16 ms·

The Bail Trap

186 points by japhyr 11y ago

mindslight 11y ago
The only real solution to this is to stop externalizing the cost of false positives onto the victims. Kidnap someone and put them in a cage for a month so they lose their salary, job, apartment etc? That adds up to an awful lot of easily demonstrable financial damage that the justice system is directly responsible for. Only when false arrests and prosecution start directly impacting these organizations' budgets will they possibly care about the harm they do.
- alentrekin 11y ago
  see also, section III http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-release...
  - alentrekin 11y ago
    Police privilege provides legal justification for any detention made with probable cause. Heroin straw > arrest > detention under bail.
    - gknoy 11y ago
      In the case mentioned in the article, though, when the man is _holding_ a soda, and has said that he's going to use the straw for that, it seems farcical to consider treating the straw as drug paraphernalia as "probable cause".
      - tsotha 11y ago
        Probable cause is something you need to conduct a search. They went far beyond a search in this instance. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea they actually charged him with a crime when they had no evidence a crime was committed. None. I don't understand why the judge didn't laugh them out of court.
        spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Because he's racist, corrupt, or both?
        tsotha 11y ago
        Or neither. You probably shouldn't make allegations like that without having some kind of evidence.
        spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Charged with a crime absent evidence of a crime is evidence of corruption. The racism is merely speculation but it's not wild speculation. You shouldn't overlook obvious evidence.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. You'd need to go after the individuals. In a circumstance like that described in the article, it would not be unreasonable to investigate the police officers' actions, specially the question of whether he truly had reasonable grounds for suspicion that the straw was truly drug paraphernalia. If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. I know it's never going to happen but one can dream...
  - outworlder 11y ago
    > If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. Can one do that? Why doesn't it seem to happen more often?
    - nickff 11y ago
      Government prosecutors are generally unwilling to charge police with crimes because they see themselves as being on the same 'team', and the 'blue wall' will stop them. In addition, we should remember that police officers are an arm of the state, not a charitable organization out to help people. There is simply no reason for anyone in the bureaucracy (including the prosecutors' offices) to care about or want to fix these problems.
      - LordKano 11y ago
        Precisely. Unless an officer's actions are both shockingly egregious and clearly documented, prosecutors usually won't do anything. After that cop is gone, the prosecutor still must work with his friend and colleagues to present cases for trial.
  - function_seven 11y ago
    > Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. Sure it will. If the cost of arresting someone was potentially a few hundred thousand dollars each time, the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone. As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, full agreement here, even regarding the pipe-shapedness of the dream :(
gtCameron 11y ago
John Oliver also did a great segment on this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5mwymTIJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5mwymTIJU
conover 11y ago
It's unclear to me how these situations are not a violation of the Eighth Amendment. United States v. Salerno: "the government's proposed conditions of release or detention not be 'excessive' in light of the perceived evil." Stack v. Boyle: "excessive" is "a figure higher than is reasonably calculated" to ensure appearance I guess it's easy to beat up people who don't have the means to defend themselves. Someone should start an Occupy Justice movement and have everyone request jury trials to cause a system crash.
- nickff 11y ago
  One of the many problems here is that the public has little sympathy for defendants, and most talk about the 'justice system' is basically a competition to see who can rail agaist criminals the most. The facts that the false conviction rate is quite high, and that the vast majority of cases (>90%) do not go to trial at all are completely missed by the citizenry who simply do not care to learn about the system they are upholding.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    There also seems to be a widespread belief that everyone who has "brushes with the law" is guilty of something, even if it wasn't the thing the cops picked them up for or the DA charged them with. I think the prevalence of "beating the system" stories in popular media helps fuel this perception.
- abarrettjo 11y ago
  This makes me wonder whether a possible solution path could be to bring a case about this to the Supreme Court.
  - justizin 11y ago
    The problem is not that the supreme court has never ruled on anything like this, it's that all a supreme court ruling does is to give you something that a good lawyer can refer to in your court case. Being in the criminal justice system is incredibly expensive and high risk, and as an individual, allowing your case to go to the supreme court requires continually losing it.
tedks 11y ago
""" Tomlin broke off to go inside the store and buy a soda. The clerk wrapped it in a paper bag and handed him a straw. Back outside, as the conversation wound down, one of the officers called the men over. He asked one of Tomlin’s friends if he was carrying anything he shouldn’t; he frisked him. Then he turned to Tomlin, who was holding his bagged soda and straw. ‘‘He thought it was a beer,’’ Tomlin guesses. ‘‘He opens the bag up, it was a soda. He says, ‘What you got in the other hand?’ I says, ‘I got a straw that I’m about to use for the soda.’ ’’ The officer asked Tomlin if he had anything on him that he shouldn’t. ‘‘I says, ‘No, you can check me, I don’t have nothing on me.’ He checks me. He’s going all through my socks and everything.’’ The next thing Tomlin knew, he says, he was getting handcuffed. ‘‘I said, ‘Officer, what am I getting locked up for?’ He says, ‘Drug paraphernalia.’ I says, ‘Drug paraphernalia?’ He opens up his hand and shows me the straw.’’ """ This isn't even the main point of the article but I think it speaks volumes on its own.
- civilian 11y ago
  Yeah. I wish we'd restrict the definition of drug paraphernalia. And ya know, end the drug war.
  - beat 11y ago
    It's a popular misconception that ending the drug war would end the injustice. But as much as I'd like to see the war on drugs put to a swift end, it's not the root of the problem. Arrest quotas have become the standard for judging police officer performance in many cities, and fines for trivial offenses have become a key revenue generator for many local governments (see the DoJ review of Ferguson for a particularly awful example). "Justice" for petty crime has become a self-sustaining industry - and a profitable one, as we can see with the rise of private for-profit prisons. If it's not drug paraphernalia, it's some other charge - jaywalking, loitering, and the ever popular "resisting arrest". A recent video interview with a former Baltimore cop summed it up well. He pointed out that it's pretty much impossible to drive a car or walk down the street without breaking some law or another. So cops can easily arrest anyone, at any time, for largely fabricated reasons. Throw in arrest quotas and fine revenue as municipal funding, and you have a formula for mass arrests and incarceration for trivial offenses. The trick then is to find people who can be arrested who won't rock the boat politically... the poor, and the non-white. Now, you wind up with a racist justice system, not out of racist intent, but out of its very architecture. The solution is for comfortable, safe, middle class white Americans to stop ignoring and start caring.
eevilspock 11y ago
I wish HN was more inclined to vote up articles like this and figure out how the tech community can effect change. Most of us will never be subject to this injustice, so it is ever so easy to avert our eyes and focus on topics such a Apples Products are Getting Harder to Use and the 1983 version of Unix System V Release 1 Programming Guide, both of which are ranked higher and have more comments despite being posted 9 hours earlier.
- davidw 11y ago
  The world is full of 'outrageous' things: we could easily keep the front page full of them. But then we'd lose what we came here for in the first place. There are other places for these kinds of articles.
  - nickff 11y ago
