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Abolish the Cash Bail System

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Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#231

Post by Broken_Hippo »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #166
kstenerud wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Europe doesn't have bail bonds, and seems to function quite well. People don't run away, because running away from a criminal prosecution means your current life (house, possessions, career, friends, family, etc) is over. People who actually are flight risks (due to the nature of the crime, extensive assets out-of-country, etc) can be held in jail pending trial, but that's pretty rare. OR consider it this way…

Western Europe barely works. Bringing one data point: my ex landlord wasn't really the owner of the house and was scamming rich landlords who had too many properties to control them properly. He also scammed tenants (eg. Not returning deposits). The London metropolitan police jailed him, plenty of evidence and testimonies. He was released nonetheless, he escaped to Dubai (where he has family), he came back to the UK…

You provided one example. I'm going to guess this person could have just posted bail and ran regardless. Bail isn't foolproof, and if you have enough money, you can get out of it. Heck, simply having money makes your odds of getting found 'not guilty' much greater in the US.

The problem is that bail really doesn't work better than a lot of other sorts of interventions. Know what has a good track record? Letting folks go and having them check in regularly. Calling them to remind them of appointments and court dates. And this has the added benefit of not ruining innocent people's lives and it is a better use of taxpayer money.

Not forcing ruin on folks really does help society at large.

Making victimless crimes legal wouldn't help with keeping innocent folks out of jail. Everyone in jail before trial is innocent. It doesn't matter what they are charged with - before trial, they are innocent. Even if the crime committed had a victim.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#232

Post by nobody9999 »

refurb wrote: post #78
javajosh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

Except non-prosecution is a tiny percentage of cases where no trial is held. Only 2% of Federal criminal cases actually go to trial[0], and 97% end with the defendant pleading to a lesser charge.

Overall, something like 90-95% of all criminal cases in the US end with a plea bargain[1]

Usually, the prosecutor uses the threat of jail or prison (for more minor offenses) or the threat of lengthy (15 years? Life?) for more serious ones to force a defendant to plead guilty to a lesser charge. And this is true even if the defendant is innocent of the crime charged.

And when someone is poor and can't afford bail, prosecutors can exert even more pressure to force a plea bargain[2], as the defendant (whether or not they actually committed a crime) will sit in jail either until they agree to plead guilty to something or go to trial.

How long would you keep your job if you were sitting in jail? How long before you couldn't pay your rent/mortgage without income from that job? Or even worse, if you're a single parent, how long could you retain custody of your children?

And it just gets worse. Should you plead guilty, you now have a criminal record and most employers won't hire you.

And remember, these are people who haven't been convicted of a crime, and no court or jury has heard their case. Yet many people's lives are ruined just because they're poor and can't afford to pay bail.

Edit: Fixed percentage of overall cases which end with a plea bargain.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...

[1] https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/docu... [PDF]

[2] https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/docu...

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#233

Post by alexilliamson »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #230
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is easy to get thrown in jail. This is especially true if your skin isn't white enough: How many stories do you hear of folks being in jail for having the description, "Tall black male?". You act like everyone can avoid all things: Have you never met anyone put in jail for not paying child support when they don't have a job... in part, because they were put in jail for not paying child support? Or... you can l…

>But it is easy to get thrown in jail. This is especially true if your skin isn't white enough: How many stories do you hear of folks being in jail for having the description, "Tall black male?". I'm sorry to break your narrative, but this is NOT true in my experience at all. 99.999999% of the time, if you end up in jail, you knowingly engaged in questionable activity or associated yourself with criminal deviants. Do…

Do you work at a jail? You must have lots of firsthand experience if you can calculate that frequency with precision to the millionths.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#234

Post by andrewaylett »

roenxi wrote: post #185
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…

> regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? The money is presumably to cover the cost of sending someone out to find the accused and drag them to the courthouse. If someone can't afford to pay the bond and then tries to run, I don't see how that money can be reclaimed except for the taxpayer covering it. Someone has decided it is easi…

But keeping them locked up _also_ costs money. And not just the direct costs, the taxpayers wind up on the hook for all the indirect costs too.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#235

Post by Broken_Hippo »

rlpb wrote: post #220
bawolff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro side: I don't see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don't flee, in principle. It makes sure people are less likely to run away while at the same time doesnt force them to sit in jail while they await trial. It should be relative to your ability to pay, and the commercial bondsman industry seems messed up, but those are implementation details and not the core of the system…

> Pro side: I don't see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don't flee, in principle. In the UK you get bail automatically unless you are a flight risk. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. Why should the burden of proof not be reversed in the US? What good does it do to automatically assume that everyone is a flight risk, when we know that most people are not?

