So, I was watching the latest Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. The main topic was our out-of-kilter bail system which can victimize low income people and their families from the moment they’re taken into custody, whether they’re innocent or guilty. It’s a topic I’ve become more interested in lately with my growing understanding of the evils of our system of mass incarceration. (The most eye opening book I’ve read in years is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. I recommend it highly.) I was more than usually attentive to what John Oliver was saying, and something kept knocking around in the back of my head. “Bail bonds. Bail bonds. When have I looked into that subject before?”
And then it hit me. Back in 2011 when I was trying to learn everything I could about BASIS charter schools, I googled Michael Block, who started BASIS with his wife, Olga Block, and I came upon an paper he wrote in 1997, before BASIS was a twinkle in the couple’s eyes. The piece by Block, who is an economist by training, is titled, Runaway Losses: Estimating the Costs of Failure to Appear in the Los Angeles Criminal Justice System. The gist of his argument is, having defendants purchase bail bonds from private companies is preferable to pretrial screening and court-run pretrial release systems. Bail bonds, good. County pretrial release systems, bad. And, to take that to its logical conclusion: Private market, good. Government services, bad. According to the paper,
Not only does the private market perform better the main task of assuring the appearance of criminal defendants, but now we see it does it at a dramatically less cost to the taxpayers. These results should suggest a clear public policy agenda.
At the very top of the paper are the words, “American Legislative Exchange Council, Report Card on Crime.” At the end are the words, “ALEC has prepared model legislation that addresses these issues. You may reach us at (202) 466-3800.” (That’s still the phone number of ALEC’s Washington, DC, office, by the way.)
Block wrote another paper on the subject in 2005, and the bail bond industry loves both of them. You can find both mentioned on the websites of, among others, Family Bail Bonds, Luna Bail Bonds, Tedd Wallace Bail Bonds and my personal favorite, Amen Bail Bonds (“The Answer To Your Prayer”). It’s no wonder these folks like Block’s scholarly take on the value of bail bonds, because selling bonds to defendants can be a very lucrative business. Programs that cut into profits are a threat, like programs in our federal courts and Washington, DC, where, according to Oliver’s story, judges “are allowed to set money bail only if the defendant can afford it.” And it’s not surprising ALEC is a staunch defender of bail bonds, in the past before most people had heard of the organization and it was able to operate under cover of night, all the way up to the present when its operations are a little more visible. An article on the Marshall Project website, The bail industry wants to be your jailer, discusses a 2014 ALEC conference where the topic of one session was the dangers that sentencing reform poses to the bail bond industry. During the discussion, Nicholas Wachinski, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, said, “My task is to bring the sexy side of bail back.” According to the article,
ALEC has proved an effective legislative vehicle for the bail industry. . . . Bail industry leaders hold top positions within ALEC, and in 2010, the industry referred to the council as its “life preserver.” Forms of the post-conviction bail law that passed in Mississippi have been introduced in at least fourteen other states, in some cases with the help of ALEC-backed legislators.
When I write about charter schools, which is often, BASIS is a regular part of the conversation. I think it helps us understand the underpinnings of the BASIS system to know something about its founders’ ideology and affiliations. Michael Block’s early associations with ALEC and his endorsement of privatization in the area of bail bonds give us a taste of what his views are concerning district-run, “government” schools and his vision for the future of education in the country. The ALEC/bail bond association makes his statement on the subject of schools and privatization in 2012 all the more telling. In a column by Robert Robb in the Republic, Block commented, “I would privatize the entire government school system.” Here’s the entire quote:
“I would privatize the entire government school system. I don’t think you can actually run schools today with the amount of disagreement we have over the fundamental mission of schools. Is it social welfare? Is it academic excellence? Is it social justice? You can’t possibly have an educational system if you have this amount of disagreement, so privatize it.”
Along with privatizing, Block, like the bail bond industry, also believes in profitizing. Though the individual BASIS schools are nonprofit, BASIS.ed, which sucks up most of the taxpayer money that goes to the schools and runs their basic operations, is a for-profit enterprise. Much of what happens at BASIS is hidden behind BASIS.ed’s for-profit fire wall. How much do Michael and Olga Block make each year? We have no idea. How much taxpayer money drawn up to the for-profit makes it back to the schools? Again, no idea. Did any taxpayer funds help subsidize the building and operation of the BASIS private schools in Silicon Valley, CA, and Brooklyn, NY (tuition: $24,000 per year)? No idea there either because the private, for-profit BASIS.ed operates without public scrutiny. And that’s just how Michael Block likes it, both personally and philosophically.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2015.
