Another repeat felon has cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet and is on the run.
The problem is not with the monitoring program, which attempts to keep these thugs in line, but with our court system, which doesn’t. The problem is bond amounts that haven’t kept up with inflation, or sanity.
Reginald Martin got a total $20,000 bond on three felony charges for robbery with a dangerous weapon ($10,000) , conspiracy to commit robbery ($5,000) and assault with a deadly weapon resulting in serious injury ($5,000). For kicks I googled “bond” and “armed robbery” to see what today’s enterprising young criminals are bonding out for elsewhere. Here are the first three that came up:
In this one, the bond ranged from $50,000 to $100,000 for the suspects involved. In another one, a judge reduced the robber’s bond amount to $60,000 — from and initial amount of $300,000. In the third robbery, a young robber is sitting in jail on a $100,000 bond.
Unlike in Reginald Martin’s case, in all three of the random Google cases, no one was seriously injured by those charged. But hey, like I’ve always said, life is cheap here.
It is a common misperception that bail amounts can only serve to insure the appearance of the defendant. That is the main purpose of bail, but judges in Mecklenburg County can consider several additional factors, including the danger of the defendant to the community and the defendant’s criminal history. That is actually a written part of the court system’s operational rules.
It’s time for the county judicial system to revamp its bond guidelines, with bond amounts for serious crimes directed on a steep upward trajectory. If the system would just do this, and if judges wouldn’t side-step it, repeat offenders like Martin wouldn’t commit felony after felony while on bond. (Martin committed the armed robbery in question while on bond.) This would probably cut the courthouse case load by a double digit percentage.
