A Critical Assessment of the Bail Project's Detention by Design Report by the Safe Streets Project

The ongoing debate over bail reform has been dominated by well-funded and well-organized progressive activist groups promoting free release for all criminals. One of these groups, the Bail Project floods the market with articles and pseudo research claiming that their soft on crime policies make us all safer.  The latest is the Bail Project's 2025 report "Detention by Design," which advocates eliminating cash bail through state constitutional amendments, the Safe Streets Project Foundation has released a counter-report defending commercial bail bonds as constitutionally sound and empirically superior. The report argues that historical precedents, from Anglo-Saxon systems to the U.S. Eighth Amendment, have always involved financial sureties rather than mere community ties. It highlights failures in bail reform jurisdictions like Cook County, Illinois, where pretrial releases led to a 45% surge in crimes by releasees, and New York City, which saw a 36.6% increase in index crimes post-2019 reforms, necessitating rollbacks. Similarly, New Jersey and Illinois experienced spikes in recidivism and failure-to-appear rates under cashless bail models, underscoring the risks of abandoning traditional bail bonds.

The Safe Streets Project report points out how bail reform advocates continue to throw ineffective solutions at the wall and hope they stick.  Most recently they have abandoned algorithmic risk assessment tools, once touted as replacements for cash bail, by their own developers like the Pretrial Justice Institute and Arnold Ventures due to biases perpetuating structural racism. The report goes on to expose the bail abolition movement as heavily funded by philanthropies, including over $800 million from entities like Arnold Ventures, the MacArthur Foundation, and George Soros's Open Society Foundations, creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem of advocacy. In contrast, commercial bail bonds demonstrate superior outcomes, with defendants 28% less likely to fail to appear compared to own-recognizance releases, according to peer-reviewed studies and Bureau of Justice Statistics data. This system leverages private incentives like cosigner accountability and fugitive recovery, all at zero taxpayer cost, while cashless bail alternatives have resulted in violent crimes by releasees and forfeitures, disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities.

Public support for strengthening and increasing the use of financially guaranteed bail bonds over cashless bail is evident in bipartisan state constitutional amendments, such as Ohio's Issue 1 (77.5% approval in 2022) and Alabama's Aniah's Law (unanimous legislative passage). Similar measures in Wisconsin, Texas, and Tennessee reflect democratic pushback against bail reform failures, often triggered by high-profile tragedies. The Safe Streets Project article concludes that while bail bonds warrant fair improvements, abolishing them in favor of unproven government programs ignores historical efficacy, empirical data, and voter consensus, prioritizing ideology over balanced pretrial justice that protects both liberty and safety.  Below is an excerpt from The Safe Streets Project Foundation article…

Counter Evidence to Detention by Design:  A Defense of Constitutional Bail
By Safe Streets Project Foundation

In November 2025, The Bail Project published "Detention by Design: State Constitutional Amendments and the Future of Bail," a report advocating for the elimination of cash bail through state constitutional amendments. The report characterizes recent amendments strengthening judicial authority over pretrial detention as evidence of an "incarceration agenda" driven by the commercial bail industry.  READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE>>>