18 ms·

Abolish the Cash Bail System

224 points by gautamdivgi 6y ago

ketzo 6y ago
Absolutely. It’s one of the most cruel and predatory systems that I can imagine — regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Christ. Give me a break. It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. > Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law. The vast majority of these individuals are awaiting trial but cannot afford the bail amount set for pretrial release. That is fucking crazy. That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality.
- throwaway17_17 6y ago
  One of the only ‘pro’ arguments that can be made in a sensible manner is to discuss the amount of people not incarcerated who do not appear for court. It is not a great argument, but it is a factor to be considered. In theory, bail, via a bondsman, is an amount of money that will Ensure that the bail-bondsman will go track down the defendant in the event they do not appear for court as required. That said, I don’t think the argument is persuasive enough to result in the system in place in most US jurisdictions.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    What? It looks like your proposing someone pay someone else to do a particular role. What does that have to do with cash bail? I'm confused.
    - creato 6y ago
      The point of bail is to put the defendant (or someone close to them) on the hook to pay the bail if the defendant doesn't show up in court. Bail bondsmen offer a different deal: pay us a fee (smaller than the bond), we'll pay your bail. If you don't show up to court, the bondsmen loses the bail bond unless they can go find the defendant and bring them into court. I think maybe the thing that should most change in this system is that practice of bail bondsmen/bounty hunting is made illegal. That should lower bonds significantly, and maybe enable bail bonds to function more as they were originally intended. I have no experience with any part of this, this is just my understanding.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
        Ohhhh, I see now. Thank you.
      - Larrikin 6y ago
        Why are we contracting out to a private business an actual sensible thing for the police to do? Law enforcement tracks down people with warrants why not issue warrants for people who skip out on court?
        ithkuil 6y ago
        Looks like the system has been designed in ancient times when society was quite different
      - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
        But that doesn't fix anything. People still have to shell out for the bail, and recovery of the prisoner is left up to a private entity (but if they get picked up by a cop on a warrant they still get sent to jail). I'm not really sure there is a way to keep whatever "good" people may be seeing in the system without all the bad parts coming along with it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y ago
  > That is fucking crazy. That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality. From everything I read, it's rather scary to be poor in America, especially if you have to deal with the judicial or medical system.
  - ars 6y ago
    > or medical system. Poor people get medicaid, which is actually pretty decent insurance since it's private (non government) insurance, paid for by the government. It's actually the middle class that has it hard: Too rich for medicaid, too poor to easily afford the deductibles. (I know this is an unpopular opinion, but things were better before Obamacare - deductibles were much much lower.)
    - ComputerGuru 6y ago
      Not just deductibles, my self-insured premiums have almost tripled since ACA.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      (non american here) so what was the problem ACA was designed to solve? I assume there must have been another group of people who are not poor enough but not middle class enough? Or something else? I care about your unpopular opinion since the popular ones are easier to find
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        The ACA addressed numerous issues, some of the more notable ones: (1) it included a very significant expansion of Medicaid eligibility. (2) for people just outside of Medicaid eligibility, it includes public subsidies for exchange-listed plans. (3) it banned a number of practices which made insurance either inaccessible or illusory, most notably preexisting condition exclusions (and the associated practice of looking for an indicator of preexisting condition and using it as pretext to cancel the policy when someone was diagnosed with an expensive-to-care-for condition), but also cancel-and-refund practices, and lifetime benefit limits.
- js2 6y ago
  > I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. There's a pretty good movie called Midnight Run that would need a new premise without cash bail. Other than that, yeah, no argument.
- jennyyang 6y ago
  The conviction rate is very high, upwards of 85% in some states. So it's not like large swaths of completely innocent people are being held in jails. I'm okay with pre-trial incarceration as long as everyone gets treated equally. Since they aren't, I think non-cash bail is a good idea, with strict requirements to check in with an officer, etc. If they don't meet their appointments or break the terms of their bail, I'm also okay to see them incarcerated pre-trial. However, there needs to be some provision to make sure that they don't stay in jail longer than what their offense would have garnered. If someone is in jail pre-trial for half the median time an average punishment if they were found guilty, then the charges should be immediately dropped. This should give prosecutors more incentive to get their acts together and have a trial in a reasonable amount of time.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    Not an expert, but I imagine the conviction rate is high because prosecutors make it the path-of-least resistance to freedom. Competent legal assistance is expensive, and building a defense is also expensive and time-consuming. So I wouldn't say that an 85% conviction rate implies anything about the innocence of pre-trial prisoners. Moreover, I think it is dangerous to do so, lest it be a circular argument: why did you arrest him? He was guilty. Why was he guilty? Because I arrested him.
    - refurb 6y ago
      It would be interesting to see data on how many charges are dropped. You are correct that cases are submitted to the DA, they look at all the evidence and decide whether or not they will prosecute. A big part of that is "can I even get a conviction?" So you'd expect a relatively high conviction rate just based on the fact that cases where conviction is unlikely are filtered out before they ever get to trial.
      - throwaway17_17 6y ago
        The data, as amazed by organizations like the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, tends to show that prosecutors accept upwards of 80% of charges submitted for prosecution by law enforcement and that grand jury’s will indict upwards of 95% of cases presented to them. [1] The common phrasing amongst lawyers is that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich and that a DA will accept as many charges at the highest level they can and that they’ll see what might stick later. 1 - Those grand jury numbers are why the Breonna Taylor non-indictment is so angering
- creato 6y ago
  > regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Bail is in fact supposed to be a function of your financial status, and the severity of the crime. What do you suggest as an alternative to bail bonds? Maybe ankle monitors for those awaiting trial? I think maybe the thing that should most change is outlawing bail bondsmen. It seems like they distort the market for bail bonds significantly and may be causing some/most of the problems with bail, and at the same time this system empowers private individuals with duties that should be the responsibility of the state (finding and detaining people who didn't show up to court).
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    > What do you suggest as an alternative to bail bonds? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but cash bails are pretty rare globally, and the normal way of going about this is: if you are dangerous/risk interfering with the investigation/a flight risk (Meaning not just "not show up" but actually leave the country, such as foreign citizens), then you await trial in jail. If you are not, then you don't.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Putting people out on their own recognizance works in most cases. The rare exception of a serious flight risk simply doesn’t get bail anyway.
    - nmfisher 6y ago
      > Putting people out on their own recognizance works in most cases. Has this been studied?
      - nobody9999 6y ago
        >> Putting people out on their own recognizance works in most cases. >Has this been studied? Actually, it has. In fact, the linked essay goes into some significant detail about it. Perhaps you might consider reading it.
- bawolff 6y ago
  Pro side: I don't see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don't flee, in principle. It makes sure people are less likely to run away while at the same time doesnt force them to sit in jail while they await trial. It should be relative to your ability to pay, and the commercial bondsman industry seems messed up, but those are implementation details and not the core of the system. *as an interesting note, in Canada its illegal to be a commercial bondsmand - https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-139.html#docCont https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-139.ht... i think that helps make the bail system be much more sane.
  - rallison 6y ago
    If the downsides weren't so significant, then sure, the pro side makes sense. But the downsides are incredibly significant - that you have huge numbers of people who spend time in jail or spend money for a bail bond, who are indeed innocent, is a sign of a fundamentally broken system. > It should be relative to your ability to pay Sure, this would help, but I suspect it would still end up often unjustly impacting those who are poorer and innocent. If people don't show up for trial, charge them for that then. But pre trial, while presumed innocent, aside from unique high flight risk scenarios? The bail system is terrible, and fundamentally unfair. Edit: to be clear, making it relative to ability to pay, and eliminating commercial bail bondsmen would be a big step in the right direction. I still think that's rife with issues, but it would be significantly better than what we have now.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Fundamentally the idea of a surety doesn't work for the really poor. If you don't have anything to put up as collateral, you don't have anything to loose by skipping bail. The flip side of that, is if you are really poor you have less resources to use making your escape, so maybe the bail system is less needed. But just because the bail system doesn't work well for poor people doesn't mean its also broken for middle class people.
      - alkonaut 6y ago
- ars 6y ago
  > your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Isn't bail adjusted based on the persons financial status? Unlike road fines and the like, it's one of the few things that do take into account a persons wealth.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Isn't bail adjusted based on the persons financial status? Is it? I'm unaware of any evidence of that. If you could share some with me, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
    - throwaway17_17 6y ago
