Illinois to become first US state to abolish cash bail
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https://www.macrotrends.net/states/washington/crime-rate-sta...
https://rpubs.com/moxbox/wa_crime2021
I'm not even seeing a significant increase, never mind a wave.
Put another way, octogenarians seldom rob at gunpoint.
Also, our population tree has the largest male population alive is currently ages ~19-40, which is the demographic most likely to commit crime.
https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyra...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-surpass-baby-boomer...
Millennials are getting old. about 30 to mid 40s now. That's not the sort of "young" I was talking about.
Second, it's not relevant how many young vs old there are, but how many compared to 50 years, 70 years ago.
There were a lot more young people back then. Birth rates are very low compared to back then.
The world's population will drop by at least 30% in the next few decades, as a result of this.
https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/1...
Fewer taxpayers, more using that tax. Note, that it would seem exceptionally unfair, IMO, for people that paid all their lives into the tax base, to suddenly be seen as "horrible" for now using medicare.
This trend of course will only continue. Going forward, as our populations shrink world wide:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
We'll forever see "lots of older people" being taken care of by "fewer younger people". It used to be there were more young than old.
Now the reverse is true, due to improved health care, and now, due to lowered birth rate.
There was no 'great resignation'. Instead, what happened during COVID is the start of the boomers retiring. Retired people have worked their entire lives, and still like to enjoy lunches, produce, and yet now there are more of them, than people making things.
Well anyhow. This may seem unrelated, but there's a lot of talk at the start of this talk, about population shifts, and collapse, and how it will affect things moving forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0CQsifJrMc
Short version:
If only we gave those kids food or better economic opportunities, they wouldn’t be doing those smash and grabs in stolen Kias for kicks.
The biggest issue I have with deterrence in the form of criminal justice is that people just don't think they'll get caught. If you don't think you'll get caught, you don't fear repercussions. Deterrence is largely a flawed theory because of this. Politicians keep pushing it because that's really the only answer they have.
Or maybe, if for 5000 years people from many different civilizations all independently reached the same conclusion, it's because the conclusion is true? Look at El Salvador—punishment introduced, crime eliminated. Seems like pretty solid empirical evidence to me!
Yes, we are experiencing a crime wave. No, no one is bother reporting much of it, except for murder, which is illegal not to report. If you want a good idea of where crime really is, look at the homicide rate.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd....
We do have an uptick, but calling it a "crime wave," is loaded language. Last time we had something like this, the word "super predators," was thrown around and we got the 1994 crime bill which put a whole bunch of petty criminals (drug users) and innocent minorities behind bars for decades. It also was the start of really aggressive policing and little care for constitutional rights, which lead to the state they are in today. All this while crime was actually going down. Be very careful with the crime hysterics in the news.
Any meaningful change will require funding and supporting youth programs like the YMCA, Big Brother programs, getting kids interested in organized sports and whatnot. It will also require fully funding schools in the middle and especially lower class zip codes. You have to get kids to see there is a way to be successful outside of gangs and crime. Any politician that promises to fix the problem by throwing people (petty criminals) in jail for longer (tough on crime) is just trying to serve a dual agenda (more aggressive police headcount) and not trying to solve the crime problem.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/report-washington-saw-its-m...
They were up 16.6% in 2022 (Seattle increased around 24%). It is 2023, Seattle is already at 35 murders from January to July, it is probably going to get much higher until December (2022 it was 52).
Last time we had something like this, the word "super predators," was thrown around and we got the 1994 crime bill which put a whole bunch of petty (drug users) criminals and minorities behind bars. It also was the start of really aggressive policing and little care for constitutional rights, which lead to the state they are in today. All this while crime was actually going down. Be very careful with the hysterics in the news.
Sry for the double post, replacing my bad math comment with a more meaningful one.
The y-axis of the chart you linked records the national homicide rate in units of homicides / 100k capita / yr, the standard units for reporting homicide rates. Those aren't percentages-- they have exactly the dimensions that the chart, and I, are talking about. So it's not correct to refer to "6.81%" in any way, because it's not a percentage. Subtracting the 2021 rate from the 2014 rate gives you a difference of 2.41 homicides / 100k / yr, which is also not a percentage. In order to express that as a percentage increase, you need to divide by the rate against which you're comparing (4.4 homicides / 100k / yr), which gives you ~1.5, i.e. a 50% increase.
We can discuss why that might have happened and whether you consider it notable, but we really can't debate a "2% increase" because that's just mathematically incorrect.
To your broader point, when we make diachronic comparisons of crime there's no particular reason to start the clock in 1990. The homicide rate is still higher than it was in 1950: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-h....
