271–280 of 288 posts
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How do you reconcile this with the presumption of innocence? Is it ok to make an innocent person pay a burdensome amount until they are exonerated?
In a vast majority of US jurisdictions, the presumption of innocence is a ‘right’ that only exists for the defendant’s lawyer to y’all about at trial. Almost all law enforcement interaction and pre-trial court proceeding operate under an inference of ‘named defendant is more likely guilty than not’.
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…
Judges aren’t robots, either. Bail is assessed by both means and severity of crime. If you’ve never been in a courtroom, you might not know this.
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>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…
Everyone arrested is innocent. You seem to forget that. Maybe you just don't have much experience, or don't realize the vague descriptions police will use to bring folks in. Systematic racism makes this more likely if you aren't white. Systematic racism is a big issue. You can be arrested for being homeless or stealing food if you are starving (not everywhere has available shelters nor food pantries to go to, nor do…
>but I'm guessing you haven't spent much time around the sort of person that gets stopped for this sort of thing
>Your experience isn't broad enough
This is awfully presumptuous.
>Live in a legal state and forget to take those joints out of the care before going to an illegal state?
It is common knowledge that marijuana is not legal everywhere and there are a lot of restrictions. Honestly, "forgeting" your drugs in your car deserves a drug charge if you transport it somewhere illegal. People should be expected to maintain a minimum degree of personal responsibility in a civilized society. This includes following basic rules.
I can't speak on the experiences of the homeless.
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Yeah, what does that have to do with the paper the parent linked?
Prop 25 upholds SB 10. This paper suggests improvements to SB10 based on potential biases in its design.
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A ruling that you can’t be arrested for protesting does not mean you can’t be arrested while protesting. Batter a cop? You’re probably going for a ride even if you were at a protest, which seems fairly reasonable.
We have plenty of examples of peaceful people being arrested, though. Including journalists. All you really have to do is be there, and then you can be taken in with a slew of excuses.
The underlying problem is that people are being punished too much for minor transgressions and screwing people like that is making life worse for everyone by proxy. First you can tell the police to just not give a fuck. This works well for the kind of people police tend to favor. If you're wealthy and look the part or you're an attractive woman this solution will likely work well for you, being white sure won't hurt…
What is interesting to me is that the article itself does not consider this alternative at all. But the simplest way to drastically reduce the number of people who are in jail pretrial because they can't afford bail would be to make the things they were charged with no longer crimes. For example, simple drug possession.
> Criminals who have not yet crossed paths with the system to really get punished to the point of changing or thrown in jail will harm and kill people.
Harming and killing people, and threats to do those things, would still be crimes in a system where the things you describe were decriminalized, and if those kinds of crimes were the only crimes the justice system had to deal with, the system could afford to hold people charged with such crimes in jail pretrial without bail if it was deemed too risky to release them, because it wouldn't take months or years to try them.
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Everyone arrested is innocent. You seem to forget that. Maybe you just don't have much experience, or don't realize the vague descriptions police will use to bring folks in. Systematic racism makes this more likely if you aren't white. Systematic racism is a big issue. You can be arrested for being homeless or stealing food if you are starving (not everywhere has available shelters nor food pantries to go to, nor do…
>Maybe you just don't have much experience, or don't realize the vague descriptions police will use to bring folks in >but I'm guessing you haven't spent much time around the sort of person that gets stopped for this sort of thing >Your experience isn't broad enough This is awfully presumptuous. >Live in a legal state and forget to take those joints out of the care before going to an illegal state? It is common knowl…
Often, I find that discussion of "personal responsibility" often comes without a minimum of empathy or understanding. It is really easy to become comfortable with some things you buy regularly to be in your car, and really easy to forget that it is in your car. People forget things all the time. This is a common human error, and penalizing folks for life for a simple error seems harsh.
And sure, you can't speak on being homeless, but you can read about it and emphasize, at least. If anything, you can pretend you are planning on being homeless. Most of the stuff written won't enlighten you on being in a big city, and are written by folks that managed to come out the other side. Like this. http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/2004/10/introduction-...
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We have plenty of examples of peaceful people being arrested, though. Including journalists. All you really have to do is be there, and then you can be taken in with a slew of excuses.
What solution would you propose? That protests are 100% ironclad arrest-free zones? That seems...unworkable.
Part of the issue is that folks are protesting the police themselves - namely, the systematic and blatant racism and police violence. The prudent measure, minimally, would be to have a background presence since they've not actually jumped on the chance to make real change. The Rodney King riots happened in 1992: We've had decades to try to change the face of policing. If anything, perhaps we should have started real change after any one of the incidences. Changed police immunity. Required more training. Try to reduce officer stress and weed out folks that were racist. Abolish police gangs. But that's much harder, and won't stop a protest while it is happening.
But it would actually stop them.
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> I see that the economic cost of perpetuating economic classes and the economic disruption of confinement without trial far outweigh this taxpayer cost. Sure, but in this instance the person you are metaphorically telling that to is the person who is paying half the costs in their capacity as a taxpayer. If there is a scheme that is cheaper than incarceration for 3rd parties and gets everyone to court on time then I…
I never said that the rich shouldn't be rich. I am implying that the poor shouldn't be held down. And I'm also arguing that having a healthy society with a functioning welfare system reduces crime and ultimately reduces these costs. But I think that's besides the point on this particular issue. I can't imagine whatever costs you're imagining are involved in tracking down people skipping court dates would tax the rich…
On the specific topic of bail bonds, one major argument is that rich people are gaining an advantage in comfort from their wealth - which I think is perfectly reasonable, given that is explicitly the purpose of wealth.
A second major argument is that the system is unreasonably harsh to the poor. Probably true, I don't know. But that isn't an argument I'm dealing with - I'm pointing out that wealthy people buying comfort is the complaint at the root of the threat and it isn't a strong complaint. Because that is what wealth is for.
> I can't imagine whatever costs you're imagining are involved in tracking down people skipping court dates would tax the rich out of their privilege.
People need to control more money than they spend so they can set themselves up for retirement. "This would just come out of their savings" is also a bad argument at all levels of the social tree.
That isn't really going to the point you raise, which I am going to leave alone, but is an aside that I think that argument is fundamentally bad because it could be repeatedly applied until it turns out you misread the future and people start running out of savings.