The Bail Trap

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/magazine/the-bail-trap.html?_r=0

by japhyr • 11 years ago

186 201 11 years ago

mindslight6• 11 years ago

The only real solution to this is to stop externalizing the cost of false positives onto the victims.

Kidnap someone and put them in a cage for a month so they lose their salary, job, apartment etc? That adds up to an awful lot of easily demonstrable financial damage that the justice system is directly responsible for. Only when false arrests and prosecution start directly impacting these organizations' budgets will they possibly care about the harm they do.

alentrekin3• 11 years ago

Police privilege provides legal justification for any detention made with probable cause.

Heroin straw > arrest > detention under bail.

jackgavigan• 11 years ago

Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. You'd need to go after the individuals. In a circumstance like that described in the article, it would not be unreasonable to investigate the police officers' actions, specially the question of whether he truly had reasonable grounds for suspicion that the straw was truly drug paraphernalia.

If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc.

I know it's never going to happen but one can dream...

outworlder• 11 years ago

If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc.

Can one do that? Why doesn't it seem to happen more often?

function_seven2• 11 years ago

Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change.

Sure it will. If the cost of arresting someone was potentially a few hundred thousand dollars each time, the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone.

As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, full agreement here, even regarding the pipe-shapedness of the dream :(

jcromartie• 11 years ago

I disagree. As soon as the justice system has to pay for its mistakes, the mistakes will go away.

mindslight6• 11 years ago

Our two proposals aren't mutually exclusive, but are essentially quite similar. For any criminal case there is a corresponding civil action to make the injured party whole. These perps are acting against the law, and as such it's obvious they should be subject to both avenues of justice.

IMHO the civil approach is just a lot easier to adjudicate - when the victim is found innocent, they should be immediately compensated for any and all damages resulting from arrest, imprisonment, and trial. If the department wants to recoup losses from specific individuals who went against policy, they can settle that much thornier argument on their own time.

Proving that a specific individual acted criminally outside their mandate is an even higher burden to meet. When this is warranted, it would be fantastic. But we can envision many cases where an individual cop is following a reasonable policy, yet it still results in an innocent being held in jail for a day and losing their job as a result.

mcherm• 11 years ago

That doesn't work.

There are decisions about which reasonable people can disagree. If every such decision risked going to jail for assault, kidnapping, or false imprisonment then no police would be willing perform arrests. We use (or should use) criminal prosecution for extreme cases (a police officer who shoots an unarmed suspect for no good reason) but use the normal processes of workplace discipline (for which the worst that can happen is that you lose your job) for questionable arrests (like arresting someone for "drug paraphernalia" for having a straw).

tsotha6• 11 years ago

What would actually happen is the cops would turn off their radios and just have a bull session at the donut shop. Someone rapes your daughter? File a report at the station. Nobody is going to get arrested if cops face that kind of personal liability.

We're already seeing a taste of it lately in NYC and Baltimore. The cops think they're being unfairly scapegoated so they're hunkering down. Somehow people are surprised crime rates are going up.

gtCameron• 11 years ago

John Oliver also did a great segment on this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5mwymTIJU

conover2• 11 years ago

It's unclear to me how these situations are not a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

United States v. Salerno: "the government's proposed conditions of release or detention not be 'excessive' in light of the perceived evil."

Stack v. Boyle: "excessive" is "a figure higher than is reasonably calculated" to ensure appearance

I guess it's easy to beat up people who don't have the means to defend themselves. Someone should start an Occupy Justice movement and have everyone request jury trials to cause a system crash.

nickff4• 11 years ago

One of the many problems here is that the public has little sympathy for defendants, and most talk about the 'justice system' is basically a competition to see who can rail agaist criminals the most. The facts that the false conviction rate is quite high, and that the vast majority of cases (>90%) do not go to trial at all are completely missed by the citizenry who simply do not care to learn about the system they are upholding.

vonmoltke• 11 years ago

There also seems to be a widespread belief that everyone who has "brushes with the law" is guilty of something, even if it wasn't the thing the cops picked them up for or the DA charged them with. I think the prevalence of "beating the system" stories in popular media helps fuel this perception.

abarrettjo2• 11 years ago

This makes me wonder whether a possible solution path could be to bring a case about this to the Supreme Court.

justizin2• 11 years ago

The problem is not that the supreme court has never ruled on anything like this, it's that all a supreme court ruling does is to give you something that a good lawyer can refer to in your court case.

Being in the criminal justice system is incredibly expensive and high risk, and as an individual, allowing your case to go to the supreme court requires continually losing it.

acveilleux2• 11 years ago

A supreme court ruling that doesn't find bails themselves unconstitutional would not help.

If they find bails unconstitutional, then the bail laws are void.

If they only find certain practices wrong, then you need to prove to a court, possibly on appeal, that the conditions from the supreme court judgement hold in your case. So you need a lawyer and some time, post-arraignment... You'll have the joy of having your bail found illegal after 2+ weeks in jail.

beat3• 11 years ago

You want to see the system change? Get the police to start arresting middle-class white people who can afford bail and lawyers on these trivial charges. If it started impacting people who weren't already poor, there'd be change, pronto.

nickff4• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, the middle class people charged under the current system either do not have enough money to defend against the charges, or would bankrupt their families by doing so. Only the rich can afford to defend in the current system, the poor and middle classes are forced to settle and serve jail time, (though all are subject to the very real possibilty of a false conviction followed by a very long sentence anyway,) as is indicated by the >90% settlement rate of criminal cases.

