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California governor signs overhaul of bail system

• foolzcrow 8y ago
  I heard Jerry Brown eats feces
• syrrim 8y ago
  If I had to speculate, I'd say this is primarily a reaction to improved ability to track people, such that it is next to impossible for a person to jump bail. You can't get on a plane, or otherwise try and cross the border, because your passport will be checked. If you drive across the country, then your credit cards/bank accounts will be tracked, and security cameras can pick up and recognize your face. I imagine that there is today fewer people not showing up to court and getting away with it. If so, then it seems like a good trade-off - those facing trial have more freedom, and threats to there freedom can't be used in a coercive manner, but those who aren't facing trial have less privacy.
  • olliej 8y ago
    It's mostly due to the increasing evidence of: * Clear biases in distribution of bail vs. non-bail gated release * The substantially unbalanced cost of bail for poor vs. middle-class and up. Basically: if your bail costs $1000 and you make $50k/year you can probably arrange cash to cover it. If you make 20k/year you probably cannot, so your option is to lose $100 - bail bond is not returned to you - or you literally go to jail without a trial.
    • Analemma_ 8y ago
      But the improved ability to track people probably helps sell it politically to the "tough on crime" crowd.
      • jaxn 8y ago
        Faster due process has a much bigger impact than tracking people down (which is both expensive and dangerous). There will also likely be an increase in "no bond" holds until the court date. This is a step in the right direction, but the entire incarceration machine needs an overhaul/downsize.
        • olliej 8y ago
          my inclination is that all non-violent offenses should be on recognizance (or however that's worded) unless there's historic evidence that you will miss your court dates. If you have previously skipped court dates then we shouldn't necessarily assume that you would make future court dates, so why do we believe bail would mean anything?
          • woolvalley 8y ago
            Would you call physical theft a violent or non-violent crime? How about if that theft involved property damage?
            • olliej 8y ago
              Honestly: I don't know. Seriously, I'm not saying these problems are easy, I'm saying that the current policies of anything and everything can lead to jail time results in long term negative effects that exacerbate existing biases. The current bail system feeds on this - if all crimes carry the potential for jail time, then all defendants can be threatened with jail time in exchange for a plea bargain that has a false confession. Let's say we go for something like "no direct victims" e.g. possession, drunk and disorderly, etc have no jail penalty, theft or violent crime does? But then how to you class smashing a window during a protest: Is that deserving of jail time? If not, then why is there the threat of incarceration pending bail? Again: I don't know, none of this really has easy yes/no answers.
            • jaxn 8y ago
              What is and isn't a violent crime is already well-defined. Mugging is a violent crime, but shoplifting isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime
    • 0xffff2 8y ago
      >or you literally go to jail without a trial. You go to jail until your trial. Not quite the same thing.
      • Guvante 8y ago
        Both are true. You go to jail without a trial until your trial is done.
      • ransom1538 8y ago
        "You go to jail until your trial." Uh. No one goes to 'trial' anymore.
      • olliej 8y ago
        I go, lets say I'm arrested for some reason (wrong place wrong time, being at a protest, being the wrong colour for the neighborhood). Ican't afford bail, now I go to jail. 2 months later the charges are dropped. I spent two months in jail, I didn't even have a trial, so I wasn't even in jail "until my trial", I was jailed for no reason. That is enough to get me fired - I didn't come to work, and US law doesn't protect me from being fired when a court prevents me from going to work. The /only/ reasons for jail before trial is if there is a risk to the public or a documented risk of not appearing. The existing bail laws punish you according to what prosecution and police can get away with, and functionally turn "bail law" into jail for the non-rich, fines for the middle class. Maybe that could be reduced if the government were considered liable for any and all losses suffered by someone who is innocent, including loss of employment. That would given prosecutors and police some balance to the incentives to prevent bail or demand large bail amounts.
