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Comment by perl4ever | Hacker News Reader

People seem to be really mad about bail reform, especially in NY, but I don't understand why.

There are always more people than the jail capacity, right? So no matter who is released from jail and makes a news story by doing something awful, they must have been released because someone else appeared to pose a greater risk at the time. It's a tradeoff using the information available at the time.

So saying that bail reform is the problem seems to me to be saying that somehow, ability to pay is a better criterion than more logical reasons for releasing people. Everything online ranting against the reforms seems to just ignore the idea that there's a tradeoff completely.

Unfortunately, the people I know who care about this, while they can tactfully avoid politics if I do, seem beyond a reasoned discussion if I bring it up. They do know something about police work, so possibly they know something I don't.

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There are indeed always more people coming into jail, and people going out. The big difference now is that there were many crimes for which the DA office might ask for significant bail that they now cannot. This matters because bail was a mechanism for taking people whom the DA saw as dangerous off the street.

Unfortunately this is not the point of bail, it’s to secure appearance at trial. Using it to keep risky offenders off the street is not part of it.

I don't see why using a combination of risk of fleeing and risk of reoffending to decide on release would be out of line.

I don't think much of appealing to definitions, which it sounds like you are doing - this is what bail is, so this is what bail is.

However, if the DA has less control over the decision, that doesn't seem obviously bad to me? And making bad decisions doesn't seem like it's inherent in the reforms?

> I don't think much of appealing to definitions, which it sounds like you are doing - this is what bail is, so this is what bail is.

Well, I mean, it’s the legal system, so definitions are literally a foundational piece. Bail is defined in state law as money provided by the defendant to secure appearance at trial. If we wanted to define it as “requiring more money than a defendant is able to provide to keep them in jail”, we could change the law.

But it became both, along with an abusive money-making tool for bail bondsmen. Also, prohibitive bail was much more likely to be requested for minority defendants compared to white.

And from my perspective, I agree that the DA having less control over the decision is a good thing. I was just trying to articulate the background and the position of the people who are anti-reform. I’d be in favor of some objective way of assessing risk of short-term reoffending, and then holding people for some limited time period awaiting dispensation of their case, but only if we can figure out a way to mitigate bias.

>Well, I mean, it’s the legal system, so definitions are literally a foundational piece.

Definitions are necessary to understand what a law is saying, I think we both agree. Not being a lawyer, I certainly have noticed that when I look up a law, it tries to define its terms in a precise manner.

Do you have a specific reference for "Bail is defined in state law as money provided by the defendant to secure appearance at trial"?

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