    I agree with the first two sentences of your post, but I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are. I have little reason to believe that these problems are going to get more public attention in the future than they are getting now, which is to say that I have little hope of fixing these issues.
    - mhurron 11y ago
      > I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are Sites that are not specifically about other topics? How about places that are primarally focused on the US, because as discussed, it really is a US only problem. Should every site everywhere only be posting about social problems? Can no other topic ever be discussed until every socail problem is solved? HN is actually pretty broad given its topic of things that are of interest to 'hackers' which is why articles like this will be posted and discussed but there are other things that are also of interest to 'hackers.' Those will also be posted and discussed.
    - res0nat0r 11y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/politics https://www.reddit.com/r/politics https://www.reddit.com/r/news https://www.reddit.com/r/news https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews
bail-throw-away 11y ago
OK - so I just had two experiences with a bay area law enforcement agency, and I am beside myself with disgust and anger: I was accused of doing something I did not. I was taken to jail and they held me on bail - and set my court date for about three weeks from the time I was booked, but an arraignment in about 5 days. I had just accepted a new job - but still had a week on my current. I HAD to post bail (and I didn't really have the money for it) so I had to get a bail bond. so I could get out and go to work!! This cost my $3,000 out of pocket. So I did, and then went to my arraignment: Guess what "no charges filed and case rejected for lack of any evidence at all" But now - I am out $3,000 and I have an arrest on my record for something that was simply a false accusation! Further, WHile I was in jail over night, the guards and police are absolute douchebags. They treat EVERYONE like crap. I now hate all cops. ALL of them.
- gambiter 11y ago
  I'm curious... in a situation like this, could you sue for wrongful arrest?
  - webkike 11y ago
    Uh, no. The entire point of the criminal justice system is to determine if arrests are wrongful or not.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Still, just because a police officer arrests you does not mean that the arrest is legitimate. (especially in a legal sense, I guess in a de facto sense this is a relatively safe avenue for police to abuse their power)
    - gambiter 11y ago
      The criminal justice system determines if the accused is innocent. The arrest is a separate action. In fact, if you are convinced that is IS a wrongful arrest, you may legally resist arrest, tell the officer, and he is supposed to let you present evidence of your innocence. However, it doesn't HAVE to be claimed at the time of arrest. I was curious in OP's case because of the "no charges filed and case rejected for lack of any evidence at all" line. It seems to me, that would be enough reason to claim wrongful arrest and at least get compensation for the bail bond.
xacaxulu 11y ago
If you've ever dealt with police in other countries (I have everywhere from France to Zimbabwe), the interactions are amazingly more peaceful. As a former US Marine (Afghanistan and Iraq), the hyper-vigilant police mentality I see more and more scares the heck out of me. It's no secret that it's getting worse, and coupled with a racket like "The Bail Trap", prison industry based products and one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, things are looking very sad here in the US. I'm sure it's not perfect anywhere, but we are way off base with our justice system. When you have to have a dash cam or a hidden cam/mic on you to prove you didn't do anything, that's pretty sad.
- Justsignedup 11y ago
  Sounds like we're moving in the direction of Russia where every driver has a cam because the cops literally don't care and it's the only way to prove that someone didn't stop mid road and went into reverse into you.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    I was under the impression that it was to fight insurance fraud.
    - mikestew 11y ago
      Fighting insurance fraud is exactly what the previous commenter was referring to, I'm sure. Joe Citizen stops, backs into you, then claims you rear-ended him. Or a pedestrian throws himself on your hood, claims you ran over him. There are montages floating around (too lazy to look, sorry) that demonstrate this. It's worth searching for, as they're pretty hilarious yet sad at the same time.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        Right, but my point was that it has very little to do with cops. Unless they witnessed the 'accident', what exactly would you expect from them without video footage of your own?
abarrettjo 11y ago
The same author writes on this topic/related issues somewhat frequently. Here's one on the origins of the police force itself: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/magazine/the-point-of-order.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/magazine/the-point-of-orde...
russnewcomer 11y ago
In reading the article, part of the conclusion that I came to is not that cash bail is inherently broken and unfixable, but the sense of scale by the people setting bail is. To a lower-income person with minimal savings and unpredictable income (like most of the subjects of the article), an unplanned $500 expense like bail is potentially crushing, whereas to a higher-income person with decent savings and regular predictable income (like the judges), an unplanned $500 expense is annoying but not catastrophic. Restructure the law so that bail cannot be easily set over $100 for non-violent misdemeanors, and that 100% of the bail is returned to the person posting it for amounts under $1000, and NYC (of which I am not a resident) will be well on it's way to solving the current problems of the bail system, and then have a whole new host of problems with the new system to solve in 50 years once all of its weaknesses are exploited. [edit] corrected improper use of bailbond to bail
- gohrt 11y ago
  The bail amount should be a function of the defendant's means. That's the entire point of bail -- a collateral to make the defendant feel incentivized to show up for court.
  - HarryHirsch 11y ago
    To a European, the bail system appears very strange. Isn't not showing up for your court date a crime in itself, and grounds for immediate arrest? Either the defendant is a threat to society or unlikely to show up at court (because he's a transient or likely to be issued a long sentence), then you lock up the fellow, or he isn't any of that, in which case one can trust him to show up on time. Also, isn't a person innocent until the judge pronounces the verdict? What is sit that makes American society so different?
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > To a European, the bail system appears very strange. Isn't not showing up for your court date a crime in itself, and grounds for immediate arrest? Yes, but resorting to arrest to bring you to trial after you've wasted the court's--and everyone else involved--time by not showing up has costs a risk of failure. Pretrial detention exists to eliminate that risk, and bail is in theory what you pay to get society to instead accept the risk and forego pretrial detention.
mcantelon 11y ago
There seems to be a lot of NGOs opposed to cops, the prison industrial complex, etc. but AFAIK there's none that will provide bail aid, which would likly make more of an impact than anything.
- bcks 11y ago
  Well, the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund is mentioned in TFA: http://www.brooklynbailfund.org http://www.brooklynbailfund.org Also in NYC: http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org
  - mcantelon 11y ago
    The article yields its fruit! Thanks!
rectang 11y ago
> Without bail — and the quick guilty pleas > that it produces — courts would come under > significant strain. "The system would shut > down," Goldberg says. It doesn't cost much to bail out some poor people. Seems like a great opportunity to screw with an unjust system!
- ma2rten 11y ago
  How much does it cost? I think it is at least 10k for the least serious crimes.
  - justizin 11y ago
    It easily goes into the hundreds of thousands, and when people with mental illness end up in jail, off their meds, they often stack up all sorts of charges for relatively minor behavior that sounds ominous on paper as "assault on a penal officer" or somesuch. Now you can get bail in the millions, and prejudice from every corner of the system. It's no longer about a straw, it's about a guard who says you punched them when in face five people were holding you and you had a spasm or something.
    - rectang 11y ago
      You don't need to bail out everybody for this hack to work. Just bailing out those with bail under N dollars should be enough to DOS the courts.
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    TFA mentioned several cases where it was under $2k.
- crpatino 11y ago
