CHARLOTTE — Part of Iryna’s Law, named after the Ukrainian woman police say was killed on the Blue Line earlier this year, mandates that judicial officials must give secured bonds to people who previously may have been given an unsecured bond or written promise to appear.
Both of which don’t require you to pay a penny to get out.
“This means, in this moment, that cashless bail is off the table for many people,” said Kristie Puckett with Second Chance Federation, a law firm started by and trying to help formerly incarcerated people.
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“It just means that if a affluent person commits a crime, they’ll be able to pay their way out while someone else who might engage in that same behavior sits and loses everything that they’ve worked for, simply because they’ve been accused of a crime,” said Puckett.
Bond is not supposed to be used as a punishment. Afterall, anyone arrested is innocent until proven guilty. Instead, bond is used by judicial officials to make sure people show up to their court date.
“Sure you have the presumption of innocence from the perspective of the court, but they also have the duty to keep the community safe,” said 12th Congressional District GOP Chairman Addul Ali.
He said this part of the new law will keep violent repeat offenders off the street. He doesn’t believe mandating bonds for some will have an unfair impact.
“I’m kind of old school in that if you do the crime, you gotta do the time,” Ali said. “And there’s this school of thought that lumps poor people and criminals together. There’s a lot of poor folks and not a whole lot of people committing crime, so I think there has to be some level of accountability.”
Another impact of the law is what it means for the Mecklenburg County Jail. Channel 9 has been told it will put added stressors on the jail, without the proper resources.
We plan to hear from the sheriff about those impacts on Dec. 8.
VIDEO: Iryna’s Law goes into effect, cracks down on pretrial release
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