Republicans are going to war against bail reform. Chris Christie is coming to its defense

Christie's bail "reform" is a disaster.

This guy is a nightmare.

I don’t know what he is smoking, but Fat Boy is not popular with real Americans, maybe RINOs and Communists.

I don’t vote for Republicans so they can be bipartisan.

Where does Christie get the idea he has this untapped fount of support?

Everybody Hates Chris.

As he mulls another bid for president — a decision he said he will make within months — Chris Christie is confronting the critics of one of the marquee achievements of his administration: bail reform. When he was governor, Christie led a bipartisan effort in New Jersey to overhaul the way courts decide who gets locked up before trial.

“We have a country right now that seems to be crying out, or at least they say they’re crying out, for some bipartisan accomplishment,” the two-term former Republican governor told a crowd ahead of a discussion hosted by the Christie Institute for Public Policy in Newark on Tuesday night. “This piece of legislation that is now the law for a number of years is the product of that work,” he added.

Criminal justice reform advocates had long complained about cash bail and its impact on some people. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, was interested in giving more authority to judges to lock up dangerous defendants but said he also came to believe bail disproportionately hurt poor people while doing little to protect public safety.

On Tuesday, the former governor and federal prosecutor dusted off the nonprofit group he formed after he left office, assembling the team of rivals that did something that, in hindsight, had no business working: a bipartisan overhaul of New Jersey’s criminal justice system.

But why talk about bail reform, which took effect in 2017, now? For starters, while New Jersey’s system has been held up in some circles as a national model, the post-pandemic spike in crime across the U.S. has reignited old criticisms of the system: that it is soft on crime, lets repeat offenders out and makes communities less safe.

(Data from the state judiciary says otherwise.)

Members of Christie’s own Republican party in New Jersey have used the issue of bail reform to attack Democrats as being soft on crime, some going as far as calling for a return of the old system. Bail reform was also one of Chris Christie’s priorities. And Christie, who is considering another run for president, said he wants to “set the record straight.”

“I understand we’re in an election year here in the state and the Legislature people are going to play politics,” Christie said, alluding to GOP campaign literature like a mailer decrying “a revolving door of criminals due to a flawed bail system.”

“Truth seems to be negotiable based on what cable channel you put on and which person you’re listening to. I’m sure there are changes that can be made to make it better, small ones,” he said. “But the results speak for themselves.”

On Tuesday, he tapped the familiar theme of bipartisanship he regularly employed when he was on the campaign trail in 2016 in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he pitched himself as a doer who would compromise with Democrats when he could and strong-arm them when he needed.

The Tuesday event, held in Seton Hall Law School’s Larson Auditorium, was a reunion of sorts: Two former attorneys general and close confidantes, Chris Porrino and Jeffrey Chiesa, state courts administrator Glenn Grant, state public defender Joseph Krakora and Alex Shalom, a lead attorney for the ACLU of New Jersey.

It was also an opportunity for some of those former allies — and sometimes foes — to heap praise on Christie as a bipartisan reformer as he tests the waters for yet another presidential bid. “The beauty of the collaboration that lead to this reform was that not everyone supported it for the same reason,” said Krakora, the state public defender. On one hand, he said, you had law enforcement supporting it because judges could now consider “dangerousness to the community” when deciding who gets locked up.

On the other, reform advocates wanted to do away with cash bail, which would free hundreds from the state’s jails simply because they were broke. Shalom, the ACLU lawyer, said he witnessed Christie’s position shift as soon as he saw the data and heard stories of indigent clients languishing in jail over unpaid tickets.

“He’s talking about ‘modern-day debtors prisons’?” Shalom, whose organization spent a significant amount of time suing the Christie administration, recalled thinking at the time. “I almost sent him an ACLU card.”

HOW THE SAUSAGE WAS MADE

When he was governor, Christie, who had burnished his reputation as a tough-on-crime federal prosecutor, had stuffed his administration with 29 former colleagues poached from his time as U.S. Attorney. That team of federal lawyers, especially Chiesa, his attorney general, quickly became annoyed that judges in the state couldn’t weigh the potential danger to the community in setting bail like their federal counterparts, said Chiesa.

“If you committed a criminal act here in Newark, depending upon whether the State Police arrested you or the FBI arrested you determined how your bail (would be set),” Chiesa said. ”It makes absolutely no sense.”

But the bail issue was a right enshrined in the state constitution and it would take an amendment to change it. At the same time, reformers in New Jersey had long complained about its onerous cash bail system, which locked up thousands of people at any given time because they couldn’t make payments as low as $150, Porrino said.

