ens of employees, we’ve already
closed three of our six locations
and if this continues on, we’re
going to lay off a lot more staff
and close all our brick-and-mortar
locations,” she said.
State legislators passed laws
thats took effect on Jan. 1, limiting
judges’ ability to impose
bail on most misdemeanors
and non-violent felonies, while
not allowing them to keep defendants
in custody pre-trial for
any misdemeanors and most
non-violent felonies.
Fordin-Saler and her competitors
in the bail industry
strongly oppose the reforms, including
one prominent Brooklyn
bondsman, who complained
that some patrons — whose bail
was retroactively eliminated as
a result of the new laws — have
already cut ties.
“I have clients coming into
my offi ce saying ‘I don’t have to
check in with you anymore,’ and
laughing,” said Ira Judelson,
who has arranged large bonds
for disgraced movie mogul Harvey
Weinstein, mixed martial
arts fi ghter Conor McGregor,
and the former director of the
International Monetary Fund
Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Judelson — whose Atlantic
Avenue offi ce lies directly
across from the recently-shuttered
House of Detention — often
deals with clients who have
to post large amounts of bail
for felony charges, and roughly
half of his customers fall outside
of the new laws.
Advocates pushing for reforms
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argued that the state’s
former bail system resulted in
the mass incarceration of poor
New Yorkers who had not been
convicted of any crimes, while
their well-heeled counterparts
could afford to buy their way
out of jail.
To illustrate the disparity,
Public Advocate Jumaane
Williams compared the case
of Weinstein — a millionaire
fi lm executive accused of sexually
assaulting two New York
women — to the tragic circumstances
surrounding the 2015
suicide of Kalief Browder, who
spent three years on Rikers Island
awaiting trial, because he
couldn’t afford $3,000 bail on
charges related to the theft of a
backpack.
“I can think of no clearer example
of why these reforms were
so critical than the fact that just
a block behind us Harvey Weinstein
arrived for his trial today
under his own power, while …
Kalief Browder couldn’t afford
to go home,” Williams said
in Manhattan Tuesday.
Bail bondsman Ira Judelson estimates the bail reforms affect half of his clients. Photo by Kevin Duggan
The Brooklyn bail industry
in particular has suffered under
policy’s enacted by District
Attorney Eric Gonzalez prior to
the state-wide bail reform. The
Kings County prosecutor —
who effectively decriminalized
possession of small amounts of
marijuana in the borough — requested
bail in only seven percent
of misdemeanor cases in
2019, and several of Judelson’s
competitors in and around
Downtown Brooklyn had already
closed shop in the years
leading up the new reforms.
On the other hand, the closure
of the Brooklyn House of
Detention as part of Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s borough-based jails
plan has not deeply impacted
either bail bonds company, according
to Judelson, who said
that most of their business
comes from the nearby criminal
and supreme courts.
But the state’s trend toward
enacting progressive criminal
justice reforms may reduce the
state’s bail bonds industry of
slightly more than 200 licensed
agents by half, according to
the head of the trade organization
the New York State Bondsman
Association Michelle
Esquenazi, who said most bailbonds
businesses are not large
enough to weather a longterm
recession.
“They’re family-owned business,
they’re not multimillion
dollar enterprises,” said Esquenazi,
who also owns Empire
Bail Bonds. “It will affect everyone
at a 50-percent ratio.”
Bail industry
Continued from page 1
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