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The problem isn't that a rich guy can make bail. The real issue is that so many poor people are trapped by bail bonds they can not meet or which put extreme fin

The problem isn't that a rich guy can make bail. The real issue is that so many poor people are trapped by bail bonds they can not meet or which put extreme financial strain on a family that is barely making it to begin with. Part of it is that the bail bond industry can afford lobbyists, and probably a bigger part is that "tough on crime" grandstanding by politicians is nearly always a winning strategy. It is too easy to claim a politician that advances any kind of reform will be pilloried as someone who is trying to put savage criminals back on the street, your street.

EdwardDiego 4y ago
The fact that bail bonds are even a private industry... ...I don't get it. In my country, technically there's a bail bond of $500 due to an archaic law, advanced to you by the Police, and you have to pay them it if you breach bail conditions. In reality, if you breach bail, your arrest will become high priority, and you're very likely going into the remand wing once arrested until you can appear in front of a judge, and then you'll also be facing a charge for breaching bail, in addition to the charges you already faced. And breaching bail is an offense that nearly guarantees that the judge will remand you into custody until your trial date, which could be 3 - 6 months away. So there's no need for monetary bonds, because the existing consequences are severe enough.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  The problem is bail though. Bail bondsman are a life saver to a person who can’t afford their bail and have to work in the morning. Obviously being rough comes with the job, but most bondsman aren’t villains they provide a service during a time of bad policy.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > The problem is bail though. No, the problem is not conditional release (bail), or even the financial penalty (bail amount) that is assigned in advance in the even the conditions are broken. The particular conditions may be problematic, especially when they (say) require, in practice, either a deposit or other security in the full value of the potential penalty or a contract with a licensed bail agent (which some states, and the federal system, generally do not.) But… > Bail bondsman are a life saver to a person who can’t afford their bail and have to work in the morning. Obviously being rough comes with the job, but most bondsman aren’t villains they provide a service during a time of bad policy. …except that bail bondsmen are a major force lobbying state governments for the policies which create the need. They are working very hard to set up, and preserve, the conditions that make them seem like lifesavers.
    - orlp 4y ago
      The arsonist fireman might seem like a lifesaver if you aren't aware he is the one that put your house on fire.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  Allowing someone to borrow money to pay bail completely defeats the purpose. It isn't legal in every state though.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    In doesn't defeat the purpose since you have to pay back the loan yourself
  - 13of40 4y ago
    I think the worse effect of the bail loan system is that for anyone who doesn't have enough cash on hand to cover it now has to pay the loan fee (or sit in jail and miss work, etc). If your bail is $100K and you need to take out a loan for it, that's $10K out of pocket regardless of whether or not you're found guilty. I would guess that half the people in this thread could just pay it and walk, and for the other half it would be devastating.
- eastbound 4y ago
  > your arrest will become high priority Most Western’s police forces are completely dysfunctional. France isn’t able to deport a non-French imam performing hate speech on French soil and living at the same address for months[1]. Police and prison forces are often caught performing lip service against both terrorism or white collar crime, practically all the cases of terrorism now include an attacker who has been liberated 2 to 50 times after murder attempts[2], and police/prison forces seem to be using law to excuse liberating obviously-dangerous people rather than using law to keep them in. So, the theory that if you break bail, you become arrestable, needs to meet actual practices in that country. Let’s hope the US govt sees enough political interest in finishing SBF to actually ensure he doesn’t flee. [1] https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-12-08-moroccan-imam-iquioussen-undesirable-%22on-european-soil%22--according-to-belgium.HkWOdWjJ_i.html https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-12-08-moroccan-imam-iquioussen... [2] For example William M in yesterday’s Paris attack (Article in French) https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/plusieurs-blesses-apres-des-coups-de-feu-a-paris-un-homme-interpelle-23-12-2022-75IG6N726ZH4XF6GQ4AF2OQMPU.php https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/plusieurs-blesses-apres-d...