And this young man (Kalief Browder) spent 3 years in Rikers for not admitting he stole because he didn’t. They just put him in prison at the age of 17 and he was beaten, raped and put in solitary(for his own good). They continued to tell him if he would confess he could get out. He wouldn’t. They let him out after 3 years and Rosie O’Donnell heard what happened. She started a GoFundMe page and raised a substantial amount of money. Kalief needed help for he was very broken. The money helped him get help and he later went to college. Last weekend he committed suicide at the age of 22. He had no history of depression or mental illness before he was in prison. He just never got over the traumatic events he experienced at Rikers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/08/k… Travesty… Terrible … By all accounts, he was a nice person.
I disagree with about everything Block and ALEC stand for, but he raises a good point: “Is it social welfare? Is it academic excellence? Is it social justice? You can’t possibly have an educational system if you have this amount of disagreement”
Profits pay your salary. If folks weren’t making money and paying taxes there would be no public monies. There is a balance to all of this. And free enterprise produces the most opportunity for the most people. Freedom is good.
The corporations they despise generate the funds they covet. They should thank God for the Koch Bros.
It allows them the ability to create all this confusion.
The corporations they despise generate the funds they covet. They should thank God for the Koch Bros.
It allows them the ability to create all this confusion.
Once again you are on top of information needed and certainly brings desire for more study on the subject. Overlooked and grossly misunderstood. Makes interesting TV viewing, but what else?
Usually, I dismiss Safier’s commentary on charter schools (including Basis) as biased and predictable. But his comments here are eye-opening and represent the sort of writing I deeply respect. The link between ALEC, the Koch brothers and the Blocks especially is new to me and I thank David for exposing the connection. Profiteers have no place in publicly funded education, especially those who go to great lengths to create an organizational firewall between their non-profit and for-profit arms.
When can we expect the for-profit Basis to issue its IPO?
Why not? It’s happening in medicine. Tort claims drive all those expenses through the roof. Ask my OB/GYN about the cost of malpractice insurance.
I spent a large part of my career as a consulting engineer providing design service to public agencies. Every contract was audited. Salaries were monitored, overhead rates audited, all expenses checked and cross-checked and became public information – because we were using taxpayer dollars. How come the charter school industry also using taxpayer dollars aren’t audited? How come they don’t have to disclose their salaries, their overhead, how many of the taxpayer dollars are actually spent in the classroom? Our public schools are audited; how ’bout a level playing field here.
The point of this piece seems to be to make an ad homenem attack on the owners of Basis using guilt by association. Anything printed by ALEC must be evil, he wrote it and therefore he is also evil. Same can be said about the Koch brothers. Please.
Michael, there’s an ongoing battle to make the for-profit wings of the charter school universe more transparent. That includes both for-profit charter schools, which are legal here but not in all states, and for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) which often run nonprofit schools. So far, the for-profit operators have been successful in arguing that they don’t have to reveal how they spend money that originates from taxpayer funds. Things would be better if that changed.
David, I agree that transparency is a positive end for any group that gets public funding. That is a valid point. However, using guilt by association doesn’t further that end. Demonizing someone because their paper (on a totally unrelated topic) happened to be printed by an organization of which you disapprove is not furthering your objective. That’s my only point.
AZ Star has a story about yesterday’s court decision refusing to give charters the same funding as public schools. I thought they all received the same amount of funds, but charters are operating on a lower figure. The estimate was $1179 per student less. The Supreme Court judges gave no reason for their decision.
The gist of his argument is, having defendants purchase bail bonds from private companies is preferable to pretrial screening and court-run pretrial release systems.
Well, what’s the rate for the bail bonds? Are they reasonable? How much money did the streamlined Bond program save the state?
An article written by a former Federal Judge regarding our overworked and underfunded court systems does not seem like a reach. Do they own any stakes in these bond companies?
Old Pueblo, please read the article I posted about Kalif Browder and his fate. Bail bondsmen are expensive, let alone making a profit. I am a mother with grown children and blacks, boys, and obviously poor people are targeted. I have seen it. I want this system gone because there are way too many Kalif Browders (targeted young men, put in prison with no way out but admission of guilt for something they didn’t do). I support David S. connecting ALEC to these practices because I have read much about a deep belief in this organization and others have that ‘these people’ must be weeded out. It is veiled but it is there. Many people just don’t see . I read Kalif’s whole story and the history for other black boys in that area. I chose to donate to the GoFundMe drive for him. He used the money well. He is dead because he never got over his experience in prison. I am so sick at heart that I am grateful David posted this. It goes on here too and all around the country. We do not have many black people in Tucson but there are many brown people, boys and poor people. Saving the state would not be an issue if this were really dealt with.
Guardians, thank you for your posting and the passion. Gives many of us the time to stop and examine our positions.
Block’s point about the private market performing, “the main task of assuring the appearance of criminal defendants” better is interesting. Is there some statistical evidence to back that up. Logic would tell me that the system that incarcerated and tried them might be able to best assure the appearance. However, I am not an expert. It seems that as a whole we agree with Block, since that is the system that we use.
http://absolutebailbond.com/