Civil rights lawyers' concerns about Atlanta's money bail system—keeping poor people in jail for minor violations when people with money can bond out—seem to have moved the needle, even if not as far as they would like.

The Municipal Court of Atlanta announced Wednesday that it will allow those charged with nonviolent offenses to sign signature bonds rather than requiring cash for bail.

The court's judges voted Monday to approve an updated Bond Standard Operating Procedure, the announcement said. “The Court routinely reviews and revises, as necessary, its bond related procedures to protect public safety and enforce the laws of its jurisdiction,” the news release said. “Over the past year, the Court established a committee to review its bond procedures and schedule.”

The court said the bench has revised the bond schedule to provide signature bonds through pretrial release to defendants arrested on new, nonviolent state traffic and/or city ordinance offenses that do not pose a significant public safety threat. “However, in the interest of public safety, defendants charged with new offenses posing a significant risk to the public and/or themselves will continue to have their bond determined by a judge within forty-eight hours pursuant to Georgia Law,” the release said.

“The court believes this updated bond procedure will continue to uphold a system that prioritizes public safety and justice, but the court also looks forward to supporting Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Councilmember Natalyn Archibong's bail reform legislation,” Chief Judge Calvin Graves said in the news release.

“Our momentum in revising the bond procedure continues to grow. We are extremely grateful for the initiatives of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and for her continued support and commitment to criminal justice reform,” Judge Terrinee Gundy, who chairs the Bond Procedure Review Committee, said in the release. “We also want to thank former Mayor Kasim Reed for his support over the last year in this effort.”

The decision followed by two weeks a letter from civil rights lawyers asking Atlanta's newly-installed major to end the practice of holding people in the city jail simply because they lack the cash to pay bail.

Civil Rights Corps and the Southern Center for Human Rights announced they had sent a letter to Bottoms reiterating their call for an end to wealth-based pretrial detention. The letter asked Atlanta officials to take immediate steps to eliminate the city's preset money bail policy and instead create a “constitutionally compliant post-arrest system.”

The letter asked the mayor to make a public endorsement by Feb. 1 of the basic principle that people who come before the Atlanta Municipal Court should not be confined in custody prior to trial solely because they cannot afford to pay money bail. The lawyers also asked her to bring the city's pretrial policy into compliance with that principle within the first 100 days of her term.

“Your promise to champion criminal justice reform,” the lawyers said, “can be put into concrete form by your support of these principles of fairness and equality in the administration of Atlanta's criminal legal system.”

The civil rights lawyers sent a similar letter to former Mayor Kasim Reed in November, noting that the two organizations have sued a number of cities in Georgia and around the country in federal court concerning these issues.

The civil rights groups said that the municipal court's current policy allows Atlanta's jail to use a “bail schedule” that lists a preset sum for each minor offense and automatically requires money as a condition of release, with no judicial review.

“People who can afford to pay are immediately released after booking,” the lawyers said. “Those who cannot are detained. As a result, city jail cells are filled nightly with people charged with misdemeanors and ordinance violations only because they cannot pay.”

Civil rights lawyers are not entirely satisfied with the changes.

“We applaud the Court's effort to re-examine its pretrial process, but we're concerned that this policy, as written, will lead to more wealth-based, pretrial detention for minor offenses, not less,” said Sarah Geraghty of the Southern Center. “First, the policy does not require the use of signature bonds in any case. Even for the most minor offenses, there is still discretion to detain people only because they cannot pay small bail amounts.”

Geraghty said that saying judges may grant signature bonds for the most minor offenses is really “no change from the former status quo.”

“Second, the policy appears to entirely eliminate pre-trial release for certain misdemeanors and ordinance offenses,” Geraghty said.