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Comment by krsdcbl | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't really see the pro side.

Assuming the accused is guilty and financially well able to pay for bail, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me to just drop some cash, write it off, and be able to leave and never show up for trial.

Assuming the accused is innocent and financially unable to pay for bail, they'll end up in jail without ever having committed a crime.

Like so much else in the US, it's showing heavy signs of a plutocraty, where money even decides if you'll be subject to the judiciary system or not. In almost any sane judiciary system I know there will be a pre-trial hearing to determine the likeliness of the suspect fleeing or obfuscating evidence, and only if this risk is arguably given, only then the suspect would be put in investigative custody (and that time served will be either counted towards the sentence, if guilty, or damages repayed to the suspect if proven innocent)

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It's not like you can forfeit the bail, skip the trial and then just walk away scot-free. There's now a warrant out for your arrest and an additional charge, and you've torpedoed pretty much any chance of leniency.

If it's a serious enough crime, they will come looking for you, and you will not be offered bail a second time. If it wasn't too serious, they might not come looking for you, but you'll have an active warrant so any traffic stop, background check, etc is going to be a huge problem for you. Arguably a worse punishment than whatever you would have gotten if you just showed up at trial.

Maybe if you're planning to never visit that state again or if you're leaving the country entirely and never want to return it might work out, but generally committing additional crimes after you've already been caught for one crime isn't a good idea.

of course, but how does this stop anyone from _fleeing_ once bail is made or from obfuscating evidence whilst awaiting trial?

All those things I said stop them from fleeing? I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, you can flee, but you're going to spend the rest of your life as a wanted criminal. It's not exactly easy.

Letting people go home without bail would include the same risk of fleeing, without the additional financial incentive. So, if the concern is people skipping trial, how does that help?

Not a lawyer, but I believe police are supposed to collect evidence before they make an arrest, to provide justification for the arrest. If there are places they still need to search, they can probably lock them off, but I think most of the evidence should already be in police custody.

>All those things I said stop them from fleeing? I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, you can flee, but you're going to spend the rest of your life as a wanted criminal. It's not exactly easy.

But, this is true with or without bail.

Right, I'm not arguing for or against bail. The comment I was originally replying to seemed to imply that bail creates a system where rich people can just commit all the crimes they want, forfeit the bail, and then go on with their lives like nothing happened. I'm just saying that's not at all the case. Just because you've paid the bail doesn't mean you're free to go and you won't suffer any consequences for the crime.

"leniency" is mostly a myth though, and affected people know it. Leniency is probation which is an expensive trap to haul you back in on nonsense reasons like missing a bus or talking to your cousin who has a criminal record.

> Assuming the accused is guilty and financially well able to pay for bail, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me to just drop some cash, write it off, and be able to leave and never show up for trial.

I don't support cash bail, personally, but it's worth noting that some amount of the bail money can be converted to a bounty for the apprehension of those of the accused who go on to skip trial.

From a non-US person, the whole Bounty system, now that is where things truly hit the Blade-Runner-esque dystopia level.

Not really, it’s not as if it’s an old west wanted dead or alive thing. It’s actually pretty mundane. They even made a crappy reality TV show about it.

3rd party bounty hunters are a pretty rare thing. Most of the time it's the same bail bondsman who facilitates a suspects release that comes looking, since the bondsman doesn't get their money back from the court until the suspect shows.

Which is the whole point.

And that bondsman likely required the suspect to list and confirm the name, address, and phone number of every family member, employer, and close contact they have.

Probably 95% of cases are the bondsman just calling the suspect's family to get them to encourage compliance.

An angry moma is going to be more effective than any manhunt.

which might also work without bail, as incarcerating the accused would cost tax money anyway - so it doesn't work too well just as an incentive for showing up, but also doesn't hinder the accused from fleeing or destroying evidence once they do pay bail.

> it's worth noting that some amount of the bail money can be converted to a bounty for the apprehension of those of the accused who go on to skip trial.

Hahaha, bounty hunting certainly makes for good movie scripts, but in practice I imagine that it's quite a bad idea.

Leave law enforcement to the police, they are already bad enough at it -- I can't imagine you want poorly trained civilians without uniform to employ violence to apprehend suspects.

What happens when a bounty hunter mistakes the identify of someone who then decides to exercise self-defense against a kidnapping attempt?

The fact that this doesn't constantly cause massive problems in a country full of guns and "stand your ground laws" is amazing :D

Using private companies for law enforcement purposes, as opposed to using accountable public employees, seems like a completely unnecessary idea. It does create a powerful lobbying industry, which makes it even harder to reform.

The unstated "pro side" is simply being mean to and destroying the lives of entire classes of people you hate.

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