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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

#201

Post by jaxn »

woolvalley wrote: post #196
jaxn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is and isn't a violent crime is already well-defined. Mugging is a violent crime, but shoplifting isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime

The thing is, I don't really care if people are using illegal substances or selling illegal services / objects between each other. But I get pretty pissed off when someone steals my bike, smashes my car, wakes me up in the middle of the night or similar. These are not necessarily violent, but they still are things I feel like we should prevent more than the other types.

These issues with bonds have nothing to do with crime prevention. And whether or not you are pissed off has no bearing on how an innocent person should be treated.

Oh, and in the US, every person is innocent until proven guilty in the court of law. So by definition, every bond is issued to an innocent person.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#202

Post by mirimir »

lightbyte wrote: post #169
mirimir wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive. So why did she do that? And did they deserve it? I'm guessing maybe a bicycle accident. Just a wild guess. I mean, been there, almost did that. But with a chain, not a bat. Those jerks almost killed me.

>And did they deserve it? Is this sarcasm? I'm struggling to think of a good reason for three elderly people to deserve getting beaten with a bat.

No, I wasn't being sarcastic. Seeing a friend run off the road while riding, and almost killed, and having people stop and blame them for the accident, generates lots of anger. I know, because I've been there. And I've also been run off the road myself, more than once.

So anyway, does that equate to "deserve it"? Maybe not, upon calm reflection. But sometimes shit just gets out of hand. I am, of course, sympathetic for everyone involved.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#203

Post by topmonk »

shimms wrote: post #107
topmonk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would easy for people to coerce others into giving up money for bail, as well. How is this worse in that aspect?

Because in the first example all the person lost was money, in the other - their liberty. Not sure how they're at all comparable.

The judge can oversee it, and if it appears anything illegal was involved, he can disallow it.

With money, this is much harder, because it's difficult to determine where money really came from.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#204

Post by WillPostForFood »

dragonwriter wrote: post #193
WillPostForFood wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then a common sense incremental change would be to drop or discourage those tiny bail amounts, not throw out the whole system. Speaking of losing jobs, a whole industry just lost theirs.

> Well, then a common sense incremental change would be to drop or discourage those tiny bail amounts, Or, we could instead try replacing money bail in a relatively small jurisdiction (say, Washington, D.C.) for a number of years, and if it works well do it in a larger jurisdiction. Once the first step of that has been done and shown to work, the case for smaller incremental steps in the next jurisdiction, though, is…

Since DC got rid of the whole system, you don’t know if they could have achieved a better result with an incremental move.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#205

Post by lsiebert »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #124
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.

And that's why the ACLU is still working to make regulation of this rule and how it's assessments work more fair. It wanted changes to the risk assessment tools in the bill, but didn't get that. What I think the various California ACLU groups (there are three of them actually) groups wanted data collection, independent risk assessment service agencies, and better due process for those facing negative bail decisions.

Anyway they are going to try to get changes to tweak the law, probably try to do their own assessments of racial bias, and I expect they'll sue locally for specific county level changes that are allowed within the law.

I think we'll get there. We know that existing risk assessment tools tend to overestimate black and latino people reoffending and underestimate white people, and if they can show a systemic bias they'll have ammunition to change things.

Getting rid of the bail industry is huge though, especially getting rid of lobbying from them against this in the next round. I'm hopeful that this will be a step forward, and allow for another step forward.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#206

Post by BoiledCabbage »

pc86 wrote: post #171
alistairSH wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they're eventually found innocent? Should the state pay then?

I'm torn on this one to be honest. Just to make the math easier let's say it costs the state $1/unit/day and 10% of those equipped are later found innocent. The state will have to charge people $1.10/day (or something close to that) due to the refunds, making it even harder for even more people to afford it in the first place. Innocence doesn't mean that you didn't use the service. Should the taxpayers foot the bill?…

> Innocence doesn't mean that you didn't use the service. Should the taxpayers foot the bill?

Of course the tax payer should pay. The criminal justice system is a service of society. The tax payer receives that benefit and as well pays its costs.

I'm really not sure what role and responsibilities people expect government to have in society.

What's next, start charging innocent people room and board for the period they were locked in jail, because they used that "service"?

The govt is not a business. Its purpose it not to make money, nor extract money from people charged with crimes. We don't want a society where you pay police each time they come to your house.

Capitalism isn't the end goal of society, it's a tool. I see way to many people on HN (not you specifically) where it seems the only tool they know of to solve a problem is "hmm.. I'll try to apply capitalism to that".

It is possible to frame every interaction in society as s product or service. The fact that we can doesn't mean we should.

I frequently see people caught up in the "technical problem solving" of how to transform something else into a buying and selling transaction with zero foresight into motivation or consequences of doing so.

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#207

Post by TomMckenny »

mikevp wrote: post #197
TomMckenny wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another instance was the removal of 3 California supreme court justices[1], including the first woman, for over turning too many death penalties and ruling against insurance companies too often (although the TV campaign to remove focused only insufficient zeal about the death penalty.) [1]Rose Bird, Cruz Reynoso, Joseph Grodin

In the case of Rose Bird, at least, it wasn't "overturning too many death penalty cases", it was policy of a blanket rubber-stamp "overturned" on any and all death penalty cases. She was opposed to the death penalty, and was imposing her opinion on the matter over the law.

That's certainly what the commercials said. But since no actual instance of ignoring the law was ever presented, I'm not sure why calm thinking individuals would solely trust vacuous repetitive hyperbolic TV commercials.

And then stretch that to two other Justices.

And as we now know the 80's clamor for less and less legal review and more and more executions had pretty bad outcomes[1]

[1]https://www.aclu.org/other/dna-testing-and-death-penalty

Re: California governor signs overhaul of bail system

#208

Post by jacobush »

acomar wrote: post #179
jacobush wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really weird when it's completely normal for insurance companies to take out TV ads for the removal of a judge. On the grounds of something unrelated, of course. So, we have the will of the people. So far, so good. And then we have the complete freedom of capital to nudge the will of the people. Something is wrong with this picture.

> complete freedom of capital to nudge the will of the people. "Nudge" is far too weak of a verb, here. There are many structural issues between the population and exercising their will, and many structural advantages that allow capital to exert undue pressure on the political process. These advantages and dis-advantages are inherent to our system and have been described at length in academia.

I am maybe too cynical. I meant nudge in the most cynical way imaginable. If you can "nudge" that avalanche or land slide juuust a little bit to the left, you can crush that house.
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