Because while you are technically innocent until proven guilty, society treats folks that are arrested as guilty unless proven innocent - and even then, if they were acting properly, they think they wouldn't have been arrested.

Example: a background check sometimes produces an arrest record (not a conviction), and that can cost a job. Background check companies don't have to be licensed, and no one keeps track.

But you are correct: The burden of proof should be reversed. We know most folks aren't a flight risk and gentle measures - such as having folks check in and calling folks to remind them of court dates - have good results.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#236

Post by jstanley »

ldoughty wrote: post #227
jstanley wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but you can't really argue your way around: > This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law

If you take a drunk driver to jail to wait out the night.. or a teen caught in a liquor store with a broken window at 3am... Or you pick up a domestic abuser and take them to jail to get them away from their victim while collecting evidence and statements... Those are all people that are presumed innocent under the law... They may spend only minutes or hours in jail as police gather and verify their information... Ru…

Well we are given the statistic that half a million people are in jail each day. The US population is about 330 million, so if what you are saying is accurate, the mean person can expect to go to jail once every 660 days.

Does that sound reasonable?

If that seems like an unreasonable proportion of your time to be spending in jail, it's probably also an unreasonable proportion of the population to be keeping in jail.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#237

Post by koheripbal »

hospadar wrote: post #229

Lots of speculation in the comments is answered by the article itself: - There's little/no evidence that cash bail increases the rate at which people show up for trial - People are (shocker) better able to defend their innocence when they haven't been rotting in jail pre-trial - People are less likely to commit other crimes before trial if they have a shorter stay in jail - Recidivism rates are lower when people spen…

> Recidivism rates are lower when people spend less time in jail

This one might just be confirmation bias as lesser sentences may be indicative of less violent criminal behavior. Without knowing what they controlled for, it's hard to accept this one as evidence.

The others make sense.

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#238

Post by nobody9999 »

serf wrote: post #119
kepler1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status... Are you f'ing kidding me? Regardless of what crime you commit, you should be able to go home and see your family? What ridiculous world are you advocating for here? Do you even think about the implications of your ideas?

>What ridiculous world are you advocating for here? Do you even think about the implications of your ideas? well, given that really atrocious crimes rarely have bail set, it seems as if the 'world being advocated' by the parent here is a world in which the punishment for your crime is not scaled by the amount of money you are capable of coming up with. The perpetrator of a bail-set crime should not have less practica…

>The perpetrator of a bail-set crime should not have less practical punishment for the crime simply because they paid their way out of part of the punishment.

Except pretrial detention, which is where bail comes in, is done prior to adjudication (plea bargain, trial, etc.), not after.

As such, the folks we're talking about haven't been convicted of anything. And if, as is supposed to be the case, that one is innocent until proven guilty, you're advocating for innocent people to be punished.

Is that actually your stance on this, or were you not understanding the situation?

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#239

Post by vidarh »

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…

The entire US justice system is a dystopia to me.

As someone who grew up in Norway, if I somehow found myself on a US jury I'd be had pressed to be able to morally justify voting "guilty" even if the accused stood up in court and committed the crime in front of me, because of the inhumane prison system and length of sentences.

It's a system that is fundamentally about satisfying a desire for vengeance at all cost, not about making society better.

[I'll add to this that Norway had a pretty brutal prison system too, until a prison reform movement started gaining traction in the 60's. The interesting part is that as it turns out, treating people like humans instead of abusing them tends to reduce re-offending]

Re: Abolish the Cash Bail System

#240

Post by 0xBA5ED »

alexilliamson wrote: post #233
0xBA5ED wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it is easy to get thrown in jail. This is especially true if your skin isn't white enough: How many stories do you hear of folks being in jail for having the description, "Tall black male?". I'm sorry to break your narrative, but this is NOT true in my experience at all. 99.999999% of the time, if you end up in jail, you knowingly engaged in questionable activity or associated yourself with criminal deviants. Do…

Do you work at a jail? You must have lots of firsthand experience if you can calculate that frequency with precision to the millionths.

"99.9999999%" means "almost always". It isn't a precise calculation, which you know. Just look at the US arrest statistics. See how many total arrests there are annually and ask yourself how many of those could be for "no good reason". Even if it's a high percentage like 10%, it is still very unlikely to occur to the average person.
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