THREAD: I'm pretty frustrated with this article overall, and with its use of my quotes. This is exactly the Willie Horton style journalism we need to leave in the past.

So I'm going to thread my emails to the Globe here, in case anyone is interested in what I actually said. https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/1284997500861063174

Bail simply is not about dangerousness. The purpose of bail, as the SJC explained in its Brangan decision in 2017, is only to ensure that the accused person comes to court. Frankly, it would make no sense to use bail to hold a dangerous person: ...

Why does someone's dangerousness depend on the amount of money they have? Why would paying a certain amount of bail make them any less dangerous? It won't, which is why bail is not about dangerousness at all. People held on a bail they cannot afford have not been found dangerous

Instead, they are only being held because of a concern they might skip their court dates. But the suspension of most of the court system means that there are few, if any, court dates for them to miss anyway. And because their case will not reach its end point -- ...

since trials have been suspended -- their detention will extend indefinitely.

Of course, there is an established mechanism to hold dangerous people. Under General Laws ch. 276, section 58A, prosecutors can file a motion to hold people who are truly dangerous. ...

But that is a more difficult burden for prosecutors to meet, so they instead ask judges to set high bails that people will not be able to afford. And, in many cases, judges will agree and hold accused people on very high, unaffordable bails because of safety concerns ...

rather than flight concerns. That is an illegal use of bail.

Plus, keep in mind, this entire population has not been convicted of anything yet. They are all presumed innocent. When incarceration puts someone's life in serious jeopardy, and none of the people we're talking ...

about have been found dangerous by a court, holding someone on an unaffordable bail doesn't make much sense.

There are also significant racial disparities in the rates of pre-trial detention. To some extent this is inherent in entrenched racial wealth disparities: a study ...

from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that the median net worth of a white household is $247,500, and for non-immigrant Black families it is $8. But a recent study has also shown that non-white defendants in Massachusetts are actually more likely to have bail set, and ...

that their bail amounts are generally higher than that for white defendants.

So all of these problems fall on presumptively innocent people, who are not legally dangerous, and disproportionately on people of color.

Finally, as we discussed, there is also a deeper question lurking here. Pretrial detention is criminogenic -- it actually increases the likelihood that the detained person will commit a crime in the future. That is because it removes the accused from their community, ...

may cost them their job and livelihood, and actually increases the chances that they'll be convicted of their charged crime (further reducing their economic prospects). So pretrial detention does not even serve its purported purpose of increasing public safety. ...

Bailing more people out will thus not only reduce their suffering while in custody and potentially save their lives from COVID-19, but it could actually decrease crime in the long term. END

(Note that every time I cited a study, I actually provided a link to that study in the email.)

Here's the email, in full: