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Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

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Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#151

Post by cs02rm0 »

bdhess wrote: post #80
cs02rm0 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if a $100 fine for someone with only $100 to their name is adjusted to punish Bill Gates the same amount... how much do you fine him? Every cent he has to his name? Because if you leave him with anything the punishment isn't the same. And what if he then commits a much more serious offence? I still think the whole concept is so flawed it's a farce.

To me it seems just as farcical to levy a $100 fine on someone who only has $100. What exactly does that accomplish?

Admin costs is an answer I've heard previously to having a non-zero lower end (i.e. an element of the fine that's not supposed to be punishment/deterrent).

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#152

Post by adrr »

Here's solution I came up with bail. Force the government to pay 10% APR on bail amount. Now the bail bonds companies become risk management companies who look at the data to determine the risk of flight for the person charged with the crime. These companies get the interest payment from the government, the government saves money by not paying to jail someone and the person charged doesn't pay anything out of pocket.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#153

Post by cs02rm0 »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #138
briandear wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a robbery results in a 10 year sentence and a poor person makes $15,000 per year, that means the sentence costs the poor person $150,000, not adjusted for inflation. A rich person who makes $1 million per year would he. Need to serve less than 2 months then right? If we are trying to use this socialist fine system, then that would necessarily result in shorter jail time for rich people because they are being “h…

You've got it backwards. "time" is the unit of punishment, as it's more equal than wealth. We agree that both a rich and poor person should serve the same time in prison for the same crime Therefore, for a fine, both a rich and a poor person should pay the same fine relative to their earnings per unit of time. i.e., if the fine is $100 for someone making $15,000/year, it should be $100,000 for someone making $15,000,…

That's simple.

But what about someone making $150k a year with no assets vs. someone living in a $1.5m property with no job who made $15k last year on $150k of shares?

What about someone with $1.5m in shares who made a $15k loss on them last year? Do they get paid instead of fined?

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#154

Post by moate »

moate wrote: post #132
dismantlethesun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this and always wondered what exactly is keeping people from doing drugs with lessers sentencing? For example, if crack-cocaine carries a high sentence, then why not drop the habit in exchange for powdered cocaine? If the question is price, then this is really more of a system targeting the poor than one that is against any specific minority group.

Crack is substantially cheaper to obtain than powdered cocaine. Crack is just powdered cocaine that's been cooked with other substances, essentially diluting it. The question is purely price, and it's the system targeting drug users of certain class/ethnic groups more than others. If you look at drug law enforcement in the US, it's substantially more punitive towards poor/minority groups.

1- Can't imagine ya'll refute what crack is/the pricing of it since those are just objective facts. So, for anyone who's salty that the system is rigged against poor people/minorities:

Citation A: https://www.vera.org/publications/for-the-record-public-heal...

Citation B: http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war

Citation C: https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ACF4F34.pdf

Citation D: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/06/28/the-war-on-...

I can do a the standard English alphabet, the Greek alphabet, simplified Chinese, Japanese kanji and any other alphabets you guys would like me to tack on with sources that state the same thing:

The War On Drugs is a War on Poor People and Minorities.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#155

Post by CamTin »

jdavis703 wrote: post #126
CamTin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has its own potential problems. Prosecutors might be under even more pressure to get convictions or plea bargains, since the alternative, if somebody is already arrested and awaiting trial, is that their bosses (ultimately elected officials) have to shell out public money for a wrongful imprisonment case. Not saying the idea doesn't have merit, but all the moving parts and bizarre incentives of this system make…

In the U.S. prosecutors are generally elected officials. Their bosses are the voters. If the voters get tired of paying for false imprisonment fees they can elect a smarter prosecutor.

The actual prosecutor/district attorney often is, but they all have lawyers working for them, except in the tiniest jurisdictions. U.S. Jurisdictions also often have elected judges, so some of the same pressures would apply to them.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#156

Post by notriddle »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #32
titzer wrote: post #4

This 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.