      Almost every state has factors required By statute to be Considered when setting bail. One of those factors is, almost always, the financial ability of the defendant to give bond. Doesn’t mean it is factored appropriately, but the law states that it should matter.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    There are quite a few people who get caught in the system for whom any amount of bail would be an unreasonable financial hardship. Seems that if they really means-tested bail, they'd come up with "zero" for a lot people, and would likely just require they stay jailed pre-trial.
- hugh-avherald 6y ago
  It cuts both ways though. The surety's financial resources are taken into account by the bail decision maker. If the accused does not have sufficient means, other conditions may be imposed. But if no other conditions are available, the bail decision maker may be obliged to refuse bail.
- rangoon626 6y ago
  Yeah! And another thing they should have let Derek Chauvin out of jail without bail too.
- kepler1 6y ago
  ...regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status... Are you f'ing kidding me? Regardless of what crime you commit, you should be able to go home and see your family? What ridiculous world are you advocating for here? Do you even think about the implications of your ideas?
  - aqme28 6y ago
    Just to be clear-- you're arguing for the person's financial status to determine whether or not they see their family, not their crime. OP was saying that your financial status should not matter.
  - serf 6y ago
    >What ridiculous world are you advocating for here? Do you even think about the implications of your ideas? well, given that really atrocious crimes rarely have bail set, it seems as if the 'world being advocated' by the parent here is a world in which the punishment for your crime is not scaled by the amount of money you are capable of coming up with. The perpetrator of a bail-set crime should not have less practical punishment for the crime simply because they paid their way out of part of the punishment.
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      >The perpetrator of a bail-set crime should not have less practical punishment for the crime simply because they paid their way out of part of the punishment. Except pretrial detention, which is where bail comes in, is done prior to adjudication (plea bargain, trial, etc.), not after. As such, the folks we're talking about haven't been convicted of anything. And if, as is supposed to be the case, that one is innocent until proven guilty, you're advocating for innocent people to be punished. Is that actually your stance on this, or were you not understanding the situation?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    sigh not the only criterion; people credibly accused of violent crimes or deemed a risk to the public should not be granted bail at all. "You can beat your wife and then go back to your family if and only if you can borrow many thousands of dollars from a sketchy private agency" is also a stupid system.
- nickff 6y ago
  To be clear, it's not 3 in 5 incarcerated people, it's 3 of 5 in jail. Jail is where you go after being charged, but before conviction, or if you're convicted of a misdemeanor (less than 1 year sentence). Unfortunately, there is an incentive for local prosecutors to convict people of offences with sentences longer than a year, so as to have them moved to state prisons, but that's a somewhat separate issue.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. While its not perfectly divided this way, it's worth noting that the US has different things called “jails” and “prisons” and that the former are mostly for pretrial and short-sentence incarceration and mostly run by local governments, while the latter in state systems are almost exclusively for post-conviction felony sentences, while they are used for all purposes in the federal system. This is important, because while the number of pre-trial confinements in the US is way too high, if you fail to understand that distinction statistics about the proportion of jail inmates that are on pre-trial confinement may be grossly misleading. There is a graphic overview of the whole detention picture here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
  - jstanley 6y ago
    OK, but you can't really argue your way around: > This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      > This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law Ok, but it's not the same half million on any given day. A huge number of those people got picked up the night before and will be out (on bail or otherwise) by the end of the business day. Incarcerating people is expensive. Even if getting them out doesn't involve the state getting an interest free loan the state still has an incentive to get them out. In functional jurisdictions the turnover is high. I know that there's a litany of exceptions for the authoritarian (and therefore more inclined to lock people up for no good reason) and well moneyed (and have the money to do it) jurisdictions in the Boston-DC corridor (and please nobody construe this as me giving the Southeast or west coast a pass, they suck too but do it differently) but the underlying problem there is societal. If you reform bail the well moneyed authoritarian jurisdictions are still well moneyed and still authoritarians and will simply spend that money using the system to screw people some other way.
- american_aurora 6y ago
  > It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. I have always assumed that the goal was to decrease flight risk for people (from the perspective of the court), thereby allowing larger swaths of people to be released pre-trial.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  By not going out on bail, you get to reduce your sentence by 'time served' right? That means, if you think there's a good chance you're going to be convicted, it might actually make more sense not to post bail. Then you'll end up released at an earlier date. If you've already lost your job and can't afford rent anywhere, it might also make sense - getting a job and renting a place are hard to do, and to do all that only to later be convicted and sent to prison and end up defaulting on your rental contract and being declared bankrupt - might not be the best move for your post-prison prospects.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. Its because people (generally) believe bad people should be punished, and good people do not get arrested.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? The money is presumably to cover the cost of sending someone out to find the accused and drag them to the courthouse. If someone can't afford to pay the bond and then tries to run, I don't see how that money can be reclaimed except for the taxpayer covering it. Someone has decided it is easier to simply keep the accused in jail. Assuming they've done the math on costs properly it would make sense. Taxpayers shouldn't be in a position to cover the cost of people running from the law. It is an uncomfortable system that clearly biases in favour of the rich - but the rich are the ones covering the cost of it all so I am comfortable standing up and saying I don't mind if they get special treatment. Wealthy people pay something like half the taxes; it seems reasonable that they can wait for their day in court in comfort. Wealth comes with privileges and they aren't criminals until they are convicted.
  - calt 6y ago
    And thus the cycle of poverty continues and meritocracy descends into hereditary meritocracy, which isn't a meritocracy at all. > I don't see how that money can be reclaimed except for the taxpayer covering it. I see that the economic cost of perpetuating economic classes and the economic disruption of confinement without trial far outweigh this taxpayer cost. Taxpayers win when justice prevails. This kind of extreme libertarian mindset just baffles me.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      > I see that the economic cost of perpetuating economic classes and the economic disruption of confinement without trial far outweigh this taxpayer cost. Sure, but in this instance the person you are metaphorically telling that to is the person who is paying half the costs in their capacity as a taxpayer. If there is a scheme that is cheaper than incarceration for 3rd parties and gets everyone to court on time then I'm sure everyone is in favour of it except maybe the bail bondsmen. But the status quo is defensible - "rich people shouldn't be privileged" isn't a sensible argument. They have to get some comfort out of all that money. That is the point of money - to buy comfort. Lots of money = lots of comfort. Many people get rich through exceptionally hard work and it makes sense that they get something out of it. If they can't buy comfort with money then there really isn't much point to it.
- raptor99 6y ago
  For the life of me, I cannot find this statistic or the derivation thereof, in the link that the author of the article gives. The report linked give stats on county and city jails. It would also be interesting to know what the actual conviction rate on this is as well so that we have a clear picture of what is occurring.
- vidarh 6y ago
  The entire US justice system is a dystopia to me. As someone who grew up in Norway, if I somehow found myself on a US jury I'd be had pressed to be able to morally justify voting "guilty" even if the accused stood up in court and committed the crime in front of me, because of the inhumane prison system and length of sentences. It's a system that is fundamentally about satisfying a desire for vengeance at all cost, not about making society better. [I'll add to this that Norway had a pretty brutal prison system too, until a prison reform movement started gaining traction in the 60's. The interesting part is that as it turns out, treating people like humans instead of abusing them tends to reduce re-offending]
- sk2020 6y ago
  So if a guy murders your mom by burning her alive in her stolen car after savagely raping her, your number one concern is that he can see his family and live comfortably before his trial and sentencing? This kind of thinking is the dysfunction you should be worried about. Criminals good. Law enforcement bad. And before bemoaning the plight of some contrived story about a preferred category of citizen being arrested for drugs or whatever, everybody I know whose gone to jail (several) ALL of them did much, much more than they were arrested for. Some were friends. None of them were good people. Judges aren’t robots, either. Bail is assessed by both means and severity of crime. If you’ve never been in a courtroom, you might not know this.
an_opabinia 6y ago
What is the alternative? Something worse? It’s on the ballot in California but it’s probably not what you want. (https://www.theleaguesf.org/#Prop25 https://www.theleaguesf.org/#Prop25)
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Here in Australia bail is determined based on the severity of the charges and the likelihood of you being guilty and / or a flight risk. Your wider point stands though: there's little reason to believe a replacement system instituted by the US Government would be better than the current one.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Your wider point stands though: there's little reason to believe a replacement system instituted by the US Government would be better than the current one. The US government doesn't set bail policy for the states or localities, only for defendants in federal courts[5]. In fact, such policies differ significantly from state to state[`0], county to county and even town to town. Here's an example of the recently reformed bail system in New York[1], which differs significantly from its neighbor states New Jersey[2] and Connecticut[3] A higher level view can be seen here[4]. [0] https://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/time-bail-cash-bail-growing-number-states-are-scrutinizing-current-systems-and-exploring https://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/time-bail-cash-ba... [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-yorks-latest-bail-law-changes-explained https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-... [2] https://njcourts.gov/courts/criminal/reform.html https://njcourts.gov/courts/criminal/reform.html [3] https://www.jud.ct.gov/cssd/bail_faq.htm https://www.jud.ct.gov/cssd/bail_faq.htm [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_in_the_United_States [5] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3142 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3142
