> Which is the problem: even if you did not commit the crime for which you're charged, you end up in jail because you literally cannot afford not to. Then you lose your job, because you know, you were in jail.
Yes; putting people in jail is a mechanism for making sure people show up to court. It is a very effective mechanism. And it remains a mechanism even after California's reforms.
There's no civil right to receive an offer of bail. Perhaps there should be some sort of legal protection so people don't lose their jobs on account of merely being arrested, but the court always has the option not to offer bail and just hold you until trial. And I think this reform actually makes that outcome more likely, which I'll explain more below.
> or if you could afford the bond you're out the bond (it does. not. get. refunded. It's pure profit for bail bond companies).
Bail bondsmen are essentially loaning you money to pay bail, it's just that you pay the interest up front as a lump sum payment. (Also, you're securing the loan by granting the bail bondsman the legal right to apprehend you and bring you to jail if you skip your court date, which is why bail bonds are still affordable despite the obviously high risk inherent in them.)
> There are also cases where bail has been used to get people who are innocent to take plea agreements, which inflates police/prosecutor success rates while simultaneously allowing the actual criminal to go free. The basic statement is "take this community service plea or we'll set your bail too high for you to afford". Again, numerous documented cases of this exist.
Sources?
In any case, the essential problem is that someone has to estimate a combination of three factors:
* The probability that the suspect will miss their court date
* The cost of trying to apprehend the suspect and return them to jail, if they miss their court date
* The probability of success of trying to apprehend the suspect and return them to jail, if they miss their court date
The bail system solves this problem. If a bail bondsman is willing to bet their money on you in exchange for a certain bond amount, and you can afford the bond amount, you don't have to stay in jail. The bail bondsman has the incentive to accurately estimate all of these factors, and also has greater knowledge of them, because the bail bondsman himself is often the one to apprehend you if you skip court. If the bail bondsman miscalculates and offers bail to risky suspects, he loses money and goes out of business; if he miscalculates and doesn't offer bail to safe suspects, he loses money to his competitors. So not only is the bail bondsman making better bets, he's also only risking his own money.
Having bureaucrats making the decision and sheriff's deputies trying to round up people who missed their court date is going to be far less efficient, and will probably result in more people staying in jail, because there will be a much stronger incentive to err in the direction of keeping people in jail. A bail bondsman who never issues any bail bonds goes out of business; a county that never releases suspects of their own recognizance has 100% of suspects show up to their court dates.
Once we recognize the fact that it really sucks to get arrested and sent to jail, and that many innocent people are arrested and sent to jail and suffer serious life consequences as a result, then the question becomes: how do we effectively reduce this suffering while still being reasonably certain that criminal defendants don't miss court? I think the bail system likely solves this problem far more effectively, measured purely in terms of reducing the suffering of the people getting arrested than the California Bureau Of Arbitrarily Deciding Whether Or Not To Release You Of Your Own Recognizance.