They should just have lower bail amounts.

Then people with enough money will just pay the bail and run.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#157

Post by logfromblammo »

kaolti wrote: post #134
pc86 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> over 30 years getting arrested for minor shit all over the US Have you tried not spending three decades committing petty crimes "all over the US?" As for your original point - credit for time - you get 1.5x for time served. If you're sentenced to prison. If you spend weeks in jail but don't actually get sentenced to prison, there's nothing against which your time can be credited. Nobody's crediting jail time toward…

> Have you tried not spending three decades committing petty crimes "all over the US?" Way to be constructive bro.

Petty crimes are, in my opinion, more strongly subjected to selective enforcement than major ones.

Consider also that the US is a bad place for a previously convicted felon to land a decent job, and that poor people, people on probation or parole, and minorities tend to have more negative police contacts, which produce more arrests, which produce more convictions. Think about the number of municipalities that criminalize acts reasonable only for the downtrodden, such as overnight camping on public property within municipal limits. Think about the number of jurisdictions that criminalize loitering and vagrancy to roust undesirables out of their town.

In all likelihood, ancestor poster is not inherently more criminal than other people with no criminal record, but has a much larger enforcement profile due to circumstantial factors. Also, familiarity breeds contempt, and frequent encounters with the justice system lead to disillusionment with its supposed fairness and impartiality. It mainly exists so that the richer can keep the poorer away from their persons, properties, and possessions; and also to perpetuate its own existence.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#158

Post by mnm1 »

Cash bail for nonviolent offenders is human rights abuse and completely unnecessary in the age of ankle bracelets and gps. I assume it still exists because people are profiting from this or because of the hate and desire to punish those simply accused, even if they are innocent. The desire for retribution and cruelty of such a system are definitely intentional factors, as much as profit, in the U.S. One should never underestimate hate and racism or their consequences here in America.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#159

Post by cs02rm0 »

arethuza wrote: post #147
cs02rm0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we're not looking at fines in relation to income but lifestyle? I just think you cannot scale fines in relation to income/lifestyle/anything else financially. You can scale it, but you can't hit people with different incomes, assets, etc. in the same fashion, which ultimately smells of a bad system to me.

So what would you recommend?

Anything else.

The points system seems sufficent to me for most driving offences, beyond costs. But community service, prison time, curfews, anything which is equivalent and not open to manipulation.

Re: Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat

#160

Post by infogulch »

CamTin wrote: post #59
hvidgaard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a fair take on it. If you wrongfully imprison anyone, they get compensation. If all evidence points to them, but they was found not guilty, then they were wrongfully imprisoned and the intent and "why" doesn't really matter to that person.

This has its own potential problems. Prosecutors might be under even more pressure to get convictions or plea bargains, since the alternative, if somebody is already arrested and awaiting trial, is that their bosses (ultimately elected officials) have to shell out public money for a wrongful imprisonment case. Not saying the idea doesn't have merit, but all the moving parts and bizarre incentives of this system make…

We're talking about bail here. Your comment assumes prosecutors must hold the accused in jail until trial. If the prosecutor is worried about paying out wrongful imprisonment compensation, just don't hold them in jail for 6 months while their trial is waiting (by setting bail low enough for them to pay it).

Right now the equation for deciding whether to hold someone in jail is entirely weighted to indiscriminately holding them for an indefinite amount of time. Why? Because it has zero impact on the state. The state finds it a little more convenient to hold them until trial (risk of runaway etc) so they do it for any minuscule reason while the life of the accused is thoroughly fucked.

Wrongful imprisonment compensation re-balances that equation. Now when setting bail instead of only considering runaway risk, they also have to consider the strength of the evidence and severity of the crime and balance it against the risk of losing the case and having to pay out compensation. This is still a little weighted towards the state but is much less one-sided than the current system.

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