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    K
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  As I understand it the bail system exists because in the US the state has no idea where you live, you don’t have to register your place of residence. But I might be wrong about that.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Hmm, true. Often in my country bail conditions involve a curfew usually from 9 or 10pm, and Police will turn up at your stated address at 10:01pm, and if you're not there, boom, breached, arrest warrant. But, given the fragmented nature of policing in the US, I can see how what works here might not work there.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  People misunderstand the US bail system. You can pay your bail yourself. Say a judge gives you a $5k bail. You give the government 5k and they hold it until your case is complete. Then they either return it or they deduct your fines etc from it and return anything left. Most people don’t do this. They go to a bail bond company, which charges them $500 and then puts up the 5k for them. They get the 5k back when the defendant shows up and keep the $500. People do skip out on bail pretty regularly, so there’s no guarantee the bondsman gets his money back. But he’s invested in finding the skipper at least as much as the government. At least in theory. The US generally doesn’t go after people very hard for skipping out on bail, they just wait until you get detained for some other crime and then arrest you for having a warrant out. Well, sometimes they still let you go after that.
parineum 4y ago
I think this attitude of, instead of raising the bottom, lowering the top comes from a desire to punish rich people rather than help poor people. I think these people would prefer everyone sit on rocks rather than poor people sit in wooden chairs while rich people had leather couches.
- kevmo314 4y ago
  It's easier to take away than to give and help. So I don't blame them for that mentality, but it would definitely be great if society worked to lift the poor up more.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    It’s great to lift up the poor, but up to what extent? Poor will still be poor, so what’s an acceptable amount of poor we should allow where they just have to deal with it?
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Lift up as many people as possible. It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. One day, hopefully not too many days away, our descendants will wake up and discover that the last poor person has been lifted from poverty. To get there from here, we have to take it one day at a time, and focus on changing what we can.
      - Godel_unicode 4y ago
        > It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. Is that actually true? I’m very curious if there’s any theoretical evidence that a society where everyone is at minimum “middle class” can exist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
        parineum 4y ago
        Probably not technically due to poor being a relative term but we have a lot of discussion these days about housing for the poor which is obviously important but there's a lot less talk about the poor starving (and really, there's more talk about the poor having an unhealthy amount of calories). I think it's important to keep perspective that we are actually making great progress on providing a higher quality of life for the worst off.
rrevi 4y ago
More on bail bonds: https://youtu.be/IS5mwymTIJU https://youtu.be/IS5mwymTIJU And more on bail reform: https://youtu.be/xQLqIWbc9VM https://youtu.be/xQLqIWbc9VM
lettergram 4y ago
The issue is bail in general, if we run under the assumption of “innocent until proven guilt (as determined by a jury of peers)” then bail is immoral. We could argue most people would make a run for it; I’d argue that a trial should be held more quickly. No prison time for more than it takes to schedule a case with a judge. Arrest the person, have a trial starting within a week or so (or don’t arrest). Part of what happens today is, they set a high bail. Lock people up for months to years without a trial, then people agree to a plea deal before the trial starts. It’s a way around due process. Imo a direct violation of the 8th amendment. Bail used to make a tad more sense when there wasn’t an organized police force but random citizens arresting you. You could post bail to farm for the season, or what have you. Then they’d have the trial when the judge held court again (after he farmed his fields).