- tyrust 6y ago
  A less slanted summary of Prop 25: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_Cash_Bail_with_Risk_Assessments_Referendum_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_C...
hevelvarik 6y ago
No. First figure out how to keep dangerous criminals off the street pre-trial. Then let’s talk. Cash bail is regressive and often unjust, I’m not willing to correct this injustice without a viable alternative to simply allowing dangerous people back onto the street hoping that they show up to trial and that they do not destroy while out. I believe our system has flaws that need correcting, but I do not advocate destroying the system to fix them.
- variaga 6y ago
  Abolishing cash bail doesn’t mean "no pretrial detention for anyone". People judged to be a flight risk or a threat to the community can still be held without bail. Abolishing cash bail is about not unnecessarily imprisoning people who would be safe to release, but who are still held under the current system because they can't afford to pay the bail.
- techsupporter 6y ago
  > I believe our system has flaws that need correcting, but I do not advocate destroying the system to fix them. “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.“ - Justice Blackstone I don’t understand why and how we got so far away from the idea that state punishment is the last resort, instead making it the first. Especially in the States, we do so many things that, even in the moment we are doing them, seem needlessly cruel yet justify them as “but what happens if one bad person continues to be bad and we miss the chance to smack them hard??”
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    Suffering is on a scale. Its better that a few innocent people sit around for a few days than one guilty person getting out and killing someone. The risks should be evaluated and the result being keeping innocent people waiting for as little as possible while also preventing criminals from getting away.
    - techsupporter 6y ago
      > Its better that a few innocent people sit around for a few days than one guilty person getting out and killing someone. Considering the comparatively tiny number of murders committed in such a way that an individual determination of the denial of any bail cannot be made, relative to the massive impact of just leaving “a few innocent people” in jail for “a few days”, I disagree. For the people most likely to not be bailed out almost immediately—as in, people who have the fewest resources—sitting in jail for a few days can be (and usually is, hence the point of this article) absolutely catastrophic. Life-ruining, all out of the fear that one person might slip through the cracks. That’s unacceptable. We can do better.
blm-acab 6y ago
#BLM
FpUser 6y ago
I am all for it. I think that the cash bail system is a crime on its own. the only thing that should determine whether this or that suspect should wait trial in jail should be potential risk to public.
tom-_- 6y ago
California Prop 25 on the ballot this election replaces cash bails with a risk assessment scoring system based on Senate Bill 10: https://policylab.stanford.edu/media/improving-california-bail.pdf https://policylab.stanford.edu/media/improving-california-ba... Note the flaws in its design that could replace the existing system with one that has potentially worse biases.
- tyrust 6y ago
  It looks like you have linked a paper proposing an improvement to SB10 that is unrelated to Prop 25, was this intentional?
  - menage 6y ago
    After SB10 was passed by the legislature, the opposition (mostly bail bond companies?) gathered enough signatures to force a "veto referendum", i.e. a referendum on whether SB10 should be adopted as the legislature had voted, or should be dropped. That referendum is Prop 25. Edit: Parent is right, the link is to a different issue.
    - tyrust 6y ago
      Yeah, what does that have to do with the paper the parent linked?
      - tom-_- 6y ago
        Prop 25 upholds SB 10. This paper suggests improvements to SB10 based on potential biases in its design.
        tyrust 6y ago
        I got it. It just seemed like from the phrasing of your post that a link to the description of Prop 25 would have made more sense.
anm89 6y ago
Considering how violent and terrifying US jails are makes this all the worse. Cash bail should have been ended. A long time ago.
kova12 6y ago
> perpetuates inequities in the justice system that are disproportionately felt by black and brown communities Why oh why isn't there a single good point on the internet that isn't getting turned into BLM propaganda
specialist 6y ago
Someones, somewheres has done a better job of handling the accused pre-trial. Start there. Give me a name. Show me a role model to emulate. Then tell me how we get from here to there. But even better, just tell me what you want. Give me action steps, some talking points. Because you had me at "Hello." I really don't need a PhD thesis relitigating western philosophy since Plato. (Ditto each and every other progressive policy issue.)
- pySSK 6y ago
  The article is quite clear in discussing the problem and solutions. When I don't understand a post about, let's say Rust, I acknowledge the gap in my knowledge instead of asking the software engineering community to dumb stuff down.
  - specialist 6y ago
    Inevitable HN critiques of each new boutique bespoke programming language and text editor du jour is poor landing page, missing screenshots, and example code buried in some wiki. How is this any different? Pretrial Services Association doesn't even get named. Just some links 1/2 down the article. For other future dummies, like myself, who've actually organized and passed legislation, here's a draft TLDR: Our pretrial cash bail system sucks. Especially for the poor. There's lots of negative knockoff effects. Here's an explainer [article], [wiki], and [video]. After 60 years of talking about reform, we need a plan. We advocate adopting the federal Pretrial Services Agency (psa.gov) risk assessment system nationwide. Like DC and NJ did 20+ years ago. They've proven effective, costs less to administer, is more fair, and leads to better outcomes. Link to impressive metrics [here]. Here's how you can help. Support your state or county based org, listed [here]. Your state not listed? No worries. Here's a [simple guide] to bootstrap an org for your state. With handy links to [model legislation], [resolutions], and [talking points]. Please [contact us] our national campaign for additions, corrections, and questions. -- Edit: Aha. This Harvard workbook doesn't suck. http://cjpp.law.harvard.edu/assets/BailReform_WEB.pdf http://cjpp.law.harvard.edu/assets/BailReform_WEB.pdf It even has model legislation. Perfect for the target audience (legislative aides). Great starting point for creating a workbook for dummies, err, activists, like myself.
kepler1 6y ago
You know, systems were established for a reason. It's not like the cash bail system was some ridiculous fanciful notion that someone created to torture the poor. We have arrested people pay cash bail so that we have some forcing function to ensure that they don't flee. And maybe a little bit to provide people the incentive not to commit crime in the first place. I don't know why, but that seems to be considered discriminatory these days. Maybe if people are experiencing hardship from being held in jail, they should try not to commit crimes? What I fear about all the social justice movements is that when you get into nitty-gritty details, the symbols that activists want to believe in (eliminating discrimination) do not actually improve the lives of people experiencing disadvantage in society very much when the actual plan of what to do materializes from the advocates of change. Dismantle the police? I think the people worst served by this idea are the poor and powerless being victimized by crime every day. They need more police presence and enforcement of law and order for their neighborhoods, not less. Think about the side effects of the symbols you want fulfilled. And if all your involvement is sitting in your white neighborhood and not having to deal with the effects of your advocacy, maybe you shouldn't be so opinionated to say how things should be changed.
- pySSK 6y ago
  There are multiple strawpeople in your argument. 1. There are people from those actual communities asking and fighting for those things. You are assuming only suburban white advocates. 2. Cash-bail: "It's not like the cash bail system was some ridiculous fanciful notion that someone created to torture the poor." Who is saying that. The linked article is first and foremost concerned with the effect of cash-bail i.e. it affects poor people more negatively that it does rich people. It's broken system. Perhaps something like Finland's salary-based speeding ticket system would work well (but should incorporate wealth has many rich people don't have salaries). 3. Dismantle the police: the idea here is that armed police are now involved in situations where that is not required. Not only is it expensive and inefficient, but it has horrible outcomes. It's the old "if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail" problem. "They need more police presence and enforcement of law and order for their neighborhoods, not less." This has not been proven to work.
- snypher 6y ago
daguava 6y ago
Reading a lot of these comments truly hurts, there is no reason for the amount of money you have to be tied to whether you are allowed out on bail at all. I was super happy to see this be proposed as a measure for the California Ballot and immediately gave it a yes - an assessment of danger and flight risk is a great way to start this foray into reform. Throwing down money disproportionately hurts the poor and underrepresented, keeping them in these demographics.
pyuser583 6y ago
I mean I live in a state that outlaws bail bondsman, but “cash as surety” is very much a thing. Focusing on the bail bond system is a distraction. Hard choices need to be made about who is incarcerated pending trial, and how they are incentivized to show up. Taking the profit motive out may or may not be a good idea. But by focusing on the contractors, you’re avoiding the bigger picture.
teekert 6y ago
As a non-US person watching certain American series on Netflix just blows my mind. For example, my wife is currently watching "Good Girls" in which we see the following things that really make me never want to live in the US (I wonder if this really happens though, can someone confirm?): - You can pay to stay out of jail so only poor people stay in jail after a crime, before the trial (guess OP proves this is real). - The poor people have the worst lawyers and thus the worst chances, and even though they are innocent can be left in debt by the process. - A couple has a daughter, she needs a kidney. They need to pay 80.000 euro (forcing a choice between crime and the life of the daughter, easy choice I'd think) - A guy stole crutches because he needed to pay 400$ to take them home (can't walk without them) - Woman tells ambulance personnel to leave her alone so she can take an Uber to the hospital to reduce cost of healthcare after being shot - A guy working at something like a loan shop (where people just seem to pile on debt) wants to use the address of a customer so his nephew can get into university (I guess it matters where you live?) - The couple from point 1 needs to choose between electricity/water and healthcare, decide to mix up checks they send to the companies to buy some time. I mean the point is already nicely made by "Breaking Bad", how do you want to reduce crime in a society when civilians are constantly forced into such impossible choices? It makes for good TV of course but the stress you must feel when you can just make ends meet in he US must be extreme. I mean there are so may series where the criminals are just perfectly reasonable and lovable, doesn't that tell you something is wrong?
