Bail is money a court requires as a guarantee that a person charged with a crime will return for trial. People who can pay go home. People who cannot stay in jail, sometimes for months, even though they have not been convicted. Many plead guilty to get out faster, whether or not they are guilty. Commercial bail bond companies, rare outside the US, profit by charging nonrefundable fees.
Cash bail drives jail populations. In 2025, local jails held more than 560,000 people, and 81 percent had not been convicted of a crime, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Black and Latino defendants are more likely to be detained and to face higher bail amounts than white defendants charged with similar offenses.
The human cost became widely known through Kalief Browder. He was held for about three years at Rikers Island, much of it in solitary confinement, because his family could not pay $3,000 bail for a charge that was later dropped. He died by suicide in 2015. Illinois became the first state to fully end cash bail on September 18, 2023. New Jersey and other places have sharply limited it.