  No, that's exactly the opposite. What the quote means is that bails allows courts to process much more arrests than reasonably possible, and that also that guilty pleas mask the fact that the grounds for most of those fast forward arrest occurred under shaky grounds at best. What you want to do is to pay poor people to sit in jail for as long as it takes to exercise their right for a fair trail. Once judges and other court personnel is forced to hear 18 hrs of bullshit accusations for every hour of real cases, they will begin to look their cozy cuff-happy bedfellows in a new light.
danielweber 11y ago
A colleague had his ex file for child support, putting him suddenly thousands of dollars in the hole (it was backdated to when they separated, not when she asked for suppor) because he's not from a socioeconomic class that keeps thousands of dollars hanging around. That left him unable to renew his driver's license, drastically impacting his ability to get work and pay child support. He now, for unrelated reasons, has full custody of his kids. But he still can't get a driver's license to get a job to support his kids because he's still behind on that child support. For the kids he has in his house. He deserves some responsibility for this, but it's like the system wants him to fail and fail hard.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  He's unable to borrow money from friends / family / bank / mortagage / credit card to pay the child support?
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    People who don't have thousands lying around tend to have friends and family in similar financial situations, may not have a bank account, probably don't have a mortgage, and little credit.
    - ectoplasm 11y ago
      It was an honest question. GP did say "his house". The fact that not everyone conforms to "tend to" stereotypes is exactly why it's worth asking these questions. Plenty of poor people in America have buckets of debt. Also, there's always pawn shops and the mob. Unpalatable, but still better than not being able to work.
      - ceejayoz 11y ago
        It's an honest question that appears to illustrate the lack of understanding of what it's like to be poor. "There's always the mob" is just tone-deaf IMO.
gohrt 11y ago
The average persons more powerful weapon against police misconduct is Jury Nullification. Refuse to convict defendants until the police start obeying the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
- Tenhundfeld 11y ago
  If you're considering this, read up on the law, and ideally, get advice from a lawyer who knows the laws and precedents of your state and local judges. It's a trickier subject than you might expect. I got called to serve jury duty several years ago, and being somewhat familiar with jury nullification, sought advice from a lawyer friend. I don't remember the exact details of his advice, but it was generally this: 1) Don't even hint that you're aware of jury nullification during jury selection and examination. Obviously don't lie if asked a direct question about it, but that doesn't really happen. Instead, you might be asked something like, "If the evidence proves the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, can you enforce the law regardless of your personal beliefs about whether the law is correct?" Just answer "yes" and be quiet – unless you honestly don't think so. (Remember, you won't know much, if anything, about the case at this point. So, abstractly, you probably can set aside personal beliefs if the facts of the case warrant it.) 2) Don't ever use the words "jury nullification" when deliberating with the other jurors. Judges can and will remove jurors who are openly engaging in jury nullification. There have even been instances of judges holding jurors in contempt for it, but according to my lawyer friend, those cases were overturned. Regardless, you will likely be removed from the jury and possibly have further hassles. 3) In jury deliberation, remember that you don't have to convince the other jurors of your position. If you don't feel right convicting the defendant, you don't have to. Just stick to your guns and let the jury be hung. I was glad I sought advice, because I ended up engaging in jury nullification. In my case, the defendant was charged with a DUI for essentially being obnoxiously drunk in his driveway on private property. He was playing music through his truck speakers, with the windows down. The engine was not on, but his keys were in the ignition – to enable the electrical system. He was having a party, with friends over, a grill going, etc. He had not signaled any intent to leave the party at his own home, and the prosecution didn't argue that he was planning to drive anywhere. But in my state, being intoxicated and having your keys in the ignition (or even initiating a sequence of events that will result in driving) is grounds for a DUI. I understand the reasons for the law being worded that way. If somebody is obviously drunk and walking towards their car to leave a bar, cops need to be able to stop him before he actually starts driving. However, in my case, what actually happened is the defendant mouthed off to the cops, and my interpretation is they were punishing him for being disrespectful. They could have just told him to turn down his music or issued him a noise violation and moved on. He was not planning to drive his car anywhere or endanger anyone. Instead, they unnecessarily escalated the situation. A DUI can be a felony and can result in losing your job or being excluded from future jobs. It's serious. I didn't think this guy deserved that – despite coming across as a total asshole during his testimony. I tried my best to convince the other jurors, but they all ultimately felt they had to enforce the law as it exists. According to the law, he did commit acts that technically constitute a DUI. So, they all voted guilty – even though many thought it "wasn't fair." After 8 hours of deliberation, we ended up with a hung jury and me being the sole dissenter. I will admit it was exhausting to keep arguing for the guy, when everybody is tired and just wants to go home. I was also very relieved when I went home that night, searched public convictions, and found none for the defendant. Anyway, if you get called to serve on a jury, please don't try to get out of it. It's a great honor and responsibility, and we need more intelligent, free-thinking people in our juries. But do educate yourself on jury nullification beforehand.
deleted 11y ago
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rsp1984 11y ago
Besides the questionable bail system, what I really don't get is why there's jail time on minor drug possession delicts. One can debate about the war-on-drugs (I think it's failed) but even if society thinks drugs are a bad thing and worth fighting against it, it's the dealers that should go to jail, not the people who use drugs. 30 days for holding a straw that might contain some heroin, really? Something is obviously very very broken here.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  If you want the war on drugs to work, arresting dealers is a waste of time. If there's demand, then there are always more poor people willing to make easy money as dealers. Sending casual users to jail is the only way to cut demand. If the casual users -- the most lucrative market -- get off scott-free then there's never any limit to demand and consumption.
CPLX 11y ago
There is a four word solution that would wipe out a massive, massive percentage of this problem: End the drug war
tyingq 11y ago
The US prison/jail vendor ecosystem is a trap as well. The phone system is a good example. Inmates have some scheduled time where they can make phone calls, provided someone on the outside has funded an account. You, of course, expect it to be a little more expensive than normal phone service. However, here's the reality. You deposit $25, then: - $7 service fee for the credit card processing - $4.50 for the first minute of every call - then $2.50 a minute for any subsequent minute So, yes, a 2 minute phone call, within the same state, costs the family $14. These are real numbers, from one of the big vendors in the space...Global Tel Link. Source: Have relative that was in jail...this is what I had to pay. Here's an older article on the subject: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/pleasedeposit.html http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/pleasedeposit.html
- tyingq 11y ago
  Just to note that phones are the tip of the iceberg. The jails and prisons are taking huge fees from commissary accounts, charging fees to see a doctor (even if you were assaulted), etc. Also things like reducing to 2 meals a day to save money. Or worse. Search google for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's outdoor tents, in Phoenix, where the average high temp in July is 41C/106F. It's really shameful.
- bernardom 11y ago
  There's a startup for that! http://pigeon.ly/ http://pigeon.ly/ The Planet Money podcast about it is great. A former inmate who wanted to solve the phone call problem, and expanded to other prison-specific issues.
