17 ms·

Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

296 points by dsr12 8y ago

cubano 8y ago
In my experience by far the worse part of the totally racist and unfair US bail system is the fact that... ...if you can't bail out, you don't get any REAL credit for the time you have spent locked up when you finally go to court and get sentenced, which really rubs injury into insult and flies 100% into the face of "innocent until proven guilty" bullshit we are all told is the way the system works. Before everyone goes off on how wrong I am, please hear me out from my POV of over 30 years getting arrested for minor shit all over the US. For the record, I have probably done time in like...12 different county jails and been through the systems in each of those places, and have been to state prison twice (no bail issues in prisons, so I'll leave them out). So back to my outrageous assertion...am I really saying that the judge gives you NO CREDIT for being in jail, away from your loved ones, your job (hopefully you had one), and your freedom, for all those weeks that you will wait to see him and have your case disposed of? Yes that is exactly what I'm saying, and here is why. Let's say 2 people get arrested for, say, felony ketamine possession on Jan 1, 2019. Richie Rich cries to mommy and get bonded out 10 hours after the arrest, and the bondsman gives him his first court date (there will be many BTW) 5 weeks out on Feb. 3rd. Joe Street is from out-of-town and the police forget to let him get local numbers from his phone before its stowed away in his property, thus leaving him totally helpless as far as calling anyone because who in in the hell remembers out-of-town numbers these days, right? [I use this example because this exact situation with the phone happened to me last year here in Vegas] So Joe is officially fucked. He too gets a court date for Feb 3rd and has to sit in jail until then. Trust me. If you have never been to county jail 5 weeks will feel approximately like 2 full-fucking eternities to you. You can't believe how bad the food is...how uncomfortable the beds are...how bad your cellmate snores...what assholes the COs are... And mostly how incredibly shit the phone system is...it's expensive as hell (3 bucks for 15 minutes I've seen) and often the speaker or mics dont work that well due to people smashing it on the wall in frustration. So you go to court FINALLY Feb 3rd, and there is Richie Rich! Oh man, he sure looks good in his street clothes and all groomed, while you look like pure crap with your ill-fitting jail garb..well at least you will be going home today, you think as you happily sit in the freezing cold holding cell and listen to people right next to each other scream at almost the top-of-their-lungs to just talk about their situation. Your head is pounding and you have been up since 4am sitting on hard-ass concrete for 5 hours...but HELL YEAH YOU ARE GOING HOME TODAY I'll take whatever probation they give me today..who cares how much I just NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA THIS JAIL! And then, of course...you never even see the judge. This is "arraignment" dipstick and everyone knows you can't plead at arraignment. Your totally overworked assigned public defender hands you his card and silently signs "call me" because its so fucking loud still. Then, in horror, you look down at the card and see your next court date is 3/18...HOLY SHIT ANOTHER 6 WEEKS ARE YOU KIDDING??? So I could go on relaying horror after horror, but I will stop here and get to the damn point. At the end, both you and Richie Rich get 3 years felony probation!! Let that sink in...you have sat in hell for maybe 4 months (sometimes 8 or 9!!) while Richie has been doing his thing in the real world, yet you both end up with the same sentence. And that's what I mean when I say that you basically get no credit for not being able to bail out. This is a 100% true story and I have seen it play out just like this perhaps a hundred times.
- pc86 8y ago
  > over 30 years getting arrested for minor shit all over the US Have you tried not spending three decades committing petty crimes "all over the US?" As for your original point - credit for time - you get 1.5x for time served. If you're sentenced to prison. If you spend weeks in jail but don't actually get sentenced to prison, there's nothing against which your time can be credited. Nobody's crediting jail time toward probation.
  - wccrawford 8y ago
    Why though? He was on worse than probation for the entire time he was in jail. Why doesn't that count as time served?
    - pc86 8y ago
      If you're incarcerated prior to sentencing, and you're sentenced to more incarceration, you get a little extra credit, such that a 1-month pre-sentencing incarceration prior to a year long sentence results in a ~10.5 month incarceration after. Incarceration and probation are two completely different things, something that everyone knows and cubano's post conveniently ignores until the end. The point of the credit is so that you can spend less time in prison if you've already spent time in jail prior. It is not to get you out of the system faster so a credit toward probationary time doesn't make any sense.
  - kaolti 8y ago
    > Have you tried not spending three decades committing petty crimes "all over the US?" Way to be constructive bro.
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      Petty crimes are, in my opinion, more strongly subjected to selective enforcement than major ones. Consider also that the US is a bad place for a previously convicted felon to land a decent job, and that poor people, people on probation or parole, and minorities tend to have more negative police contacts, which produce more arrests, which produce more convictions. Think about the number of municipalities that criminalize acts reasonable only for the downtrodden, such as overnight camping on public property within municipal limits. Think about the number of jurisdictions that criminalize loitering and vagrancy to roust undesirables out of their town. In all likelihood, ancestor poster is not inherently more criminal than other people with no criminal record, but has a much larger enforcement profile due to circumstantial factors. Also, familiarity breeds contempt, and frequent encounters with the justice system lead to disillusionment with its supposed fairness and impartiality. It mainly exists so that the richer can keep the poorer away from their persons, properties, and possessions; and also to perpetuate its own existence.
ddtaylor 8y ago
It's worth noting that bail has been ruled unconstitutional in the Federal system and replaced by a pretrial service.
captainbland 8y ago
I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
- cs02rm0 8y ago
  If one person gets their life savings cleared out for a $100 speeding fine, how do you equate that financial pain to Bill Gates? Why should Bill Gates be punished more in the same situation for having put the work in to build a successful company? You end up with silly (IMHO) situations like someone getting a $290k fine in Switzerland for 85mph in a 50 zone. 6 months in jail for someone who can't afford a $1k bail is the other end of the scale though - surely it cost substantially more than that to keep him in there. I'm pretty certain in the UK we have charities that help people out in such situations, is there no equivalent provision in the US?
  - mantas 8y ago
    If you were looking at fine as a price to pay to break the law, then yes, it's silly. But the fine should make you not want to break the law in the first place. Then math is completely different.
  - skate22 8y ago
    A $50 ticket is not going to deter bill gates from speeding. The goal of a speeding ticket is not to collect $50, it is to save lives by detering people from speeding..
    - squarefoot 8y ago
      "The goal of a speeding ticket is not to collect $50, it is to save lives by detering people from speeding.." It was once, maybe. I wonder how many people are actually turned from minor offenders into full criminals by the current law/jail system. To me it looks like the goal is to operate an artificial selection on the human species to encourage those who help the economy more. That is, legalized Eugenics.