      • trhway 8y ago
        You go to jail and that makes you more pliable for a plea deal.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    > If I had to speculate, I'd say this is primarily a reaction to improved ability to track people, such that it is next to impossible for a person to jump bail. There may be some sense in which it is enabled by that, but it's definitely a reaction to a national grassroots political movement (stronger in the Dem party, but not exclusive to it) against the money bail system as economically unjust, plus the relative successful model of Washington, D.C., in eliminating money bail even ahead of the national movement gaining traction.
  • philwelch 8y ago
    People who skip bail, by and large, don't get on a plane or drive across the country. Also, the bail system isn't designed to only incentivize defendants themselves to show up to court. The bail bondsman has the financial incentive and the legal right to apprehend and deliver a defendant who has skipped bail. Removing the bail bondsman from the equation only increases the public cost of reapprehending these defendants. Edit: I should add...people who get caught committing crimes are generally not the best at responding to the incentive of not going to jail, or else they wouldn’t get caught committing crimes in the first place. So any mechanism that relies on this incentive is unlikely to be effective. Introducing a third party with vested interests at no additional cost is a non-trivial benefit of the bail system. Although maybe the police unions are happy to transfer the workload (and added hours!) to their members.
    • bodas 8y ago
      It would also be a lot cheaper to dispense with courts and replace them with private arbitrators with the power to send people to prison. A system where the decision on whether you go to jail or not is made by bail bondsmen is not just. If they decide not to grant you a bond, to where do you appeal?
      • jaxn 8y ago
        Or dispense with prison in the vast majority of cases.
      • philwelch 8y ago
        Where do you appeal if the judge decides not to release you of your own recognizance? Where do you appeal of the judge decides not to even offer you bail, for that matter? By the time you're dealing with a bail bondsman, you're already in jail, and a judge has likely decided not to release you of your own recognizance. The question is whether or not you have to stay there until trial.
        • sjy 8y ago
          > Where do you appeal of the judge decides not to even offer you bail, for that matter? To a higher court, as with any other judicial order? This is how things work in normal common law countries like the UK, Canada and Australia.
  • maxlybbert 8y ago
    I remember reading somebody’s life story (I think one of my relatives), who mentioned that a strange man showed up on his doorstep when he was a little kid in the early 1900s. His father talked with the man, gave him some money, and sent him away. Years later, the father explained that the man was the father’s brother, who had committed some crime before the turn of the century, and would occasionally show up saying he was down on his luck. Whether the story was true, what stuck with me was the fact that there was once a time that somebody could leave town and largely create a brand-new identity. I guess it’s possible today, but it’s not easy. For starters, you need a social security number, and businesses are able to check whether those are valid better than they could a few years ago.
  • akira2501 8y ago
    > because your passport will be checked. That's far more a concern for people trying to re-enter the United States. For those leaving, this is hardly an impediment.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • jdavis703 8y ago
      Your passport is checked when you leave the U.S. It’s done electronically though, so if your passport is clear you don’t even notice it when you leave (unlike say the exit Visa stamp you get in Schegen countries). If your passport comes back flagged when you’re leaving the U.S. the FBI or Marshall’s or whoever can apprehend you.
      • gaadd33 8y ago
        How does the US electronically check my passport when driving into Canada? I can seen Canada doing it on entry and relaying that to the US but otherwise, how does that check get done?
        • gizmo686 8y ago
          The US has good relations with Canada; and Canada is not particularly fond of criminals entering their country. When they check your passport, they will notice you are out on bail and, at best, deny you entry. (The Canadian border also happens to be the US border, so they might also refer the incident to US authorities)
        • jdavis703 8y ago
          After some Googling, it appears that the U.S. land border crossing points are less monitored. I've only utilized U.S. air and sea crossings, both of which do have electronic exit visas (because the shipline or airline reports their passenger manifest to the authorities). So, yes, no check is done when using a land crossing.
• rdl 8y ago
  I'm not sure if I agree with this change (there are positives and negatives to the bail system), but I love that in a federal system individual states are free to experiment like this. Maybe it will work, and then other states can adopt it.
  • jaxn 8y ago
    I can't think of good sides to the bail system. What positives do you see.