codecamper 11y ago
Maybe technology could help this situation? It sounds like a big part of the problem are too many arrests for things without enough evidence. Wouldn't everyone benefit for better logs & statistical analysis? If a certain police officer had a 15% conviction rate, and he actually liked his job, then he'd be sure next time to be more sure about his arrests. Such a tool could track recent trends as well. Also, it sounds like there needs to be a system (email??) to contact employers. All employers required to have an official address and courts are required to contact it with current case status. Anyone else have ideas about how tech could help the situation?
- arkem 11y ago
  I don't think arrest to conviction conversion rate is very meaningful by itself since in many jurisdictions the prosecutors get to choose which arrested persons to prosecute and how vigorously.
  - codecamper 11y ago
    hmm, the arrests are the input. The prosecutors would be a second filter step. And that step would be more or less constant. There are several steps towards conviction and many variables, but I think there are statistical methods that can tease out the conversion rates at each step along the way.
- conover 11y ago
  What about on the other end: an automated system to assign bail amounts? Plug in charges + criminal history + financial status into a system that determines bail. That way it's in the hands of a computer and there is no blowback to a particular judge/prosecutor/etc.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Then any judgment is removed from the system. Judges can abuse that power, and they can have bad judgment, but an algorithm has no judgment at all. Worse, you can get people turning off their mind as to whether it made any sense, because "that's what the computer said". People are in the system for some good reasons...
craigds 11y ago
This kind of nonsense is why as a tourist, I would think very carefully before ever going to the US, and have little desire to. Based on what I know about the place, I'd feel uneasy the whole time I was there, as though I could be arrested at any moment just for crossing the road the wrong way. One time I took my Irish passport instead of my NZ one by mistake when entering Australia, and I was subjected to dog sniffs and minor harrassment by the border control staff, which made me very uncomfortable. From what I understand that's nothing compared to what you can expect as a foreigner entering the US. Do other non-Americans feel this way or is it just me? I can't imagine this situation does wonders for American tourism or business. FWIW my experience of police (in both NZ and in Germany) has been that they're always very pleasant to deal with.
- chasing 11y ago
  Calm down. You'll be just fine traveling the United States. You might even have a pleasant interaction with an American police officer which you can add to your list. They're mostly just good people trying to do good work, just like the rest of us.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    [citation needed]
    - chasing 11y ago
      > [citation needed] Look it up.
- krapp 11y ago
  >I can't imagine this situation does wonders for American tourism or business. The US appears to be the second most common tourist destination in the world, with about 75 million arrivals in 2014 alone[0][1], so I guess it's doing just fine, and is not actually a nightmarish police state, and most people come and go without incident. Feel free to jaywalk with impunity. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings [1]http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Fast_Facts_2014.pdf http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Fa... ^Yes, it's a PDF.
graycat 11y ago
I'm not a lawyer but I am a US citizen. To me, the police, prosecutors, and judges in the OP are, really, just out to attack the poor people, just attack them like wild, mad, rabid dogs, attack them for no good reason, just declare war on them, out of hate, arrogance, self-exalted ego, like thugs that just like to beat up on people. Let's see: "Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." So, the OP violated: "Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, ..." The trials are not "speedy". Any judge who has any respect for the Constitution and is not out just to act like a wild, mad, rabid dog out to declare war on the poor people should immediately dismiss any case without a "speedy trial". So, the OP violated: "Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, ..." The "right of trial by jury" was not "preserved". Instead, the delays in the system and the excessive bail canceled that right. So, the OP violated: "Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The bail was deliberately excessive and the jail situation "inflicted" "cruel and unusual punishments" as a means to coerce a guilty plea without a trial. In addition, from "The rest of the file contained Tomlin’s criminal history, which included 41 convictions, ..." the system clearly convicts and punishes the defendants based not on the crime they are accused of but often just on the record of crimes of the past, crimes for which they have "paid their debt to society", that is, multiple jeopardy. In addition, it is now essentially illegal to carry more than, say, a few hundred dollars in cash. Seeing such cash, it is common for the police just to confiscate it, in wild violation of "Amendment V ... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." So, from the OP: "The documentation submitted by the arresting officer explained that his training and experience told him that plastic straws are 'a commonly used method of packaging heroin residue.'" That's essentially the same as saying that "his training and experience told him that" commonly criminals breathe and that he observed the defendant breathing so arrested him. The judge should have laughed the police officer out of the court room and asked the public defender to file charges of false arrest against the officer and bringing a nonsense legal case against the prosecutor. Instead, the judge just went along with wild, mad, rabid dog attack on the citizen. No, clearly, actually his training and experience told him that the defendant was poor so should be viciously attacked with the intention of ruining his life -- the excuse was that he had in one hand a bottle of soft drink and in the other hand a soda straw. Here the police, prosecutors, and judges are just declaring war on a large fraction of US citizens -- just war, no cause, no reason, wildly illegal and unconstitutional, very dirty business. The whole system is wildly in conflict with the Constitution. If the US legal system had any honest functionality at all, then any lawyer should be able to make a motion that would shut down the whole situation coast to coast in an hour.
tsotha 11y ago
There's are a lot of things to cringe about in this story, but bail isn't one of them. The article says so-and-so was held in jail because he couldn't pay bail, but that's not really accurate. The guy is held because he was arrested. Bail is an out you get until the trail if you can convince the judge you're gonna show up for the trial. IMO there are two real problems with the story about the "main character". First, the DA comes to the judge with a case against a guy charged with possessing a straw. The judge should have thrown it out and said "come back when you have evidence of a crime". Second, we have the means to protect inmates from each other. There's no reason for a three week stay to mean a busted up face. Jail should be boring, but safe, and the state should be liable for every rape or assault that happens inside.
yason 11y ago
I'm somehow always a bit worried when travelling to the US and reading these stories just makes it worse. I don't know what the risk for a visitor is in reality. These cases seem to happen out of nowhere. I don't have any reason to be arrested, really, and I'll probably be fine absolutely most of the time but if something should happen and I happened to be around I'm, as a foreigner, in a very weak position to understand what's going on. I should probably read a couple of books on US legal system and how things work there but the need for doing so would usually arise from having to travel to some totalitarian developing country. In certain countries, you should expect to have some money as it might be customary to bribe the police officer or other officials but once that's settled things generally unfold fine from there. It seems that in the US, you should expect to have lots of money as it might be customary to bribe the court yet things can generally get quite uncertain from there, based on what I've read. It's hard to evaluate the risk, though: the probability is rather low but the impact can be devastating. I get the feeling that if only you're a "regular Joe", ideally white (or fit in the "good" ethnicity of your city), you don't stand out of others, and you have money, you're likely to be fine. The further you deviate from that the more unpredictable things can get.