rishabhd 8y ago
Harrowing, absolutely harrowing.
titzer 8y ago
This is horrible. Instead of bail, they should just have steeper fines for failure to appear and yet on the flipside the same guarantees afforded to jury duty as far as employment (i.e. can't be fired for having to appear in court). That would allow poorer people to keep their jobs and still be present for court dates. Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for. The system is rigged against the minorities. Look why cannabis was criminalized in the first place - to target blacks and hippies (https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...). As a politician, keep as many of 'em in jails as you can, thus showing the white population you're "tough on crime" and at the same time filling the coffers of your private prison operator friends with state cash for the jailing.
  - dismantlethesun 8y ago
    I have heard this and always wondered what exactly is keeping people from doing drugs with lessers sentencing? For example, if crack-cocaine carries a high sentence, then why not drop the habit in exchange for powdered cocaine? If the question is price, then this is really more of a system targeting the poor than one that is against any specific minority group.
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      > If the question is price, then this is really more of a system targeting the poor than one that is against any specific minority group. Well, if the majority of poor people are blacks (and Latinos), then it certainly is a racist policy to have vastly different sentencing for the drugs for poor and rich people.
    - moate 8y ago
      Crack is substantially cheaper to obtain than powdered cocaine. Crack is just powdered cocaine that's been cooked with other substances, essentially diluting it. The question is purely price, and it's the system targeting drug users of certain class/ethnic groups more than others. If you look at drug law enforcement in the US, it's substantially more punitive towards poor/minority groups.
jacobr 8y ago
Sweden actually has a similar problem even without the bail system. Most people get released awaiting trial, depending on severity of the crime, risk of influencing the case, etc. The ones who don't end up incarcerated with way worse conditions than regular prisons while waiting for the trial. You might end up with a sentence of 1 year after already spending most of it in an insitution with limited visitation rights, none of the rehabilitation, education and leisure available in regular prisons.
- candiodari 8y ago
  All European countries have a system that is sort-of a "reverse bail" problem. You can become a "civil party" to a complaint that you submit to the police. If you have money, you can force that complaint to get before a criminal judge, who is forced to ask you (the civil party) why you want this person criminally punished (e.g. jail), and listen to your response. So poor people cannot complain about things like government excess or police brutality, since those complaints get thrown out. Nor can they effectively get police help, except in very severe cases. But a rich person can drag you in front of a criminal court for not wiping the pavement in front of your apartment often enough. This is a bail system. The money you put down, you get back if the person gets convicted. Additionally, in some countries the defendant, if convicted, will need to pay your lawyer expenses (again, if they are convicted). Pretty much all of Europe.
  - nemetroid 8y ago
    > All European countries > criminal judge Almost all of Europe uses civil law, where there is no distinction between civil and criminal courts. > But a rich person can drag you in front of a criminal court for not wiping the pavement in front of your apartment often enough. > This is a bail system. The money you put down, you get back if the person gets convicted. This is far removed from reality as far as I am aware. Please provide sources.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      > Almost all of Europe uses civil law, where there is no distinction between civil and criminal courts. Obviously not true. In fact, this is so obviously wrong I don't know where to start. Differences between civil and criminal courts: * different hierarchy * different powers (criminal court can, say, order imprisonment) * different judges * different parties (defendant vs prosecution for criminal, defendant vs complainant for civil court) * different standards of proof * different rights (e.g. the right to a jury trial in some countries) Even this barely scratches the surface of the differences. > This is far removed from reality as far as I am aware. Please provide sources. Start reading here, it describes part of the procedure: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partie_civile_en_France https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partie_civile_en_France Google suggests this as an English alternative: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1958.tb00483.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.... (note there is "partie civile" and "action civile". They are NOT the same, aren't directly related. Specifically it is NOT the case that the "partie civile" is the complainant in an "action civile", as one might think. Keep reading) The procedure is, generally speaking: 1) complain to the police, get a record or the complaint 2) with the record (which is a number), go to an "investigation judge" (no need to prove anything or ...), declare your intent to become "partie civile", register your lawyer, etc. He will tell you the amount of the "bail" for the case (which is going to be ~1000 euro. It differs from case to case, but not much) 3) pay the "bail" to the "griffe" (sort-of-kind-of the secretary of the court, they have an office in every courthouse) and register it 4) take said registration back to the judge you registered with, judge writes an order 5) write the prosecutor to deliver the order of the investigative judge Now, the prosecutor is forced to bring the case before criminal court within a certain amount of time, and is forced to demand a nonzero punishment for whatever the complaint is (in fact this is one of the ways they get out from under it: they demand ridiculous punishments so the judge will rule against them). The non-obvious and terrible thing for the victims of this system is misjudging the motivation of the police/prosecution (technically there is a distinction between the police and the people that do this, but it's essentially a different department of the same organization...). You might think the police will try to punish the guilty party, if there is one. That's technically true, but only in the following sense : they will try to get a conviction, and with this procedure REGARDLESS of their judgement there is a guilty party. If they think they can get a conviction, odds are VERY good they'll pursue seriously. Things that do NOT influence whether they pursue (and therefore do not influence whether you get convicted) include reasonableness, whether you're nice to the police, whether there's significant damages, whether anyone else was involved, whether the police promised not to do that (which they do, frankly almost always, then bring the case anyway and get the conviction), ... An evil way to get ahead in elections in France: use this system to get your niece to complain against your competition, then point out (perfectly accurately) that your opponent is under investigation for terrible crime X. They will go free, eventually (or maybe not), but by that time it has long since stopped mattering.
Svip 8y ago