    • koolba 8y ago
      Getting people to show up to trial is the main one. I’d like to see an experiment where rather than money, instead a free citizen is offered up for bail. And if you don’t show up for trial the citizen goes to jail till they apprehend you.
      • jeffdavis 8y ago
        I don't follow your proposal. Honestly, it sounds really scary and disturbing, but I'll let you explain it better first.
        • koolba 8y ago
          Rather than putting up cash, a friend, brother, sister, etc offers themselves as the bond for my freedom. If I abscond then they’ll be arrested and imprisoned until I’m apprehended. Assuming that “everybody has somebody”, it’s quite fair as rich or poor you’ll be able to find someone to be your bond. Again the idea is to have a strong incentive to report for trial. Assuming your actually emotionally close to the person being offered as bond (ex: I wouldn’t let my brother go to prison) then you’d make sure to show up. In the case of the person who has done no wrong and knows they will show up to trial, it reduces the cost of the bond to effectively zero. For the rich you’re able to put a price higher than just money, the actual freedom of someone they care about. Note that this entire system is predicated on a judge deciding if the person being offered for bond being worthy of the position. Otherwise you could have rich people “buy” their freedom by paying off a sap to sign their name.
• saltedshiv 8y ago
  Everytime bail comes up I see the same comments. Like, nearly word for word. The more I let that set in, the more uncomfortable I feel
• ENOTTY 8y ago
  Both judges and "risk-assessment tools" have biases. Judges have unconscious biases and risk-assessment tools are fed biased data. So I'm not confident this will actually help matters.
  • Someone1234 8y ago
    Judge's biases exist in the money bail system too. Judges often set bail amounts from a range. This doesn't solve all issues, this just solves one issue, which is that someone's economic status shouldn't be why they're in jail, only their likelihood of committing more crime, witness tampering, or skipping court. I'm sure this new system will have problems that will need to be addressed, but it is a moral thing to TRY.
    • ENOTTY 8y ago
      What if biases are easier to detect (and correct) in the cash bail system? If true, would it then be more moral to to stick with the cash bail system? I could argue that a judge's biases are harder to detect and correct because in doing so you literally have to accuse another human person of being biased, which is something nobody wants to do. To argue that an algorithm is biased requires that one analyze all the data fed into the algorithm and gain some insight into the algorithm. Most of the time the original data is unavailable, incomplete, or proprietary and the models used to predict risk are also considered proprietary, which limits an outsider's ability to detect and correct biases.
    • dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Judge's biases exist in the money bail system too. Judges often set bail amounts from a range. Or deny it because no arrangement can adequately guarantee appearance, yes. The fact that money is the key element used to guarantee appearance doesn't mean that money is always sufficient even in the money bail system.
• rootw0rm 8y ago
  my gf has bail review on the 30th, too bad this won't help her. her bail is at $355,000, she's currently in vista detention facility =(
  • tfang17 8y ago
    you're definitely not the typical HN user
    • zavi 8y ago
      That's right, the typical HN users are some of the finest intellectuals who would never act criminally due to their superior intellect and morals. Most of us are from Norway actually.
  • komali2 8y ago
    Jesus, what kind of crime allegation gets that kind of bail set?
    • rootw0rm 8y ago
      she's accused of beating up 3 old people with a bat, then smashing up their vehicle for good measure
      • mirimir 8y ago
        Impressive. So why did she do that? And did they deserve it? I'm guessing maybe a bicycle accident. Just a wild guess. I mean, been there, almost did that. But with a chain, not a bat. Those jerks almost killed me.
        • lightbyte 8y ago
          >And did they deserve it? Is this sarcasm? I'm struggling to think of a good reason for three elderly people to deserve getting beaten with a bat.
• alottafunchata 8y ago
  Dumb
• DanCarvajal 8y ago
  I wish Gov. Jerry Brown was young enough to run for President. I don't like the crop of Democrats that are vying for 2020.