tedks2• 11 years ago

""" Tomlin broke off to go inside the store and buy a soda. The clerk wrapped it in a paper bag and handed him a straw. Back outside, as the conversation wound down, one of the officers called the men over. He asked one of Tomlin’s friends if he was carrying anything he shouldn’t; he frisked him. Then he turned to Tomlin, who was holding his bagged soda and straw. ‘‘He thought it was a beer,’’ Tomlin guesses. ‘‘He opens the bag up, it was a soda. He says, ‘What you got in the other hand?’ I says, ‘I got a straw that I’m about to use for the soda.’ ’’ The officer asked Tomlin if he had anything on him that he shouldn’t. ‘‘I says, ‘No, you can check me, I don’t have nothing on me.’ He checks me. He’s going all through my socks and everything.’’ The next thing Tomlin knew, he says, he was getting handcuffed. ‘‘I said, ‘Officer, what am I getting locked up for?’ He says, ‘Drug paraphernalia.’ I says, ‘Drug paraphernalia?’ He opens up his hand and shows me the straw.’’ """

This isn't even the main point of the article but I think it speaks volumes on its own.

civilian• 11 years ago

Yeah. I wish we'd restrict the definition of drug paraphernalia. And ya know, end the drug war.

beat3• 11 years ago

It's a popular misconception that ending the drug war would end the injustice. But as much as I'd like to see the war on drugs put to a swift end, it's not the root of the problem.

Arrest quotas have become the standard for judging police officer performance in many cities, and fines for trivial offenses have become a key revenue generator for many local governments (see the DoJ review of Ferguson for a particularly awful example). "Justice" for petty crime has become a self-sustaining industry - and a profitable one, as we can see with the rise of private for-profit prisons.

If it's not drug paraphernalia, it's some other charge - jaywalking, loitering, and the ever popular "resisting arrest". A recent video interview with a former Baltimore cop summed it up well. He pointed out that it's pretty much impossible to drive a car or walk down the street without breaking some law or another. So cops can easily arrest anyone, at any time, for largely fabricated reasons.

Throw in arrest quotas and fine revenue as municipal funding, and you have a formula for mass arrests and incarceration for trivial offenses. The trick then is to find people who can be arrested who won't rock the boat politically... the poor, and the non-white. Now, you wind up with a racist justice system, not out of racist intent, but out of its very architecture.

The solution is for comfortable, safe, middle class white Americans to stop ignoring and start caring.

matwood2• 11 years ago

And cops wonder why they have a huge public image problem.

eevilspock• 11 years ago

I wish HN was more inclined to vote up articles like this and figure out how the tech community can effect change. Most of us will never be subject to this injustice, so it is ever so easy to avert our eyes and focus on topics such a Apples Products are Getting Harder to Use and the 1983 version of Unix System V Release 1 Programming Guide, both of which are ranked higher and have more comments despite being posted 9 hours earlier.

davidw• 11 years ago

The world is full of 'outrageous' things: we could easily keep the front page full of them.

But then we'd lose what we came here for in the first place.

There are other places for these kinds of articles.

nickff4• 11 years ago

I agree with the first two sentences of your post, but I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are. I have little reason to believe that these problems are going to get more public attention in the future than they are getting now, which is to say that I have little hope of fixing these issues.

gohrt4• 11 years ago

We didn't come here for a weekly 2-minutes hate about Apple UIs.

13thLetter• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, there's a gigantic blind spot: the politicians supported by the tech community tend to be, despite occasional rhetorical nods, extremely bad on criminal justice issues. People are nevertheless reluctant to criticize "their team," so instead hideous injustices like the ones described in this article, or the milking of low-income minorities for fines and penalties in towns like Ferguson, Missouri, just sort of... happen, and the blame is directed towards vague targets like "cops" or "the system" or "racism" or "America" instead of the politicians who are currently in office and either letting the situation fester or actively making it worse.

This isn't to say that most alternative politicians are better, of course, but the only voice you truly have in a democracy is to vote the bastards out. And keep voting them out year after year until the survivors finally get the idea.

bail-throw-away3• 11 years ago

OK - so I just had two experiences with a bay area law enforcement agency, and I am beside myself with disgust and anger:

I was accused of doing something I did not. I was taken to jail and they held me on bail - and set my court date for about three weeks from the time I was booked, but an arraignment in about 5 days.

I had just accepted a new job - but still had a week on my current.

I HAD to post bail (and I didn't really have the money for it) so I had to get a bail bond. so I could get out and go to work!! This cost my $3,000 out of pocket.

So I did, and then went to my arraignment: Guess what "no charges filed and case rejected for lack of any evidence at all"

But now - I am out $3,000 and I have an arrest on my record for something that was simply a false accusation! Further, WHile I was in jail over night, the guards and police are absolute douchebags. They treat EVERYONE like crap.

I now hate all cops. ALL of them.

gambiter3• 11 years ago

I'm curious... in a situation like this, could you sue for wrongful arrest?

webkike• 11 years ago

Uh, no. The entire point of the criminal justice system is to determine if arrests are wrongful or not.

gohrt4• 11 years ago

There is no legitimate reason to make the the arrestee pay the bond fee in this case. The state (taxpayers) should pay.

ma2rten5• 11 years ago

Yes, the entire system is flawed.

chongli• 11 years ago

Really, the arresting officer ought to be on the hook personally for this. That would change police behaviour overnight.

gnopgnip• 11 years ago

The point of the bond is to give a financial incentive for the arrested to show up to court. If anyone other than the arrested was on the hook for the bill there would be no point. The reality is that judges rarely face any penalty for setting bail too high and preventative detention is used for nonviolent crimes.

ma2rten5• 11 years ago

Why did you have to go back to your old job? If your employer really needed you to document your work or something, shouldn't they have payed for your bail?

pavel_lishin4• 11 years ago

If your employer really needed you to document your work or something, shouldn't they have payed for your bail?

What?

trhway• 11 years ago

I am out $3,000 and I have an arrest on my record for something that was simply a false accusation!