- Natsu 6y ago
  It's after an arrest -- whether or not there was a crime is determined at trial. The idea is both to make sure that people show up for court and to have a bounty to give to bounty hunters if they do not to enforce compliance, rather than putting that on the police themselves, because there just aren't enough cops around to round up everyone who simply wouldn't show up otherwise. But yeah, being poor is effectively a punishment in and of itself and not just in this circumstance, either.
- josu 6y ago
  If you want to learn more about the US judicial and prison system you should listen to the third season of Serial. >Serial is heading back to court. This time, in Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases. >So we did. Inside these ordinary cases we found the troubling machinery of the criminal justice system on full display. We chose Cleveland, because they let us record everywhere — courtrooms, back hallways, judges’ chambers, prosecutors’ offices. And then we followed those cases outside the building, into neighborhoods, into people’s houses, and into prison. https://serialpodcast.org/ https://serialpodcast.org/
Ensorceled 6y ago
The entire criminal justice system needs an overhaul; from the way the police operate (under paid, over worked, under trained, almost no accountability), to the way DAs are incented to heavily prosecute and plea bargain, from the way prisons are over used to the way having a conviction drastically reduces your QoL even after incarceration. Add that the whole system is heavily skewed against PoC and the poor ... Focusing on one flaw in the whole, majorly flawed system is a waste of time: the defund the police, the no cash bail, the no slave labour movements all need to get together into a "fix the system" movement.
acvny 6y ago
I never understood this. This is an example of laws written for the rich.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The underlying problem is that people are being punished too much for minor transgressions and screwing people like that is making life worse for everyone by proxy. First you can tell the police to just not give a fuck. This works well for the kind of people police tend to favor. If you're wealthy and look the part or you're an attractive woman this solution will likely work well for you, being white sure won't hurt either. The problem with this solution is unevenness of enforcement. Anyone of demographics the cops don't like (don't be a young black male) or anyone that crosses the cops is really gonna get screwed by this solution. It's also worth keeping in mind that less work necessitates cuts to the police force. Bored cops are an enemy of a free society. Second you can solve it with the courts. Let the cops pick up whoever they want and sort it all out in the courts. Release people promptly and without bail, etc. etc. The problem with this solution is that vulnerable people still get screwed hard. "The ride" will still likely cost you your job in a high turnover industry. Eventually the cops are gonna get tired of seeing the same damn bike thief at it again the next day and stop picking people up though if the court doesn't actually punish the real criminals. Thirdly you can solve this problem at the legislative level. You can not criminalize many things that boil down to minor instances of bad judgement and convert many nonviolent crimes into civil crimes, limit the circumstances under which police can arrest, limit the punishments the courts can inflict, require more prompt trials and releases, etc, etc. The downside is that like every public policy there are losers. There will be loopholes and certain kinds of crime are just gonna be below a threshold where anything gets done about them. If you get unlucky and happen to live beside the obvious crack house that the cops can't do much about then it's simply gonna suck for you. Furthermore people's lives will be ruined by a tolerance approach just as much as by an authoritarian approach. Criminals who have not yet crossed paths with the system to really get punished to the point of changing or thrown in jail will harm and kill people. That's just how it is when you relax laws at scale. Is it worth it? It's a matter of opinion. Bailing on cash bail targets the court system for the point of reform. It's not a bad thing and certainly every little bit helps but if we truly don't want to over punish people for things society has to come to terms with the fact that it will need to cast a very coarse net and a lot of people engaging in behavior that you, yes you the reader, consider criminal will necessarily slip through (with the details depending on the part of the system in which you choose to make your changes as I've described above). There is no free lunch here. Make no mistake, I don't think this is a zero sum game and I'm all for a very coarse net. I just think a lot of people here are unprepared for exactly what it does look like and how long it takes to stabilize.
LatteLazy 6y ago
I feel like this is a much smaller issue than the US public defender situation. Or the way crimes carry vast sentences and prosecutors often later them on so that of anything sticks its still decades in prison. Then you either take a plea or face a 400 year jail sentence with a lawyer who has 100 other clients and can't actually remember your name or what you were charged with. The whole criminal "justice" system in the states looks crazy to me. Bail reform won't really fix that.
throw2010121300 6y ago
Wow, it's interesting to see this posted here since I was literally just reading about the fact that a lot of American weapons manufacturer uses prison laborers who get paid as little as $0.23 per hour! https://www.michaelwest.com.au/us-prison-labour-foreign-weapons-makers-finance-australian-government-think-tank-aspi/ https://www.michaelwest.com.au/us-prison-labour-foreign-weap... Heck, you can even easily buy these forced laborers online from https://www.unicor.gov/Index.aspx https://www.unicor.gov/Index.aspx I guess this cash bail system is created to fuel modern slavery in the United States today, which is actually fully legal according to the US constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
- mattbroekhuis 6y ago
  Jail != prison
rufusroflpunch 6y ago
This doesn’t address the actual problem, which is that too many things are illegal.
hospadar 6y ago
Lots of speculation in the comments is answered by the article itself: - There's little/no evidence that cash bail increases the rate at which people show up for trial - People are (shocker) better able to defend their innocence when they haven't been rotting in jail pre-trial - People are less likely to commit other crimes before trial if they have a shorter stay in jail - Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail GREAT info about all things pretrial detention (and really all things prison) from the prison policy initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/pretrial_detention/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/pretrial_detention/ Personal bias disclosure: I believe that imprisonment of any kind is incredibly cruel/counterproductive and that we as a society should prioritize getting as many people out of jail as possible. Justice is complex and hard and it won't be easy but I'd rather live in a world where people are seldom locked up, with no one loosing their right to vote [because of felony convictions, or for any other reason], and no one being afraid of the government that's supposed to be by/for/and of them.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  > Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail This one might just be confirmation bias as lesser sentences may be indicative of less violent criminal behavior. Without knowing what they controlled for, it's hard to accept this one as evidence. The others make sense.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >> Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail >This one might just be confirmation bias as lesser sentences may be indicative of less violent criminal behavior. Without knowing what they controlled for, it's hard to accept this one as evidence. You are misunderstanding GP's point. The data shows that the less time people spend in pretrial detention (not jail/prison after conviction), the less likely they are to re-offend. And in many cases, folks arrested for really violent crimes aren't offered bail at all. If someone is arrested for a non-violent offense (petit theft for example) and bail is set at $1,000 and they can't get their hands on $1,000 (because they're poor which is why they're stealing, maybe?) they will rot in jail until the case is adjudicated. But a wealthy person arrested for beating his wife to death who can afford $50,000 bail can walk out the door and murder his girlfriend while awaiting trial. Bail just punishes the poor.
down_to_birds 6y ago
Yes! Also, while we're at it. Abolish the entire US policing and prison system. And don't rebuild it. https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-makes-the-case-for-abolition/ https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-make...
specialist 6y ago
I just learned that bail reform is on the CA State 2020 ballot. Per wiki and SSC, vote "Yes" to support replacing cash bail with the risk assessments system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_25 Please reply with details if your country, state, home town as a similar reform effort.
toss1 6y ago
This point seems like a "well, duh..." - they are basically putting low-risk people in a crime bootcamp - surrounding them with people more experienced in crime, and nothing to do but talk to them. Psych studies show that people trend toward the average of the 5 personalities with whom they surround themselves. <sarc> So, let's take low-risk people who have made a mistake and surround them with people who make a habit of making mistakes. Brilliant! /<sarc> "Another study conducted in Kentucky found that detaining low- and moderate-risk defendants is strongly correlated with higher rates of new criminal activity both during the retrial period and years after case disposition. The same study found that as the length of pretrial detention increases up to 30 days, recidivism rates for low- and moderate-risk defendants also increases significantly. When held 2–3 days, for instance, low-risk defendants are almost 40 percent more likely to commit new crimes before trial than equivalent defendants held no more than 24 hours. When held 8–14 days, low-risk defendants are 51 percent more likely to commit another crime within two years after completion of their cases than equivalent defendants held no more than 24 hours."
nojvek 6y ago
TIL: US Bail system is a bond. I.e One has to pay that money to get out of jail before trial. If they skip trial, they don’t get the money back, otherwise they do. Then there are Proffesional Bail Agents. https://www.allcitybailbonds.com/bail-calculator https://www.allcitybailbonds.com/bail-calculator . They charge 10% of bail bond as a fee. Bail agents will pay the bond and recover the money when the person shows up at trial. So this has the same effect as college loans. Colleges keep on amping up their fees, since students don’t fully understand how loans work. Or how healthcare keeps on getting expensive YoY.
csense 6y ago
If you abolish the cash bail system, what's the penalty for not showing up to your trial?