  • GeneralMayhem 8y ago
    He tried, a long time ago, and lost the primaries to Carter (twice... not sure why he bothered to enter the primary in 1980). He also lost a presidential primary in 1992 (Clinton). If he ran again in 2020... well, it would be pretty fitting considering he's done his whole career path twice, but it's pretty crazy that it's not absolutely out of the question for someone who was on the national stage at the same time as Carter and Reagan to still be there.
    • _delirium 8y ago
      His 1980 campaign was particularly weird in its combination of positions. It was during the height of his "Governor Moonbeam" reputation, and combined a grab-bag of left-wing and right-wing proposals, mostly culturally left but economically right-ish. Strategically this might've been an attempt to paint both Carter and Ted Kennedy (the other main primary candidate) as old-fashioned: Carter as staid and culturally conservative, and Kennedy (who had proposed a single-payer health plan) as the big-government, big-spending liberal, with Brown as a new modern kind of liberal who balanced budgets while advocating for acupuncture, solar energy, organic farming, and space travel. Very "California ideology", but it didn't really work nationally. His 1976 campaign by contrast was oddly similar to his current persona, a kind of center-left, pragmatic technocrat. The conventional wisdom seems to be that he only lost because Carter figured out quicker how to campaign in the new primary system (1976 was the first year that primaries rather than state conventions dominated) and racked up a bunch of early delegates.
  • MBCook 8y ago
    Wow. I didn’t realize he was 80. I knew he’d been governor for quite a while.
    • jkaplowitz 8y ago
• lurquer 8y ago
  Instead of the duly appointed Judge making the decision, the power is delegated to a "Risk Assessment" board. (i.e., a bunch of unaccountable social workers). So, instead of an individual Judge getting flack for excessive bail, he can sleep at night having had his authority delegated to an anonymous 'committee' that can refuse to set bail altogether. It seems the general public -- at least in California -- has little idea of the enormous role in the judicial system played by bail bondsmen. I know dozens. They are all a bit sketchy. But, they are the front-line dealing with the lowest rungs of society. They do a lot of good, ensure their charges stay out of trouble, and show up to court. They do it for a profit. But, that doesn't diminish their role. I'm interested in seeing how it will turn out. I wish them well, but I've found abuses are more likely when the responsibility for a person is diffused amongst many.
  • YokoZar 8y ago
    Isn't part of the problem that judges face a lot of pressures to be extra harsh when deciding bail? A board seems less likely to face political blowback when the rare out on bail person commits a serious crime. That sounds like the sort of incident that incentivizes judges to be extra harsh.
    • hollerith 8y ago
      Good point. One of the arguments given for why crimes are punished less severely in Germany and France is that sentencing judges there are less accountable to voters.
      • jopsen 8y ago
        If you also people if punishments are severe enough, most will say no. If you also people if a specific punishment is severe enough, most will say yes. People require less severe punishments the more informed they are. Voting on judges is only going to get a more generalized mob effect.
    • firic 8y ago
      If judges risk themselves politically if they release people on bail then that means that the will of the people is to rarely release people on bail. I know it may sound weird to you and me but apparently there are a lot of people in California who feel that someone accused of a crime should suffer in prison until they are proven innocent. That is the disadvantage of democracy, people with different opinions get to vote. The solution is to educate voters why you think that they should vote differently or to move to another place.
• kodablah 8y ago
  > work with lawmakers and the state’s top Supreme Court justice [...] Under last-minute changes, judges would have greater power to decide [...] Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who helped craft the legislation It's an improvement, sure, but no surprise consulting a branch or two of government to draft it would end up with more power to a branch. What are the objective criteria for the "risk analysis" that divides the accused into the three risk levels? And how often do extenuating circumstances really occur that require judicial override sans approval from an additional independent council?