(IANAL) There are good news and bad news - you probably can "seal" your arrest, bad news is that it isn't automatic, takes effort, and you'll probably will need to pay for a lawyer.

pacquiao882• 11 years ago

It depends which state you were arrested in. In some states it will remain with you for the rest of your life, regardless of innocence.

marincounty2• 11 years ago

Same thing happened to a relative, but he was out $20 grand on bail, and $10 grand on a lawyer who went to court one time to get bail reduced; he couldn't get the judge to budge.

After three weeks in Santa Rita jail, he was let out. The cop at the impound yard said, "Sorry--you were at the wrong place at the wrong time." He went bankrupt soon afterwards.

e40• 11 years ago

That is horrible. That is literally the type of random thing which can ruin a life. I (and others) feel so powerless to change this part of our society. I just have no idea how this will ever change.

developer1• 11 years ago

I sympathize with your situation, but am confused by "I am out $3,000". Do you not get bail money back when your presence in court is concluded? I always thought bail was a deposit, not a payment. You only lose your bail money if you don't show up when required, no?

BrentOzar• 11 years ago

Do you not get bail money back when your presence in court is concluded?

If you post the full bail yourself, yes, but he said he'd paid a bail bond. If you can't post the full bail yourself (say, it's $30k) then you go to a bail bondsman and they pay the full bail for you - in exchange for a fee, usually 10% of your bail. That fee is non-refundable.

Then if you skip out while you're on bail, they come find you and drag you back to court to get their money back.

fnordfnordfnord6• 11 years ago

Laws vary by state but basically it amounts to: Bail was too expensive/risky so he paid a fee to a bondsman to get him out. A bond is a guarantee provided by a third party, the bondsman, that you will appear in court. It is usually some fraction of your actual bail, like 10%. So if we assume 10% and $3,000 paid to the bondsman, then his bail was probably $30,000. If that's correct then GP's alternative would have been to post $30k with the police until the conclusion of his/her case.

arrosenberg• 11 years ago

If you get a bail bond, you pay the bondsman 10% of the total amount, and they front the entire bail amount. When you show up for court, they get the full amount.

The 10% you paid ($3,000 in this case) is basically a vig for the service the bondsman provides in fronting the money.

bail-throw-away3• 11 years ago

If I were to post the actual full bail ~33,000 myself -- I "get it back" - but it is legal for them to keep the full bail amount 1 Year Plus 1 Day before they return it to me...

Using a bail bondsman I pay some fee (could be negotiated) but in my case was 10%

Since I paid the bail bondsman to post a 33,000 bond on my behalf - I pay him 3,300 up front. I do not get this back - regardless of the outcome of the case... however if I resolve it at the arraignment they refund ~10% at some ambiguous future date.

I should be able to bill the city for this given they had no charges and no evidence.

beachstartup• 11 years ago

the interactions i had with the legal / police system when i was younger form the basis of most of my political opinions, especially the controversial ones. i won't mention them here but you can probably use your imagination to determine what i'm talking about.

the police are not there to help you, or seek truth. they are there to fuck you over swiftly and silently if the powers that be decide you need to be fucked over. simple as that.

xacaxulu• 11 years ago

If you've ever dealt with police in other countries (I have everywhere from France to Zimbabwe), the interactions are amazingly more peaceful. As a former US Marine (Afghanistan and Iraq), the hyper-vigilant police mentality I see more and more scares the heck out of me. It's no secret that it's getting worse, and coupled with a racket like "The Bail Trap", prison industry based products and one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, things are looking very sad here in the US. I'm sure it's not perfect anywhere, but we are way off base with our justice system. When you have to have a dash cam or a hidden cam/mic on you to prove you didn't do anything, that's pretty sad.

Justsignedup• 11 years ago

Sounds like we're moving in the direction of Russia where every driver has a cam because the cops literally don't care and it's the only way to prove that someone didn't stop mid road and went into reverse into you.

pavel_lishin4• 11 years ago

I was under the impression that it was to fight insurance fraud.

marincounty2• 11 years ago

I caved in a year ago and boought two $15.00 dash cams off Amazon. I haven't been pulled over for No Reason since I got the cam. (I bought two because they were cheap, and keep one behind my seat in case the device fails.)

I thought about buying Gopro, but figured for my needs the price was too high, and a potential thief might break a window to get to the expensive cam?

I have been pulled over for no reason so many times, I wish they had these cheap cams when I turned 16.

I have never understood bail. Why don't they make it coincide with a person's yearly income? While I'm at it, why aren't traffic infractions tied to income? I gringe when I hear about $500 traffic tickets, or $280 for jaywalking? A wealthy person gets a ticket--he tells his wife over diner. A poor person gets a ticket, it can ruin their living situation? Never seemed fair?

Loughla• 11 years ago

Sorry for how long this turned out to be. I believe the massive number of vets returning from places like Afghanistan and Iraq has had quite a bit to do with the increased tensions between civilians and police as well, and has also contributed to the militarization of police across the country (at least in attitude, if not in equipment).

Couple a newly returned squad of soldiers who are more than qualified for civilian law-enforcement with a new incoming supply of armored transport and military equipment, you can't avoid the militarization of the police force.

As anecdotal evidence; in my small area of the mid-west, our local county police force (I'm ignoring the state and city cops for now) is comprised of roughly 50 officers. Without the jail and office-dwellers, it's about 35 who are on the street daily.

After looking it up, of those 35, 32 have less than 10 years' experience. Of those 32, all were hired within 3 months of returning from Afghanistan or Iraq.

I never put two and two together. I just noticed that the attitude in the county has changed.

Whereas people used to talk to the police they met, and used to interact with them at community events, they don't anymore (and the cops don't come to church socials, community gatherings or celebrations anymore - they only stick with each other). In the past, I have actually invited officers to the house for lemonade, or even delivered it to them, when I saw them sitting at the nearest speed trap spot on hot days. I've jumped their cars when they die. I've even invited them to (illegal) fireworks displays - with no worries, because they understood that we weren't idiots.