224 points by gautamdivgi 6y ago

Absolutely. It’s one of the most cruel and predatory systems that I can imagine — regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Christ. Give me a break. It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. > Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law. The vast majority of these individuals are awaiting trial but cannot afford the bail amount set for pretrial release. That is fucking crazy. That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality.

throwaway17_17 6y ago
One of the only ‘pro’ arguments that can be made in a sensible manner is to discuss the amount of people not incarcerated who do not appear for court. It is not a great argument, but it is a factor to be considered. In theory, bail, via a bondsman, is an amount of money that will Ensure that the bail-bondsman will go track down the defendant in the event they do not appear for court as required. That said, I don’t think the argument is persuasive enough to result in the system in place in most US jurisdictions.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  What? It looks like your proposing someone pay someone else to do a particular role. What does that have to do with cash bail? I'm confused.
  - creato 6y ago
    The point of bail is to put the defendant (or someone close to them) on the hook to pay the bail if the defendant doesn't show up in court. Bail bondsmen offer a different deal: pay us a fee (smaller than the bond), we'll pay your bail. If you don't show up to court, the bondsmen loses the bail bond unless they can go find the defendant and bring them into court. I think maybe the thing that should most change in this system is that practice of bail bondsmen/bounty hunting is made illegal. That should lower bonds significantly, and maybe enable bail bonds to function more as they were originally intended. I have no experience with any part of this, this is just my understanding.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      Ohhhh, I see now. Thank you.
    - Larrikin 6y ago
      Why are we contracting out to a private business an actual sensible thing for the police to do? Law enforcement tracks down people with warrants why not issue warrants for people who skip out on court?
      - ithkuil 6y ago
        Looks like the system has been designed in ancient times when society was quite different
    - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
      But that doesn't fix anything. People still have to shell out for the bail, and recovery of the prisoner is left up to a private entity (but if they get picked up by a cop on a warrant they still get sent to jail). I'm not really sure there is a way to keep whatever "good" people may be seeing in the system without all the bad parts coming along with it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y ago
> That is fucking crazy. That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality. From everything I read, it's rather scary to be poor in America, especially if you have to deal with the judicial or medical system.
- ars 6y ago
  > or medical system. Poor people get medicaid, which is actually pretty decent insurance since it's private (non government) insurance, paid for by the government. It's actually the middle class that has it hard: Too rich for medicaid, too poor to easily afford the deductibles. (I know this is an unpopular opinion, but things were better before Obamacare - deductibles were much much lower.)
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    Not just deductibles, my self-insured premiums have almost tripled since ACA.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    (non american here) so what was the problem ACA was designed to solve? I assume there must have been another group of people who are not poor enough but not middle class enough? Or something else? I care about your unpopular opinion since the popular ones are easier to find
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      The ACA addressed numerous issues, some of the more notable ones: (1) it included a very significant expansion of Medicaid eligibility. (2) for people just outside of Medicaid eligibility, it includes public subsidies for exchange-listed plans. (3) it banned a number of practices which made insurance either inaccessible or illusory, most notably preexisting condition exclusions (and the associated practice of looking for an indicator of preexisting condition and using it as pretext to cancel the policy when someone was diagnosed with an expensive-to-care-for condition), but also cancel-and-refund practices, and lifetime benefit limits.
js2 6y ago
> I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. There's a pretty good movie called Midnight Run that would need a new premise without cash bail. Other than that, yeah, no argument.
jennyyang 6y ago
The conviction rate is very high, upwards of 85% in some states. So it's not like large swaths of completely innocent people are being held in jails. I'm okay with pre-trial incarceration as long as everyone gets treated equally. Since they aren't, I think non-cash bail is a good idea, with strict requirements to check in with an officer, etc. If they don't meet their appointments or break the terms of their bail, I'm also okay to see them incarcerated pre-trial. However, there needs to be some provision to make sure that they don't stay in jail longer than what their offense would have garnered. If someone is in jail pre-trial for half the median time an average punishment if they were found guilty, then the charges should be immediately dropped. This should give prosecutors more incentive to get their acts together and have a trial in a reasonable amount of time.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Not an expert, but I imagine the conviction rate is high because prosecutors make it the path-of-least resistance to freedom. Competent legal assistance is expensive, and building a defense is also expensive and time-consuming. So I wouldn't say that an 85% conviction rate implies anything about the innocence of pre-trial prisoners. Moreover, I think it is dangerous to do so, lest it be a circular argument: why did you arrest him? He was guilty. Why was he guilty? Because I arrested him.
  - refurb 6y ago
    It would be interesting to see data on how many charges are dropped. You are correct that cases are submitted to the DA, they look at all the evidence and decide whether or not they will prosecute. A big part of that is "can I even get a conviction?" So you'd expect a relatively high conviction rate just based on the fact that cases where conviction is unlikely are filtered out before they ever get to trial.
    - throwaway17_17 6y ago
      The data, as amazed by organizations like the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, tends to show that prosecutors accept upwards of 80% of charges submitted for prosecution by law enforcement and that grand jury’s will indict upwards of 95% of cases presented to them. [1] The common phrasing amongst lawyers is that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich and that a DA will accept as many charges at the highest level they can and that they’ll see what might stick later. 1 - Those grand jury numbers are why the Breonna Taylor non-indictment is so angering
creato 6y ago
> regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Bail is in fact supposed to be a function of your financial status, and the severity of the crime. What do you suggest as an alternative to bail bonds? Maybe ankle monitors for those awaiting trial? I think maybe the thing that should most change is outlawing bail bondsmen. It seems like they distort the market for bail bonds significantly and may be causing some/most of the problems with bail, and at the same time this system empowers private individuals with duties that should be the responsibility of the state (finding and detaining people who didn't show up to court).
- alkonaut 6y ago
  > What do you suggest as an alternative to bail bonds? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but cash bails are pretty rare globally, and the normal way of going about this is: if you are dangerous/risk interfering with the investigation/a flight risk (Meaning not just "not show up" but actually leave the country, such as foreign citizens), then you await trial in jail. If you are not, then you don't.
- Retric 6y ago
  Putting people out on their own recognizance works in most cases. The rare exception of a serious flight risk simply doesn’t get bail anyway.
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    > Putting people out on their own recognizance works in most cases. Has this been studied?
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      >> Putting people out on their own recognizance works in most cases. >Has this been studied? Actually, it has. In fact, the linked essay goes into some significant detail about it. Perhaps you might consider reading it.
bawolff 6y ago
Pro side: I don't see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don't flee, in principle. It makes sure people are less likely to run away while at the same time doesnt force them to sit in jail while they await trial. It should be relative to your ability to pay, and the commercial bondsman industry seems messed up, but those are implementation details and not the core of the system. *as an interesting note, in Canada its illegal to be a commercial bondsmand - https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-139.html#docCont https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-139.ht... i think that helps make the bail system be much more sane.
- rallison 6y ago
  If the downsides weren't so significant, then sure, the pro side makes sense. But the downsides are incredibly significant - that you have huge numbers of people who spend time in jail or spend money for a bail bond, who are indeed innocent, is a sign of a fundamentally broken system. > It should be relative to your ability to pay Sure, this would help, but I suspect it would still end up often unjustly impacting those who are poorer and innocent. If people don't show up for trial, charge them for that then. But pre trial, while presumed innocent, aside from unique high flight risk scenarios? The bail system is terrible, and fundamentally unfair. Edit: to be clear, making it relative to ability to pay, and eliminating commercial bail bondsmen would be a big step in the right direction. I still think that's rife with issues, but it would be significantly better than what we have now.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Fundamentally the idea of a surety doesn't work for the really poor. If you don't have anything to put up as collateral, you don't have anything to loose by skipping bail. The flip side of that, is if you are really poor you have less resources to use making your escape, so maybe the bail system is less needed. But just because the bail system doesn't work well for poor people doesn't mean its also broken for middle class people.
    - alkonaut 6y ago
ars 6y ago
> your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Isn't bail adjusted based on the persons financial status? Unlike road fines and the like, it's one of the few things that do take into account a persons wealth.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Isn't bail adjusted based on the persons financial status? Is it? I'm unaware of any evidence of that. If you could share some with me, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
  - throwaway17_17 6y ago
    Almost every state has factors required By statute to be Considered when setting bail. One of those factors is, almost always, the financial ability of the defendant to give bond. Doesn’t mean it is factored appropriately, but the law states that it should matter.
- kelnos 6y ago
  There are quite a few people who get caught in the system for whom any amount of bail would be an unreasonable financial hardship. Seems that if they really means-tested bail, they'd come up with "zero" for a lot people, and would likely just require they stay jailed pre-trial.
hugh-avherald 6y ago
It cuts both ways though. The surety's financial resources are taken into account by the bail decision maker. If the accused does not have sufficient means, other conditions may be imposed. But if no other conditions are available, the bail decision maker may be obliged to refuse bail.
rangoon626 6y ago
Yeah! And another thing they should have let Derek Chauvin out of jail without bail too.
kepler1 6y ago
...regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status... Are you f'ing kidding me? Regardless of what crime you commit, you should be able to go home and see your family? What ridiculous world are you advocating for here? Do you even think about the implications of your ideas?
- aqme28 6y ago
  Just to be clear-- you're arguing for the person's financial status to determine whether or not they see their family, not their crime. OP was saying that your financial status should not matter.
- serf 6y ago
  >What ridiculous world are you advocating for here? Do you even think about the implications of your ideas? well, given that really atrocious crimes rarely have bail set, it seems as if the 'world being advocated' by the parent here is a world in which the punishment for your crime is not scaled by the amount of money you are capable of coming up with. The perpetrator of a bail-set crime should not have less practical punishment for the crime simply because they paid their way out of part of the punishment.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >The perpetrator of a bail-set crime should not have less practical punishment for the crime simply because they paid their way out of part of the punishment. Except pretrial detention, which is where bail comes in, is done prior to adjudication (plea bargain, trial, etc.), not after. As such, the folks we're talking about haven't been convicted of anything. And if, as is supposed to be the case, that one is innocent until proven guilty, you're advocating for innocent people to be punished. Is that actually your stance on this, or were you not understanding the situation?
- pjc50 6y ago
  sigh not the only criterion; people credibly accused of violent crimes or deemed a risk to the public should not be granted bail at all. "You can beat your wife and then go back to your family if and only if you can borrow many thousands of dollars from a sketchy private agency" is also a stupid system.
nickff 6y ago
To be clear, it's not 3 in 5 incarcerated people, it's 3 of 5 in jail. Jail is where you go after being charged, but before conviction, or if you're convicted of a misdemeanor (less than 1 year sentence). Unfortunately, there is an incentive for local prosecutors to convict people of offences with sentences longer than a year, so as to have them moved to state prisons, but that's a somewhat separate issue.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. While its not perfectly divided this way, it's worth noting that the US has different things called “jails” and “prisons” and that the former are mostly for pretrial and short-sentence incarceration and mostly run by local governments, while the latter in state systems are almost exclusively for post-conviction felony sentences, while they are used for all purposes in the federal system. This is important, because while the number of pre-trial confinements in the US is way too high, if you fail to understand that distinction statistics about the proportion of jail inmates that are on pre-trial confinement may be grossly misleading. There is a graphic overview of the whole detention picture here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
- jstanley 6y ago
  OK, but you can't really argue your way around: > This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    > This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law Ok, but it's not the same half million on any given day. A huge number of those people got picked up the night before and will be out (on bail or otherwise) by the end of the business day. Incarcerating people is expensive. Even if getting them out doesn't involve the state getting an interest free loan the state still has an incentive to get them out. In functional jurisdictions the turnover is high. I know that there's a litany of exceptions for the authoritarian (and therefore more inclined to lock people up for no good reason) and well moneyed (and have the money to do it) jurisdictions in the Boston-DC corridor (and please nobody construe this as me giving the Southeast or west coast a pass, they suck too but do it differently) but the underlying problem there is societal. If you reform bail the well moneyed authoritarian jurisdictions are still well moneyed and still authoritarians and will simply spend that money using the system to screw people some other way.
american_aurora 6y ago
> It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. I have always assumed that the goal was to decrease flight risk for people (from the perspective of the court), thereby allowing larger swaths of people to be released pre-trial.
londons_explore 6y ago
By not going out on bail, you get to reduce your sentence by 'time served' right? That means, if you think there's a good chance you're going to be convicted, it might actually make more sense not to post bail. Then you'll end up released at an earlier date. If you've already lost your job and can't afford rent anywhere, it might also make sense - getting a job and renting a place are hard to do, and to do all that only to later be convicted and sent to prison and end up defaulting on your rental contract and being declared bankrupt - might not be the best move for your post-prison prospects.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. Its because people (generally) believe bad people should be punished, and good people do not get arrested.
roenxi 6y ago
> regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? The money is presumably to cover the cost of sending someone out to find the accused and drag them to the courthouse. If someone can't afford to pay the bond and then tries to run, I don't see how that money can be reclaimed except for the taxpayer covering it. Someone has decided it is easier to simply keep the accused in jail. Assuming they've done the math on costs properly it would make sense. Taxpayers shouldn't be in a position to cover the cost of people running from the law. It is an uncomfortable system that clearly biases in favour of the rich - but the rich are the ones covering the cost of it all so I am comfortable standing up and saying I don't mind if they get special treatment. Wealthy people pay something like half the taxes; it seems reasonable that they can wait for their day in court in comfort. Wealth comes with privileges and they aren't criminals until they are convicted.
- calt 6y ago
  And thus the cycle of poverty continues and meritocracy descends into hereditary meritocracy, which isn't a meritocracy at all. > I don't see how that money can be reclaimed except for the taxpayer covering it. I see that the economic cost of perpetuating economic classes and the economic disruption of confinement without trial far outweigh this taxpayer cost. Taxpayers win when justice prevails. This kind of extreme libertarian mindset just baffles me.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    > I see that the economic cost of perpetuating economic classes and the economic disruption of confinement without trial far outweigh this taxpayer cost. Sure, but in this instance the person you are metaphorically telling that to is the person who is paying half the costs in their capacity as a taxpayer. If there is a scheme that is cheaper than incarceration for 3rd parties and gets everyone to court on time then I'm sure everyone is in favour of it except maybe the bail bondsmen. But the status quo is defensible - "rich people shouldn't be privileged" isn't a sensible argument. They have to get some comfort out of all that money. That is the point of money - to buy comfort. Lots of money = lots of comfort. Many people get rich through exceptionally hard work and it makes sense that they get something out of it. If they can't buy comfort with money then there really isn't much point to it.
raptor99 6y ago
For the life of me, I cannot find this statistic or the derivation thereof, in the link that the author of the article gives. The report linked give stats on county and city jails. It would also be interesting to know what the actual conviction rate on this is as well so that we have a clear picture of what is occurring.
vidarh 6y ago
The entire US justice system is a dystopia to me. As someone who grew up in Norway, if I somehow found myself on a US jury I'd be had pressed to be able to morally justify voting "guilty" even if the accused stood up in court and committed the crime in front of me, because of the inhumane prison system and length of sentences. It's a system that is fundamentally about satisfying a desire for vengeance at all cost, not about making society better. [I'll add to this that Norway had a pretty brutal prison system too, until a prison reform movement started gaining traction in the 60's. The interesting part is that as it turns out, treating people like humans instead of abusing them tends to reduce re-offending]
sk2020 6y ago
So if a guy murders your mom by burning her alive in her stolen car after savagely raping her, your number one concern is that he can see his family and live comfortably before his trial and sentencing? This kind of thinking is the dysfunction you should be worried about. Criminals good. Law enforcement bad. And before bemoaning the plight of some contrived story about a preferred category of citizen being arrested for drugs or whatever, everybody I know whose gone to jail (several) ALL of them did much, much more than they were arrested for. Some were friends. None of them were good people. Judges aren’t robots, either. Bail is assessed by both means and severity of crime. If you’ve never been in a courtroom, you might not know this.