Is it possible to get compensation for wrongful imprisonment in the US? I know it is in Denmark. The logic being that it shouldn't be 'free' for the state to imprison someone wrongfully. In Denmark, you seek compensation after the fact. The exact compensation will depend on several variables, so I cannot give an exact figure. But I did find a case where a man was wrongfully imprisoned for five months, and got 141,000 DKK (~22,000 USD) in compensation. Although, the case noted he had sought 500,000 DKK in compensation.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  It is but it is extremely rare. These are systemic problems, caused by the construction of the system itself and not due to bad actors. One problem is to have a successful suit against wrongful imprisonment, you have to prove intent. If somebody accidentally imprisoned you acting in good faith, the idea is that people make mistakes. There is automatic protection built into the system to allow prosecutors and LE to do their jobs. If there wasn't intent but the job they did was sloppy, it becomes a very grey area because then you have to define "sloppy". Everybody's sloppy to some degree or another, so the courts have set a high bar here (IANAL, just what I've read). The second problem is that laws and punishments are set in isolation, as if they were dealing with an ideal citizen who just broke one law. If you've got a job, a car, and savings and then you forget to pay your car insurance, a hefty fine isn't a big deal. If, however, you're poor and have to drive without insurance just to have a job and eat, then the laws were not set up with you in mind. It's not malice by one person that causes this. It's apathy among dozens of people all with different slices of the problem. It's not clear who would be the person responsible or who would have the supervisory authority over all of these people to prevent it even if the system were in place to find restitution.
  - thechao 8y ago
    I understand the situation as described. I do feel that many Americans (including myself) would be happier without intent: the imprisonment of a free person is a fundamental violation of constitutional rights and, regardless of intent, is a wrong, which should lead to compensation.
guessthejuice 8y ago
I remember reading about this years ago. It's sad that this problem hasn't been resolved in all that time. We already have a legal system that advantages the wealthy ( more money for better lawyers, experts, etc ) over everyone else. But this bail problem is egregious and cruel. But it isn't the poor who created legal system. It isn't he poor who write laws.
- DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
  The system isn't fundamentally flawed though. The problem starts when it's abused. When people are locked away regardless of whether or not there is any probability of them leaving the country or otherwise "disappearing" before their trial. Someone who has a family most likely won't do that, and there's no reason for them to go to prison until they have been proven guilty of a crime.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    There is one radical viewpoint that I believe holds for the law and computer security practices: if it is abusable it is fundamentally flawed. To give a deliberately extreme example imagine a law that gave the accusser fifty percent of the assets of a terrorist and the prosecutor the other fifty percent with no downsides for a false accusation. Fundamentally there is no way that said law wouldn't be abused for profit and make a complete hash out of justice.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
What is the alternative then? Let a probable criminal go wander the streets or disappear altogether? At least these people have some possibility of release rather than none at all. While some innocents may be confined to a jail awaiting trial, I'm sure this is a minority, not the majority. Even then, bail skippers still occur. Let's quit with the "Oh the poor criminal being treated that way" mentality.
- DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
  > "Oh the poor criminal being treated that way" No. It's the exact opposite. Until they are proven guilty of a crime, it's a "Oh the poor innocent people being treated that way" mentality, and that is perfectly justifiable. People awaiting trial should only be locked away when there's any actual reason to believe they would disappear or commit a serious crime before their trial.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    Thus, the purpose of bail money that people are complaining about. However, as I said in my post, most people are likely to be guilty of said crime and the most heinous ones are those you don't want them on the streets.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  > What is the alternative then? Let a probable criminal go wander the streets or disappear altogether? Grotesque inequities in the bail system are merely one symptom of the intractable disaster of criminal justice in America. This problem is tied to many other problems, you can't deal with them one at a time. But "letting someone go" is not as bad as it sounds. Keeping them in jail because they can't come up with a few hundred dollars from a predatory storefront bailbonds joint ALSO has problems. If that person had a job, they've now lost it. If they have children, they're now at risk of losing them, and the children face an even more chaotic home life. In addition to that, keeping someone locked up is costly to the state.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
snarfy 8y ago
Financial punishments should be required by law to be a percentage of your worth/income instead of an arbitrary number. $100 fine can be devastating if you are living paycheck to paycheck. For others it's a bar tab. Fixed fees disproportionately hurt the poor.
- zimablue 8y ago
  Setting that scale is nigh on impossible though. Young people with zero in assets and incredibly rich parents (asset-rich not income). Young people with no assets and poor parents but massive future earning potential (academic or sports stars). Old people with massive material wealth in the value of their houses who will be incredibly unwilling (and make a great newspaper headline) to move it.
zubairq 8y ago
Denmark is not so clear cut. Here SKAT, the tax system presumes citizens guilty and they have to prove their innocence. This can mean jail time too for the citizens
JudasGoat 8y ago
In Massachusetts it is common to have two different ammounts bepending how you choose to pay. For instance, my bail was $100,000 cash or 1 million bond. Seeing as bail bondsmen typically require a 10 percent non refundable fee, you would pay the cash ammount and it is returned upon completion of your trial. The problem perceived by the incarcerated is that the courts would be likely to include a fine similar to your cash bail in a resolution to a guilty finding.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
This article is incredibly misleading in numerous ways. You can find details on pretrial release, like all other issues related to the justice department from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This [1] paper is extremely relevant. The normal process in the US is that an individual's case will be seen by a judge within 24 hours of their detention and the judge will assign bail. Contrary to the media, the defendant is often not even present for this process. They will simply be pulled from their cell or detention area and informed what the judge decided. And in the vast majority of cases this is that the individual is released for 'free', or released on personal recognizance. Even in felony cases some 32% of individuals are released without financial condition. When bail is set, individuals can generally get out for 10% of that amount. In some cases they can do it directly through the court, and that 10% will be refunded once the individual returns to court and completes their trial. If not they can go to bail bondsmen who take the 10% as their profit margin, and pay 100% to the court themselves. The bailbonds companies then get their 100% back from the court once the defendant shows up and completes their trial. This is where modern day 'bounty hunting' can come into play -- the bail bondsmen have a strong incentive to ensure that their clients do not flee. Bail tends to be set in relation to the criminal record of an individual, the seriousness of an offense, how much of a flight risk they are, and whether or not they're likely to be a danger to themselves or others if released. So for instance of all individuals with no prior convictions 77% are released, 63% of those with misdemeanor priors are released, but only 46% of those with felony priors are released. This is also why there are demographic differences in bails and release rates (age, gender, race, etc). Two individuals may commit the same crime, but when one has a criminal record and the other does not - there will be different outcomes. Articles typically try to spin this as prejudice (as this one did), but it is in no way shape or form prejudicial. There are also statistics that can be used to, inadvertently, test how reliable detention vs release decisions are. In particular when there are emergency releases (such as because of jail overcrowding) where defendants who would not normally be released, are, about 52% end up being charged with some sort of pretrial misconduct. The rate for those who were intentionally released ranges from 27% to 36% depending on the release type. Anyhow, there's an immense amount of other actual information and data on that paper alone, including things like regression comparison of release rates vs reoffense rates to see if the systems in place are justified or not. And in some cases they are not, in some cases they are. I think it's reasonable to conclude that it's a system that does pretty well, but could be made better. [1] - https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/prfdsc.