Remand is a crazy idea. Why do we detain people before they're proven guilty?
There are a lot of reasons to do this. The real question is why the detention is designed to be punitive, and why can you pay to get out of it?
So if you were making the laws, the trooper that pulled over Timothy McVeigh would have just given him a summons and told him to show up in court?
I agree that holding someone without a conviction looks like a violation of the presumption of innocence. This is why the right to a speedy trial is in the constitution, to minimize this violation. Unfortunately that right is somewhat theoretical. Depending on the crime, people spend on average between 50 and 200 days in jail before trial. This is way too long and we should really figure out how to streamline these processes for the cases where someone really does need to be held for trial.
Well, it's certainly not a real concern that is addressed by cash bail; if someone is inclined to flee prosecution for a major crime, a cash bail will either (a) be unaffordable, and thus equivalent to no bail, or (b) affordable and an acceptable cost to sacrifice when fleeing.
If you think about what people are fleeing if they are fleeing bail, it makes sense. Bail is essentially taking money. If someone can post a million dollars bail, but thinks they can evade the Justice system by fleeing, a million dollars probably isn't going to be worth a sizable risk of being imprisoned for whatever the potential sentence is for their crime.
OTOH, non-cash-bail systems tend to put more focus on monitoring and related conditions which have a real and meaningful impact on flight.
For non-serious crimes we really shouldn't.
But "cashless bail" has downsides. People are more likely to just skip hearings. Or they keep committing minor crimes because they don't view themselves as facing consequences.
That's a good reason for not going simple OR (own recognizance), and may in cases where there is more personal information beyond just a serious crime be part of why particular suspects ought not be considered for bail of any kind, but not a good reason, in any case, for a jail or cash-bail binary choice.
> But "cashless bail" has downsides. People are more likely to just skip hearings.
D.C. uses a no-cash-bail system, and IIRC does not see this compared to either when they used cash bail or to other jurisdictions that do.
> Or they keep committing minor crimes because they don't view themselves as facing consequences.
Again, I don't think there's evidence that this is the case, but insofar as it is, it seems it would be a speedy trial problem. (And/or a reason certain suspects ought not to be eligible for bail of any kind.)
A speedy trial might help with that. And it's a great idea in any event.
Well if you weren't detaining them... 'fleeing' wouldn't be a thing so they couldn't flee and problem solved.
As long as they turn up for their trial what's the problem?
If they don't, prosecute them for that as well.
Police generally don’t have a lot of resources to track people down.
And.. staying with your cousin isn’t “taking flight” - it’s just being a fool.
It doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to evade the police. They don’t keep searching indefinitely.
Well, we have this thing called civil forfeiture...
It lets you take somebody's money if you're a cop.
So let's say you're a cop in need of some money.
You can simply pull somebody over, among others things... and... take their money
Well, what would you do if somebody just took your money? You might want to tell on them, or at least get your money back.
Easiest way to not get told on with consequence if you stole somebody's money? Put them in jail with the powers vested in you...