Oct. 3, 2025 7 AM PT
To the editor: Thanks for the op-ed on bail (“The push to hold more nonviolent suspects in jail threatens public safety,” Sept. 30). Eliminating bail is critically vital, as a good portion of individuals arrested are poor, folks of shade and/or accused of nonviolent crimes. Some are harmless however can not pay the bail bondsman, resulting in dramatic penalties: lack of job and repute, household issues or, because the article factors out, lack of life.
That is made even worse when crimes dedicated by the wealthy are so incessantly minimized. A Jeffrey Epstein can go on committing abuses for years and nonetheless strike deals with federal prosecutors.
Bail is patently unjust and doesn’t make us safer — fairly the other. Jails are colleges for crime and are unsafe. The poor pay the value, harmless or not, and we, the taxpayers, foot the invoice.
Marie Matthews, San Pedro
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To the editor: Decide your poison if money bail is restored. When it thrived broadly, an enormous trade of bail-bond racketeers benefited. Money bail’s elimination decimated their ranks, and for good motive.
Positive, there are issues with the present system. However any treatment that merely restores money bail will revive its well-documented historic downsides.
Gary Dolgin, Santa Monica