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/prfdsc.pdf
jdlyga 8y ago
Banning setting excessive bail is literally in the constitution. We should abide by that.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  Unfortunately, many parts of the constitution, including this one, have been re-interpreted into near irrelevance by courts. Excessive bail = bail larger than that which is typically required which means that that whatever bail is typically required is by definition not excessive. A more reasonable interpretation would be any bail larger than the amount necessary to achieve the purpose that bail is supposed to serve, which experiments by places like DC have shown for many cases to be any bail larger than zero.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
The US never abolished slavery, it just replaced it with prison labor and an endless supply of poor people that are fed into it on all sorts of minor offenses that would in most countries not result in a conviction. I know of no other countries that lock up this large a percentage of their population and then still manages to rival major war zones in terms of gun deaths per capita. It's offensive how ridiculously ineffective and cruel the US prison system is. Here's the fix: abandon slave labor and bring back prisons under local government control fully funded out of tax money. Then allow local politicians to decide what is reasonable to do with that funding. The whole problem is simply that people are profiting from locking people up and bankrolling the whole process.
- nojvek 8y ago
  Yep, US has the highest rate of incarceration compared to any other country. It's kind of insane that 1 in every 1000 people is in jail/prison. Not only is it a huge cost to the government maintaining that many prisoners, but it's also a huge drain to the economy to have that many humans contained within 4 walls. Some of them even spending so much time in solitude that they'd rather commit suicide and end their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate#/media/File:Incarceration_rates_worldwide.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra... We have a long way to go as humanity before we can call ourselves an advanced civilization that cares for every being on the planet and the planet itself in a sustainable way.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
Seems more and more like our legal system is based around people being guilty until proven innocent. This is so wrong. People who could be flight risks are the ones who should pay bail.
throw2016 8y ago
There is an incestuous network of profit driven companies who benefit from this. Apart from the bail bonds and insurance companies detailed in the article there are also private prisons. All these interests are perfectly aligned to lobby and fund campaigns and 'grow their business'. Their presence and funding of DA and judges is a clear conflict of interest. This is basically a synergy of corruption and exploitation. Corporate drones and funded economists go on about 'freedom' and this is a perfect example of how markets can produce toxic outcomes for individuals. Other developed countries do not mix up private interests and profit motives in their justice system and do not have problems of this scale. But the worst thing for individuals is once tainted, even wrongly, it becomes difficult to get back to get back to normal life, be it employment, housing or credit.
- wang_li 8y ago
  According to ProPublica[1], in 2010 there were 1.6 million people in prisons in the US. Of those 128,195 were in private prison facilities. According to [2], the number of federal inmates in private facilities in 2016 was 22,000, which is down from 27,000 mentioned in the ProPublica piece in 2010. Additionally, in 2016 the Feds announced the intent to discontinue the use of private prisons. (Don't know if that has changed in the last two years or not.) It doesn't seem like private prisons make any significant portion of the system. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry https://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-... [2] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-private-prison-phase-out https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/what-you-need-...
  - throw2016 8y ago
    That Fed announcement was an Obama era directive and was reversed by Jeff Sessions in 2017 [1]. 8.5% is not a small number and the conflict of interest is untenable as the scandals have shown. That this could be reversed inspite of known abuses [2] and serious problems [3] with the private prison system is extremely troubling. Private prison operators are one of the largest lobbying groups and spend more than $45 million a year on lobbying. [4] There have been a series of serious scandals with private prisons [5], judges [6] and corruption [7] with people sent to prison simply to pad numbers in private prisons. It's unteneble for a civilized society that believes in rule of law to allow justice to be vulgarized in this manner and allow a system known to be corrupt to stand. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-will-again-use-private-prisons/2017/02/23/da395d02-fa0e-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justi... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/?utm_term=.7365ae9c7446 https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/... [3] http://time.com/5013760/american-private-prisons-donald-trump/ http://time.com/5013760/american-private-prisons-donald-trum... [4] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-yankovich/be-careful-private-prison_b_8144860.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-yankovich/be-careful-pr... [5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2011/08/12/pennsylvania-judge-gets-life-sentence-for-prison-kickback-scheme/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2011/08/12/pennsylv... [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html [7] https://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private-pri.html https://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private...
adrr 8y ago
Here's solution I came up with bail. Force the government to pay 10% APR on bail amount. Now the bail bonds companies become risk management companies who look at the data to determine the risk of flight for the person charged with the crime. These companies get the interest payment from the government, the government saves money by not paying to jail someone and the person charged doesn't pay anything out of pocket.
mnm1 8y ago
Cash bail for nonviolent offenders is human rights abuse and completely unnecessary in the age of ankle bracelets and gps. I assume it still exists because people are profiting from this or because of the hate and desire to punish those simply accused, even if they are innocent. The desire for retribution and cruelty of such a system are definitely intentional factors, as much as profit, in the U.S. One should never underestimate hate and racism or their consequences here in America.