an_opabinia 6y ago

What is the alternative? Something worse? It’s on the ballot in California but it’s probably not what you want. (https://www.theleaguesf.org/#Prop25 https://www.theleaguesf.org/#Prop25)

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Here in Australia bail is determined based on the severity of the charges and the likelihood of you being guilty and / or a flight risk. Your wider point stands though: there's little reason to believe a replacement system instituted by the US Government would be better than the current one.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Your wider point stands though: there's little reason to believe a replacement system instituted by the US Government would be better than the current one. The US government doesn't set bail policy for the states or localities, only for defendants in federal courts[5]. In fact, such policies differ significantly from state to state[`0], county to county and even town to town. Here's an example of the recently reformed bail system in New York[1], which differs significantly from its neighbor states New Jersey[2] and Connecticut[3] A higher level view can be seen here[4]. [0] https://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/time-bail-cash-bail-growing-number-states-are-scrutinizing-current-systems-and-exploring https://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/time-bail-cash-ba... [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-yorks-latest-bail-law-changes-explained https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-... [2] https://njcourts.gov/courts/criminal/reform.html https://njcourts.gov/courts/criminal/reform.html [3] https://www.jud.ct.gov/cssd/bail_faq.htm https://www.jud.ct.gov/cssd/bail_faq.htm [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_in_the_United_States [5] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3142 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3142
tyrust 6y ago
A less slanted summary of Prop 25: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_Cash_Bail_with_Risk_Assessments_Referendum_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_C...

hevelvarik 6y ago

No. First figure out how to keep dangerous criminals off the street pre-trial. Then let’s talk. Cash bail is regressive and often unjust, I’m not willing to correct this injustice without a viable alternative to simply allowing dangerous people back onto the street hoping that they show up to trial and that they do not destroy while out. I believe our system has flaws that need correcting, but I do not advocate destroying the system to fix them.

