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Abolish the Cash Bail System

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Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#71

Post by dragonwriter »

ars wrote: post #28
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is fucking crazy. That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality. From everything I read, it's rather scary to be poor in America, especially if you have to deal with the judicial or medical system.

> or medical system. Poor people get medicaid, which is actually pretty decent insurance since it's private (non government) insurance, paid for by the government. It's actually the middle class that has it hard: Too rich for medicaid, too poor to easily afford the deductibles. (I know this is an unpopular opinion, but things were better before Obamacare - deductibles were much much lower.)

> Poor people get medicaid, which is actually pretty decent insurance since it's private (non government) insurance, paid for by the government.

Medicaid isn't consistently private insurance paid for by the government; though “managed risk” through outside (sometimes still publicly operated; several of them in California are county-run) plans is an increasingly popular model, though many states continue to have traditional fee-for-service model as well (California has a mix of managed care and fee-for-service.)

> (I know this is an unpopular opinion, but things were better before Obamacare - deductibles were much much lower.)

It's not the most popular opinion, by it remains extremely widespread, and lots of money, effort, and propaganda has expended to generate and maintain this opinion over the last decade.

Also, premiums and deductibles were often lower because the combination of lifetime limits, preexisting condition exclusions and the associated recission practice [0], and the cancel-and-refund practice [1], all of which the ACA banned, made it possible for insurance companies to collect premiums and then find an excuse to leave people who thought they were insured uninsured when they actually needed the insurance most.

[0] whereby insurance companies would investigate for anything they could characterize as evidence of an undisclosed preexistinf condition as a pretext for cancelling the policy once someone started to look like an expensive case.

[1] whereby, lacking even the pretext of an undisclosed preexisting condition, when someone looked to become too expensive, the insurance company would just cancel their policy and refund all past premiums (and eat the cost of any previous benefits received.)

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#72

Post by ithkuil »

Larrikin wrote: post #38
creato wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of bail is to put the defendant (or someone close to them) on the hook to pay the bail if the defendant doesn't show up in court. Bail bondsmen offer a different deal: pay us a fee (smaller than the bond), we'll pay your bail. If you don't show up to court, the bondsmen loses the bail bond unless they can go find the defendant and bring them into court. I think maybe the thing that should most change in thi…

Why are we contracting out to a private business an actual sensible thing for the police to do? Law enforcement tracks down people with warrants why not issue warrants for people who skip out on court?

Looks like the system has been designed in ancient times when society was quite different

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#73

Post by kelnos »

ars wrote: post #27
ketzo wrote: post #2

Absolutely. It’s one of the most cruel and predatory systems that I can imagine — regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Christ. Give me a break. It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for. > Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. Th…

> your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Isn't bail adjusted based on the persons financial status? Unlike road fines and the like, it's one of the few things that do take into account a persons wealth.

There are quite a few people who get caught in the system for whom any amount of bail would be an unreasonable financial hardship. Seems that if they really means-tested bail, they'd come up with "zero" for a lot people, and would likely just require they stay jailed pre-trial.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#74

Post by specialist »

Someones, somewheres has done a better job of handling the accused pre-trial.

Start there. Give me a name. Show me a role model to emulate.

Then tell me how we get from here to there.

But even better, just tell me what you want. Give me action steps, some talking points.

Because you had me at "Hello." I really don't need a PhD thesis relitigating western philosophy since Plato.

(Ditto each and every other progressive policy issue.)

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#75

Post by dragonwriter »

ithkuil wrote: post #68
ars wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or medical system. Poor people get medicaid, which is actually pretty decent insurance since it's private (non government) insurance, paid for by the government. It's actually the middle class that has it hard: Too rich for medicaid, too poor to easily afford the deductibles. (I know this is an unpopular opinion, but things were better before Obamacare - deductibles were much much lower.)

(non american here) so what was the problem ACA was designed to solve? I assume there must have been another group of people who are not poor enough but not middle class enough? Or something else? I care about your unpopular opinion since the popular ones are easier to find

The ACA addressed numerous issues, some of the more notable ones:

(1) it included a very significant expansion of Medicaid eligibility.

(2) for people just outside of Medicaid eligibility, it includes public subsidies for exchange-listed plans.

(3) it banned a number of practices which made insurance either inaccessible or illusory, most notably preexisting condition exclusions (and the associated practice of looking for an indicator of preexisting condition and using it as pretext to cancel the policy when someone was diagnosed with an expensive-to-care-for condition), but also cancel-and-refund practices, and lifetime benefit limits.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#76

Post by kepler1 »

You know, systems were established for a reason. It's not like the cash bail system was some ridiculous fanciful notion that someone created to torture the poor.