- jquery 4y ago
  I think bail is immoral, mostly. It should be replaced by a system where being let free is the default, but if you are deemed a threat to public safety, then no amount of money should secure your freedom (and you should have a right to contest such a ruling and a right to a speedy trial etc etc).
at-w 4y ago
To play devil's advocate, extremely high profile white collar criminals like SBF are objectively less likely to reoffend while on bail in a way that would harm regular citizens than someone arrested for any violent or gang-related crime. His victims deserve justice too, but the odds of him defrauding more people while on bail now that this is widely known, he's under constant surveillance, and his/FTX's assets are frozen, is incredibly low. Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes and the like are all scumbags, but if you give me the choice between living next to them, or someone arrested for almost any other crime, I'm picking the fraudster that depended on their now ruined public image to defraud people.
- orhmeh09 4y ago
  What’s your objective definition of someone’s likelihood of reoffending? Further, he still has phone and Internet privileges — does this impulsive man even seem like he can help himself?
  - creato 4y ago
    Even if he could find victims gullible enough to trust him, he’s under too much scrutiny from other less gullible people. Reoffending is impossible.
    - collectedparts 4y ago
      Agreed on the basic point that he won't win any more confidence games. I think the main thing is that we haven't seen what he might do now that he knows for sure that he's (by default) headed for a lifetime in jail. It seems that before the arrest, he was pretty delusional / "high on his own supply" and believed he was going to somehow talk his way out of trouble, as he'd ostensibly been doing for so long. So the thought experiment now is: do we believe that there's anything nefarious that he could do now, that he'd stopped himself from doing back when he was still trying to maintain an illusion? For example, he could have various wallet private keys (secretly?) memorized [1], and could take steps to move the funds to new wallets. TBH the idea that his (fiat) transactions are limited to $1k is a little laughable for someone who until recently, and perhaps still, has access to billions in crypto. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet
z3phyr 4y ago
> bail bond industry The fact that there is a bail bond industry sounds horrible to me.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
It’s not like that anymore, at least in places like Seattle. Everyone gets bail, even if they skipped bail a few times already and have outstanding bench warrants. And of course, people in those situations aren’t rich people, but mostly the unhoused. The northwest bail fund in particular helps out even on minor bail that are handed down (which aren’t denied even if they’ve skipped bail on a few charges already). Bail has become a bit of a joke here.
- jquery 4y ago
  How is skipping bail not an automatic jailable offense? Anyway I looked up Washington law and it seems the problem is that everyone has a right to bail, even those who are a great risk to public safety. Judges should have some discretion here. Cash bail is a horrible, unjust system, but some of the replacements that have popped up are no good either, especially because they make people think that cash bail is the solution and you end up with society regressing.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    > How is skipping bail not an automatic jailable offense? We would like to know also. Our judges are off their rockers here. I would honestly be ok with no or reasonable bail for income (like in California?) and then no leniency for not showing up to court.
    - jquery 4y ago
      It appears judges hands are tied by Washington law. Only individuals accused of capital offenses can be denied bail. I agree, this is lunacy. Yes, what California has done is you cannot set bail at an amount someone cannot post, but judges can deny bail for those deemed a public safety threat or those who have skipped bail. Individuals are assessed based on “risk to the community” and whether they get bail is based on that. Seems reasonable to me.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Same in NY. Guy recently got bailed out on a domestic assault, went home and murdered the original victim. Very good changes! Very empowering for her
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