I haven't done any of that for over five years.

Why?

Because all the police now treat their police work like an extension of their time in the military. All of them. Every one. Legitimately, they stick together like it's still the military, and always have their fingers on the trigger of whatever gun they're carrying when speaking to anyone who isn't in a county officer uniform.

They're driving around with multiple firearms in rural areas where the crime rate is non-existent. Honestly, I don't know where my house keys are because I have never locked the doors.

In 8 years.

But, they've become, essentially, a little military. They practice swat tactics, they practice distance shooting, they practice how to take down dangerous criminals that don't exist in our area.

Why? What does that help? They should be practicing how to talk to children without needing to touch a gun, and how to interact with adults without treating them like criminals.

tl;dr: returning vets who refuse to lose the military attitude, increased military supplies to civilian law enforcement agencies, and the shit-tons of money to be made in corrections have all contributed to this problem of hyper-vigilance.

EliRivers• 11 years ago

the increased tensions between civilians and police as well

That's a big part of the problem right there. Police are civilians [1], but they have been picturing themselves as some kind of messed-up "soldiers against crime" that they now believe their own nonsense; it's them against the civilians (not them against criminals - them against civilians).

Hiring ex-soldiers to be police officers is part of the problem; military training (of the killing people quickly through intense violence type [2]) teaches a mindset that is utterly unsuited to policing.

Living in the UK, I feel safer with routinely unarmed police.

[1] Sure, in some countries the police are actually military or paramilitary personnel, but those countries aren't being discussed here.

[2] Which is, of course, by no means all. I was reserve forces myself for fifteen years and never touched a loaded firearm.

sandworm101• 11 years ago

Except that most of the military do not walk around with fingers on triggers all day. That's a very small group of front-line combat people. Half the military rarely pick up a weapon. The air force, most all of the navy, most everyone in intel ... they aren't raiding desert compounds every night. I'm betting that a US base (in the US) probably has few guns per person than a typical US neighborhood.

It might be counterintuitive, but I find MPs (military police) generally much more friendly and calm that the average civilian cop.

tsotha6• 11 years ago

I believe the massive number of vets returning from places like Afghanistan and Iraq has had quite a bit to do with the increased tensions between civilians and police as well, and has also contributed to the militarization of police across the country (at least in attitude, if not in equipment).

Seems unlikely to me. Police departments always had vets. When we went to war in Kuwait in 1991, guys right around retirement age had been in Vietnam. Back when they joined the veteran cops were military veterans from WW II and Korea. Police departments have always preferred to hire combat veterans, because you don't know who's going to crack the first time they take incoming fire. So you hire someone who's already been shot at.

Anyway, the time frame is off. The first gulf war wasn't until 1991, but police departments had already traded in their .38 Specials for high capacity automatics and started dressing like ninjas by the mid '80s.

From what I can tell police forces in the US stopped acting like police and more like an invading army as a response to well armed drug dealers and a few well-publicized shootouts in which the home team didn't do well, most notably this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

Which might be the most studied shootout in US history. The FBI changed its contact policies as a result, and police departments normally pay close attention to FBI recommendations.

It's a kind of positive feedback loop, where fearful cops subject people to humiliating procedures in an effort to keep themselves safe, and people responding like people always respond to humiliation.

A colleague of mine spent fifteen minutes spread-eagled face down on a hot street because he kind of looked like someone who committed a nonviolent crime. Do that to a thousand people and one of them is going to start shooting the next time he's pulled over.

novaleaf• 11 years ago

I don't mean to derail your main point, but I don't think it would be supprising that the police of other countries treat you nicer due to "tourist privilage".

I lived in Thailand for 8 years, and I can confirm that "Farang" (white tourists) are treated better than Thai citizens. With good reason though, as tourism is the lifeblood for many communities.

stuaxo• 11 years ago

In the UK some stuff happens, but the violence of American police is completely shocking.

abarrettjo2• 11 years ago

The same author writes on this topic/related issues somewhat frequently. Here's one on the origins of the police force itself: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/magazine/the-point-of-orde...

russnewcomer4• 11 years ago

In reading the article, part of the conclusion that I came to is not that cash bail is inherently broken and unfixable, but the sense of scale by the people setting bail is. To a lower-income person with minimal savings and unpredictable income (like most of the subjects of the article), an unplanned $500 expense like bail is potentially crushing, whereas to a higher-income person with decent savings and regular predictable income (like the judges), an unplanned $500 expense is annoying but not catastrophic.

Restructure the law so that bail cannot be easily set over $100 for non-violent misdemeanors, and that 100% of the bail is returned to the person posting it for amounts under $1000, and NYC (of which I am not a resident) will be well on it's way to solving the current problems of the bail system, and then have a whole new host of problems with the new system to solve in 50 years once all of its weaknesses are exploited.

[edit] corrected improper use of bailbond to bail

gohrt4• 11 years ago

The bail amount should be a function of the defendant's means. That's the entire point of bail -- a collateral to make the defendant feel incentivized to show up for court.

HarryHirsch2• 11 years ago

To a European, the bail system appears very strange. Isn't not showing up for your court date a crime in itself, and grounds for immediate arrest?

Either the defendant is a threat to society or unlikely to show up at court (because he's a transient or likely to be issued a long sentence), then you lock up the fellow, or he isn't any of that, in which case one can trust him to show up on time. Also, isn't a person innocent until the judge pronounces the verdict?

What is sit that makes American society so different?

russnewcomer4• 11 years ago

Absolutely, I agree. But my point, which I believe underscores the article's, is the people setting the bail amount don't appear to have a true understanding in many cases of the defendant's means.

testin00000013• 11 years ago

Just a little quibble... if 100% of the bail bond is returned to the accused, how exactly does the bail bond company make money?

If the bail bond company can't make money on the deal, they won't offer their services...

