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California governor signs overhaul of bail system

latimes.com

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Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#121

Post by donarb »

tommoor wrote: post #116
rdl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly, getting people to show up for trial. It might not be the best system, but it does work to some degree. For the same person, setting increased bail due to more serious allegations or greater flight risk does seem to make sense. That people have wildly different levels of wealth to start with is the major problem, but a system that would give me a $5000 bail on a shoplifting charge vs. a $5mm bail on murder see…

It seems like they could go with a system similar to some of the nordic countries do for driving tickets where the bail amount is a percentage of your earnings.

Don’t you mean the fine amount? I doubt any jurisdictions arrest for traffic infractions.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#122

Post by dragonwriter »

Someone1234 wrote: post #24
ENOTTY wrote: post #19

Both judges and "risk-assessment tools" have biases. Judges have unconscious biases and risk-assessment tools are fed biased data. So I'm not confident this will actually help matters.

Judge's biases exist in the money bail system too. Judges often set bail amounts from a range. This doesn't solve all issues, this just solves one issue, which is that someone's economic status shouldn't be why they're in jail, only their likelihood of committing more crime, witness tampering, or skipping court. I'm sure this new system will have problems that will need to be addressed, but it is a moral thing to TRY…

> Judge's biases exist in the money bail system too. Judges often set bail amounts from a range.

Or deny it because no arrangement can adequately guarantee appearance, yes. The fact that money is the key element used to guarantee appearance doesn't mean that money is always sufficient even in the money bail system.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#123

Post by Gibbon1 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #58
koolba wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting people to show up to trial is the main one. I’d like to see an experiment where rather than money, instead a free citizen is offered up for bail. And if you don’t show up for trial the citizen goes to jail till they apprehend you.

> Getting people to show up to trial is the main one. So I think at the top end of the spectrum this might make sense. The problem is that a very large percentage people in jail are there because their bail was literally $50 or $100 but they didn't have the money to pay it, so they end up in jail for months or years on end. And for these people, bail has zero impact on whether they show up for trial.

I think it's devolved into mostly getting in the way and generating perverse outcomes.

Used to be if you skipped town the local authorities would have no way of tracking you down. And authorities where ever you fled to would often have no ability to tell if you had a warrant. That's mostly not true anymore.

So then you have people sitting in jail because they're broke, probably too broke to fee even. And for crimes where if they did flee might be in everyone's interest. The police will surely be heartbroken to find out a local trouble maker decided to leave town. /s

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#124

Post by GeneralMayhem »

lsiebert wrote: post #118

I'd remind people that when dealing with a bad system, a less bad system that still has bad points is still an improvement. What you really want is a system that allows further changes based on assessment of it's faults.

That's true, but not always politically viable. You only get to muster up the political will to take a swing at the big structural problems every so often. If this turns out to be horribly insufficient of a measure, it'll be a few years before it's likely to change again, so for that reason it's understandable for organizations like the ACLU to be annoyed at what they see as missing their shot.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#125

Post by dragonwriter »

jmspring wrote: post #103
firic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with one party? How is a primary system in one party different than a general election amongst two parties?

California did better with balanced government. Republican Gov and democratic legislature. There was some semblance of balance. Without that balance, we see prop 47 and 57. Local communities using those as an excuse to not really do much in the way of law enforcement — the city government of Santa Cruz was actively hostile toward the police well into the 90s. An individual casing bikes with bike tools in the east bay…

> California did better with balanced government. Republican Gov and democratic legislature.

No, it didn't. It was nonstop crisis.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#126

Post by Gibbon1 »

davidsawyer wrote: post #91
maxxxxx wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it used to be in Britain. Rich people would send somebody else to prison in their place.

Wow, that's absolutely insane. How did people think that was a good idea?

During the civil war you could get out of being drafted by paying someone to take your place.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#127

Post by trhway »

0xffff2 wrote: post #61
olliej wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly due to the increasing evidence of: * Clear biases in distribution of bail vs. non-bail gated release * The substantially unbalanced cost of bail for poor vs. middle-class and up. Basically: if your bail costs $1000 and you make $50k/year you can probably arrange cash to cover it. If you make 20k/year you probably cannot, so your option is to lose $100 - bail bond is not returned to you - or you literally…

>or you literally go to jail without a trial. You go to jail until your trial. Not quite the same thing.

You go to jail and that makes you more pliable for a plea deal.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#128

Post by olliej »

woolvalley wrote: post #102
olliej wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my inclination is that all non-violent offenses should be on recognizance (or however that's worded) unless there's historic evidence that you will miss your court dates. If you have previously skipped court dates then we shouldn't necessarily assume that you would make future court dates, so why do we believe bail would mean anything?

Would you call physical theft a violent or non-violent crime? How about if that theft involved property damage?

Honestly: I don't know. Seriously, I'm not saying these problems are easy, I'm saying that the current policies of anything and everything can lead to jail time results in long term negative effects that exacerbate existing biases. The current bail system feeds on this - if all crimes carry the potential for jail time, then all defendants can be threatened with jail time in exchange for a plea bargain that has a false confession.

Let's say we go for something like "no direct victims" e.g. possession, drunk and disorderly, etc have no jail penalty, theft or violent crime does? But then how to you class smashing a window during a protest: Is that deserving of jail time? If not, then why is there the threat of incarceration pending bail? Again: I don't know, none of this really has easy yes/no answers.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#129

Post by philwelch »

pishpash wrote: post #63
philwelch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 receiv…

If that were the case, then why bother having bail hearings? Just set bail uniformly to some high number like $1M, payable only through a bail bond agency, and let those agents bid on how much premium to charge. Credible people would pay market rate for a collateralized or uncollateralized personal loan, because that's what they could have gotten from a bank in the first place. Oh right, poor people can't get loans.…

There’s no financial risk: the bondsman pays bail directly to the court on behalf of the defendant, and the bail is returned to the bondsman upon the defendant successfully appearing. This is what gives the bondsman the legal right to apprehend the defendant if he does not appear in court. The defendant can’t take the bail money and run. If he could, bail bonds would not be a viable business.

If you intend to show up to court, and can get a personal loan large enough to cover bail, of course you’re better off doing that. And if you skip bail and don’t get the money back and have no means to repay that personal loan, you carry that debt with you and you cease to have the ability to take out large personal loans, so skipping bail isn’t really a sustainable life strategy in that case, either. And yeah, I’d actually be in favor of sliding-scale bail so rich people couldn’t just pay their own bail either, though you’d need to figure out what to do if you ever arrested Jeff Bezos because I don’t think Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are gonna put their money together to be his bondsmen :)

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#130

Post by Johnny555 »

rdl wrote: post #99
jaxn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of good sides to the bail system. What positives do you see.

Mostly, getting people to show up for trial. It might not be the best system, but it does work to some degree. For the same person, setting increased bail due to more serious allegations or greater flight risk does seem to make sense. That people have wildly different levels of wealth to start with is the major problem, but a system that would give me a $5000 bail on a shoplifting charge vs. a $5mm bail on murder see…

Mostly, getting people to show up for trial.

Here's a section from the actual bill:

A person released pursuant to the local rule of court shall be released on his or her own recognizance or on supervised own recognizance release ... A person shall not be required to pay for any nonmonetary condition or combination of conditions imposed pursuant to this section

I believe Supervised Own Recognizance means that the defendant can be required to wear a GPS tracking ankle bracelet (but under this bill, they can't be required to pay for it).

So that may do more to ensure that the defendant shows up for trial than leaving his girlfriend on the hook for $25K of bail money if he skips the trial. Plus, it seems that it'd be a good deterrent from committing other crimes while waiting for trial.

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