Eliminate Bail

Just release people on their own recognizance until their court/hearing dates, as long as they are minor offenders. Obviously, it should be on a case by case and crime by crime, but the current system is corrupt, unjust and outdated. People aren't going anywhere if they want to "get away with it", the grid is all consuming. If you don't show, you will be arrested shortly after that - we have finger prints, facial recognition etc. You arn't going anywhere anymore. The system itself metes punishment in advance on those presumed innocent until proven guilty. It harms impoverished or un-educated people above others and let those with money to burn receive greater treatment under the law. There should be no such thing as bail. Either you are released with some degree of supervision/leg sensors/visitation or you are held when there is reasonable cause to protect society, individuals or to deter REAL flight risk (murder, serious theft, fraud, etc). Nobody is a serious risk of flight for shoplifting, because if they do they'll be arrested in short order for something else and a warrant will exist for the contempt of court.

I was listening to WNYC and couldn't figure out why they were talking about reforming bail when it needs to go altogether. Equal justice before the law and innocent until proven guilty. What do you think?

Tagged house arrest. Cheaper and basically does the same job.

~:smoking:

The idea of bail is to prevent people skipping out, and to compel their dependents if they try.

It is not about recapturing them.

It's punishment. Even if you are acquitted, you were still stuck with 10% of the bail price if you hired a bondsman.

I am middle road on this. "Justice and equality" blahblah "Corrupt DAs and police" blah blah.

And I also make a living finding bail jumpers and court no-shows. There are no shortage of these, especially in population pockets of poverty and drug use.

If we eliminate bail, thats just one more reason for a person to not show up to court.

The justice system is designed to ruin people irrespective of conviction. I can see the point of holding family members hostage and punishing them along with their charged relative, but last I checked family members were supposed to be kept separate from punishment because that is unjust as well. Failure to show up to court would be an arrest-able and chargeable offense on its own. It's time that we annihilate the legal system which is an outdated affront to our basic rights. Lets rebuild or reform now with sensible plans that give weight to charged peoples rights.

To be clear. I don't care about most people. I care about myself and those I love or have an affinity for. I plan for their protection and my interests can be used in conjunction with yours to benefit both of our own influence spheres. I appeal to the rights of man and basic legal protections because it is common use language, not necessarily* because I believe that individuals actually have an inherent right to anything but their eventual death.

*I may or may not for purposes of later statement deniability

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Originally Posted by ICantSpellDawg

The justice system is designed to ruin people irrespective of conviction. I can see the point of holding family members hostage and punishing them along with their charged relative, but last I checked family members were supposed to be kept separate from punishment because that is unjust as well. Failure to show up to court would be an arrest-able and chargeable offense on its own. It's time that we annihilate the legal system which is an outdated affront to our basic rights. Lets rebuild or reform now with sensible plans that give weight to charged peoples rights.

To be clear. I don't care about most people. I care about myself and those I love or have an affinity for. I plan for their protection and my interests can be used in conjunction with yours to benefit both of our own influence spheres. I appeal to the rights of man and basic legal protections because it is common use language, not necessarily* because I believe that individuals actually have an inherent right to anything but their eventual death.

*I may or may not for purposes of later statement deniability

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If arrest and additional charges is reason enough for people to show up to court, it is not working.

I have seen little old ladies lose their home because their POS grandchild had them post bail and she was on the hook for it. That was her decision, just like it was the decision of her crackhead grandson to skip town.

Without some sort of punitive punishment, there would be more now shows. Arrest is a deterrent for very few things for some people

You just talked about a system that allows little old women to lose their homes because we allow them to gamble it on a family member. We create the system that uses emotional leverage to take homes from old ladies. This is exactly what I'm talking about. We take the family's financial security hostage. These tend to be stupid people who only understand some rudimentary concept of family and we use that against them. Any system that encourages innocent people to harm themselves should be corrected or abolished. taking that old woman's house was no punishment for her grandson, clearly - it was a punishment for his grandma who did nothing wrong except have faith in her loved one.

Nobody made her take a loan out on her trailer.

Her grandson was obviously guilty, or he would have gone to court.

All of the side arguments about poor child rearing and stupid people having kids aside, she could have just not posted his bail.

You are saying we need to abolish a system because it is predatory, the problem is that it is voluntary, just like high-interest predatory cash advance companies and car salesmen who sell to people with bad credits at 500% market bvalue at a 20% interest rate. If you want to legislate financial morality, you have a long road ahead of you. She signed the paper. She knew the risks.

It's just like co-signing on a loan. Do you want to eliminate that as well?

How about we just not allow people to bond out? Period. They can sit in jail.

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

How about we just not allow people to bond out? Period. They can sit in jail.

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If you believe that the answer to injustice is further injustice? yes.

I'm trying to get you to tell me a viable alternative. You have not given me one yet

If we get rid of bondsmen, then people won't be able to make bond. People will cry discrimination because only the rich people can buy their way out.

I cannot speak for every municiplaity in the US, but the vast majority of municipalities I deal with do not extend lines of credit to people. So this whole "grams losing the house" thing really has nothing to do with the city/state. The bondsman is acting like a bank and giving you a loan. The court pays back the bond when you appear and you pay back the bondsman, or the court pays the bondsman directly. He keeps his 10-15%

If the person does skip out, the court does not pony up.

Regarding feeling sorry for gramma, please keep in mind that the bondsman is on the hook for this. This dude just paid the courts 25 grand, and he will never see it again. So yeah, he's gonna put a lien on whatever he can to get re-imbursed, and quite often this is a long, costly process regardless of the outcome. If he sends me after the bail jumper, I take 10% as well, effectively causing him to break even or even lose money. I cannot feel too sorry for gramma when letting her off the hook means financial ruin for a business and its employees.

Give me an alternative. Just letting people out on their own recognisance will not work all the time. Only some of the time. And the others will sit in jail because you have taken their other options away

The alternative is to not allow bonds. Either a specific criminal action leads one to believe that the alleged criminal is a threat to society even prior to trial or it does not. If it does not they are free to go until on their own recognizance until their court date. If they do not show up, an arrest warrant is generated and they will be arrested and imprisoned immediately upon discovery or apprehension until their next court date. This is a favorable way now due to our understanding of the rights of the accused as well as the increasing impermeability of "the grid". You may couple visitation, house arrest and digital location verification to the conditions of release depending on the crime, but not punitive financial measures that serve as regressive penalty the lower down the income ladder one finds themselves. Simply do away with being able to buy yourself out of jail and do away with imprisoning the accused to the greatest extent possible on technicality. It is more just and would save us more money as a society. It is a win/win, except for people who benefit from the current system.

For example, someone accused of negligent homicide or certain types of murder might be under house arrest, while someone accused of serial murder or fraud on a massive international scale might be jailed. These would not be punitive measures but reasonable assurances that we would prevent further intransigence that is warranted under the specific circumstances. Why buying off the accusers enters into the situation is a cynical throwback to a time when certain people were worth more than others in law. It lasted because it had some pluses, but the value of those pluses has been increasingly rendered archaic.