Which would end up making it harder for the relatively poor to make bail...

How about this: Just get rid of bail entirely for low level offenses. When a minor crime is expected to be charged, bring the suspect in, fingerprint and identify them, give a court date, then... let them go home.

mikestew3• 11 years ago

Just a little quibble... if 100% of the bail bond is returned to the accused, how exactly does the bail bond company make money?

The bail bond company wouldn't be involved at all if the accused has the money for bail. The bail bond company is bonding the accused for the whole amount, that's the (typically) 10% the accused is paying. (EDIT: and if you don't show up for court, the bond company is authorized to go get you and drag your ass in. 'cause they're out their money otherwise. And thus you get such quality TV as Bounty Hunters.) However, if you can muster the whole amount, you don't need a bail bond company. Ergo, if bail amounts were reasonable, we would have less of a need for bail bond companies.

Your last paragraph is covered by "OR" or "own recognizance". IOW, you go home with no money out of pocket. However, one must wait until arraignment before a judge before OR is an option. Waiting for arraignment is the part we could get rid of with your proposal.

pavel_lishin4• 11 years ago

A bail companies will put up the actual bail, and charge the arrested person a flat fee that does not get returned to them.

Of course, if the arrested person runs off, they're out the money they paid the court.

russnewcomer4• 11 years ago

You're completely correct, and my meaning was to say 100% of the bail, not the bail bond. I originally transposed the meaning of bail and bond in typing my post, and didn't correctly edit it. Obviously the bail bond companies can set their own fees, this is more for the case of people being able to bail themselves out without the need for a bond.

stephengillie• 11 years ago

Sorry for the tangent - I just realized Bail Bonds companies are just Payday Loans companies that exclusively operate in bail.

kiliantics• 11 years ago

This is the way it works for minor offences in other countries. They don't even bother with fingerprints where I'm from. The state-corporate alliance sure loves screwing people over wherever they can in the US.

fnordfnordfnord6• 11 years ago

How about this: Just get rid of bail entirely for low level offenses. When a minor crime is expected to be charged, bring the suspect in, fingerprint and identify them, give a court date, then... let them go home.

That's called a PR bond "Personal Recognizance" Ken Paxton the AG of Texas was recently released on a PR bond after being charged with a felony in Colin County, Tx.

PR bonds are an option in most states (I think), but rarely used for, reasons. After the Sandra Bland death, there are noises being made here about making PR bonds the mandated default in Texas for most petty (petit?) crimes & misdemeanors.

acveilleux2• 11 years ago

For a lot of the poors, any bail to post is too much bail. In the article here, one kid who got a 250$ bail and couldn't pay was homeless. He probably could hardly afford to eat, panhandling is not going to come up with 250$.

russnewcomer4• 11 years ago

Agree, but I think if it's hard to set it over $100, more judges are going to put bail into a manageable range, or even not set it where many times.

mcantelon2• 11 years ago

There seems to be a lot of NGOs opposed to cops, the prison industrial complex, etc. but AFAIK there's none that will provide bail aid, which would likly make more of an impact than anything.

bcks• 11 years ago

Well, the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund is mentioned in TFA: http://www.brooklynbailfund.org

Also in NYC: http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org

mcantelon2• 11 years ago

The article yields its fruit! Thanks!

rectang2• 11 years ago

    > Without bail — and the quick guilty pleas
    > that it produces — courts would come under
    > significant strain. "The system would shut
    > down," Goldberg says.

It doesn't cost much to bail out some poor people. Seems like a great opportunity to screw with an unjust system!

ma2rten5• 11 years ago

How much does it cost? I think it is at least 10k for the least serious crimes.

justizin2• 11 years ago

It easily goes into the hundreds of thousands, and when people with mental illness end up in jail, off their meds, they often stack up all sorts of charges for relatively minor behavior that sounds ominous on paper as "assault on a penal officer" or somesuch. Now you can get bail in the millions, and prejudice from every corner of the system.

It's no longer about a straw, it's about a guard who says you punched them when in face five people were holding you and you had a spasm or something.

aidenn03• 11 years ago

TFA mentioned several cases where it was under $2k.

crpatino2• 11 years ago

No, that's exactly the opposite.

What the quote means is that bails allows courts to process much more arrests than reasonably possible, and that also that guilty pleas mask the fact that the grounds for most of those fast forward arrest occurred under shaky grounds at best.

What you want to do is to pay poor people to sit in jail for as long as it takes to exercise their right for a fair trail. Once judges and other court personnel is forced to hear 18 hrs of bullshit accusations for every hour of real cases, they will begin to look their cozy cuff-happy bedfellows in a new light.

frankus• 11 years ago

What the article is saying is that the threat of bail (in an amount that a defendant can't pay) makes plea deals more likely, which currently keeps actual trials from clogging up the court system.

If someone were to post bail for them they could still go to trial without sitting in jail in the meantime.

aidenn03• 11 years ago

You need a license to be a bail bondsman, though TFA said that NYC recently passed a law to allow non-profits to post bail without a license.

danielweber3• 11 years ago

A colleague had his ex file for child support, putting him suddenly thousands of dollars in the hole (it was backdated to when they separated, not when she asked for suppor) because he's not from a socioeconomic class that keeps thousands of dollars hanging around.

That left him unable to renew his driver's license, drastically impacting his ability to get work and pay child support.

He now, for unrelated reasons, has full custody of his kids. But he still can't get a driver's license to get a job to support his kids because he's still behind on that child support. For the kids he has in his house.

He deserves some responsibility for this, but it's like the system wants him to fail and fail hard.

ectoplasm4• 11 years ago

He's unable to borrow money from friends / family / bank / mortagage / credit card to pay the child support?

ceejayoz3• 11 years ago

People who don't have thousands lying around tend to have friends and family in similar financial situations, may not have a bank account, probably don't have a mortgage, and little credit.

danielweber3• 11 years ago

The amount owed is about half his yearly gross income. If he goes to work, it's entirely to pay money to his ex, not keep it for his kids. He can't pay it back in any logical sense before he dies.

