. at 1473.

c	

Louisiana Revised Statutes. §§ 22:1065.1, 22:1381.5, & 22:1404.3.

d	

Louisiana Revised Statutes § 22:1381.5.

e	

Louisiana Revised Statutes § 22:1065.1.

f	

The one exception is Jefferson Parish, where the premium is 12.5
percent and the court receives the additional 0.5 percent, for a
total of 1 percent to the court. Louisiana Revised Statutes § 13:718(I)
(2).

g	

Letter from James J. Donelon, Commissioner of Insurance, Louisiana
Department of Insurance to All Licensed Bail Bond Producers and
Commercial Sureties re: Directive 214, Re: Bail Bond Premium Rate,
February 20, 2019, https://perma.cc/H5BH-EEKN.

h	

Ibid. See also Letter from Micah West, Southern Poverty Law
Center to James J. Donelon, Commissioner of Insurance, Louisiana
Department of Insurance re: Complaint Against Multiple Bail
Companies and their Insurance Underwriters for Charging
Excessive and Illegal Premiums, September 7, 2017, https://perma.
cc/64WU-NK6Y.

48	 Derwyn Bunton, “Public Defense’s Role in Fighting Injustice,” Verdict
22, no. 4 (2016), https://perma.cc/F74F-2F68.
49	 Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, and Megan Stevenson, “The
Downstream Consequences of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention,”
Stanford Law Review 69, no. 3 (2017), 711-94, https://perma.
cc/3DCF-CB47.
50	 Lowenkamp, VanNostrand, and Holsinger, Investigating the Impact
of Pretrial Detention, 2013; and Stevenson, “Distortion of Justice,”
2018.
51	 Three hundred fifty-eight of the 448 people were detained because
they were unable to pay bail for a felony arrest; the others for a
state misdemeanor, municipal, or traffic offense. These figures are
based on data from the final five months of 2018.
52	 See for example U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division,
“Special Litigation Section Cases and Matters: Corrections,”
https://perma.cc/AUG8-3Y3E.
53	 Margaret E. Noonan, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000-2014—Statistical
Tables (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 2016), 1, https://perma.cc/6UK5-KDRE.
54	 Ibid., 2.
55	 Allison Plyer and Lamar Gardere, The New Orleans Prosperity Index:
Tricentennial Edition (New Orleans: The Data Center, 2018), 19-20,
https://perma.cc/W9HK-643U.
56	 See Douglas N. Evans, The Debt Penalty: Exposing the Financial
Barriers to Offender Reintegration (New York: John Jay College of
Criminal Justice, 2014), https://perma.cc/Y2YR-E6TQ.
57	 Louisiana Revised Statutes § 15:175(B)(2).

58

Vera Institute of Justice

“Bail and money bail: A brief history” p. 19
a	

Kelly Allen, “The Evolution of Money Bail,” W, Haywood Burns
Institute for Fairness and Equity, April 18, 2016, https://perma.cc/
K2QY-R4BU; In Re Kenneth Humphrey, No. S247278 (Ca. October
9, 2018) (Amici Curiae Brief of National Law Professors of Criminal,
Procedural, and Constitutional Law), https://perma.cc/339ZTSVX; and Timothy R. Schnacke, Michael R. Jones, and Claire M.

B. Brooker, The History of Bail and Pretrial Release (Rockville, MD:
Pretrial Justice Institute, 2010), https://perma.cc/KZ4A-LKVB.
b	

c	

d	

Edward Livingston, A System of Penal Law for the State of Louisiana
(Philadelphia, PA: James Kay, Jun, 1833), 32.
For the influence of historic racial oppression on modern bail
practices in Louisiana, see Flozell Daniels Jr., Benjamin Weber, and
Jon Wool, “From Bondage to Bail Bonds: Putting a Price on Freedom
in New Orleans,” The Data Center, May 14, 2018, https://perma.cc/
TN8F-TGQS.
Clifford T. Keenan, “We Need More Bail Reform,” Pretrial Services
Agency for the District of Columbia, September 2013, https://
perma.cc/GSD7-SQZC; and Spurgeon Kennedy, National
Association of Pretrial Services Agencies, Assessing Pretrial Risk: The
Science of Pretrial Risk Assessment, presentation on February 2019,
on file with authors.

e	

Ibid.

f	

Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, art. 335.