296 points by dsr12 8y ago

In my experience by far the worse part of the totally racist and unfair US bail system is the fact that... ...if you can't bail out, you don't get any REAL credit for the time you have spent locked up when you finally go to court and get sentenced, which really rubs injury into insult and flies 100% into the face of "innocent until proven guilty" bullshit we are all told is the way the system works. Before everyone goes off on how wrong I am, please hear me out from my POV of over 30 years getting arrested for minor shit all over the US. For the record, I have probably done time in like...12 different county jails and been through the systems in each of those places, and have been to state prison twice (no bail issues in prisons, so I'll leave them out). So back to my outrageous assertion...am I really saying that the judge gives you NO CREDIT for being in jail, away from your loved ones, your job (hopefully you had one), and your freedom, for all those weeks that you will wait to see him and have your case disposed of? Yes that is exactly what I'm saying, and here is why. Let's say 2 people get arrested for, say, felony ketamine possession on Jan 1, 2019. Richie Rich cries to mommy and get bonded out 10 hours after the arrest, and the bondsman gives him his first court date (there will be many BTW) 5 weeks out on Feb. 3rd. Joe Street is from out-of-town and the police forget to let him get local numbers from his phone before its stowed away in his property, thus leaving him totally helpless as far as calling anyone because who in in the hell remembers out-of-town numbers these days, right? [I use this example because this exact situation with the phone happened to me last year here in Vegas] So Joe is officially fucked. He too gets a court date for Feb 3rd and has to sit in jail until then. Trust me. If you have never been to county jail 5 weeks will feel approximately like 2 full-fucking eternities to you. You can't believe how bad the food is...how uncomfortable the beds are...how bad your cellmate snores...what assholes the COs are... And mostly how incredibly shit the phone system is...it's expensive as hell (3 bucks for 15 minutes I've seen) and often the speaker or mics dont work that well due to people smashing it on the wall in frustration. So you go to court FINALLY Feb 3rd, and there is Richie Rich! Oh man, he sure looks good in his street clothes and all groomed, while you look like pure crap with your ill-fitting jail garb..well at least you will be going home today, you think as you happily sit in the freezing cold holding cell and listen to people right next to each other scream at almost the top-of-their-lungs to just talk about their situation. Your head is pounding and you have been up since 4am sitting on hard-ass concrete for 5 hours...but HELL YEAH YOU ARE GOING HOME TODAY I'll take whatever probation they give me today..who cares how much I just NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA THIS JAIL! And then, of course...you never even see the judge. This is "arraignment" dipstick and everyone knows you can't plead at arraignment. Your totally overworked assigned public defender hands you his card and silently signs "call me" because its so fucking loud still. Then, in horror, you look down at the card and see your next court date is 3/18...HOLY SHIT ANOTHER 6 WEEKS ARE YOU KIDDING??? So I could go on relaying horror after horror, but I will stop here and get to the damn point. At the end, both you and Richie Rich get 3 years felony probation!! Let that sink in...you have sat in hell for maybe 4 months (sometimes 8 or 9!!) while Richie has been doing his thing in the real world, yet you both end up with the same sentence. And that's what I mean when I say that you basically get no credit for not being able to bail out. This is a 100% true story and I have seen it play out just like this perhaps a hundred times.

pc86 8y ago
> over 30 years getting arrested for minor shit all over the US Have you tried not spending three decades committing petty crimes "all over the US?" As for your original point - credit for time - you get 1.5x for time served. If you're sentenced to prison. If you spend weeks in jail but don't actually get sentenced to prison, there's nothing against which your time can be credited. Nobody's crediting jail time toward probation.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  Why though? He was on worse than probation for the entire time he was in jail. Why doesn't that count as time served?
  - pc86 8y ago
    If you're incarcerated prior to sentencing, and you're sentenced to more incarceration, you get a little extra credit, such that a 1-month pre-sentencing incarceration prior to a year long sentence results in a ~10.5 month incarceration after. Incarceration and probation are two completely different things, something that everyone knows and cubano's post conveniently ignores until the end. The point of the credit is so that you can spend less time in prison if you've already spent time in jail prior. It is not to get you out of the system faster so a credit toward probationary time doesn't make any sense.
- kaolti 8y ago
  > Have you tried not spending three decades committing petty crimes "all over the US?" Way to be constructive bro.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    Petty crimes are, in my opinion, more strongly subjected to selective enforcement than major ones. Consider also that the US is a bad place for a previously convicted felon to land a decent job, and that poor people, people on probation or parole, and minorities tend to have more negative police contacts, which produce more arrests, which produce more convictions. Think about the number of municipalities that criminalize acts reasonable only for the downtrodden, such as overnight camping on public property within municipal limits. Think about the number of jurisdictions that criminalize loitering and vagrancy to roust undesirables out of their town. In all likelihood, ancestor poster is not inherently more criminal than other people with no criminal record, but has a much larger enforcement profile due to circumstantial factors. Also, familiarity breeds contempt, and frequent encounters with the justice system lead to disillusionment with its supposed fairness and impartiality. It mainly exists so that the richer can keep the poorer away from their persons, properties, and possessions; and also to perpetuate its own existence.

ddtaylor 8y ago

It's worth noting that bail has been ruled unconstitutional in the Federal system and replaced by a pretrial service.

captainbland 8y ago

I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?

cs02rm0 8y ago
If one person gets their life savings cleared out for a $100 speeding fine, how do you equate that financial pain to Bill Gates? Why should Bill Gates be punished more in the same situation for having put the work in to build a successful company? You end up with silly (IMHO) situations like someone getting a $290k fine in Switzerland for 85mph in a 50 zone. 6 months in jail for someone who can't afford a $1k bail is the other end of the scale though - surely it cost substantially more than that to keep him in there. I'm pretty certain in the UK we have charities that help people out in such situations, is there no equivalent provision in the US?
- mantas 8y ago
  If you were looking at fine as a price to pay to break the law, then yes, it's silly. But the fine should make you not want to break the law in the first place. Then math is completely different.
- skate22 8y ago
  A $50 ticket is not going to deter bill gates from speeding. The goal of a speeding ticket is not to collect $50, it is to save lives by detering people from speeding..
  - squarefoot 8y ago
    "The goal of a speeding ticket is not to collect $50, it is to save lives by detering people from speeding.." It was once, maybe. I wonder how many people are actually turned from minor offenders into full criminals by the current law/jail system. To me it looks like the goal is to operate an artificial selection on the human species to encourage those who help the economy more. That is, legalized Eugenics.