variaga 6y ago
Abolishing cash bail doesn’t mean "no pretrial detention for anyone". People judged to be a flight risk or a threat to the community can still be held without bail. Abolishing cash bail is about not unnecessarily imprisoning people who would be safe to release, but who are still held under the current system because they can't afford to pay the bail.
techsupporter 6y ago
> I believe our system has flaws that need correcting, but I do not advocate destroying the system to fix them. “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.“ - Justice Blackstone I don’t understand why and how we got so far away from the idea that state punishment is the last resort, instead making it the first. Especially in the States, we do so many things that, even in the moment we are doing them, seem needlessly cruel yet justify them as “but what happens if one bad person continues to be bad and we miss the chance to smack them hard??”
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  Suffering is on a scale. Its better that a few innocent people sit around for a few days than one guilty person getting out and killing someone. The risks should be evaluated and the result being keeping innocent people waiting for as little as possible while also preventing criminals from getting away.
  - techsupporter 6y ago
    > Its better that a few innocent people sit around for a few days than one guilty person getting out and killing someone. Considering the comparatively tiny number of murders committed in such a way that an individual determination of the denial of any bail cannot be made, relative to the massive impact of just leaving “a few innocent people” in jail for “a few days”, I disagree. For the people most likely to not be bailed out almost immediately—as in, people who have the fewest resources—sitting in jail for a few days can be (and usually is, hence the point of this article) absolutely catastrophic. Life-ruining, all out of the fear that one person might slip through the cracks. That’s unacceptable. We can do better.

blm-acab 6y ago

#BLM

FpUser 6y ago

I am all for it. I think that the cash bail system is a crime on its own. the only thing that should determine whether this or that suspect should wait trial in jail should be potential risk to public.

tom-_- 6y ago

California Prop 25 on the ballot this election replaces cash bails with a risk assessment scoring system based on Senate Bill 10: https://policylab.stanford.edu/media/improving-california-bail.pdf https://policylab.stanford.edu/media/improving-california-ba... Note the flaws in its design that could replace the existing system with one that has potentially worse biases.

tyrust 6y ago
It looks like you have linked a paper proposing an improvement to SB10 that is unrelated to Prop 25, was this intentional?
- menage 6y ago
  After SB10 was passed by the legislature, the opposition (mostly bail bond companies?) gathered enough signatures to force a "veto referendum", i.e. a referendum on whether SB10 should be adopted as the legislature had voted, or should be dropped. That referendum is Prop 25. Edit: Parent is right, the link is to a different issue.
  - tyrust 6y ago
    Yeah, what does that have to do with the paper the parent linked?
    - tom-_- 6y ago
      Prop 25 upholds SB 10. This paper suggests improvements to SB10 based on potential biases in its design.
      - tyrust 6y ago
        I got it. It just seemed like from the phrasing of your post that a link to the description of Prop 25 would have made more sense.

anm89 6y ago

Considering how violent and terrifying US jails are makes this all the worse. Cash bail should have been ended. A long time ago.

kova12 6y ago

> perpetuates inequities in the justice system that are disproportionately felt by black and brown communities Why oh why isn't there a single good point on the internet that isn't getting turned into BLM propaganda

specialist 6y ago

Someones, somewheres has done a better job of handling the accused pre-trial. Start there. Give me a name. Show me a role model to emulate. Then tell me how we get from here to there. But even better, just tell me what you want. Give me action steps, some talking points. Because you had me at "Hello." I really don't need a PhD thesis relitigating western philosophy since Plato. (Ditto each and every other progressive policy issue.)

pySSK 6y ago
The article is quite clear in discussing the problem and solutions. When I don't understand a post about, let's say Rust, I acknowledge the gap in my knowledge instead of asking the software engineering community to dumb stuff down.
- specialist 6y ago
  Inevitable HN critiques of each new boutique bespoke programming language and text editor du jour is poor landing page, missing screenshots, and example code buried in some wiki. How is this any different? Pretrial Services Association doesn't even get named. Just some links 1/2 down the article. For other future dummies, like myself, who've actually organized and passed legislation, here's a draft TLDR: Our pretrial cash bail system sucks. Especially for the poor. There's lots of negative knockoff effects. Here's an explainer [article], [wiki], and [video]. After 60 years of talking about reform, we need a plan. We advocate adopting the federal Pretrial Services Agency (psa.gov) risk assessment system nationwide. Like DC and NJ did 20+ years ago. They've proven effective, costs less to administer, is more fair, and leads to better outcomes. Link to impressive metrics [here]. Here's how you can help. Support your state or county based org, listed [here]. Your state not listed? No worries. Here's a [simple guide] to bootstrap an org for your state. With handy links to [model legislation], [resolutions], and [talking points]. Please [contact us] our national campaign for additions, corrections, and questions. -- Edit: Aha. This Harvard workbook doesn't suck. http://cjpp.law.harvard.edu/assets/BailReform_WEB.pdf http://cjpp.law.harvard.edu/assets/BailReform_WEB.pdf It even has model legislation. Perfect for the target audience (legislative aides). Great starting point for creating a workbook for dummies, err, activists, like myself.

kepler1 6y ago

You know, systems were established for a reason. It's not like the cash bail system was some ridiculous fanciful notion that someone created to torture the poor. We have arrested people pay cash bail so that we have some forcing function to ensure that they don't flee. And maybe a little bit to provide people the incentive not to commit crime in the first place. I don't know why, but that seems to be considered discriminatory these days. Maybe if people are experiencing hardship from being held in jail, they should try not to commit crimes? What I fear about all the social justice movements is that when you get into nitty-gritty details, the symbols that activists want to believe in (eliminating discrimination) do not actually improve the lives of people experiencing disadvantage in society very much when the actual plan of what to do materializes from the advocates of change. Dismantle the police? I think the people worst served by this idea are the poor and powerless being victimized by crime every day. They need more police presence and enforcement of law and order for their neighborhoods, not less. Think about the side effects of the symbols you want fulfilled. And if all your involvement is sitting in your white neighborhood and not having to deal with the effects of your advocacy, maybe you shouldn't be so opinionated to say how things should be changed.

pySSK 6y ago
There are multiple strawpeople in your argument. 1. There are people from those actual communities asking and fighting for those things. You are assuming only suburban white advocates. 2. Cash-bail: "It's not like the cash bail system was some ridiculous fanciful notion that someone created to torture the poor." Who is saying that. The linked article is first and foremost concerned with the effect of cash-bail i.e. it affects poor people more negatively that it does rich people. It's broken system. Perhaps something like Finland's salary-based speeding ticket system would work well (but should incorporate wealth has many rich people don't have salaries). 3. Dismantle the police: the idea here is that armed police are now involved in situations where that is not required. Not only is it expensive and inefficient, but it has horrible outcomes. It's the old "if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail" problem. "They need more police presence and enforcement of law and order for their neighborhoods, not less." This has not been proven to work.
snypher 6y ago

daguava 6y ago

Reading a lot of these comments truly hurts, there is no reason for the amount of money you have to be tied to whether you are allowed out on bail at all. I was super happy to see this be proposed as a measure for the California Ballot and immediately gave it a yes - an assessment of danger and flight risk is a great way to start this foray into reform. Throwing down money disproportionately hurts the poor and underrepresented, keeping them in these demographics.

pyuser583 6y ago

I mean I live in a state that outlaws bail bondsman, but “cash as surety” is very much a thing. Focusing on the bail bond system is a distraction. Hard choices need to be made about who is incarcerated pending trial, and how they are incentivized to show up. Taking the profit motive out may or may not be a good idea. But by focusing on the contractors, you’re avoiding the bigger picture.

teekert 6y ago

As a non-US person watching certain American series on Netflix just blows my mind. For example, my wife is currently watching "Good Girls" in which we see the following things that really make me never want to live in the US (I wonder if this really happens though, can someone confirm?): - You can pay to stay out of jail so only poor people stay in jail after a crime, before the trial (guess OP proves this is real). - The poor people have the worst lawyers and thus the worst chances, and even though they are innocent can be left in debt by the process. - A couple has a daughter, she needs a kidney. They need to pay 80.000 euro (forcing a choice between crime and the life of the daughter, easy choice I'd think) - A guy stole crutches because he needed to pay 400$ to take them home (can't walk without them) - Woman tells ambulance personnel to leave her alone so she can take an Uber to the hospital to reduce cost of healthcare after being shot - A guy working at something like a loan shop (where people just seem to pile on debt) wants to use the address of a customer so his nephew can get into university (I guess it matters where you live?) - The couple from point 1 needs to choose between electricity/water and healthcare, decide to mix up checks they send to the companies to buy some time. I mean the point is already nicely made by "Breaking Bad", how do you want to reduce crime in a society when civilians are constantly forced into such impossible choices? It makes for good TV of course but the stress you must feel when you can just make ends meet in he US must be extreme. I mean there are so may series where the criminals are just perfectly reasonable and lovable, doesn't that tell you something is wrong?

