A recent study found that roughly 56% of suspects accused of violent crimes or weapons violations in Dallas are released on bail or on their own recognizance, and nearly 25% of them end up arrested again.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia commissioned the study after expressing frustration over the repercussions of the bail “reform” movement, which has been championed by Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot.
Michael Smith, a criminologist based out of the University of Texas at San Antonio, picked a sample of 464 suspects arrested in 2021 and tracked them through May of this year, according to Fox 4.
Of the 464 suspects, 40% were kept in custody or transferred to other agencies after their arrest (187), but 56% were released on bail or on their own recognizance (260). Of those 260 suspects who were released, 62 were later re-arrested for allegedly committing another crime.
The sample consisted of suspects arrested for murder, robbery of a business, robbery of an individual, family violence aggravated assault, non-family violence aggravated assault, and weapons law violations.
Smith found that out of the 109 murder suspects in the sample, about one-third were released on bail.
Roughly two-thirds of those with aggravated assault charges were also released.
Suspects charged with robbery of a business or an individual clocked release rates of 29.4% and 41.1%, respectively, and those with weapons law violations made bail or were released on their own recognizance about 75% of the time.
“I am somewhat astonished, to be frank,” Garcia admitted on Tuesday at a public safety meeting.
“To see 34% of the individuals this department worked so hard to take off the streets that have committed murder — to have family, to have community in those neighborhoods trust the police to take those individuals that have done that type of crime — to only be back out in a little over two weeks, is astonishing to me,” he stated.
The stunning revelation follows an accused capital murderer’s recent escape from house arrest and electronic monitoring.
Bryce Jones posted bail in January after being indicted for a triple homicide he allegedly participated in on July 4 last year, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
“I think it is eye-opening for people that don’t work with this kind of data regularly to see the percentage of people who get out on bail,” Smith told Fox 4. “Far more get out in the Dallas sample — would get out on bail — than would ever happen in the federal system.”
The Dallas Police Department logged 189 homicides through the end of October this year, but it is currently unclear how many murder suspects have been released on bail since Smith’s study only sampled 2021 arrests.
“As long as we see these types of numbers, we don’t have any business saying we take gun crime seriously,” said Garcia. “I’ve never met a neighborhood that asked for less police. I’ve also never met a neighborhood in Dallas impacted by violent crime that’s asked for less accountability of violent criminals.”
Earlier in the week, Dallas City Council members discussed ways to use Smith’s study to start a conversation with state lawmakers about making judges’ decisions more transparent since they ultimately have the authority to set bail.
“Is there any way an individual could learn the case dispositions of a specific judge?” Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn asked Smith, per Fox 4.
He responded to her question by noting that though such information is available to the public, it is not easily accessed.
“If we could create a system that would allow for that visibility, the transparency Chief Garcia is calling for, it is at least plausible that you would see different results in the data I just showed you,” Smith stated.
The issue is further complicated in Dallas County, however, as every judge in the jurisdiction has been ordered by a federal court to take into account a defendant’s financial situation when setting bail, following a lawsuit by the ACLU and other civil rights groups, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.