Assemblyman John McKeon has introduced a bill that will undo much of the Bail Reform put into effect in 2014 in the State of New Jersey. McKeon sees growing problems with the amount of money and resources that would be required to im
plement the bail reform. Eliminating bail creates an unnecessary burden on an already burdened criminal justice system according to the Assemblyman. The cost is extraordinary at more than a half-billion dollars per year according to one study. The bail reform legislation that was put into place would require the courts to be open on weekends meaning state and county employees would be required to work weekends costing taxpayers additional money. The funding for the proposed Pretrial Services simply isn’t there. Senator Nicholas Scutari has introduced the same bill in the Senate.
Many of the proposed bail reforms look nice on paper but simply do not work in reality because there is not enough money and there are not enough people to implement the reforms. At a cost of nearly half a billion dollars (according to one study) to taxpayers, the bail reform is much more expensive than initially thought. Many voted for the reforms because they were promised savings. The proposed bill would stop the costly bail reform from taking place in January 2017.