Although now she owes him child support every month. But any payment she makes goes right back to her, to be deducted against what he owes her.[1]

Friends and family have given him a place to live where he acts as a stay-at-home dad, since for now working is useless (and the child require 24/7 monitoring by adults). If friends and family were to give him the money to pay off the debt, it would just give the money to his ex, and there is no guarantee that she would then start paying her side of the debt.[1] I guess she would then be the one unable to get a driver's license and go to work and pay child support, which is "justice" only in a weird warped sense of the word in that they each have suffered the same kind of injustice, and doesn't really help the kids.

[1] The ideal situation is to just have both debts neutralize each other and disappear, but it's not clear that this would be binding even if you could get the two angry ex'es to agree to it -- parents have signed off on child support in the past only to have the courts put it in place anyway, since the kids couldn't sign it away.

testin00000013• 11 years ago

Not really his fault. Child support is an outdated system with zero relevance today. He is the victim.

If a woman is not prepared to care for her children, she doesn't need to have any. Equality under the law means that if she can't pay, she can give up custody of her children to the father or a relative or adoption.

DanBC2• 11 years ago

If he doesn't want to pay for children he can chose not to have any.

norea-armozel2• 11 years ago

Well yes and no the system 'wants' him to fail hard. Part of the problem isn't as much as the false concern for the welfare of the children (and their primary guardian). Many CPS agencies will take a cut of the child support money so the bigger the monthly required support the bigger their cut. It's really a racket onto itself. For example, my sister actually was getting child support from her first husband directly but CPS didn't like that idea and fined her ex for evading child support. In the end, he started sending CPS the checks and my sister got much less money.

Gotta love Kansas. /s

AnthonyMouse3• 11 years ago

He now, for unrelated reasons, has full custody of his kids.

I recall an article about a case where a mother was filing for government assistance and was required to list the child's father's name on the application. She didn't know the name so she made one up, which happened to be the name of a real person. So the government started garnishing his wages.

He went to court because he was not the father and had never even met the mother, but the standard was "the best interest of the child" without exception. Since the child's real father was unknown, receiving child support from an unrelated person is better for the child than not receiving it from anyone, so the court said he had to pay anyway.

By that logic, your colleague shouldn't have to pay now that he has full custody of the children, because it isn't in the best interest of the children for the parent with custody to be paying "child support" to the parent without custody. But that would require these things to be decided based on logic and precedent rather than politics and random chance. (And I'm only remembering an article I read some years ago; I have no idea what the law is today in your jurisdiction.)

gohrt4• 11 years ago

The average persons more powerful weapon against police misconduct is Jury Nullification. Refuse to convict defendants until the police start obeying the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

Tenhundfeld3• 11 years ago

If you're considering this, read up on the law, and ideally, get advice from a lawyer who knows the laws and precedents of your state and local judges. It's a trickier subject than you might expect.

I got called to serve jury duty several years ago, and being somewhat familiar with jury nullification, sought advice from a lawyer friend.

I don't remember the exact details of his advice, but it was generally this:

1) Don't even hint that you're aware of jury nullification during jury selection and examination.

Obviously don't lie if asked a direct question about it, but that doesn't really happen. Instead, you might be asked something like, "If the evidence proves the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, can you enforce the law regardless of your personal beliefs about whether the law is correct?" Just answer "yes" and be quiet – unless you honestly don't think so. (Remember, you won't know much, if anything, about the case at this point. So, abstractly, you probably can set aside personal beliefs if the facts of the case warrant it.)

2) Don't ever use the words "jury nullification" when deliberating with the other jurors.

Judges can and will remove jurors who are openly engaging in jury nullification. There have even been instances of judges holding jurors in contempt for it, but according to my lawyer friend, those cases were overturned. Regardless, you will likely be removed from the jury and possibly have further hassles.

3) In jury deliberation, remember that you don't have to convince the other jurors of your position. If you don't feel right convicting the defendant, you don't have to. Just stick to your guns and let the jury be hung.

I was glad I sought advice, because I ended up engaging in jury nullification.

In my case, the defendant was charged with a DUI for essentially being obnoxiously drunk in his driveway on private property. He was playing music through his truck speakers, with the windows down. The engine was not on, but his keys were in the ignition – to enable the electrical system. He was having a party, with friends over, a grill going, etc. He had not signaled any intent to leave the party at his own home, and the prosecution didn't argue that he was planning to drive anywhere. But in my state, being intoxicated and having your keys in the ignition (or even initiating a sequence of events that will result in driving) is grounds for a DUI.

I understand the reasons for the law being worded that way. If somebody is obviously drunk and walking towards their car to leave a bar, cops need to be able to stop him before he actually starts driving. However, in my case, what actually happened is the defendant mouthed off to the cops, and my interpretation is they were punishing him for being disrespectful. They could have just told him to turn down his music or issued him a noise violation and moved on. He was not planning to drive his car anywhere or endanger anyone. Instead, they unnecessarily escalated the situation.

A DUI can be a felony and can result in losing your job or being excluded from future jobs. It's serious. I didn't think this guy deserved that – despite coming across as a total asshole during his testimony. I tried my best to convince the other jurors, but they all ultimately felt they had to enforce the law as it exists. According to the law, he did commit acts that technically constitute a DUI. So, they all voted guilty – even though many thought it "wasn't fair."

After 8 hours of deliberation, we ended up with a hung jury and me being the sole dissenter. I will admit it was exhausting to keep arguing for the guy, when everybody is tired and just wants to go home. I was also very relieved when I went home that night, searched public convictions, and found none for the defendant.

