If you have money, you can pay the bail and get released, while poor people can’t.
I don’t see why people with money should get benefits in the legal system?
The 8th amendment has a clause that disallows “excessive bail”. In Stack v. Boyle, the Supreme Court found this to mean “that a defendant’s bail cannot be set higher than an amount that is reasonably likely to ensure the defendant’s presence at the trial.” So it follows that IN THEORY, bail is SUPPOSED to be set at an amount that is consistent with the defendant’s financial resources (including, it would also follow, increasing the amount for more wealthy people to ensure that it has the same proportionate effect on the defendant’s decision-making process).
Of course, that rule is just a bunch of meaningless words if nobody enforces it… and guess what, the main way to enforce this is by bringing a suit against the government alleging that they violated the rule. So IN PRACTICE (speculation warning here, I’m just some guy), I would imagine that they just set bail schedules at a level where anyone who can afford to pay won’t be able to win an “excessive bail” lawsuit, and anyone who can’t afford to pay it will also probably not be able to afford the cost of that lawsuit.
And something tells me that we aren’t likely to see a wealthy person suing the government for not setting bail high enough for them.
And since bail is generally set at the discretion of a judge (I’m sure some jurisdictions have limitations, and others just “guidelines”), it can be increased based on the perceived heinousness of the crime or in some cases outright denied entirely.
cannot be set higher than an amount that is reasonably likely to ensure the defendant’s presence at the trial
That is a sentence that you can really roll over in your head. It does not necessarily also mean an amount within the resources of the defendant. I watch a lot of hearings, and something I’ve seen at least a few times is a set of allegations and past facts (usually something like multiple failures to appear in the past, and/or fleeing from police) in a situation where the actual charge being bailed on has a statutory requirement that bail be offered. The judge doesn’t want to let the person out on bail, so therefore sets the bail at $1 million or something which is functionally the same thing as not giving them bail.
Usually this triggers a motion for a hearing about the bail amount by the defense lawyer to argue down the amount, but if the court date on the charge is earlier than court date for the motion, it becomes a moot issue.
Just so we’re clear, bail is a temporary release from imprisonment while you’re awaiting trial. And the bail money is a deposit that you get back when you attend trial.
The purpose of lodging the bail money is to give you an incentive to attend trial, and the judge will consider your income when they decide the bail amount. A rich person might have to post more bail than a poorer person.
The last time I saw this question asked on reddit, the OP thought paying bail was an alternative to serving prison time if you’re found guilty of a crime.
This avoids the whole premise of it though. It is supposed to be if they are a threat to not showin, but mostly a threat to the public as well, you set no bail. Non violent crimes make 0 sense to have bail on. If you don’t attend there is a warrant placed for your arrest whether or not you paid bail. Also, ONLY rich people get all of their money back. The majority of the population posts bail using a bail bondsmen, so if they set your bail at $3000, you pay a bail bondman $300 to get out of jail until the court case (which will take months). You do not get that $300 dollars, the bondsmen gets it when you show up. If you do NOT show up, the bail bond company hires a bounty hunter to come after you, on top of the warrant for your arrest often times.
So you get pulled over for an accusation, are “innocent” until proven guilty, but either are forced to pay money to gain freedom, or are placed in jail until getting decided “innocent” as you already were
This. Justice shouldn’t be paywalled.
Thanks, this is useful information for when they find the evidence.
I think a lot of people misunderstand because in so many TV shows and movies it’s a trope for someone to get in trouble and be bailed out. The fact that they’ve got a court case to attend and that’s not the end of it is often left out.
The last time I saw this question asked on reddit, the OP thought paying bail was an alternative to serving prison time if you’re found guilty of a crime.
Haha that’s funny :) I can actually see this happening in a future America though. The love of money is obscene.
Bail is not money you get back. It’s money that a bail bondsman doesn’t have to fork over if you dont show.
Either you are so rich that the opportunity cost of tieing up the whole amount is more than the fee (so you just pay the bond fee) or you don’t have enough and need to ask someone to lend it to yoy (that is, you pay the bond.)
New York tried to largely ban cash bail (becaue its essentially just a way to lock up the poor), but because of Republicans and police unions (i repeat myself) who whined about offenses while out on bail, the state poked a bunch of holes in it instead of making pre-trial detention easier.
Cash bail is ALWAYS indefensible. If someone is so dangerous to civic order they need to be detained pre-trial, then no amount of money should get them out of it.
Well it’s not insane because the laws in the us are made to be chains for the poor and spiderwebs for the rich. This is on purpose.
The lies we tell ourselves to cope, and the “justifications” the powerful use to keep those laws in place are what’s insane.
It is, I don’t think it can be explained as “not insane”
It is biased towards the rich. Much of American society and laws are biased towards the rich or biased towards large corporations.
So it is insane, but since it’s just as insane as the rest of the system, you aren’t supposed to notice.
