6 ms·

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. Y

• 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
            • woolvalley 8y ago
              The thing is, I don't really care if people are using illegal substances or selling illegal services / objects between each other. But I get pretty pissed off when someone steals my bike, smashes my car, wakes me up in the middle of the night or similar. These are not necessarily violent, but they still are things I feel like we should prevent more than the other types.
    • olliej 8y ago
      Bail does not effect your ability to track people - what tracking do you think it adds? Or do you mean the bit where bail ensure that all the arrested poor people are kept in jail?
  • 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
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• 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
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  • 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.