Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#91

Post by drilldrive » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

richardhod wrote: post #66

drilldrive wrote: post #24

Cash bail is a terrible system, but not having it is worse. At least from what I understand, the states removing cash bail end up having the judges keep much more people in jail, as suddenly everybody is a flight risk.

This is a false dichotomy. There is non-cash bail too, and other systems of encouraging or ensuring people attend court.

Of course there are other options, but nothing gets people to show up quite like money does. I looked a fair bit and unfortunately have not found any statistics on holding rates before and after bail reform in the states doing so, neither have I found flight rates before and after, so if anybody could clear the air here I would greatly appreciate it.

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#92

Post by clairity » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #57

candiodari wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article also proves things that people were unwilling to accept in this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19253333 There people always made the point that human judges making just decisions based on fairness. Well, clearly not. Algorithms would be another, better way to know exactly what makes the determination if a person should be released awaiting trial or not.

> Algorithms would be another, better way... Humans are flawed, and any system made by humans will be flawed. That's just reality. Whether the system is composed of human judges or human built mechanical judges, it will display the same biases of-, and will be vulnerable to the same manipulation by-, humans that exists today. People like cops and DA's will figure out, "Hey! Just feed it the right input, I'll get the…

we have ways to compensate for human flaws - like having a diverse group checking and balancing each other. it’s (seen as) inefficient but that doesn’t account for hidden costs like people’s lives being destroyed by injustice.

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#93

Post by esotericn » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #15

I wish we would focus more on reweaving our tattered social fabric so people can access housing, healthcare, etc affordably and consistently. We also need to make it easier for parents to put their kids first. From what I gather, money spent on preschool reduces money spent on prison down the line as just one example of the direct and known connection between how we treat our kids and crime statistics. I'm not saying…

Agree wholeheartedly.

I'm British; our problems are quite different; but in my mind it's a similar principle.

Something that sticks in my mind is a tendency to focus on "the poor". The sense that there's an undefeatable "poor" by definition. We need "housing for the poor", "jobs for the poor", and so on and so forth.

This article is an example of it. It's basically saying "if you have no money bad things happen to you". Which is mind bendingly, blindingly obvious, in a world in which we've made money _everything_ and in which we've created conditions in which most individuals won't have much or any of it.

A solid example of that sort of firefighting.

What we actually need is for there to be no, or very few, "poor". For society to be less stratified, so that people can actually consider each other neighbours rather than essentially different species living on the same land.

I don't know how to achieve it, but I know that food banks and homeless shelters and "affordable" housing and all of these tweaks are really papering over our inability to just come out and say.. something?

Everyone who is willing to contribute to society gets to share in the wealth of it. I don't know what it looks like, but it doesn't look like the current situation.

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#94

Post by ska » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #74

throwaway_boi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race variable is often correlated with other data. Look at red lining in real estate/banking. They marked black neighbourhoods with red boxes, white neighbourhoods with green. The bank would approve business and home loans depending on if you were in a red or green area. Algorithmically the banks did not engage in a racist practice but systemically they are.

But did they mark red areas because they were black neighborhoods or because historically people in those neighborhoods defaulted on loans? An algorithm as simple as "mark neighborhoods with high default rates as red, low default rates as green" would probably turn out to be "racist" even if it is also flagging poor white trailer parks with red. There's no easy way to solve that

At least in the case of historic redlining (i.e. where the term came from), we don't have to wonder - there has been a ton of research done on this, and it was pretty clearly a racially motivated discriminatory practice. A fact which resulting in, among other measures, the fair housing act in the late 60s....

