In recent years, there has been a lot of controversy regarding bail decisions; particularly, to people who have limited resources. More recently the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; which is the highest court in Massachusetts, said that bail should factor in whether the criminal defendant has less money and what the risk of having a bail being excessive or unfair.  Meaning that if an executive or someone that with a lot of money is able to afford it versus someone that has very little money is not able to, that the court should take a look at that.

For example, the idea is that detaining someone before their found guilty, sometimes forces people to plead out to cases that they were not in fact guilty to avoid jail. Other times had someone held for an excessive period of time just because they have limited money.  So, there has been more of a trend; particularly in Massachusetts to factor in the criminal defendant’s ability to pay bail, because bail is not supposed to be a punishment as much as to ensure that they will appear in court.

There is also a dangerousness hearing that can be held which is not part of the bail, but if they determined that the person needs to be detained because of the dangerousness, this is just talking about bail.