• theptip 8y ago
  To add another data point to the discussion -- I recently discovered that the bail system is sometimes used as a tool to force women into prostitution; see https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/29/revealed-how-us-sex-traffickers-recruit-jailed-women-for-prostitution-the-trap https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/29/r.... TLDR is that pimps find women who are up for bail, offer to bail them out, and then threaten to rescind the bail if they don't start working for them. It seems like the easier fix would be to forbid a bail payment from being rescinded once it's made, but removing bail entirely also solves the problem.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• jmspring 8y ago
  For communities already pushing the extremes of what Prop 47 and Prop 57 allow, this will be one more blow to the common citizenry. Places like Santa Cruz have a very high recidivism rates where serial bike thieves, petty theft, even violence towards common citizens are maybe ticketed and at best brought in and released in a couple of hours will use this as further excuse to do nothing. Examples - woman assaulted in front of her child at a city park with a ranger near by, perp didn't even get a ticket. Known bike thieves carrying a bike while riding another - nothing done. This happens in a number of CA cities (Berkeley, SF, Santa Cruz). It's always interesting to see how ideals of one party left unchecked drive a city/state in to the ground.
  • firic 8y ago
    What does this have to do with one party? How is a primary system in one party different than a general election amongst two parties?
    • jmspring 8y ago
      California did better with balanced government. Republican Gov and democratic legislature. There was some semblance of balance. Without that balance, we see prop 47 and 57. Local communities using those as an excuse to not really do much in the way of law enforcement — the city government of Santa Cruz was actively hostile toward the police well into the 90s. An individual casing bikes with bike tools in the east bay would have an “encounter” with PD, in Santa Cruz PD actually told me in a meeting - they won’t engage unless they actively see an incident in progress or the owner reports it.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        > California did better with balanced government. Republican Gov and democratic legislature. No, it didn't. It was nonstop crisis.
      • spacehome 8y ago
        Seriously, though, what would you have the cop do in that case?
• downandout 8y ago
  This is terrible. Pretrial detention in rough California county jails is often used as a bargaining chip by prosecutors to get quick convictions in exchange for probationary sentences. "Don't like the constant threat of being raped or assaulted every day? Sign the deal, take a felony conviction, and you'll get out on probation tonight". This won't result in more poor people being released. It will simply result in a higher percentage of middle and upper class people being extorted into guilty pleas that they would not otherwise take, under the threat of losing their careers and families as a result of many months, and in a large number of cases, years, of pretrial detention.
  • stanleydrew 8y ago
    > This won't result in more poor people being released. It will simply result in a higher percentage of middle and upper class people being extorted into guilty pleas that they would not otherwise take, under the threat of losing their careers and families as a result of many months, and in a large number of cases, years, of pretrial detention. Uhh, sounds like they will be treated the same as a poor person is currently treated then. I don't see what's wrong with everyone being treated equally regardless of ability to pay.
    • downandout 8y ago
      Uhh, sounds like they will be treated the same as a poor person is currently treated then. I agree that judges should have the discretion to release poor people that cannot make bail. That part of the system needed to be changed. I don't agree that they should have limitless discretion to arbitrarily hold anyone without bail. That is a gaping and dangerous hole to open up.
      • 0xB31B1B 8y ago
        That is already the case right now, anyone can be held without bail
        • downandout 8y ago
• fdr 8y ago
  I see nobody has mentioned the "Freedom Funds," so, I will do so now. One of the better known ones: http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org/ http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org/ What these are revolving, non-profit bail funds. They screen those who require bail as to maximize the recovery of the money, choosing those that are thought to have good prospects in showing up to court. They seem to be quite effective at this, so I think there is a reasonable chance the law's "commissions" can also enjoy some accuracy. It also lends some ideas as to how such commissions can be held accountable, benchmarked, or enjoy some internal competition.
• lsiebert 8y ago
  I'd remind people that when dealing with a bad system, a less bad system that still has bad points is still an improvement. What you really want is a system that allows further changes based on assessment of it's faults.
  • GeneralMayhem 8y ago
    That's true, but not always politically viable. You only get to muster up the political will to take a swing at the big structural problems every so often. If this turns out to be horribly insufficient of a measure, it'll be a few years before it's likely to change again, so for that reason it's understandable for organizations like the ACLU to be annoyed at what they see as missing their shot.
