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According to your link 32% of all defendants are held on bail, I would call that "a very large percentage". It would be interesting to see what proportion of th
by adam-a 8y ago
According to your link 32% of all defendants are held on bail, I would call that "a very large percentage". It would be interesting to see what proportion of the total incarcerated population those held on bail made up too. It's also worth pointing out that that data stops at 2004 and shows the amount held on bail increased ~15% in 14 years, from the "media sources" I've read it has apparently not stopped going up in the most recent 14 years either.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoThose data are only for felonies -- bails tend to be much higher. People who face bails of $50 to $100 are going to disproportionately be charged with misdemeanors, and we'd expect a much larger percentage to be able to meet it than the bails for felonies.
- pc86 8y agoThe original statement was "a very large percentage people in jail are there because their bail was literally $50 or $100 but they didn't have the money to pay it." So to determine the accuracy of that you need to see how many people are in jail specifically for failure to pay a very small bail amount. The fact that 32% are held on bail doesn't address the original point. From the linked source, page three: > When the bail was under $10,000, most defendants secured release, including 7 in 10 defendants with bail under $5,000 (figure 3). So we're talking about $50-100 bail fines, but even if you raise the definition of "small amount" to $5k, 70% of those are released. We're already down into single digit percentages of folks with a <$5k bail set who are financially unable to pay it. I wish the data went to $1k and below because I imagine the percentage unable to pay would be minuscule.