Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
1–10 of 184 posts
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#2I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#3Harrowing, absolutely harrowing.
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#4This is horrible. Instead of bail, they should just have steeper fines for failure to appear and yet on the flipside the same guarantees afforded to jury duty as far as employment (i.e. can't be fired for having to appear in court). That would allow poorer people to keep their jobs and still be present for court dates. Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for.
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#5I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
If one person gets their life savings cleared out for a $100 speeding fine, how do you equate that financial pain to Bill Gates? Why should Bill Gates be punished more in the same situation for having put the work in to build a successful company?
You end up with silly (IMHO) situations like someone getting a $290k fine in Switzerland for 85mph in a 50 zone.
6 months in jail for someone who can't afford a $1k bail is the other end of the scale though - surely it cost substantially more than that to keep him in there. I'm pretty certain in the UK we have charities that help people out in such situations, is there no equivalent provision in the US?
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#6I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
> Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences.
That's an accurate description of the status quo. Just look at Volkswagen. Paid a couple billion in fines, couple of lower level managers serve a little bit of jail time, and the company is back to profitable as if nothing had happened - even though the deaths of thousands of people can be directly attributed to the scandal (per https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/emissionen-die-toerichte-...). The shareholders didn't suffer a dent.
It's similar with banks - when you owe a bank a million $, you have a problem. When you owe a bank a hundred million $, the bank has a problem. The richer you are, the more you can get away with.
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#7I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
That is the case in (some?) Scandinavian countries, as well as Switzerland. I think it's generally indexed on income (based on tax return), with fines being expressed in days (of a fraction of the offender's disposable income). There's usually a lower bound (e.g. 6€ in Finland) but no upper bound. The day-fines may also be convertible to jail time (at a ratio of 1:3 or 1:4 I think).
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#8This is horrible. Instead of bail, they should just have steeper fines for failure to appear and yet on the flipside the same guarantees afforded to jury duty as far as employment (i.e. can't be fired for having to appear in court). That would allow poorer people to keep their jobs and still be present for court dates. Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for.
> Flight risk is really not as high as the system is designed for.
The system is rigged against the minorities. Look why cannabis was criminalized in the first place - to target blacks and hippies (https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...). As a politician, keep as many of 'em in jails as you can, thus showing the white population you're "tough on crime" and at the same time filling the coffers of your private prison operator friends with state cash for the jailing.
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#9I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
If one person gets their life savings cleared out for a $100 speeding fine, how do you equate that financial pain to Bill Gates? Why should Bill Gates be punished more in the same situation for having put the work in to build a successful company? You end up with silly (IMHO) situations like someone getting a $290k fine in Switzerland for 85mph in a 50 zone. 6 months in jail for someone who can't afford a $1k bail is…
> If one person gets their life savings cleared out for a $100 speeding fine, how do you equate that financial pain to Bill Gates? Why should Bill Gates be punished more in the same situation for having put the work in to build a successful company?
He's not punished "more", he's punished equitably. The ultimate goal is not to collect $100, it's for the offender to not reoffend.
Disposable income is an actual objective and important concept, and if you ignore it when handing out financial punishment it just stops being punishment at all for people sufficiently wealthy to not give a single flying fuck.
Having "put the work in to build a successful company" — or just inherited their wealth — should not make one immune to punishment, yet that's exactly what happens with unscaled fixed-amount fines.
> You end up with silly (IMHO) situations like someone getting a $290k fine in Switzerland for 85mph in a 50 zone.
There's nothing silly about it. If that's a $500 fine for somebody with an income of 7 figures, it's not a punishment at all and completely fail at its purpose of making the offender not reoffend: they could get such a fine every single day and live just fine while an offender on US minimum wage loses two weeks worth of work on a single fine.
Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
#10I think that if there are financial penalties - or similar in the case of bail - they have to be adjusted to means (don't get me wrong, this can be a challenge in itself). Otherwise you're basically saying that something is legal for the rich who could easily make the bail or the fine, but illegal for somebody poor who cannot make the fine which can have ever worse consequences. Why should that be?
If one person gets their life savings cleared out for a $100 speeding fine, how do you equate that financial pain to Bill Gates? Why should Bill Gates be punished more in the same situation for having put the work in to build a successful company? You end up with silly (IMHO) situations like someone getting a $290k fine in Switzerland for 85mph in a 50 zone. 6 months in jail for someone who can't afford a $1k bail is…
That seems a fairly reasonable fine to me - if the speeder has "annual income of more than $820,000 and is worth well over $20 million" then why shouldn't he pay more?
Also:
"The Testarossa driver was initially fined a little less than $90,000 by the local jurisdiction. That was raised to $145,000 by the next court after the driver claimed diplomatic immunity, saying he is diplomat from the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. That didn't sway the court, which boosted the fine to $290,000."
https://www.wired.com/2010/01/record-speeding-fine-dents-swi...