g	

See for example In re Humphrey, 19 Cal. App. 5th 1006, 1029 (2018)
(“Money bail, however, has no logical connection to protection of
the public, as bail is not forfeited upon commission of additional
crimes”), https://perma.cc/RFB2-5WMP; and ODonnell v. Harris
County, 251 F. Supp. 3d 1052, 1110 (S.D. Tex. 2017), https://perma.cc/
E2J2-5T3G. See also American Bar Association (ABA), Standards for
Criminal Justice—Pretrial Release, Third Edition (Washington, DC:
ABA, 2007), Standard 10-1.4(d) (“Financial conditions [of release]
should not be employed to respond to concerns for public safety”),
https://perma.cc/X2PH-RQL5.

h	

Christopher T. Lowenkamp, Marie VanNostrand, and Alexander
Holsinger, The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention (Houston, TX:
Laura and John Arnold Foundation, 2013), 15, https://perma.
cc/5UF5-KMJ9.

i	

United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987).

c	

Data shared with partner sites by the Laura and John Arnold
Foundation during the development of the PSA for New Orleans. On
file with the authors.

d	

Public Safety Assessment, Stakeholder Education Lesson Plan
(Houston, TX: Laura and John Arnold Foundation, 2018), 25, https://
perma.cc/HJJ9-PBCN.

e	

Bernard E. Harcourt, “Risk as a Proxy for Race,” Federal Sentencing
Reporter 27, no. 4 (2015), 237-43, 237, https://perma.cc/F7S7-8K63.

“Bail, fines and fees in municipal court” p. 31
a	

Municipal Code of New Orleans, § 54:23(e)(2)(ii).

b	

Using a custodial arrest—booking a person into jail—is itself a
departure from the norm in these cases. The typical police practice
in response to nonviolent municipal misdemeanor crimes is to arrest
and detain the person just long enough to issue a summons without
taking the person to jail. This has been the practice for more than a
decade, following a 2008 city council ordinance. But the ordinance
only applies to arrests made under the municipal code, not to state
misdemeanors.

c	

Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, art. 313.

“Benefits and limitations of the Public Safety Assessment”
p. 28
a	

See generally Lowenkamp, VanNostrand, and Holsinger,
Investigating the Impact of Pretrial Detention, 2013; Marie
VanNostrand and Christopher T. Lowenkamp, Assessing Pretrial Risk
Without a Defendant Interview (Houston, TX: Laura and John Arnold
Foundation, 2013), https://perma.cc/9FP3-JZ8R.

b	

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights gathered
these concerns in a July 2018 statement. The Use of Pretrial Risk
Assessment Instruments: a Shared Statement of Civil Rights
Concerns, 2018, https://perma.cc/T5X9-UB3M.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

59

Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the many people who contributed to this report.
The research was overseen by Chris Mai, who also produced the budget
analyses. Theresa McKinney produced all other quantitative analyses.
Lionel Smith planned and led the focus groups. Jennifer Trone contributed
immensely to the crafting and writing of this report. The report was edited
by Léon Digard, with editorial support from Cindy Reed and Tim Merrill.
Paragini Amin created the graphics. The authors would also like to thank
reviewers of this report for their helpful feedback, including Mary Crowley,
Nancy Fishman, Christian Henrichson, Jim Parsons, and Insha Rahman.
This report is supported by Arnold Ventures, Baptist Community
Ministries, and the Foundation for Louisiana.
The authors are grateful for the deep knowledge generously shared by the
member organizations of the New Orleans Alliance for Equity and Justice.

About citations
As researchers and readers alike rely more and more on public knowledge
made available through the Internet, “link rot” has become a widely
acknowledged problem with creating useful and sustainable citations. To
address this issue, the Vera Institute of Justice is experimenting with the
use of Perma.cc (https://perma.cc), a service that helps scholars, journals,
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60

Vera Institute of Justice

Credits
© Vera Institute of Justice 2019. All rights reserved.
An electronic version of this report is posted on Vera’s website at www.vera.org/paid-in-full.
Cover image: Melody Chang, mural by Charles Gillam, Sr.
Graphics: Paragini Amin
In 2006, Vera came to New Orleans at the request of the city council, which saw an opportunity
for the city to reduce unnecessary jail incarceration and thus change its approach to fostering
public safety. For 13 years, Vera New Orleans has served as a nexus of initiatives that advocate
forward-thinking criminal justice policies. Vera works with partners in community and government
to build a local justice system that embodies equality, fairness, and effectiveness in the
administration of justice. Using a collaborative data-driven approach, Vera New Orleans provides
the high quality analysis and long-range planning capacity needed for the city to articulate and
implement good government practices.
For more information about this report or Vera New Orleans, contact Jon Wool, director of justice
policy, at jwool@vera.org, or William Snowden, director, at wsnowden@vera.org, respectively.

Suggested citation
Jon Wool, Alison Shih, and Melody Chang. Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New
Orleans. New Orleans: Vera Institute of Justice, 2019.

Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans

61

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