rishabhd 8y ago

Harrowing, absolutely harrowing.

titzer 8y ago

This is horrible. Instead of bail, they should just have steeper fines for failure to appear and yet on the flipside the same guarantees afforded to jury duty as far as employment (i.e. can't be fired for having to appear in court). That would allow poorer people to keep their jobs and still be present for court dates. Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for.

mschuster91 8y ago
> Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for. The system is rigged against the minorities. Look why cannabis was criminalized in the first place - to target blacks and hippies (https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...). As a politician, keep as many of 'em in jails as you can, thus showing the white population you're "tough on crime" and at the same time filling the coffers of your private prison operator friends with state cash for the jailing.
- dismantlethesun 8y ago
  I have heard this and always wondered what exactly is keeping people from doing drugs with lessers sentencing? For example, if crack-cocaine carries a high sentence, then why not drop the habit in exchange for powdered cocaine? If the question is price, then this is really more of a system targeting the poor than one that is against any specific minority group.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > If the question is price, then this is really more of a system targeting the poor than one that is against any specific minority group. Well, if the majority of poor people are blacks (and Latinos), then it certainly is a racist policy to have vastly different sentencing for the drugs for poor and rich people.
  - moate 8y ago
    Crack is substantially cheaper to obtain than powdered cocaine. Crack is just powdered cocaine that's been cooked with other substances, essentially diluting it. The question is purely price, and it's the system targeting drug users of certain class/ethnic groups more than others. If you look at drug law enforcement in the US, it's substantially more punitive towards poor/minority groups.

jacobr 8y ago

Sweden actually has a similar problem even without the bail system. Most people get released awaiting trial, depending on severity of the crime, risk of influencing the case, etc. The ones who don't end up incarcerated with way worse conditions than regular prisons while waiting for the trial. You might end up with a sentence of 1 year after already spending most of it in an insitution with limited visitation rights, none of the rehabilitation, education and leisure available in regular prisons.

candiodari 8y ago
All European countries have a system that is sort-of a "reverse bail" problem. You can become a "civil party" to a complaint that you submit to the police. If you have money, you can force that complaint to get before a criminal judge, who is forced to ask you (the civil party) why you want this person criminally punished (e.g. jail), and listen to your response. So poor people cannot complain about things like government excess or police brutality, since those complaints get thrown out. Nor can they effectively get police help, except in very severe cases. But a rich person can drag you in front of a criminal court for not wiping the pavement in front of your apartment often enough. This is a bail system. The money you put down, you get back if the person gets convicted. Additionally, in some countries the defendant, if convicted, will need to pay your lawyer expenses (again, if they are convicted). Pretty much all of Europe.
- nemetroid 8y ago
  > All European countries > criminal judge Almost all of Europe uses civil law, where there is no distinction between civil and criminal courts. > But a rich person can drag you in front of a criminal court for not wiping the pavement in front of your apartment often enough. > This is a bail system. The money you put down, you get back if the person gets convicted. This is far removed from reality as far as I am aware. Please provide sources.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    > Almost all of Europe uses civil law, where there is no distinction between civil and criminal courts. Obviously not true. In fact, this is so obviously wrong I don't know where to start. Differences between civil and criminal courts: * different hierarchy * different powers (criminal court can, say, order imprisonment) * different judges * different parties (defendant vs prosecution for criminal, defendant vs complainant for civil court) * different standards of proof * different rights (e.g. the right to a jury trial in some countries) Even this barely scratches the surface of the differences. > This is far removed from reality as far as I am aware. Please provide sources. Start reading here, it describes part of the procedure: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partie_civile_en_France https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partie_civile_en_France Google suggests this as an English alternative: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1958.tb00483.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.... (note there is "partie civile" and "action civile". They are NOT the same, aren't directly related. Specifically it is NOT the case that the "partie civile" is the complainant in an "action civile", as one might think. Keep reading) The procedure is, generally speaking: 1) complain to the police, get a record or the complaint 2) with the record (which is a number), go to an "investigation judge" (no need to prove anything or ...), declare your intent to become "partie civile", register your lawyer, etc. He will tell you the amount of the "bail" for the case (which is going to be ~1000 euro. It differs from case to case, but not much) 3) pay the "bail" to the "griffe" (sort-of-kind-of the secretary of the court, they have an office in every courthouse) and register it 4) take said registration back to the judge you registered with, judge writes an order 5) write the prosecutor to deliver the order of the investigative judge Now, the prosecutor is forced to bring the case before criminal court within a certain amount of time, and is forced to demand a nonzero punishment for whatever the complaint is (in fact this is one of the ways they get out from under it: they demand ridiculous punishments so the judge will rule against them). The non-obvious and terrible thing for the victims of this system is misjudging the motivation of the police/prosecution (technically there is a distinction between the police and the people that do this, but it's essentially a different department of the same organization...). You might think the police will try to punish the guilty party, if there is one. That's technically true, but only in the following sense : they will try to get a conviction, and with this procedure REGARDLESS of their judgement there is a guilty party. If they think they can get a conviction, odds are VERY good they'll pursue seriously. Things that do NOT influence whether they pursue (and therefore do not influence whether you get convicted) include reasonableness, whether you're nice to the police, whether there's significant damages, whether anyone else was involved, whether the police promised not to do that (which they do, frankly almost always, then bring the case anyway and get the conviction), ... An evil way to get ahead in elections in France: use this system to get your niece to complain against your competition, then point out (perfectly accurately) that your opponent is under investigation for terrible crime X. They will go free, eventually (or maybe not), but by that time it has long since stopped mattering.

