NYC’s ‘Bail Bond Bill of Rights’ law is designed to better inform customers

A child exits the Mass Bail Out trailer outside Rikers Island last year. Eagle file photo by Clarissa Sosin.

By Victoria Merlino

New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has instituted new rules to better protect consumers who use a bail bond agent.

Under the new rules, bail bond agents must provide consumers with DCWP’s Bail Bond Consumer Bill of Rights, post a bail bond fees sign, and clearly provide the consumer with business and contact information, such as the agent’s name, license number, address and phone number.

The bail bond system has faced intense scrutiny in recent months and the state included a significant bail reform law in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget, though judges are still able to set cash bail for defendants.

Advocates want to see an end to the bail bond system completely.

“There’s an understanding that having a private actor with a profit motive … runs totally counter to [the] idea of fairness and justice,” Nick Encalada-Malinowski, the civil rights campaign director of advocacy group VOCAL-NY told the Eagle last year.

The New York City Comptroller’s Office suggested banning bail bonds in January 2018, releasing a report that said that ending all money bail should be a “high priority.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently passed a “cashless bail” law that will enable individuals charged with misdemeanor or non-violent felonies to avoid bail, a measure advocates hailed as a way to address the number of low-income people and people of color in the New York prison system.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill and district attorneys from all five boroughs have criticized the law, according to the New York Post.