Unable to pay $25,000 to bail himself out, a Queens resident languished in New York City’s notoriously overcrowded and abusive Rikers Island jail for approximately five months. According to court documents, he should’ve only paid $2 for bail and been released after one week.
Aitabdel Salem, an immigrant from Algeria, was detained in November 2014 for fighting a cop who arrested him for theft at a clothing store. He was locked away at Rikers because he was unable to pay the $25,000 bail amount. After his first week behind bars, however, prosecutors on the case were unable to indict him and he no longer owed thousands of dollars. To be released, Salem only had to chalk up two, $1 bail payments for unrelated mischief and tampering charges.
His lawyer, Stephen Pokart, never told him. And when Salem was eventually released in May 2015, he also missed his arraignment because of a court date mix-up. He was subsequently charged with bail jumping, jailed, and slapped with $30,000 for the officer assault.
“(Salem) was shocked and dismayed and frustrated that his case was unconscionably mishandled and there was no communication by his attorney telling him his bail was $2 which he could have made at any moment,” Glenn Hardy, one of Salem’s new attorneys, said at a recent court hearing.
In reality, Pokart’s failure is representative of New York City’s broken bail system.
Last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office announced that some nonviolent offenders wouldn’t be jailed for being poor and unable to make bail. The decision was made about one month after Kalief Browder, who was jailed as a teenager because he couldn’t pay a $3,000 bail amount, committed suicide. Browder didn’t commit a crime, but spent more than three years at Rikers, and half of that time in solitary confinement. When he was released, he suffered from depression and paranoia. He ultimately took his own life.
New York City’s bail system forces poor people to pay an average of $2,000 to avoid jail time. According to the New York Lawyers’ Association, 44 percent of defendants are unable to pay $500, let alone thousands. Prior to de Blasio announcement, 45,500 people were held on bail, annually. Roughly 90 percent of the people behind bars are black or Latino.
Instead of funneling defendants to city jails, including Rikers, the judges can now offer low-level offenders the opportunity to attend drug and behavioral therapy instead. Judges can also require text message reminders and daily check-ins, in lieu of setting bail.