The proposal was to replace the cash bail system with one where judges could order defendants jailed based in part on a risk assessment that weighs the suspect’s criminal history and the charges they face.

Fast forward through two years of committee hearings and backroom deals and social justice protests and politicking, and the measure was put to the public as a ballot question. It passed.

The move placed New Jersey in the national spotlight as one of the first states to adopt such sweeping changes to how it treats its criminal defendants.

Think-pieces were written. Then came the backlash.For one, cops hated it, Porrino said. “They were going nuts,” said Porrino. “Just like they’re going crazy in New York right now.”

“We were under a tremendous amount of pressure from our law enforcement partners who were saying, ‘This is crazy. All these people are getting released,’” the former attorney general recalled. ”We said right then, ‘We never said it was going to be perfect. We also never said it was going to be easy.’”

One of the most common and vexing complaints about bail reform, according to mayors, police chiefs, and some county prosecutors, has been the “catch-and-release” of criminals who are arrested, processed, and go on to reoffend.

Local officials contend the problem is widespread and especially worrying in the case of car thefts, which spiked in recent years but have shown recent signs of slowing. The state judiciary says just over one percent of defendants out on pretrial release were charged with additional serious crimes while awaiting trial.

Several bills currently before the state Legislature would chip away at some of the provisions of bail reform, particularly the presumption that you won’t be jailed before trial if you are accused of certain crimes.

And now, some Democrats who supported the reforms at the time are now having second thoughts, leaving bail reform’s future an open question.

CHRISTIE’S NEXT MOVE?

Christie, who barely registers among GOP voters if named after all in polls of possible nominees, has increasingly signaled he’s prepared for another White House bid.

The former governor has spent months attacking the primary’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, who he endorsed early in 2016 after he ended his own nationwide campaign. After he served as a close adviser to Trump over his four years in office, Christie broke with his former friend after the failed insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

More recently, Christie has attacked other Republicans who will likely make a bid, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest competitor according to recent polling, and former Vice President Mike Pence.

In an even more overt public move that points to another run, Christie will travel to the early-voting state of New Hampshire next week to speak at a town hall-style event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

He ended his 2016 presidential bid shortly after a lackluster showing in the New Hampshire presidential primary that year. He was in sixth place among Republicans, with 8% of the vote.

In November, Christie told NJ Advance Media he would announce whether he’ll run for president by the end of June. More recently, in a report published on March 15, Christie told the Washington Examiner he’d decide within the “next 45 to 60 days.”

As for the timing of the Tuesday event? Christie told NJ Advance Media that since it’s an election year in New Jersey where all 120 seats in the state Senate and Assembly are on the ballot it’s a good time to educate the public.

Pressed on why bail reform has become a national discussion, Christie, who’s currently an ABC News analyst, said the same applied.

“I think that people who are looking at 2024 should be educated if they’re going to run for president, they should be educated on what we really did here. And whether I run or I don’t, I’m going to make sure people are because I’ll either have a perch at ABC, or I’ll have a perch on a debate stage,” Christie said.

Bail reform only works if you don’t have “woke” DAs and judges. The other must is past arrests and convictions have to be taken into account. Sure this time the arrest was for shoplifting $100.00 of merchandise but she has a record for assault, trespassing, possession, and multiple civil judgments outstanding. Not a good risk for bail reform. The most important consideration is community safety.

Oh and bail reform should never mean no bail it should mean bail that is in proportion to the offense and other factors such as past criminal history.

I hear ya.

I have no idea.

Maybe he’s on the Dems mailing list, and they praise him
non-stop.

WHEN will a few of these politicians be a target for criminals & THEY will WAKE UP???

I’ve felt the same way about these lenient judges you hear
about. Let their family deal with the death and
destruction.

BS,,,,,Christi doesn’t have Other People’s Money to run yet and is hedging bets he can find enough suckers to bankroll him.

I don’t care if he runs or not, he’s an absolute nightmare
of a political figure.

Why again does bail need reforming?

If he decides to run he can go on a book signing tour at Dollar Trees where his book may be selling two for a dollar.

How’s the bridge traffic, Chris?

Christie is MORE THAN WELCOME to make his case that freeing felons to terrorize people, mainly minorities, is a ‘good thing’, but he’ll be lucky to get as far as Jeb.

Nobody outside the northeast ghetto even remembers this also-ran. But hey he knocked some guy named Hogan out of the race so that’s something.

Agreed. Good one.