EdwardDiego 4y ago

The fact that bail bonds are even a private industry... ...I don't get it. In my country, technically there's a bail bond of $500 due to an archaic law, advanced to you by the Police, and you have to pay them it if you breach bail conditions. In reality, if you breach bail, your arrest will become high priority, and you're very likely going into the remand wing once arrested until you can appear in front of a judge, and then you'll also be facing a charge for breaching bail, in addition to the charges you already faced. And breaching bail is an offense that nearly guarantees that the judge will remand you into custody until your trial date, which could be 3 - 6 months away. So there's no need for monetary bonds, because the existing consequences are severe enough.

edgyquant 4y ago
The problem is bail though. Bail bondsman are a life saver to a person who can’t afford their bail and have to work in the morning. Obviously being rough comes with the job, but most bondsman aren’t villains they provide a service during a time of bad policy.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > The problem is bail though. No, the problem is not conditional release (bail), or even the financial penalty (bail amount) that is assigned in advance in the even the conditions are broken. The particular conditions may be problematic, especially when they (say) require, in practice, either a deposit or other security in the full value of the potential penalty or a contract with a licensed bail agent (which some states, and the federal system, generally do not.) But… > Bail bondsman are a life saver to a person who can’t afford their bail and have to work in the morning. Obviously being rough comes with the job, but most bondsman aren’t villains they provide a service during a time of bad policy. …except that bail bondsmen are a major force lobbying state governments for the policies which create the need. They are working very hard to set up, and preserve, the conditions that make them seem like lifesavers.
  - orlp 4y ago
    The arsonist fireman might seem like a lifesaver if you aren't aware he is the one that put your house on fire.
HyperSane 4y ago
Allowing someone to borrow money to pay bail completely defeats the purpose. It isn't legal in every state though.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- charcircuit 4y ago
  In doesn't defeat the purpose since you have to pay back the loan yourself
- 13of40 4y ago
  I think the worse effect of the bail loan system is that for anyone who doesn't have enough cash on hand to cover it now has to pay the loan fee (or sit in jail and miss work, etc). If your bail is $100K and you need to take out a loan for it, that's $10K out of pocket regardless of whether or not you're found guilty. I would guess that half the people in this thread could just pay it and walk, and for the other half it would be devastating.
eastbound 4y ago
> your arrest will become high priority Most Western’s police forces are completely dysfunctional. France isn’t able to deport a non-French imam performing hate speech on French soil and living at the same address for months[1]. Police and prison forces are often caught performing lip service against both terrorism or white collar crime, practically all the cases of terrorism now include an attacker who has been liberated 2 to 50 times after murder attempts[2], and police/prison forces seem to be using law to excuse liberating obviously-dangerous people rather than using law to keep them in. So, the theory that if you break bail, you become arrestable, needs to meet actual practices in that country. Let’s hope the US govt sees enough political interest in finishing SBF to actually ensure he doesn’t flee. [1] https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-12-08-moroccan-imam-iquioussen-undesirable-%22on-european-soil%22--according-to-belgium.HkWOdWjJ_i.html https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-12-08-moroccan-imam-iquioussen... [2] For example William M in yesterday’s Paris attack (Article in French) https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/plusieurs-blesses-apres-des-coups-de-feu-a-paris-un-homme-interpelle-23-12-2022-75IG6N726ZH4XF6GQ4AF2OQMPU.php https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/plusieurs-blesses-apres-d...
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  K
pantalaimon 4y ago
As I understand it the bail system exists because in the US the state has no idea where you live, you don’t have to register your place of residence. But I might be wrong about that.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Hmm, true. Often in my country bail conditions involve a curfew usually from 9 or 10pm, and Police will turn up at your stated address at 10:01pm, and if you're not there, boom, breached, arrest warrant. But, given the fragmented nature of policing in the US, I can see how what works here might not work there.
Amezarak 4y ago
People misunderstand the US bail system. You can pay your bail yourself. Say a judge gives you a $5k bail. You give the government 5k and they hold it until your case is complete. Then they either return it or they deduct your fines etc from it and return anything left. Most people don’t do this. They go to a bail bond company, which charges them $500 and then puts up the 5k for them. They get the 5k back when the defendant shows up and keep the $500. People do skip out on bail pretty regularly, so there’s no guarantee the bondsman gets his money back. But he’s invested in finding the skipper at least as much as the government. At least in theory. The US generally doesn’t go after people very hard for skipping out on bail, they just wait until you get detained for some other crime and then arrest you for having a warrant out. Well, sometimes they still let you go after that.

parineum 4y ago

I think this attitude of, instead of raising the bottom, lowering the top comes from a desire to punish rich people rather than help poor people. I think these people would prefer everyone sit on rocks rather than poor people sit in wooden chairs while rich people had leather couches.

kevmo314 4y ago
It's easier to take away than to give and help. So I don't blame them for that mentality, but it would definitely be great if society worked to lift the poor up more.
- xwdv 4y ago
  It’s great to lift up the poor, but up to what extent? Poor will still be poor, so what’s an acceptable amount of poor we should allow where they just have to deal with it?
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Lift up as many people as possible. It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. One day, hopefully not too many days away, our descendants will wake up and discover that the last poor person has been lifted from poverty. To get there from here, we have to take it one day at a time, and focus on changing what we can.
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      > It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. Is that actually true? I’m very curious if there’s any theoretical evidence that a society where everyone is at minimum “middle class” can exist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
      - parineum 4y ago
        Probably not technically due to poor being a relative term but we have a lot of discussion these days about housing for the poor which is obviously important but there's a lot less talk about the poor starving (and really, there's more talk about the poor having an unhealthy amount of calories). I think it's important to keep perspective that we are actually making great progress on providing a higher quality of life for the worst off.