186 points by japhyr 11y ago

The only real solution to this is to stop externalizing the cost of false positives onto the victims. Kidnap someone and put them in a cage for a month so they lose their salary, job, apartment etc? That adds up to an awful lot of easily demonstrable financial damage that the justice system is directly responsible for. Only when false arrests and prosecution start directly impacting these organizations' budgets will they possibly care about the harm they do.

alentrekin 11y ago
see also, section III http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-release...
- alentrekin 11y ago
  Police privilege provides legal justification for any detention made with probable cause. Heroin straw > arrest > detention under bail.
  - gknoy 11y ago
    In the case mentioned in the article, though, when the man is _holding_ a soda, and has said that he's going to use the straw for that, it seems farcical to consider treating the straw as drug paraphernalia as "probable cause".
    - tsotha 11y ago
      Probable cause is something you need to conduct a search. They went far beyond a search in this instance. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea they actually charged him with a crime when they had no evidence a crime was committed. None. I don't understand why the judge didn't laugh them out of court.
      - spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Because he's racist, corrupt, or both?
        tsotha 11y ago
        Or neither. You probably shouldn't make allegations like that without having some kind of evidence.
        spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Charged with a crime absent evidence of a crime is evidence of corruption. The racism is merely speculation but it's not wild speculation. You shouldn't overlook obvious evidence.
jackgavigan 11y ago
Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. You'd need to go after the individuals. In a circumstance like that described in the article, it would not be unreasonable to investigate the police officers' actions, specially the question of whether he truly had reasonable grounds for suspicion that the straw was truly drug paraphernalia. If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. I know it's never going to happen but one can dream...
- outworlder 11y ago
  > If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. Can one do that? Why doesn't it seem to happen more often?
  - nickff 11y ago
    Government prosecutors are generally unwilling to charge police with crimes because they see themselves as being on the same 'team', and the 'blue wall' will stop them. In addition, we should remember that police officers are an arm of the state, not a charitable organization out to help people. There is simply no reason for anyone in the bureaucracy (including the prosecutors' offices) to care about or want to fix these problems.
    - LordKano 11y ago
      Precisely. Unless an officer's actions are both shockingly egregious and clearly documented, prosecutors usually won't do anything. After that cop is gone, the prosecutor still must work with his friend and colleagues to present cases for trial.
- function_seven 11y ago
  > Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. Sure it will. If the cost of arresting someone was potentially a few hundred thousand dollars each time, the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone. As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, full agreement here, even regarding the pipe-shapedness of the dream :(

gtCameron 11y ago

John Oliver also did a great segment on this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5mwymTIJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5mwymTIJU

conover 11y ago

It's unclear to me how these situations are not a violation of the Eighth Amendment. United States v. Salerno: "the government's proposed conditions of release or detention not be 'excessive' in light of the perceived evil." Stack v. Boyle: "excessive" is "a figure higher than is reasonably calculated" to ensure appearance I guess it's easy to beat up people who don't have the means to defend themselves. Someone should start an Occupy Justice movement and have everyone request jury trials to cause a system crash.

nickff 11y ago
One of the many problems here is that the public has little sympathy for defendants, and most talk about the 'justice system' is basically a competition to see who can rail agaist criminals the most. The facts that the false conviction rate is quite high, and that the vast majority of cases (>90%) do not go to trial at all are completely missed by the citizenry who simply do not care to learn about the system they are upholding.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  There also seems to be a widespread belief that everyone who has "brushes with the law" is guilty of something, even if it wasn't the thing the cops picked them up for or the DA charged them with. I think the prevalence of "beating the system" stories in popular media helps fuel this perception.
abarrettjo 11y ago
This makes me wonder whether a possible solution path could be to bring a case about this to the Supreme Court.
- justizin 11y ago
  The problem is not that the supreme court has never ruled on anything like this, it's that all a supreme court ruling does is to give you something that a good lawyer can refer to in your court case. Being in the criminal justice system is incredibly expensive and high risk, and as an individual, allowing your case to go to the supreme court requires continually losing it.

tedks 11y ago

""" Tomlin broke off to go inside the store and buy a soda. The clerk wrapped it in a paper bag and handed him a straw. Back outside, as the conversation wound down, one of the officers called the men over. He asked one of Tomlin’s friends if he was carrying anything he shouldn’t; he frisked him. Then he turned to Tomlin, who was holding his bagged soda and straw. ‘‘He thought it was a beer,’’ Tomlin guesses. ‘‘He opens the bag up, it was a soda. He says, ‘What you got in the other hand?’ I says, ‘I got a straw that I’m about to use for the soda.’ ’’ The officer asked Tomlin if he had anything on him that he shouldn’t. ‘‘I says, ‘No, you can check me, I don’t have nothing on me.’ He checks me. He’s going all through my socks and everything.’’ The next thing Tomlin knew, he says, he was getting handcuffed. ‘‘I said, ‘Officer, what am I getting locked up for?’ He says, ‘Drug paraphernalia.’ I says, ‘Drug paraphernalia?’ He opens up his hand and shows me the straw.’’ """ This isn't even the main point of the article but I think it speaks volumes on its own.

civilian 11y ago
Yeah. I wish we'd restrict the definition of drug paraphernalia. And ya know, end the drug war.
- beat 11y ago
  It's a popular misconception that ending the drug war would end the injustice. But as much as I'd like to see the war on drugs put to a swift end, it's not the root of the problem. Arrest quotas have become the standard for judging police officer performance in many cities, and fines for trivial offenses have become a key revenue generator for many local governments (see the DoJ review of Ferguson for a particularly awful example). "Justice" for petty crime has become a self-sustaining industry - and a profitable one, as we can see with the rise of private for-profit prisons. If it's not drug paraphernalia, it's some other charge - jaywalking, loitering, and the ever popular "resisting arrest". A recent video interview with a former Baltimore cop summed it up well. He pointed out that it's pretty much impossible to drive a car or walk down the street without breaking some law or another. So cops can easily arrest anyone, at any time, for largely fabricated reasons. Throw in arrest quotas and fine revenue as municipal funding, and you have a formula for mass arrests and incarceration for trivial offenses. The trick then is to find people who can be arrested who won't rock the boat politically... the poor, and the non-white. Now, you wind up with a racist justice system, not out of racist intent, but out of its very architecture. The solution is for comfortable, safe, middle class white Americans to stop ignoring and start caring.

eevilspock 11y ago

I wish HN was more inclined to vote up articles like this and figure out how the tech community can effect change. Most of us will never be subject to this injustice, so it is ever so easy to avert our eyes and focus on topics such a Apples Products are Getting Harder to Use and the 1983 version of Unix System V Release 1 Programming Guide, both of which are ranked higher and have more comments despite being posted 9 hours earlier.