Anyway, if you get called to serve on a jury, please don't try to get out of it. It's a great honor and responsibility, and we need more intelligent, free-thinking people in our juries. But do educate yourself on jury nullification beforehand.

calebrichardson• 11 years ago

What type of arguments did you make during the deliberation?

You can't exactly say "I don't want to apply the law in this particular case."

montecarl• 11 years ago

Thanks for sharing your story. So this resulted in a hung jury? Do you know if there was a retrial? Is it common to retry cases like this?

erobbins• 11 years ago

Nice. I was on a jury where we did something similar.

Guy had been charged with having a concealed weapon. He and a couple of friends had been out shooting at some remote location where it was perfectly legal to shoot. They had a bunch of different guns with them... rifles, pistols, revolvers, etc which were in a couple places in this guy's truck, mostly on the tailgate and a few they were done with in the cab.

Well, a fish and game officer came along, and decided to check these guys out. She got permission to search and found a revolver in the cab that was under a shirt that one of the guys had taken off and tossed on the seat. Based off this, he got charged with having a concealed weapon. The way the law was written, he was actually guilty.

Took us 5 minutes to vote not guilty and send this poor guy home. I was very proud of my fellow jurors that day.

matwood2• 11 years ago

If somebody is obviously drunk and walking towards their car to leave a bar, cops need to be able to stop him before he actually starts driving.

They need to stop him, explain it is his lucky day and call him a cab.

aaron_m04• 11 years ago

You made the right choice to nullify. The world needs more people like you!

kazinator• 11 years ago

You should be able to enforce the law regardless of your personal beliefs.

However, that a person who isn't driving ("D") cannot possibly be driving under the influence ("DUI") isn't a personal belief. It is a belief which is rational with an arguably objective basis.

If I were asked, "can you enforce the law regardless of your personal beliefs", I would assume that it refers to things like being soft/strict on someone because of religion, race, politics or whatever. So that I could answer "yes" with confidence.

If asked "can you enforce the law regardless of rational convictions based on objective reasoning", I would say, of course, no fucking way.

Because then, what is the point of the jury, if not to apply reason? An expert system could be programmed to understand the law and just spit out a sentence based on matching the apparent facts to the rules.

rsp1984• 11 years ago

Besides the questionable bail system, what I really don't get is why there's jail time on minor drug possession delicts.

One can debate about the war-on-drugs (I think it's failed) but even if society thinks drugs are a bad thing and worth fighting against it, it's the dealers that should go to jail, not the people who use drugs. 30 days for holding a straw that might contain some heroin, really? Something is obviously very very broken here.

WildUtah• 11 years ago

If you want the war on drugs to work, arresting dealers is a waste of time. If there's demand, then there are always more poor people willing to make easy money as dealers.

Sending casual users to jail is the only way to cut demand. If the casual users -- the most lucrative market -- get off scott-free then there's never any limit to demand and consumption.

CPLX• 11 years ago

There is a four word solution that would wipe out a massive, massive percentage of this problem: End the drug war

tyingq2• 11 years ago

The US prison/jail vendor ecosystem is a trap as well.

The phone system is a good example. Inmates have some scheduled time where they can make phone calls, provided someone on the outside has funded an account.

You, of course, expect it to be a little more expensive than normal phone service.

However, here's the reality.

You deposit $25, then: - $7 service fee for the credit card processing - $4.50 for the first minute of every call - then $2.50 a minute for any subsequent minute

So, yes, a 2 minute phone call, within the same state, costs the family $14.

These are real numbers, from one of the big vendors in the space...Global Tel Link. Source: Have relative that was in jail...this is what I had to pay.

Here's an older article on the subject: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/pleasedeposit.html

tyingq2• 11 years ago

Just to note that phones are the tip of the iceberg. The jails and prisons are taking huge fees from commissary accounts, charging fees to see a doctor (even if you were assaulted), etc.

Also things like reducing to 2 meals a day to save money. Or worse. Search google for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's outdoor tents, in Phoenix, where the average high temp in July is 41C/106F.

It's really shameful.

bernardom• 11 years ago

There's a startup for that!

http://pigeon.ly/

The Planet Money podcast about it is great. A former inmate who wanted to solve the phone call problem, and expanded to other prison-specific issues.

codecamper5• 11 years ago

Maybe technology could help this situation?

It sounds like a big part of the problem are too many arrests for things without enough evidence.

Wouldn't everyone benefit for better logs & statistical analysis? If a certain police officer had a 15% conviction rate, and he actually liked his job, then he'd be sure next time to be more sure about his arrests. Such a tool could track recent trends as well.

Also, it sounds like there needs to be a system (email??) to contact employers. All employers required to have an official address and courts are required to contact it with current case status.

Anyone else have ideas about how tech could help the situation?

arkem• 11 years ago

I don't think arrest to conviction conversion rate is very meaningful by itself since in many jurisdictions the prosecutors get to choose which arrested persons to prosecute and how vigorously.

codecamper5• 11 years ago

hmm, the arrests are the input. The prosecutors would be a second filter step. And that step would be more or less constant.

There are several steps towards conviction and many variables, but I think there are statistical methods that can tease out the conversion rates at each step along the way.

conover2• 11 years ago

What about on the other end: an automated system to assign bail amounts? Plug in charges + criminal history + financial status into a system that determines bail. That way it's in the hands of a computer and there is no blowback to a particular judge/prosecutor/etc.

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

Then any judgment is removed from the system. Judges can abuse that power, and they can have bad judgment, but an algorithm has no judgment at all. Worse, you can get people turning off their mind as to whether it made any sense, because "that's what the computer said".

People are in the system for some good reasons...

codecamper5• 11 years ago

That sounds like a great idea. YC, are you listening? :)

If such a system could be fed with information like.. did the defendant run, then it could also figure out what bond levels work.

Another part of this article mentions that below a certain level, bail bonds won't handle it. Is that because a human is required to make a decision?