rrevi 4y ago

More on bail bonds: https://youtu.be/IS5mwymTIJU https://youtu.be/IS5mwymTIJU And more on bail reform: https://youtu.be/xQLqIWbc9VM https://youtu.be/xQLqIWbc9VM

lettergram 4y ago

The issue is bail in general, if we run under the assumption of “innocent until proven guilt (as determined by a jury of peers)” then bail is immoral. We could argue most people would make a run for it; I’d argue that a trial should be held more quickly. No prison time for more than it takes to schedule a case with a judge. Arrest the person, have a trial starting within a week or so (or don’t arrest). Part of what happens today is, they set a high bail. Lock people up for months to years without a trial, then people agree to a plea deal before the trial starts. It’s a way around due process. Imo a direct violation of the 8th amendment. Bail used to make a tad more sense when there wasn’t an organized police force but random citizens arresting you. You could post bail to farm for the season, or what have you. Then they’d have the trial when the judge held court again (after he farmed his fields).

jquery 4y ago
I think bail is immoral, mostly. It should be replaced by a system where being let free is the default, but if you are deemed a threat to public safety, then no amount of money should secure your freedom (and you should have a right to contest such a ruling and a right to a speedy trial etc etc).

at-w 4y ago

To play devil's advocate, extremely high profile white collar criminals like SBF are objectively less likely to reoffend while on bail in a way that would harm regular citizens than someone arrested for any violent or gang-related crime. His victims deserve justice too, but the odds of him defrauding more people while on bail now that this is widely known, he's under constant surveillance, and his/FTX's assets are frozen, is incredibly low. Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes and the like are all scumbags, but if you give me the choice between living next to them, or someone arrested for almost any other crime, I'm picking the fraudster that depended on their now ruined public image to defraud people.

orhmeh09 4y ago
What’s your objective definition of someone’s likelihood of reoffending? Further, he still has phone and Internet privileges — does this impulsive man even seem like he can help himself?
- creato 4y ago
  Even if he could find victims gullible enough to trust him, he’s under too much scrutiny from other less gullible people. Reoffending is impossible.
  - collectedparts 4y ago
    Agreed on the basic point that he won't win any more confidence games. I think the main thing is that we haven't seen what he might do now that he knows for sure that he's (by default) headed for a lifetime in jail. It seems that before the arrest, he was pretty delusional / "high on his own supply" and believed he was going to somehow talk his way out of trouble, as he'd ostensibly been doing for so long. So the thought experiment now is: do we believe that there's anything nefarious that he could do now, that he'd stopped himself from doing back when he was still trying to maintain an illusion? For example, he could have various wallet private keys (secretly?) memorized [1], and could take steps to move the funds to new wallets. TBH the idea that his (fiat) transactions are limited to $1k is a little laughable for someone who until recently, and perhaps still, has access to billions in crypto. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet

z3phyr 4y ago

> bail bond industry The fact that there is a bail bond industry sounds horrible to me.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

It’s not like that anymore, at least in places like Seattle. Everyone gets bail, even if they skipped bail a few times already and have outstanding bench warrants. And of course, people in those situations aren’t rich people, but mostly the unhoused. The northwest bail fund in particular helps out even on minor bail that are handed down (which aren’t denied even if they’ve skipped bail on a few charges already). Bail has become a bit of a joke here.

jquery 4y ago
How is skipping bail not an automatic jailable offense? Anyway I looked up Washington law and it seems the problem is that everyone has a right to bail, even those who are a great risk to public safety. Judges should have some discretion here. Cash bail is a horrible, unjust system, but some of the replacements that have popped up are no good either, especially because they make people think that cash bail is the solution and you end up with society regressing.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  > How is skipping bail not an automatic jailable offense? We would like to know also. Our judges are off their rockers here. I would honestly be ok with no or reasonable bail for income (like in California?) and then no leniency for not showing up to court.
  - jquery 4y ago
    It appears judges hands are tied by Washington law. Only individuals accused of capital offenses can be denied bail. I agree, this is lunacy. Yes, what California has done is you cannot set bail at an amount someone cannot post, but judges can deny bail for those deemed a public safety threat or those who have skipped bail. Individuals are assessed based on “risk to the community” and whether they get bail is based on that. Seems reasonable to me.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
Same in NY. Guy recently got bailed out on a domestic assault, went home and murdered the original victim. Very good changes! Very empowering for her

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]