Washington's Courts Are About to Become Banks. That Should Worry Everyone.

Staff Writer
Mar 29
3 min read

Pop quiz. Can the same institution hold your money, decide your case, and keep what you owe if you lose? If you said "no, that sounds like a conflict of interest," congratulations — you have better instincts than the people drafting Washington's new bail rules. Here's what's being proposed. The Washington Supreme Court is considering a rule that creates a "strong presumption" letting defendants post 10% of their bail directly wit

h the court clerk. Not just for small cases. For everything. Misdemeanors and felonies. In every court in the state.

What That Means Mechanically

Think about what that means mechanically. Step one: The judge sets your bail. Step two: You hand cash to the court clerk. Step three: The court holds your money in its own registry. Step four: If you come back for all your hearings, they give it back. Step five: If you don't come back, the court keeps your deposit and comes after you for the remaining 90%. That money — the forfeited deposit, whatever they collect on the rest — goes to the county treasurer. The county funds the court. So the court is holding defendant money, adjudicating defendant cases, forfeiting defendant deposits, collecting defendant debts, and funneling the proceeds to the entity that pays its bills. All in the same case. All involving the same defendant.

Judicial Conduct and Impartiality

There's a rule in Washington's Code of Judicial Conduct that says judges must avoid "the appearance of impropriety." The test isn't whether a judge actually did something wrong. The test is whether a reasonable person looking at the situation would question the court's impartiality. Would a reasonable person question impartiality when the court is also the bank?

There's another rule that says judges can't use their position to advance economic interests. And another that requires disqualification when the court has an economic interest in the outcome. Right now, none of this is a problem. When a bail agent posts a surety bond, the financial interest belongs to the agent. The court just adjudicates. Clean separation. The judge doesn't care who posted what because the court has no money in the game.

The Proposed Rule's Implications

The proposed rule puts the court's money in the game. Every single case. You want to know where this leads? Philadelphia. They ran a deposit system for decades. Defendants posted 10% with the court. Then they didn't come back. The 90% was uncollectible. Over time the courts racked up roughly a billion dollars in phantom debt from 210,000 people who disappeared. Recovery rate? About 3%. The courts tried to be banks, failed at it, and eventually just erased the whole thing.

The Consequences

A billion dollars. Gone. And in the meantime, the courts were spending staff hours chasing bad debt instead of processing cases. That's not a worst-case scenario. That's what actually happened in the only major American city that ran this system at scale. Now imagine it in Washington. Not just on $200 misdemeanor deposits — those are tiny. Imagine it on felonies. $50,000 bail becomes a $5,000 clerk deposit. Defendant disappears. Court forfeits the $5,000 and adds $45,000 to its books as a receivable. Multiply that across every felony FTA in the state. How long before Washington's courts are sitting on their own mountain of uncollectible debt?

Courts aren't banks. They don't have collection departments. They don't have skip-tracing teams. They don't have the infrastructure, the staffing, or the expertise. Forcing them into that role doesn't modernize the system. It breaks it. And the person standing in front of a judge whose court is holding their cash? They have every right to wonder whose side the system is on.