davidw 11y ago
The world is full of 'outrageous' things: we could easily keep the front page full of them. But then we'd lose what we came here for in the first place. There are other places for these kinds of articles.
- nickff 11y ago
  I agree with the first two sentences of your post, but I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are. I have little reason to believe that these problems are going to get more public attention in the future than they are getting now, which is to say that I have little hope of fixing these issues.
  - mhurron 11y ago
    > I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are Sites that are not specifically about other topics? How about places that are primarally focused on the US, because as discussed, it really is a US only problem. Should every site everywhere only be posting about social problems? Can no other topic ever be discussed until every socail problem is solved? HN is actually pretty broad given its topic of things that are of interest to 'hackers' which is why articles like this will be posted and discussed but there are other things that are also of interest to 'hackers.' Those will also be posted and discussed.
  - res0nat0r 11y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/politics https://www.reddit.com/r/politics https://www.reddit.com/r/news https://www.reddit.com/r/news https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews

bail-throw-away 11y ago

OK - so I just had two experiences with a bay area law enforcement agency, and I am beside myself with disgust and anger: I was accused of doing something I did not. I was taken to jail and they held me on bail - and set my court date for about three weeks from the time I was booked, but an arraignment in about 5 days. I had just accepted a new job - but still had a week on my current. I HAD to post bail (and I didn't really have the money for it) so I had to get a bail bond. so I could get out and go to work!! This cost my $3,000 out of pocket. So I did, and then went to my arraignment: Guess what "no charges filed and case rejected for lack of any evidence at all" But now - I am out $3,000 and I have an arrest on my record for something that was simply a false accusation! Further, WHile I was in jail over night, the guards and police are absolute douchebags. They treat EVERYONE like crap. I now hate all cops. ALL of them.

gambiter 11y ago
I'm curious... in a situation like this, could you sue for wrongful arrest?
- webkike 11y ago
  Uh, no. The entire point of the criminal justice system is to determine if arrests are wrongful or not.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Still, just because a police officer arrests you does not mean that the arrest is legitimate. (especially in a legal sense, I guess in a de facto sense this is a relatively safe avenue for police to abuse their power)
  - gambiter 11y ago
    The criminal justice system determines if the accused is innocent. The arrest is a separate action. In fact, if you are convinced that is IS a wrongful arrest, you may legally resist arrest, tell the officer, and he is supposed to let you present evidence of your innocence. However, it doesn't HAVE to be claimed at the time of arrest. I was curious in OP's case because of the "no charges filed and case rejected for lack of any evidence at all" line. It seems to me, that would be enough reason to claim wrongful arrest and at least get compensation for the bail bond.

xacaxulu 11y ago

If you've ever dealt with police in other countries (I have everywhere from France to Zimbabwe), the interactions are amazingly more peaceful. As a former US Marine (Afghanistan and Iraq), the hyper-vigilant police mentality I see more and more scares the heck out of me. It's no secret that it's getting worse, and coupled with a racket like "The Bail Trap", prison industry based products and one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, things are looking very sad here in the US. I'm sure it's not perfect anywhere, but we are way off base with our justice system. When you have to have a dash cam or a hidden cam/mic on you to prove you didn't do anything, that's pretty sad.

Justsignedup 11y ago
Sounds like we're moving in the direction of Russia where every driver has a cam because the cops literally don't care and it's the only way to prove that someone didn't stop mid road and went into reverse into you.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  I was under the impression that it was to fight insurance fraud.
  - mikestew 11y ago
    Fighting insurance fraud is exactly what the previous commenter was referring to, I'm sure. Joe Citizen stops, backs into you, then claims you rear-ended him. Or a pedestrian throws himself on your hood, claims you ran over him. There are montages floating around (too lazy to look, sorry) that demonstrate this. It's worth searching for, as they're pretty hilarious yet sad at the same time.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      Right, but my point was that it has very little to do with cops. Unless they witnessed the 'accident', what exactly would you expect from them without video footage of your own?

abarrettjo 11y ago

The same author writes on this topic/related issues somewhat frequently. Here's one on the origins of the police force itself: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/magazine/the-point-of-order.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/magazine/the-point-of-orde...

russnewcomer 11y ago

In reading the article, part of the conclusion that I came to is not that cash bail is inherently broken and unfixable, but the sense of scale by the people setting bail is. To a lower-income person with minimal savings and unpredictable income (like most of the subjects of the article), an unplanned $500 expense like bail is potentially crushing, whereas to a higher-income person with decent savings and regular predictable income (like the judges), an unplanned $500 expense is annoying but not catastrophic. Restructure the law so that bail cannot be easily set over $100 for non-violent misdemeanors, and that 100% of the bail is returned to the person posting it for amounts under $1000, and NYC (of which I am not a resident) will be well on it's way to solving the current problems of the bail system, and then have a whole new host of problems with the new system to solve in 50 years once all of its weaknesses are exploited. [edit] corrected improper use of bailbond to bail

gohrt 11y ago
The bail amount should be a function of the defendant's means. That's the entire point of bail -- a collateral to make the defendant feel incentivized to show up for court.
- HarryHirsch 11y ago
  To a European, the bail system appears very strange. Isn't not showing up for your court date a crime in itself, and grounds for immediate arrest? Either the defendant is a threat to society or unlikely to show up at court (because he's a transient or likely to be issued a long sentence), then you lock up the fellow, or he isn't any of that, in which case one can trust him to show up on time. Also, isn't a person innocent until the judge pronounces the verdict? What is sit that makes American society so different?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > To a European, the bail system appears very strange. Isn't not showing up for your court date a crime in itself, and grounds for immediate arrest? Yes, but resorting to arrest to bring you to trial after you've wasted the court's--and everyone else involved--time by not showing up has costs a risk of failure. Pretrial detention exists to eliminate that risk, and bail is in theory what you pay to get society to instead accept the risk and forego pretrial detention.

mcantelon 11y ago

There seems to be a lot of NGOs opposed to cops, the prison industrial complex, etc. but AFAIK there's none that will provide bail aid, which would likly make more of an impact than anything.

bcks 11y ago
Well, the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund is mentioned in TFA: http://www.brooklynbailfund.org http://www.brooklynbailfund.org Also in NYC: http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org
- mcantelon 11y ago
  The article yields its fruit! Thanks!

rectang 11y ago

> Without bail — and the quick guilty pleas > that it produces — courts would come under > significant strain. "The system would shut > down," Goldberg says. It doesn't cost much to bail out some poor people. Seems like a great opportunity to screw with an unjust system!