    • lsiebert 8y ago
      And that's why the ACLU is still working to make regulation of this rule and how it's assessments work more fair. It wanted changes to the risk assessment tools in the bill, but didn't get that. What I think the various California ACLU groups (there are three of them actually) groups wanted data collection, independent risk assessment service agencies, and better due process for those facing negative bail decisions. Anyway they are going to try to get changes to tweak the law, probably try to do their own assessments of racial bias, and I expect they'll sue locally for specific county level changes that are allowed within the law. I think we'll get there. We know that existing risk assessment tools tend to overestimate black and latino people reoffending and underestimate white people, and if they can show a systemic bias they'll have ammunition to change things. Getting rid of the bail industry is huge though, especially getting rid of lobbying from them against this in the next round. I'm hopeful that this will be a step forward, and allow for another step forward.
• refurb 8y ago
  I can't find it now, but I was reading a Reddit post on this from someone who works in the California court system. His/her opinion was that this wasn't going to really change much. People arrested for minor crimes are often released on their own recognizance and major crime they aren't offer bail terms they can meet. Under this new system, the same people will likely be released without bail and the same people will be kept behind bars. Interestingly, if you skip out on a court date, an arrest warrant is issued, but they expire after 3 years. Apparently getting people to show up for their court date is a huge problem as the consequences are pretty minor unless you encounter law enforcement.
• drewmol 8y ago
  Bail seems like an outdated concept that has ballooned into a mechanism to extort money with little public benifit. When a deposit was enough to keep someone charged with a crime from running off to the next town and never being heard from again it was probably effective. Now, if bail is a major factor in whether a defendant returns to court or turns wanted outlaw, the charges are either too minor to warrent bail, or so serious that paying for release probably should not have ever been an option. Bail is just an initial deposit, a checksum to make sure no one gets out free: either cash or tax dollars for the administration and encarceration of poor defendants. Hope this doesn't turn into a system of simply optimizing bail payment per offer by setting custom amounts.
• mrweasel 8y ago
  Other countries do just fine without a bail system, so I'm not sure why the US needs one. Is it because of slowness in the legal system and you don't want to have people in jail while they wait to their trial? Because then maybe one would need to look at reducing the amount of time between being jailed and put on trial.
• cft 8y ago
  Why do they bother to write (D-Van Nuys) after state senator names? (Van Nuys) would suffice. California is a one party socialist state.
  • TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    Lol, what? Democrats have a super-majority, but there are still Republicans in office. I also haven't noticed much abolishment of private property or class going on in California, so the "socialist" part is inaccurate too.
• alistairSH 8y ago
  I haven't seen numbers... does anybody know, or have sources, for the rate of skipping trial (with and without bail)? I wonder if, like excessively long prison sentences, that increasing bail has limited returns (in terms of getting people to show up for their trials). IE, most people will come to trial anyways. Those that are likely to skip will skip regardless of bail amount.
• gesman 8y ago
  Just wonder in case of dangerous local gang member - couldn’t gang influence (threaten) risk assessment board people to let the guy go free?
  • pjgrad 8y ago
    They could rob people to pay their buddy's bail too, and threaten the judge to reduce sentencing. What's your point?
• sewercake 8y ago
  A relatively new podcast has a really enlightening episode on the bail system [1]. Episode two. Highly recommended. The big takeaways for me: - the process for setting bail prices is very opaque, with little accountability. Many districts have extraordinary or unmanageably high bail for common crimes. - if you are poor, and can't afford bail, you either have to stay in jail, meaning you are apart from your family, unable to work, or more often than not, pay a bail bondsman a non-refundable amount of money to get you out of jail, meaning, before you are charged, before you are guilty (or innocent), you end up paying a fine. [1] https://twitter.com/justice_podcast?lang=en https://twitter.com/justice_podcast?lang=en
  • pas 8y ago
    Isn't bail set by the judge after you are charged, that is after arraignment?