AnthonyMouse3• 11 years ago

If a certain police officer had a 15% conviction rate, and he actually liked his job, then he'd be sure next time to be more sure about his arrests.

...or get better at pretending to be more sure so that the innocent defendants he arrests don't screw up his numbers by getting acquitted.

You get what you measure. If you measure the conviction rate then the conviction rate will go up, but that isn't the same thing as the percentage of convicted defendants who were actually guilty.

craigds• 11 years ago

This kind of nonsense is why as a tourist, I would think very carefully before ever going to the US, and have little desire to.

Based on what I know about the place, I'd feel uneasy the whole time I was there, as though I could be arrested at any moment just for crossing the road the wrong way.

One time I took my Irish passport instead of my NZ one by mistake when entering Australia, and I was subjected to dog sniffs and minor harrassment by the border control staff, which made me very uncomfortable. From what I understand that's nothing compared to what you can expect as a foreigner entering the US.

Do other non-Americans feel this way or is it just me? I can't imagine this situation does wonders for American tourism or business.

FWIW my experience of police (in both NZ and in Germany) has been that they're always very pleasant to deal with.

chasing2• 11 years ago

Calm down. You'll be just fine traveling the United States. You might even have a pleasant interaction with an American police officer which you can add to your list. They're mostly just good people trying to do good work, just like the rest of us.

spacemanmatt3• 11 years ago

[citation needed]

krapp• 11 years ago

I can't imagine this situation does wonders for American tourism or business.

The US appears to be the second most common tourist destination in the world, with about 75 million arrivals in 2014 alone[0][1], so I guess it's doing just fine, and is not actually a nightmarish police state, and most people come and go without incident. Feel free to jaywalk with impunity.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings

[1]http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Fa...

^Yes, it's a PDF.

graycat• 11 years ago

I'm not a lawyer but I am a US citizen.

To me, the police, prosecutors, and judges in the OP are, really, just out to attack the poor people, just attack them like wild, mad, rabid dogs, attack them for no good reason, just declare war on them, out of hate, arrogance, self-exalted ego, like thugs that just like to beat up on people.

Let's see:

"Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

So, the OP violated:

"Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, ..."

The trials are not "speedy". Any judge who has any respect for the Constitution and is not out just to act like a wild, mad, rabid dog out to declare war on the poor people should immediately dismiss any case without a "speedy trial".

So, the OP violated:

"Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, ..."

The "right of trial by jury" was not "preserved". Instead, the delays in the system and the excessive bail canceled that right.

So, the OP violated:

"Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

The bail was deliberately excessive and the jail situation "inflicted" "cruel and unusual punishments" as a means to coerce a guilty plea without a trial.

In addition, from

"The rest of the file contained Tomlin’s criminal history, which included 41 convictions, ..."

the system clearly convicts and punishes the defendants based not on the crime they are accused of but often just on the record of crimes of the past, crimes for which they have "paid their debt to society", that is, multiple jeopardy.

In addition, it is now essentially illegal to carry more than, say, a few hundred dollars in cash. Seeing such cash, it is common for the police just to confiscate it, in wild violation of

"Amendment V

... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

So, from the OP:

"The documentation submitted by the arresting officer explained that his training and experience told him that plastic straws are 'a commonly used method of packaging heroin residue.'"

That's essentially the same as saying that "his training and experience told him that" commonly criminals breathe and that he observed the defendant breathing so arrested him.

The judge should have laughed the police officer out of the court room and asked the public defender to file charges of false arrest against the officer and bringing a nonsense legal case against the prosecutor. Instead, the judge just went along with wild, mad, rabid dog attack on the citizen.

No, clearly, actually his training and experience told him that the defendant was poor so should be viciously attacked with the intention of ruining his life -- the excuse was that he had in one hand a bottle of soft drink and in the other hand a soda straw.

Here the police, prosecutors, and judges are just declaring war on a large fraction of US citizens -- just war, no cause, no reason, wildly illegal and unconstitutional, very dirty business.

The whole system is wildly in conflict with the Constitution. If the US legal system had any honest functionality at all, then any lawyer should be able to make a motion that would shut down the whole situation coast to coast in an hour.

tsotha6• 11 years ago

There's are a lot of things to cringe about in this story, but bail isn't one of them. The article says so-and-so was held in jail because he couldn't pay bail, but that's not really accurate. The guy is held because he was arrested. Bail is an out you get until the trail if you can convince the judge you're gonna show up for the trial.

IMO there are two real problems with the story about the "main character". First, the DA comes to the judge with a case against a guy charged with possessing a straw. The judge should have thrown it out and said "come back when you have evidence of a crime".

Second, we have the means to protect inmates from each other. There's no reason for a three week stay to mean a busted up face. Jail should be boring, but safe, and the state should be liable for every rape or assault that happens inside.

yason• 11 years ago

I'm somehow always a bit worried when travelling to the US and reading these stories just makes it worse. I don't know what the risk for a visitor is in reality. These cases seem to happen out of nowhere. I don't have any reason to be arrested, really, and I'll probably be fine absolutely most of the time but if something should happen and I happened to be around I'm, as a foreigner, in a very weak position to understand what's going on.

I should probably read a couple of books on US legal system and how things work there but the need for doing so would usually arise from having to travel to some totalitarian developing country. In certain countries, you should expect to have some money as it might be customary to bribe the police officer or other officials but once that's settled things generally unfold fine from there. It seems that in the US, you should expect to have lots of money as it might be customary to bribe the court yet things can generally get quite uncertain from there, based on what I've read. It's hard to evaluate the risk, though: the probability is rather low but the impact can be devastating.

I get the feeling that if only you're a "regular Joe", ideally white (or fit in the "good" ethnicity of your city), you don't stand out of others, and you have money, you're likely to be fine. The further you deviate from that the more unpredictable things can get.

The Bail Trap

Related Stories