Svip 8y ago

Is it possible to get compensation for wrongful imprisonment in the US? I know it is in Denmark. The logic being that it shouldn't be 'free' for the state to imprison someone wrongfully. In Denmark, you seek compensation after the fact. The exact compensation will depend on several variables, so I cannot give an exact figure. But I did find a case where a man was wrongfully imprisoned for five months, and got 141,000 DKK (~22,000 USD) in compensation. Although, the case noted he had sought 500,000 DKK in compensation.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago
It is but it is extremely rare. These are systemic problems, caused by the construction of the system itself and not due to bad actors. One problem is to have a successful suit against wrongful imprisonment, you have to prove intent. If somebody accidentally imprisoned you acting in good faith, the idea is that people make mistakes. There is automatic protection built into the system to allow prosecutors and LE to do their jobs. If there wasn't intent but the job they did was sloppy, it becomes a very grey area because then you have to define "sloppy". Everybody's sloppy to some degree or another, so the courts have set a high bar here (IANAL, just what I've read). The second problem is that laws and punishments are set in isolation, as if they were dealing with an ideal citizen who just broke one law. If you've got a job, a car, and savings and then you forget to pay your car insurance, a hefty fine isn't a big deal. If, however, you're poor and have to drive without insurance just to have a job and eat, then the laws were not set up with you in mind. It's not malice by one person that causes this. It's apathy among dozens of people all with different slices of the problem. It's not clear who would be the person responsible or who would have the supervisory authority over all of these people to prevent it even if the system were in place to find restitution.
- thechao 8y ago
  I understand the situation as described. I do feel that many Americans (including myself) would be happier without intent: the imprisonment of a free person is a fundamental violation of constitutional rights and, regardless of intent, is a wrong, which should lead to compensation.

guessthejuice 8y ago

I remember reading about this years ago. It's sad that this problem hasn't been resolved in all that time. We already have a legal system that advantages the wealthy ( more money for better lawyers, experts, etc ) over everyone else. But this bail problem is egregious and cruel. But it isn't the poor who created legal system. It isn't he poor who write laws.

DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
The system isn't fundamentally flawed though. The problem starts when it's abused. When people are locked away regardless of whether or not there is any probability of them leaving the country or otherwise "disappearing" before their trial. Someone who has a family most likely won't do that, and there's no reason for them to go to prison until they have been proven guilty of a crime.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  There is one radical viewpoint that I believe holds for the law and computer security practices: if it is abusable it is fundamentally flawed. To give a deliberately extreme example imagine a law that gave the accusser fifty percent of the assets of a terrorist and the prosecutor the other fifty percent with no downsides for a false accusation. Fundamentally there is no way that said law wouldn't be abused for profit and make a complete hash out of justice.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

What is the alternative then? Let a probable criminal go wander the streets or disappear altogether? At least these people have some possibility of release rather than none at all. While some innocents may be confined to a jail awaiting trial, I'm sure this is a minority, not the majority. Even then, bail skippers still occur. Let's quit with the "Oh the poor criminal being treated that way" mentality.

DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
> "Oh the poor criminal being treated that way" No. It's the exact opposite. Until they are proven guilty of a crime, it's a "Oh the poor innocent people being treated that way" mentality, and that is perfectly justifiable. People awaiting trial should only be locked away when there's any actual reason to believe they would disappear or commit a serious crime before their trial.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  Thus, the purpose of bail money that people are complaining about. However, as I said in my post, most people are likely to be guilty of said crime and the most heinous ones are those you don't want them on the streets.
crispyambulance 8y ago
> What is the alternative then? Let a probable criminal go wander the streets or disappear altogether? Grotesque inequities in the bail system are merely one symptom of the intractable disaster of criminal justice in America. This problem is tied to many other problems, you can't deal with them one at a time. But "letting someone go" is not as bad as it sounds. Keeping them in jail because they can't come up with a few hundred dollars from a predatory storefront bailbonds joint ALSO has problems. If that person had a job, they've now lost it. If they have children, they're now at risk of losing them, and the children face an even more chaotic home life. In addition to that, keeping someone locked up is costly to the state.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago

snarfy 8y ago

Financial punishments should be required by law to be a percentage of your worth/income instead of an arbitrary number. $100 fine can be devastating if you are living paycheck to paycheck. For others it's a bar tab. Fixed fees disproportionately hurt the poor.

zimablue 8y ago
Setting that scale is nigh on impossible though. Young people with zero in assets and incredibly rich parents (asset-rich not income). Young people with no assets and poor parents but massive future earning potential (academic or sports stars). Old people with massive material wealth in the value of their houses who will be incredibly unwilling (and make a great newspaper headline) to move it.

zubairq 8y ago

Denmark is not so clear cut. Here SKAT, the tax system presumes citizens guilty and they have to prove their innocence. This can mean jail time too for the citizens

JudasGoat 8y ago

In Massachusetts it is common to have two different ammounts bepending how you choose to pay. For instance, my bail was $100,000 cash or 1 million bond. Seeing as bail bondsmen typically require a 10 percent non refundable fee, you would pay the cash ammount and it is returned upon completion of your trial. The problem perceived by the incarcerated is that the courts would be likely to include a fine similar to your cash bail in a resolution to a guilty finding.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