ma2rten 11y ago
How much does it cost? I think it is at least 10k for the least serious crimes.
- justizin 11y ago
  It easily goes into the hundreds of thousands, and when people with mental illness end up in jail, off their meds, they often stack up all sorts of charges for relatively minor behavior that sounds ominous on paper as "assault on a penal officer" or somesuch. Now you can get bail in the millions, and prejudice from every corner of the system. It's no longer about a straw, it's about a guard who says you punched them when in face five people were holding you and you had a spasm or something.
  - rectang 11y ago
    You don't need to bail out everybody for this hack to work. Just bailing out those with bail under N dollars should be enough to DOS the courts.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  TFA mentioned several cases where it was under $2k.
crpatino 11y ago
No, that's exactly the opposite. What the quote means is that bails allows courts to process much more arrests than reasonably possible, and that also that guilty pleas mask the fact that the grounds for most of those fast forward arrest occurred under shaky grounds at best. What you want to do is to pay poor people to sit in jail for as long as it takes to exercise their right for a fair trail. Once judges and other court personnel is forced to hear 18 hrs of bullshit accusations for every hour of real cases, they will begin to look their cozy cuff-happy bedfellows in a new light.

danielweber 11y ago

A colleague had his ex file for child support, putting him suddenly thousands of dollars in the hole (it was backdated to when they separated, not when she asked for suppor) because he's not from a socioeconomic class that keeps thousands of dollars hanging around. That left him unable to renew his driver's license, drastically impacting his ability to get work and pay child support. He now, for unrelated reasons, has full custody of his kids. But he still can't get a driver's license to get a job to support his kids because he's still behind on that child support. For the kids he has in his house. He deserves some responsibility for this, but it's like the system wants him to fail and fail hard.

ectoplasm 11y ago
He's unable to borrow money from friends / family / bank / mortagage / credit card to pay the child support?
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  People who don't have thousands lying around tend to have friends and family in similar financial situations, may not have a bank account, probably don't have a mortgage, and little credit.
  - ectoplasm 11y ago
    It was an honest question. GP did say "his house". The fact that not everyone conforms to "tend to" stereotypes is exactly why it's worth asking these questions. Plenty of poor people in America have buckets of debt. Also, there's always pawn shops and the mob. Unpalatable, but still better than not being able to work.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      It's an honest question that appears to illustrate the lack of understanding of what it's like to be poor. "There's always the mob" is just tone-deaf IMO.

gohrt 11y ago

The average persons more powerful weapon against police misconduct is Jury Nullification. Refuse to convict defendants until the police start obeying the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

Tenhundfeld 11y ago
If you're considering this, read up on the law, and ideally, get advice from a lawyer who knows the laws and precedents of your state and local judges. It's a trickier subject than you might expect. I got called to serve jury duty several years ago, and being somewhat familiar with jury nullification, sought advice from a lawyer friend. I don't remember the exact details of his advice, but it was generally this: 1) Don't even hint that you're aware of jury nullification during jury selection and examination. Obviously don't lie if asked a direct question about it, but that doesn't really happen. Instead, you might be asked something like, "If the evidence proves the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, can you enforce the law regardless of your personal beliefs about whether the law is correct?" Just answer "yes" and be quiet – unless you honestly don't think so. (Remember, you won't know much, if anything, about the case at this point. So, abstractly, you probably can set aside personal beliefs if the facts of the case warrant it.) 2) Don't ever use the words "jury nullification" when deliberating with the other jurors. Judges can and will remove jurors who are openly engaging in jury nullification. There have even been instances of judges holding jurors in contempt for it, but according to my lawyer friend, those cases were overturned. Regardless, you will likely be removed from the jury and possibly have further hassles. 3) In jury deliberation, remember that you don't have to convince the other jurors of your position. If you don't feel right convicting the defendant, you don't have to. Just stick to your guns and let the jury be hung. I was glad I sought advice, because I ended up engaging in jury nullification. In my case, the defendant was charged with a DUI for essentially being obnoxiously drunk in his driveway on private property. He was playing music through his truck speakers, with the windows down. The engine was not on, but his keys were in the ignition – to enable the electrical system. He was having a party, with friends over, a grill going, etc. He had not signaled any intent to leave the party at his own home, and the prosecution didn't argue that he was planning to drive anywhere. But in my state, being intoxicated and having your keys in the ignition (or even initiating a sequence of events that will result in driving) is grounds for a DUI. I understand the reasons for the law being worded that way. If somebody is obviously drunk and walking towards their car to leave a bar, cops need to be able to stop him before he actually starts driving. However, in my case, what actually happened is the defendant mouthed off to the cops, and my interpretation is they were punishing him for being disrespectful. They could have just told him to turn down his music or issued him a noise violation and moved on. He was not planning to drive his car anywhere or endanger anyone. Instead, they unnecessarily escalated the situation. A DUI can be a felony and can result in losing your job or being excluded from future jobs. It's serious. I didn't think this guy deserved that – despite coming across as a total asshole during his testimony. I tried my best to convince the other jurors, but they all ultimately felt they had to enforce the law as it exists. According to the law, he did commit acts that technically constitute a DUI. So, they all voted guilty – even though many thought it "wasn't fair." After 8 hours of deliberation, we ended up with a hung jury and me being the sole dissenter. I will admit it was exhausting to keep arguing for the guy, when everybody is tired and just wants to go home. I was also very relieved when I went home that night, searched public convictions, and found none for the defendant. Anyway, if you get called to serve on a jury, please don't try to get out of it. It's a great honor and responsibility, and we need more intelligent, free-thinking people in our juries. But do educate yourself on jury nullification beforehand.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rsp1984 11y ago

Besides the questionable bail system, what I really don't get is why there's jail time on minor drug possession delicts. One can debate about the war-on-drugs (I think it's failed) but even if society thinks drugs are a bad thing and worth fighting against it, it's the dealers that should go to jail, not the people who use drugs. 30 days for holding a straw that might contain some heroin, really? Something is obviously very very broken here.

WildUtah 11y ago
If you want the war on drugs to work, arresting dealers is a waste of time. If there's demand, then there are always more poor people willing to make easy money as dealers. Sending casual users to jail is the only way to cut demand. If the casual users -- the most lucrative market -- get off scott-free then there's never any limit to demand and consumption.

CPLX 11y ago

There is a four word solution that would wipe out a massive, massive percentage of this problem: End the drug war

tyingq 11y ago

The US prison/jail vendor ecosystem is a trap as well. The phone system is a good example. Inmates have some scheduled time where they can make phone calls, provided someone on the outside has funded an account. You, of course, expect it to be a little more expensive than normal phone service. However, here's the reality. You deposit $25, then: - $7 service fee for the credit card processing - $4.50 for the first minute of every call - then $2.50 a minute for any subsequent minute So, yes, a 2 minute phone call, within the same state, costs the family $14. These are real numbers, from one of the big vendors in the space...Global Tel Link. Source: Have relative that was in jail...this is what I had to pay. Here's an older article on the subject: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/pleasedeposit.html http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/pleasedeposit.html

tyingq 11y ago
Just to note that phones are the tip of the iceberg. The jails and prisons are taking huge fees from commissary accounts, charging fees to see a doctor (even if you were assaulted), etc. Also things like reducing to 2 meals a day to save money. Or worse. Search google for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's outdoor tents, in Phoenix, where the average high temp in July is 41C/106F. It's really shameful.
bernardom 11y ago
There's a startup for that! http://pigeon.ly/ http://pigeon.ly/ The Planet Money podcast about it is great. A former inmate who wanted to solve the phone call problem, and expanded to other prison-specific issues.

