President Trump has signed an executive order ending cashless bail, a program that allowed repeat offenders back on the street to commit additional crimes while awaiting trial. For illegal alien offenders, it was even worse, since many simply never showed up for court.
For Democrats, the program worked well because when the illegals did not return for their trial, they were not convicted and not incarcerated, allowing Democrats to claim that conviction and incarceration rates were lower among illegal aliens.
But now, that is all going to end. Criminals will go to jail. And illegals will be deported, or go to jail and then get deported.
The White House condemned cashless bail as a failed experiment that endangers public safety, citing a series of cases where offenders released without bail quickly reoffended. In New York, a man with dozens of prior arrests was freed after smearing feces on a subway rider, while another murdered a mother in front of her children less than a day after being released for assaulting her.
Others included men who beat an NYPD officer and were immediately released, two illegal immigrants who attacked and bit police officers but were let go, and a suspected Tren de Aragua gang member freed multiple times before finally being held on sex trafficking charges. One career criminal with nearly fifty arrests and thirty convictions was even allowed to walk after being arrested six times in a single year.
Illinois saw a murder suspect released under its no-cash-bail law, and in New York City even convicted killers caught dealing drugs were set free again. Washington, D.C., where most defendants are released pretrial, offered similar examples: in 2025 a man freed after assaulting a police officer stabbed and killed someone on a Metro train just two days later; the year before, another suspect released after attacking a daycare went on to beat two teachers in front of toddlers.
Other cases included a man awaiting trial for murder firing into homes in Maryland, a repeat sex offender with arrests spanning 2018 to 2023 freed after abusing a five-year-old girl, and a man accused of groping three women who was immediately rearrested for assaulting three more. Even seemingly minor offenses highlighted the problem: a man who hurled a sandwich at a federal officer faced up to eight years in prison but was still released, while in 2020 a journalist near Union Station was sexually abused by a homeless man who was freed before trial.
Democrats argue it is unfair to keep people in jail who cannot afford bail, and even claim there is no data showing that releasing them is dangerous. They often cite the Brennan Center’s analysis, which concluded that cashless bail did not increase crime. But that study was flawed. By focusing on overall citywide crime rates, it ignored pretrial crime, a small but critical subset of total crime.
It also overlooked how failures to appear prevent convictions, erasing crimes committed by no-shows from official statistics. On paper, this makes crime look lower while, in reality, more crime is happening on the streets.
Logic and statistics both show the danger. Releasing criminals back into society poses clear risks, especially since most offenders are repeat offenders. According to the National Institute of Justice, nearly 44 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within the first year, and about 68 percent within three years. These numbers make it clear that cashless bail increases risks to public safety.
Several localized studies back this up. In Illinois, during the first half of 2024, a suburban state’s attorney reported a 30 percent increase in crime committed by those on pretrial release compared to those on cash bail, along with a 280 percent increase in failures to appear. In Chicago, nearly 20 percent of felony defendants were already on pretrial release for another pending case, and 12 percent of all felony filings involved individuals who were already out on felony pretrial release.
Even more troubling, Cook County’s Chief Judge’s office has been accused of artificially lowering failure-to-appear statistics by requiring mail notification before warrants can be issued. The real numbers show that more than 70 percent of defendants missed at least one court date during the first year of cashless bail.
The Yolo County studies in California clearly illustrate the dangers of zero bail. The District Attorney’s 2022 report found that of 595 individuals released on zero bail, more than 70 percent were rearrested, and about 20 percent were charged with violent crimes such as murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and domestic violence.
An expanded 2023 study compared 100 defendants released on zero bail to 100 released on traditional bail. The difference was striking: zero-bail defendants committed 163 percent more crimes, with recidivism rates of 78 percent versus 46 percent for those who posted bail. Researchers noted that the Emergency Bail Release program was never intended to deter recidivism or provide rehabilitation, so it was predictable that offenders released without supervision or support would quickly return to crime.
By reducing conviction and incarceration rates, not because fewer crimes are committed, but because defendants fail to appear, cashless bail creates a statistical illusion of success. In reality, it puts offenders back on the streets, weakens accountability, and erodes public safety.
The chain of evidence is obvious: cashless bail increases failure-to-appear rates, fewer appearances mean fewer convictions, reduced convictions create the illusion of lower crime, and meanwhile, actual reoffending skyrockets. Illegal aliens are especially unlikely to return for court if they are not under bond.
Since they are in the country illegally, it makes sense to deport them when they are arrested. Under Trump, the DOJ has largely done this by dropping charges without prejudice and proceeding with deportation. Democrats and the media, of course, claim that charges are being dropped because they are fake or would not stand up in court, and they argue the deportations are unwarranted since there was no conviction. But that ignores the fact that being in the country illegally is already grounds for deportation.
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