Philly Council hearing looks at bail-gun crime relationship
Last year, St. Louis was on pace to match its 2010 homicide rate when officials instituted higher bail for all illegal gun-possession cases.
Last year, St. Louis was on pace to match its 2010 homicide rate when officials instituted higher bail for all illegal gun-possession cases.
By the end of the year, the city's homicide rate had dropped 20 percent from 2010.
That encouraging example was at the heart of a City Council Public Safety Committee hearing Wednesday exploring the nexus of bail and future gun crimes.
Councilman Curtis Jones Jr., the committee chair, introduced a resolution calling for the hearing in light of Mayor Nutter's vow to crack down on illegal guns as well as the case of Jorge Aldea.
Aldea was accused of killing a potential murder witness in January after he was released on bail from a gun charge.
"If someone with a gun tries to convince you they are dangerous . . . you should have believed them the first time," Jones said.
In January, Philadelphia prosecutors began following St. Louis' example, First Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann testified Wednesday.
Last year, the average bail in illegal gun possession cases was about $11,000, he said. Since prosecutors began asking for higher bail, the average has been more than $25,000, he said.
McCann said that there had been 118 gun possession arrests since Jan. 26 and that two-thirds of the defendants remained in custody.
Witnesses, however, cautioned that academics were studying what happened in St. Louis last year and that no correlation had been established between the higher bail and the drop in homicides there.
John S. Goldkamp, a Temple University professor who has studied the city's bail and court systems since the 1970s, called the idea that raising bail prevents crime a myth.
He said better supervision and engagement with offenders would have a greater effect.
"It's not bail conditions that are too low. It's what we do with defendants who are accused of gun-related crimes," he said.
Goldkamp and McCann agreed, however, that current bail guidelines, crafted in 1995, are "woefully out of date."
"These things were never meant to be standing still. They were meant to adjust," Goldkamp said. "There are crimes now we never imagined."