This article is incredibly misleading in numerous ways. You can find details on pretrial release, like all other issues related to the justice department from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This [1] paper is extremely relevant. The normal process in the US is that an individual's case will be seen by a judge within 24 hours of their detention and the judge will assign bail. Contrary to the media, the defendant is often not even present for this process. They will simply be pulled from their cell or detention area and informed what the judge decided. And in the vast majority of cases this is that the individual is released for 'free', or released on personal recognizance. Even in felony cases some 32% of individuals are released without financial condition. When bail is set, individuals can generally get out for 10% of that amount. In some cases they can do it directly through the court, and that 10% will be refunded once the individual returns to court and completes their trial. If not they can go to bail bondsmen who take the 10% as their profit margin, and pay 100% to the court themselves. The bailbonds companies then get their 100% back from the court once the defendant shows up and completes their trial. This is where modern day 'bounty hunting' can come into play -- the bail bondsmen have a strong incentive to ensure that their clients do not flee. Bail tends to be set in relation to the criminal record of an individual, the seriousness of an offense, how much of a flight risk they are, and whether or not they're likely to be a danger to themselves or others if released. So for instance of all individuals with no prior convictions 77% are released, 63% of those with misdemeanor priors are released, but only 46% of those with felony priors are released. This is also why there are demographic differences in bails and release rates (age, gender, race, etc). Two individuals may commit the same crime, but when one has a criminal record and the other does not - there will be different outcomes. Articles typically try to spin this as prejudice (as this one did), but it is in no way shape or form prejudicial. There are also statistics that can be used to, inadvertently, test how reliable detention vs release decisions are. In particular when there are emergency releases (such as because of jail overcrowding) where defendants who would not normally be released, are, about 52% end up being charged with some sort of pretrial misconduct. The rate for those who were intentionally released ranges from 27% to 36% depending on the release type. Anyhow, there's an immense amount of other actual information and data on that paper alone, including things like regression comparison of release rates vs reoffense rates to see if the systems in place are justified or not. And in some cases they are not, in some cases they are. I think it's reasonable to conclude that it's a system that does pretty well, but could be made better. [1] - https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/prfdsc.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/prfdsc.pdf

jdlyga 8y ago

Banning setting excessive bail is literally in the constitution. We should abide by that.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Unfortunately, many parts of the constitution, including this one, have been re-interpreted into near irrelevance by courts. Excessive bail = bail larger than that which is typically required which means that that whatever bail is typically required is by definition not excessive. A more reasonable interpretation would be any bail larger than the amount necessary to achieve the purpose that bail is supposed to serve, which experiments by places like DC have shown for many cases to be any bail larger than zero.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

The US never abolished slavery, it just replaced it with prison labor and an endless supply of poor people that are fed into it on all sorts of minor offenses that would in most countries not result in a conviction. I know of no other countries that lock up this large a percentage of their population and then still manages to rival major war zones in terms of gun deaths per capita. It's offensive how ridiculously ineffective and cruel the US prison system is. Here's the fix: abandon slave labor and bring back prisons under local government control fully funded out of tax money. Then allow local politicians to decide what is reasonable to do with that funding. The whole problem is simply that people are profiting from locking people up and bankrolling the whole process.

nojvek 8y ago
Yep, US has the highest rate of incarceration compared to any other country. It's kind of insane that 1 in every 1000 people is in jail/prison. Not only is it a huge cost to the government maintaining that many prisoners, but it's also a huge drain to the economy to have that many humans contained within 4 walls. Some of them even spending so much time in solitude that they'd rather commit suicide and end their lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate#/media/File:Incarceration_rates_worldwide.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra... We have a long way to go as humanity before we can call ourselves an advanced civilization that cares for every being on the planet and the planet itself in a sustainable way.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

Seems more and more like our legal system is based around people being guilty until proven innocent. This is so wrong. People who could be flight risks are the ones who should pay bail.

throw2016 8y ago

There is an incestuous network of profit driven companies who benefit from this. Apart from the bail bonds and insurance companies detailed in the article there are also private prisons. All these interests are perfectly aligned to lobby and fund campaigns and 'grow their business'. Their presence and funding of DA and judges is a clear conflict of interest. This is basically a synergy of corruption and exploitation. Corporate drones and funded economists go on about 'freedom' and this is a perfect example of how markets can produce toxic outcomes for individuals. Other developed countries do not mix up private interests and profit motives in their justice system and do not have problems of this scale. But the worst thing for individuals is once tainted, even wrongly, it becomes difficult to get back to get back to normal life, be it employment, housing or credit.

wang_li 8y ago
According to ProPublica[1], in 2010 there were 1.6 million people in prisons in the US. Of those 128,195 were in private prison facilities. According to [2], the number of federal inmates in private facilities in 2016 was 22,000, which is down from 27,000 mentioned in the ProPublica piece in 2010. Additionally, in 2016 the Feds announced the intent to discontinue the use of private prisons. (Don't know if that has changed in the last two years or not.) It doesn't seem like private prisons make any significant portion of the system. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry https://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-... [2] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-private-prison-phase-out https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/what-you-need-...
- throw2016 8y ago
  That Fed announcement was an Obama era directive and was reversed by Jeff Sessions in 2017 [1]. 8.5% is not a small number and the conflict of interest is untenable as the scandals have shown. That this could be reversed inspite of known abuses [2] and serious problems [3] with the private prison system is extremely troubling. Private prison operators are one of the largest lobbying groups and spend more than $45 million a year on lobbying. [4] There have been a series of serious scandals with private prisons [5], judges [6] and corruption [7] with people sent to prison simply to pad numbers in private prisons. It's unteneble for a civilized society that believes in rule of law to allow justice to be vulgarized in this manner and allow a system known to be corrupt to stand. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-will-again-use-private-prisons/2017/02/23/da395d02-fa0e-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justi... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/?utm_term=.7365ae9c7446 https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/... [3] http://time.com/5013760/american-private-prisons-donald-trump/ http://time.com/5013760/american-private-prisons-donald-trum... [4] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-yankovich/be-careful-private-prison_b_8144860.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-yankovich/be-careful-pr... [5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2011/08/12/pennsylvania-judge-gets-life-sentence-for-prison-kickback-scheme/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2011/08/12/pennsylv... [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html [7] https://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private-pri.html https://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private...

adrr 8y ago

Here's solution I came up with bail. Force the government to pay 10% APR on bail amount. Now the bail bonds companies become risk management companies who look at the data to determine the risk of flight for the person charged with the crime. These companies get the interest payment from the government, the government saves money by not paying to jail someone and the person charged doesn't pay anything out of pocket.

mnm1 8y ago

Cash bail for nonviolent offenders is human rights abuse and completely unnecessary in the age of ankle bracelets and gps. I assume it still exists because people are profiting from this or because of the hate and desire to punish those simply accused, even if they are innocent. The desire for retribution and cruelty of such a system are definitely intentional factors, as much as profit, in the U.S. One should never underestimate hate and racism or their consequences here in America.