Logically it favors the rich, just like every other aspect of society.
So I guess it’s no more insane than so many other aspects of society, like how Enron Musk can get paid more by Tesla than every single worker working there.It’s one of those things that mostly works because there aren’t many rich people.
Since crimes committed by rich folks are mostly white collar, they’re rarely a danger to society if let back onto the streets.
It’s one of those statistical solutions that doesn’t really do enough thinking about why the statistics shake out that way.
That said, there is a gradient, rich folks can make bail for petty offenses but for violent ones judges may be inclined to just deny bail purely because the rich prick would be able to post it easily and the crime they’re accused of warrants not letting them back out.
And this is why stuff should be defined in terms of day’s earnings to provide scaling. If an ultra-rich person gets jailed and has to post 20 billion dollars in bail, they can’t treat jail as a minor inconvenience.
The big white collar crimes are far more of a danger to society than many of the so-called blue collar crimes. Massive pollution leading to global warming, which impacts billions of people around the globe, that’s high impact, and that’s 100% white collar.
Or pick something that’s not as dramatic. Pick the bank collapse in the US 15 years ago, where many people lost their homes but we didn’t see finance experts get locked up even though they created a massive catastrophe for the country and had to get bailed out by the government. But of course we would lock up someone for stealing an orange, or breaking a car window, because somehow those are more dangerous.
Or let’s get even smaller scale. Let’s just talk about wage theft. If my boss steals thousands of dollars from my paycheck, as she did many years ago, there’s zero chance she’s going to get locked up. But if I were to steal $20 from the cash register, the police might take me away in handcuffs.
It’s not insane, just very classist
Illinois just got rid of cash bail and it’s working pretty well so far, so at least there are folks there who see how crazy it is too.
And republicans (or, at least one, in my district) are campaigning here on how cashless bail is letting criminals go free.
Cashless bail isn’t letting criminals go free any more than cash-based bail was. I am just as safe. There is nothing to see here, except a more level playing field for all.
Why do the republicans in charge hate people so much? I don’t think their constituents hate people nearly as much as the leaders.
I don’t see why people with money should get benefits in the legal system?
Because they are rich, duh!
Bail is an option for the courts to use to insure someone that might be a certain level of flight risk shown up to court.
It’s not 100% necessity. People can be released on their own bond commonly referred to as a “personal bond” they don’t pay anything and just promise to show up.
Has this bond system been abused as a form of oppression. Of course. We’re human after all and there are corrupt shitty judges on the bench.
But for the most part the bond system does function.
We all agree that the bond system functions. The question is whether it’s discriminatory, and data shows that it is, which is why it’s no longer used in some places. It’s not only the corrupt judges, it’s the judges. It’s not only the judges, it’s the cops who know that the judges will do their thing. You can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride, as they say, and this is one piece of it.
And suppose you get arrested. Now you want to post bond, but part of that involves pretrial release conditions, which would ordinarily be a violation of your constitutional rights, but if you agree to them, then they’re acceptable. And what’s your real option here? Get locked up until the trial? Then you can’t work and you lose your house and your car and your family. So you get onerous conditions imposed on you, assumed guilty until proven innocent, and somehow it’s supposed to be consistent with the Bill of Rights. We all know it’s not, but that’s no matter, because the appeals courts are down with it, and nobody can stop them.
There are two primary systems of law in the United States that absolutely must be reformed above any other branch or law.
Immigration and criminal justice.
These systems in the United States are archaic third world and downright discriminatory to anybody that goes through them.
They are truly terrible.
The fact that we even have such systems in place in the United States is mind-boggling.
Other countries look at us and simply call us barbarians.
Crimes exist for the poor. Simple as.
No, crimes exist for whoever isn’t in power. There are several crimes that can only be committed by rich people, such as those related to banking and the stock market, formation of cartels* and monopolistic/anti-competitive practices, etc. But conveniently the criminals are only prosecuted when they are the political or commercial opponents of whoever happens to be in charge at the time.
*Not the drug kind, the “a small group of companies with a combined market majority conspires to fix prices while pretending to compete with each other” kind
It’s not Insane, it’s just wrong. People who can’t afford bail can generally get a bail bond, which will front the cost in exchange for the defendant paying about 10% IIRC. The thinking is that people who aren’t considered a flight risk, and aren’t a risk to the community, shouldn’t be imprisoned until there’s a guilty verdict, and putting money on the line that they lose if they don’t show up to court will encourage them to show up.
On the surface, it’s not an insane thought. It’s just… wrong. It just doesn’t really work. In practice it really does just disproportionately punish those who are already suffering, while also making it possible for the wealthy to further escape any consequences.
It’s supposed to be scaled as a percentage of income / net worth. Whether that’s true in practice however is debatable
Isn’t it one of the basic principles in that legal system that people with more money get more rights?
Yes. Better rights, too.
