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Comment by zomg | Hacker News Reader

meanwhile, in massachusetts where bail can't be used as an economic means to keep people locked up, criminals are being freed and continue to do what they do best. just this month:

officer chesna and vera adams in weymouth, ma -- gunned down with his own service weapon by a savage whose bail was reduced ($5k to $500). this asshole then murdered an elderly woman on her own porch who witnessed the murder.

marine combat veteran kevin quinn -- killed in a head on crash by another low-life who was freed because his bail was reduced (from $35k to $1k).

it's comical that this topic is positioned as "rich vs poor" issue. in reality, criminals who are a serious threat to society, are being let loose and innocent civilians become the collateral damage.

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But, according to what you say, if those murderers had the money, they would have murdered just the same.

Maybe the problem is that bails don't distinguish between truly dangerous individuals and the rest of the people.

But that is the entire point of this discussion. If someone is a rich "low-life" then even a $5k or $35k bail from your example wouldn't have stopped him from being out. If you really care about not freeing "criminals" (that have not been convicted yet right?) then wouldn't you appreciate a system only reliant on danger to society and flight risk, why even bring economics into it?

Are there many rich low-lifes? Are many well-off people detained for personally committing violent crimes?

I'd suppose most serious crimes by well-off people are either economical, or done by hired hitmen. OTOH a previously lucky criminal may possess quite enough loot from crimes yet uncovered to pay a large bail.

It is a rich vs. poor issue. If that "savage" had had a lot of money, they would have paid bail and still committed the murder.

If they're truly a "savage", don't offer bail as an option. That's the judgment call that needs to be made.

But it is not even "a lot". $5000 can be acquired by scrapping together $500 from family/friends and giving that to a bail bond company. Not all poor people can accomplish that, but many can.

If $5000 is a better bail for this person than $500, that is a lucky accident. It is not as if $50,000 would automatically be a better number either.

Risky individuals either need to be kept in jail (or perhaps closely tracked). Keeping bail bond profitable is not a successful strategy here.

Dehumanization aside those two aren't mutually exclusive at all - a rich psychopath would be just as releasable. The crossover that makes it appear to work for the wrong reason isn't a good system.

The system "works" by law of averages like my simple test for cancer - you don't have it. That answer is right far more often than not and lacks false positives by definition.

Really there are two problems made into one - fiscal inequity and reoffense. The theory of monetary bail was deterrence but it doesn't seem to work that well with irrational defendants and sufficiently rich, screwed, or underworld connected defendants which make the calculation rational to transgress.

All that the "extreme" demand is that wealth not be a consideration for bail. Either they are a sufficient flight or repeat crime before trial risk or they are not. Judging that is in itself a hard problem of great importance to liberty and security.

A no release before ever philosophy would be equitable but extremely problematic to liberty and expensive. It could be mitigated with very expedient trials but a proper investigation takes time. Downright luxury jail conditions could mitigate this some but the fundamental loss of freedom remains no matter how gilded the cage.

A release literally everyone before sentencing approach would also not work well barring fantastic and powerful technologies like being able to teleport them or unremovable and unblockable trackers.

It should be a binary decision:

Pose a threat to society -> Jail pending trial

Not a threat -> Released pending trial

There shouldn't be an option for:

Pose a threat to society + Rich -> Bail pending trial

I think bail also serves as a mechanism to make sure they show up for the trail. Or if they don't show up, their family and friends who helped post the bail will tell the police where they are.

Just to point out that there are literally hundreds of thousands more instances proving bail is a broken system as opposed to the two that you selected.

The legal system in the US is in large part a horrific dumpster fire.

Here's the question at the heart of this- Which do you feel to be a greater problem in our society; Imprisoning people unjustly, or allowing criminals back into the street to commit more crimes?

My answer is "both". Bail reform advocates typically say they want people to be kept out of jail before their trial, for free, if they pose no flight risk or danger to the community (ie, violent criminal past) and want people kept in jail if they pose a flight risk or a danger to the community. There is not a perfect solution, but we can do much better.

TL;dr- not all crimes are the same, not all criminals are the same, and we both agree the system is broken. The difference seems to be that you're not actually advocating for any specific solution, just pointing out that bad people have done bad things.

The goal is not to just let everyone go free while they await sentencing, it is to have a jail system that houses people on the basis of their danger to the public and/or their risk to flee instead of their ability to pay. I don't see how anyone can actually be against that.

Besides bail just allows cases just like you mention to happen, just that it's rich guys. Take a look at Robert Durst, posting $300,000 bail then stalking his brother with a gun. And Durst isn't the only guy to do this, what about Roman Polanski? What about Robert Vesco? Criminals who are a serious threat to society, are being let loose and innocent civilians become the collateral damage in money bail systems.

Funny, I’m also from MA and when I read the article title I thought, “yeah bail is broken, we’re letting too many repeat offenders out on bail”.

Yet, the article has the opposite view.

Somewhere along the road our society has flipped and now virtue is vice and vice is virtue.

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