Natsu 6y ago
It's after an arrest -- whether or not there was a crime is determined at trial. The idea is both to make sure that people show up for court and to have a bounty to give to bounty hunters if they do not to enforce compliance, rather than putting that on the police themselves, because there just aren't enough cops around to round up everyone who simply wouldn't show up otherwise. But yeah, being poor is effectively a punishment in and of itself and not just in this circumstance, either.
josu 6y ago
If you want to learn more about the US judicial and prison system you should listen to the third season of Serial. >Serial is heading back to court. This time, in Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases. >So we did. Inside these ordinary cases we found the troubling machinery of the criminal justice system on full display. We chose Cleveland, because they let us record everywhere — courtrooms, back hallways, judges’ chambers, prosecutors’ offices. And then we followed those cases outside the building, into neighborhoods, into people’s houses, and into prison. https://serialpodcast.org/ https://serialpodcast.org/

Ensorceled 6y ago

The entire criminal justice system needs an overhaul; from the way the police operate (under paid, over worked, under trained, almost no accountability), to the way DAs are incented to heavily prosecute and plea bargain, from the way prisons are over used to the way having a conviction drastically reduces your QoL even after incarceration. Add that the whole system is heavily skewed against PoC and the poor ... Focusing on one flaw in the whole, majorly flawed system is a waste of time: the defund the police, the no cash bail, the no slave labour movements all need to get together into a "fix the system" movement.

acvny 6y ago

I never understood this. This is an example of laws written for the rich.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

The underlying problem is that people are being punished too much for minor transgressions and screwing people like that is making life worse for everyone by proxy. First you can tell the police to just not give a fuck. This works well for the kind of people police tend to favor. If you're wealthy and look the part or you're an attractive woman this solution will likely work well for you, being white sure won't hurt either. The problem with this solution is unevenness of enforcement. Anyone of demographics the cops don't like (don't be a young black male) or anyone that crosses the cops is really gonna get screwed by this solution. It's also worth keeping in mind that less work necessitates cuts to the police force. Bored cops are an enemy of a free society. Second you can solve it with the courts. Let the cops pick up whoever they want and sort it all out in the courts. Release people promptly and without bail, etc. etc. The problem with this solution is that vulnerable people still get screwed hard. "The ride" will still likely cost you your job in a high turnover industry. Eventually the cops are gonna get tired of seeing the same damn bike thief at it again the next day and stop picking people up though if the court doesn't actually punish the real criminals. Thirdly you can solve this problem at the legislative level. You can not criminalize many things that boil down to minor instances of bad judgement and convert many nonviolent crimes into civil crimes, limit the circumstances under which police can arrest, limit the punishments the courts can inflict, require more prompt trials and releases, etc, etc. The downside is that like every public policy there are losers. There will be loopholes and certain kinds of crime are just gonna be below a threshold where anything gets done about them. If you get unlucky and happen to live beside the obvious crack house that the cops can't do much about then it's simply gonna suck for you. Furthermore people's lives will be ruined by a tolerance approach just as much as by an authoritarian approach. Criminals who have not yet crossed paths with the system to really get punished to the point of changing or thrown in jail will harm and kill people. That's just how it is when you relax laws at scale. Is it worth it? It's a matter of opinion. Bailing on cash bail targets the court system for the point of reform. It's not a bad thing and certainly every little bit helps but if we truly don't want to over punish people for things society has to come to terms with the fact that it will need to cast a very coarse net and a lot of people engaging in behavior that you, yes you the reader, consider criminal will necessarily slip through (with the details depending on the part of the system in which you choose to make your changes as I've described above). There is no free lunch here. Make no mistake, I don't think this is a zero sum game and I'm all for a very coarse net. I just think a lot of people here are unprepared for exactly what it does look like and how long it takes to stabilize.

LatteLazy 6y ago

I feel like this is a much smaller issue than the US public defender situation. Or the way crimes carry vast sentences and prosecutors often later them on so that of anything sticks its still decades in prison. Then you either take a plea or face a 400 year jail sentence with a lawyer who has 100 other clients and can't actually remember your name or what you were charged with. The whole criminal "justice" system in the states looks crazy to me. Bail reform won't really fix that.

throw2010121300 6y ago

Wow, it's interesting to see this posted here since I was literally just reading about the fact that a lot of American weapons manufacturer uses prison laborers who get paid as little as $0.23 per hour! https://www.michaelwest.com.au/us-prison-labour-foreign-weapons-makers-finance-australian-government-think-tank-aspi/ https://www.michaelwest.com.au/us-prison-labour-foreign-weap... Heck, you can even easily buy these forced laborers online from https://www.unicor.gov/Index.aspx https://www.unicor.gov/Index.aspx I guess this cash bail system is created to fuel modern slavery in the United States today, which is actually fully legal according to the US constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

mattbroekhuis 6y ago
Jail != prison

rufusroflpunch 6y ago

This doesn’t address the actual problem, which is that too many things are illegal.

hospadar 6y ago

Lots of speculation in the comments is answered by the article itself: - There's little/no evidence that cash bail increases the rate at which people show up for trial - People are (shocker) better able to defend their innocence when they haven't been rotting in jail pre-trial - People are less likely to commit other crimes before trial if they have a shorter stay in jail - Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail GREAT info about all things pretrial detention (and really all things prison) from the prison policy initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/pretrial_detention/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/pretrial_detention/ Personal bias disclosure: I believe that imprisonment of any kind is incredibly cruel/counterproductive and that we as a society should prioritize getting as many people out of jail as possible. Justice is complex and hard and it won't be easy but I'd rather live in a world where people are seldom locked up, with no one loosing their right to vote [because of felony convictions, or for any other reason], and no one being afraid of the government that's supposed to be by/for/and of them.

koheripbal 6y ago
> Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail This one might just be confirmation bias as lesser sentences may be indicative of less violent criminal behavior. Without knowing what they controlled for, it's hard to accept this one as evidence. The others make sense.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >> Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail >This one might just be confirmation bias as lesser sentences may be indicative of less violent criminal behavior. Without knowing what they controlled for, it's hard to accept this one as evidence. You are misunderstanding GP's point. The data shows that the less time people spend in pretrial detention (not jail/prison after conviction), the less likely they are to re-offend. And in many cases, folks arrested for really violent crimes aren't offered bail at all. If someone is arrested for a non-violent offense (petit theft for example) and bail is set at $1,000 and they can't get their hands on $1,000 (because they're poor which is why they're stealing, maybe?) they will rot in jail until the case is adjudicated. But a wealthy person arrested for beating his wife to death who can afford $50,000 bail can walk out the door and murder his girlfriend while awaiting trial. Bail just punishes the poor.

down_to_birds 6y ago

Yes! Also, while we're at it. Abolish the entire US policing and prison system. And don't rebuild it. https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-makes-the-case-for-abolition/ https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-make...

specialist 6y ago

I just learned that bail reform is on the CA State 2020 ballot. Per wiki and SSC, vote "Yes" to support replacing cash bail with the risk assessments system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_25 Please reply with details if your country, state, home town as a similar reform effort.

toss1 6y ago

This point seems like a "well, duh..." - they are basically putting low-risk people in a crime bootcamp - surrounding them with people more experienced in crime, and nothing to do but talk to them. Psych studies show that people trend toward the average of the 5 personalities with whom they surround themselves. <sarc> So, let's take low-risk people who have made a mistake and surround them with people who make a habit of making mistakes. Brilliant! /<sarc> "Another study conducted in Kentucky found that detaining low- and moderate-risk defendants is strongly correlated with higher rates of new criminal activity both during the retrial period and years after case disposition. The same study found that as the length of pretrial detention increases up to 30 days, recidivism rates for low- and moderate-risk defendants also increases significantly. When held 2–3 days, for instance, low-risk defendants are almost 40 percent more likely to commit new crimes before trial than equivalent defendants held no more than 24 hours. When held 8–14 days, low-risk defendants are 51 percent more likely to commit another crime within two years after completion of their cases than equivalent defendants held no more than 24 hours."

nojvek 6y ago

TIL: US Bail system is a bond. I.e One has to pay that money to get out of jail before trial. If they skip trial, they don’t get the money back, otherwise they do. Then there are Proffesional Bail Agents. https://www.allcitybailbonds.com/bail-calculator https://www.allcitybailbonds.com/bail-calculator . They charge 10% of bail bond as a fee. Bail agents will pay the bond and recover the money when the person shows up at trial. So this has the same effect as college loans. Colleges keep on amping up their fees, since students don’t fully understand how loans work. Or how healthcare keeps on getting expensive YoY.

csense 6y ago

If you abolish the cash bail system, what's the penalty for not showing up to your trial?