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#95

Post by mikeash » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #50

Someone1234 wrote: post #3

This is a very interesting data driven article that will make you depressed. I recommend it. > Technological solutions, like electronic anklets that monitor an individual’s whereabouts, are another option. Even sending text-message reminders to show up in court makes it more likely that a defendant will do so. All these options are cheaper than incarceration. I hope this gains popularity. Cash bail discriminates agai…

If I'm a bail bondsman, I'm probably already sending text messages to my clients to make sure they show up in court, because if they don't, I'm the one out the money unless I go pick them up and take them to the county jail myself. I'm not sure about ankle bracelets, but there's no reason they couldn't be part of the current bail system, either--if I'm a bail bondsman, I'd give a discount to any client that wears an…

How much competition is there going to be the bail bondsman for the homeless guy who gets picked up for vagrancy, or a poor person working paycheck to paycheck who already owes his soul to the local payday lenders?

Your proposal sounds like a great way to get excellent bail services for people who have money, but that’s not how the courts are supposed to work.

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#96

Post by fgonzag » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #88

Hello71 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think private bondsmen in the US can legally contract to require people to wear ankle bracelets. More fundamentally though, these sorts of "free market" theories tend to assume an unreasonable amount of options and knowledge of potential clients. See: payday loans. Sure, in theory all the details of the loans are pre-agreed, and customers sure do have a lot of options. In practice, the most ethical providers…

I bet they have apps they could require people to stick in their phone which do the same thing. If not, and you feel like contributing to the dystopian hellscape we live in: business oppos!

Unless you plan on surgically implanting the phone, I don't think that's a bulletproof plan

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#97

Post by scottlocklin » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

fgonzag wrote: post #96

scottlocklin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they have apps they could require people to stick in their phone which do the same thing. If not, and you feel like contributing to the dystopian hellscape we live in: business oppos!

Unless you plan on surgically implanting the phone, I don't think that's a bulletproof plan

I dunno have you seen human beings lately? Most people seem to be surgically attached to their nerd dild^H^H^H phones. Assuming the bailee is a rational and well intentioned actor (the article does seem to imply many people miss court because they forget), this is probably a reasonable thing to do.

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#98

Post by crankylinuxuser » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 12:09 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #95

philwelch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm a bail bondsman, I'm probably already sending text messages to my clients to make sure they show up in court, because if they don't, I'm the one out the money unless I go pick them up and take them to the county jail myself. I'm not sure about ankle bracelets, but there's no reason they couldn't be part of the current bail system, either--if I'm a bail bondsman, I'd give a discount to any client that wears an…

How much competition is there going to be the bail bondsman for the homeless guy who gets picked up for vagrancy, or a poor person working paycheck to paycheck who already owes his soul to the local payday lenders? Your proposal sounds like a great way to get excellent bail services for people who have money, but that’s not how the courts are supposed to work.

> Your proposal sounds like a great way to get excellent bail services for people who have money, but that’s not how the courts are supposed to work.

Sure about that? The way this country is heading is "One dollar = One vote". And once a sector gets accustomed to a stream of cash, there's no way to stop that flow of money.. No matter how dirty that money is.

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#99

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #67

jakelazaroff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compulsory surgically-implanted surveillance transmitters after being charged with a crime seems… extremely dystopian?

For people not yet convicted, I agree. For the already convicted it seems less dystopian than locking them in a concrete and steel cage with violent felons.

Aren't the "violent felons" in prison, while those not yet convicted held in jail?

Re: Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years

#100

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 12:17 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #37

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm confused to why a system needs to have bail bondsmen - isn't the idea behind bail being something you can possibly give up but want to get back? Isn't bail bonds something you can't afford? Even just paying the fee might be too much for people, but the alternative is to wait in jail an unjust amount of time.

Most people don't have enough cash on hand to pay any amount of bail that would serve as an incentive for them to get back--especially not most people who get arrested on criminal complaints. The bail bondsman actually provides another service to the court: he has the legal power and financial incentive to apprehend a suspect and return them to the custody of the court if you skip bail. In other words, instead of the…

> It's a fairly underrated and underappreciated market mechanism where the entire problem of "making sure people show up to court if they are on trial" can be handled by a competitive market, usually more efficiently or humanely than most local governments would do themselves.

The idea that the US and the Phillipines, the two countries where bail is dominated by commercial bail bondsman, handle this matter more humanely than the rest of the world is, at best, not obviously correct and could use some support.