codecamper 11y ago

Maybe technology could help this situation? It sounds like a big part of the problem are too many arrests for things without enough evidence. Wouldn't everyone benefit for better logs & statistical analysis? If a certain police officer had a 15% conviction rate, and he actually liked his job, then he'd be sure next time to be more sure about his arrests. Such a tool could track recent trends as well. Also, it sounds like there needs to be a system (email??) to contact employers. All employers required to have an official address and courts are required to contact it with current case status. Anyone else have ideas about how tech could help the situation?

arkem 11y ago
I don't think arrest to conviction conversion rate is very meaningful by itself since in many jurisdictions the prosecutors get to choose which arrested persons to prosecute and how vigorously.
- codecamper 11y ago
  hmm, the arrests are the input. The prosecutors would be a second filter step. And that step would be more or less constant. There are several steps towards conviction and many variables, but I think there are statistical methods that can tease out the conversion rates at each step along the way.
conover 11y ago
What about on the other end: an automated system to assign bail amounts? Plug in charges + criminal history + financial status into a system that determines bail. That way it's in the hands of a computer and there is no blowback to a particular judge/prosecutor/etc.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Then any judgment is removed from the system. Judges can abuse that power, and they can have bad judgment, but an algorithm has no judgment at all. Worse, you can get people turning off their mind as to whether it made any sense, because "that's what the computer said". People are in the system for some good reasons...

craigds 11y ago

This kind of nonsense is why as a tourist, I would think very carefully before ever going to the US, and have little desire to. Based on what I know about the place, I'd feel uneasy the whole time I was there, as though I could be arrested at any moment just for crossing the road the wrong way. One time I took my Irish passport instead of my NZ one by mistake when entering Australia, and I was subjected to dog sniffs and minor harrassment by the border control staff, which made me very uncomfortable. From what I understand that's nothing compared to what you can expect as a foreigner entering the US. Do other non-Americans feel this way or is it just me? I can't imagine this situation does wonders for American tourism or business. FWIW my experience of police (in both NZ and in Germany) has been that they're always very pleasant to deal with.

chasing 11y ago
Calm down. You'll be just fine traveling the United States. You might even have a pleasant interaction with an American police officer which you can add to your list. They're mostly just good people trying to do good work, just like the rest of us.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  [citation needed]
  - chasing 11y ago
    > [citation needed] Look it up.
krapp 11y ago
>I can't imagine this situation does wonders for American tourism or business. The US appears to be the second most common tourist destination in the world, with about 75 million arrivals in 2014 alone[0][1], so I guess it's doing just fine, and is not actually a nightmarish police state, and most people come and go without incident. Feel free to jaywalk with impunity. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings [1]http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Fast_Facts_2014.pdf http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Fa... ^Yes, it's a PDF.

graycat 11y ago

I'm not a lawyer but I am a US citizen. To me, the police, prosecutors, and judges in the OP are, really, just out to attack the poor people, just attack them like wild, mad, rabid dogs, attack them for no good reason, just declare war on them, out of hate, arrogance, self-exalted ego, like thugs that just like to beat up on people. Let's see: "Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." So, the OP violated: "Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, ..." The trials are not "speedy". Any judge who has any respect for the Constitution and is not out just to act like a wild, mad, rabid dog out to declare war on the poor people should immediately dismiss any case without a "speedy trial". So, the OP violated: "Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, ..." The "right of trial by jury" was not "preserved". Instead, the delays in the system and the excessive bail canceled that right. So, the OP violated: "Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The bail was deliberately excessive and the jail situation "inflicted" "cruel and unusual punishments" as a means to coerce a guilty plea without a trial. In addition, from "The rest of the file contained Tomlin’s criminal history, which included 41 convictions, ..." the system clearly convicts and punishes the defendants based not on the crime they are accused of but often just on the record of crimes of the past, crimes for which they have "paid their debt to society", that is, multiple jeopardy. In addition, it is now essentially illegal to carry more than, say, a few hundred dollars in cash. Seeing such cash, it is common for the police just to confiscate it, in wild violation of "Amendment V ... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." So, from the OP: "The documentation submitted by the arresting officer explained that his training and experience told him that plastic straws are 'a commonly used method of packaging heroin residue.'" That's essentially the same as saying that "his training and experience told him that" commonly criminals breathe and that he observed the defendant breathing so arrested him. The judge should have laughed the police officer out of the court room and asked the public defender to file charges of false arrest against the officer and bringing a nonsense legal case against the prosecutor. Instead, the judge just went along with wild, mad, rabid dog attack on the citizen. No, clearly, actually his training and experience told him that the defendant was poor so should be viciously attacked with the intention of ruining his life -- the excuse was that he had in one hand a bottle of soft drink and in the other hand a soda straw. Here the police, prosecutors, and judges are just declaring war on a large fraction of US citizens -- just war, no cause, no reason, wildly illegal and unconstitutional, very dirty business. The whole system is wildly in conflict with the Constitution. If the US legal system had any honest functionality at all, then any lawyer should be able to make a motion that would shut down the whole situation coast to coast in an hour.

tsotha 11y ago

There's are a lot of things to cringe about in this story, but bail isn't one of them. The article says so-and-so was held in jail because he couldn't pay bail, but that's not really accurate. The guy is held because he was arrested. Bail is an out you get until the trail if you can convince the judge you're gonna show up for the trial. IMO there are two real problems with the story about the "main character". First, the DA comes to the judge with a case against a guy charged with possessing a straw. The judge should have thrown it out and said "come back when you have evidence of a crime". Second, we have the means to protect inmates from each other. There's no reason for a three week stay to mean a busted up face. Jail should be boring, but safe, and the state should be liable for every rape or assault that happens inside.

yason 11y ago

I'm somehow always a bit worried when travelling to the US and reading these stories just makes it worse. I don't know what the risk for a visitor is in reality. These cases seem to happen out of nowhere. I don't have any reason to be arrested, really, and I'll probably be fine absolutely most of the time but if something should happen and I happened to be around I'm, as a foreigner, in a very weak position to understand what's going on. I should probably read a couple of books on US legal system and how things work there but the need for doing so would usually arise from having to travel to some totalitarian developing country. In certain countries, you should expect to have some money as it might be customary to bribe the police officer or other officials but once that's settled things generally unfold fine from there. It seems that in the US, you should expect to have lots of money as it might be customary to bribe the court yet things can generally get quite uncertain from there, based on what I've read. It's hard to evaluate the risk, though: the probability is rather low but the impact can be devastating. I get the feeling that if only you're a "regular Joe", ideally white (or fit in the "good" ethnicity of your city), you don't stand out of others, and you have money, you're likely to be fine. The further you deviate from that the more unpredictable things can get.