We have arrested people pay cash bail so that we have some forcing function to ensure that they don't flee. And maybe a little bit to provide people the incentive not to commit crime in the first place. I don't know why, but that seems to be considered discriminatory these days. Maybe if people are experiencing hardship from being held in jail, they should try not to commit crimes?

What I fear about all the social justice movements is that when you get into nitty-gritty details, the symbols that activists want to believe in (eliminating discrimination) do not actually improve the lives of people experiencing disadvantage in society very much when the actual plan of what to do materializes from the advocates of change.

Dismantle the police? I think the people worst served by this idea are the poor and powerless being victimized by crime every day. They need more police presence and enforcement of law and order for their neighborhoods, not less.

Think about the side effects of the symbols you want fulfilled. And if all your involvement is sitting in your white neighborhood and not having to deal with the effects of your advocacy, maybe you shouldn't be so opinionated to say how things should be changed.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#77

Post by menage »

tyrust wrote: post #40
tom-_- wrote: post #22

California Prop 25 on the ballot this election replaces cash bails with a risk assessment scoring system based on Senate Bill 10: https://policylab.stanford.edu/media/improving-california-ba... Note the flaws in its design that could replace the existing system with one that has potentially worse biases.

It looks like you have linked a paper proposing an improvement to SB10 that is unrelated to Prop 25, was this intentional?

After SB10 was passed by the legislature, the opposition (mostly bail bond companies?) gathered enough signatures to force a "veto referendum", i.e. a referendum on whether SB10 should be adopted as the legislature had voted, or should be dropped. That referendum is Prop 25.

Edit: Parent is right, the link is to a different issue.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#78

Post by refurb »

javajosh wrote: post #13
jennyyang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conviction rate is very high, upwards of 85% in some states. So it's not like large swaths of completely innocent people are being held in jails. I'm okay with pre-trial incarceration as long as everyone gets treated equally. Since they aren't, I think non-cash bail is a good idea, with strict requirements to check in with an officer, etc. If they don't meet their appointments or break the terms of their bail, I'…

Not an expert, but I imagine the conviction rate is high because prosecutors make it the path-of-least resistance to freedom. Competent legal assistance is expensive, and building a defense is also expensive and time-consuming. So I wouldn't say that an 85% conviction rate implies anything about the innocence of pre-trial prisoners. Moreover, I think it is dangerous to do so, lest it be a circular argument: why did y…

It would be interesting to see data on how many charges are dropped. You are correct that cases are submitted to the DA, they look at all the evidence and decide whether or not they will prosecute. A big part of that is "can I even get a conviction?"

So you'd expect a relatively high conviction rate just based on the fact that cases where conviction is unlikely are filtered out before they ever get to trial.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#79

Post by techsupporter »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #41
techsupporter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe our system has flaws that need correcting, but I do not advocate destroying the system to fix them. “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.“ - Justice Blackstone I don’t understand why and how we got so far away from the idea that state punishment is the last resort, instead making it the first. Especially in the States, we do so many things that, even in the moment we…

Suffering is on a scale. Its better that a few innocent people sit around for a few days than one guilty person getting out and killing someone. The risks should be evaluated and the result being keeping innocent people waiting for as little as possible while also preventing criminals from getting away.

> Its better that a few innocent people sit around for a few days than one guilty person getting out and killing someone.

Considering the comparatively tiny number of murders committed in such a way that an individual determination of the denial of any bail cannot be made, relative to the massive impact of just leaving “a few innocent people” in jail for “a few days”, I disagree.

For the people most likely to not be bailed out almost immediately—as in, people who have the fewest resources—sitting in jail for a few days can be (and usually is, hence the point of this article) absolutely catastrophic. Life-ruining, all out of the fear that one person might slip through the cracks.

That’s unacceptable. We can do better.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#80

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

unishark wrote: post #67
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conviction rate is because people are forced to plea out to avoid the stacked overcharging done by prosecutors. You either take the 1-5, or go to trial and risk 20 to Life. The conviction rate at the state level is most certainly not something to be proud of because of the way it's obtained >...However, there needs to be some provision to make sure that they don't stay in jail longer than what their offense would…

Funny story but the public defender jumped at the chance to "go out back and fight". And the judge got first sanctioned then lost his job. And I rather doubt the 85 percent is dominated by innocent people accused of first degree murder pleading it down to 1-5.

I was being kind of sarcastic with the 1-5 -> 20+, but the point still stands, you can look at being home to see your child finish high school, or be a grandfather to a teenager when you are released.
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