And, crucially, there were many changes between 1950 and 2023 that made it easier to prevent homicides: material technology got way better in the form of smartphones, ubiquitous cameras, DNA evidence, shock trauma units (that turn would-be murders into attempted murders), and an aging population that's less prone to homicide in general. If you took all of those things away and tried to fight 2023's homicide rate with 1950's tech, you'd find we have quite a few thumbs on the scale today.
>And, crucially, there were many changes between 1950 and 2023 that made it easier to prevent homicides: material technology got way better in the form of smartphones, ubiquitous cameras, DNA evidence
These are good at solving crimes, but not preventing them. As BLM rioters (not protesters) knew and Jan 6 people didn't is that a simple surgical mask will foil most camera system identification.
>shock trauma units (that turn would-be murders into attempted murders)
This is true, but you still have to get the patient into the hospital in time. Gunshots and stab woulds turn fatal really fast.
>and an aging population that's less prone to homicide in general.
We are aging, but our largest demographic currently is between 19-40 (prime time age).
>If you took all of those things away and tried to fight 2023's homicide rate with 1950's tech, you'd find we have quite a few thumbs on the scale today.
Perhaps a little.
In the long run, solving crimes is preventing them because crime (especially serious violent crime) is Pareto-distributed.
> This is true, but you still have to get the patient into the hospital in time. Gunshots and stab woulds turn fatal really fast.
The major innovation of shock trauma units just was getting patients to high-end hospitals really fast. In the 1970's, Baltimore began using helicopters to airlift critical patients to a city-wide shock center, which was considered outlandish at the time but paid off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_Adams_Cowley_Shock_Trauma_Ce.... The system works well enough that Baltimore now has roughly two non-fatal shootings for every fatal one. That's great for the survivors but tends to mask the scale of the violence, as a lot fewer of those victims would have survived without Dauphin helicopters.
> We are aging, but our largest demographic currently is between 19-40 (prime time age).
This sounds like a statement about one possible way to divide the population into histogram bins in 2023 rather than a comparison of population structure between 1950 and 2023. Since 1950, the most murder-prone fraction of the population (men in their 20's) has decreased by about 10%. (https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...). There are various reasonably ways of making that comparison but they all give the same qualitative answer supporting the common-sense observation that the US population pyramid has aged.
How does that work? If you are saying because the violent criminals are now in jail, that's completely discounting new generations.
>That's great for the survivors but tends to mask the scale of the violence, as a lot fewer of those victims would have survived without Dauphin helicopters.
Ya, I'll buy that.
>This sounds like a statement about one possible way to divide the population into histogram bins in 2023 rather than a comparison of population structure between 1950 and 2023.
I linked both population trees somewhere.
>Since 1950, the most murder-prone fraction of the population (men in their 20's) has decreased by about 10%.
You need to provide some data for that, I don't see how that's possible since it's not accounting for baby boomers or for population growth (unless you mean as a percentage). GenX was quite a small generation, but the Millennia's are quite large.
Great conversation though!
We need to look specifically at the sorts of crimes sensitive to these measures right?
I corrected OP's math and OP edited the comment to remove the claim about the increase in homicides being negligible, so now the thread doesn't really make any sense. But that's why I was talking about homicides.
Even the news would love a higher crime rate and they the most capable to sell the story and extract the profits.
I chased off an ex coworker who was literally throttling another coworker in a Walmart parking lot. The police arrived after and declined to take a statement, or evidence, or pursue the matter even though the attacker had a known name and address.
A local yokel tried to burn my apartment building down twice setting a fire in the interior stairwell at the top of the building around midnight endangering 50 some apartments. He lost his phone at the scene of attempt 1 and 30 days later came back to try again but nobody put any serious effort towards this. Locally the perp is throught to be a local drug dealer who..
Assaulted a neighbor in the parking lot on a different occasion before I pepper gelled him. Police actually showed up for that one again after it was over and threatened me with prosecution for pepper spraying the fellow that attacked someone.
In Seattle I dealt with multiple dangerous situations with looney tunes that are literally mental patients wandering the streets committing crimes many times by GTFO a few times by standing up to crazies that were threatening me or mine and once with judicious application of pepper spray vs a fellow that had already got physical. In no case would it have been possible to get a cop during the situation nor useful to consult thereafter. They literally announced in 2022 that they had no detectives to handle new sexual assault cases THAT YEAR
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/sea...
They sure as fuck aren't assigning any resources to figure at which mental patient tried to punch a citizen. This is the same reason you see property crime unreported unless such a report is specifically required for insurance purposes. No law enforcement nor prosecutorial resources will be tasked if its reported. For instance I witnessed hundreds of cases of attempted or successful shoplifting that certainly exceeded the figure required for it to be a felony but I myself reported zero to the police nor was I allowed to do so and I know for a fact few if any were pursued for the same logical reason. There is no reason to believe that the city or state would carry such an endeavor to completion.
Then there was the fellow that broke into our building and pushed my wife down and tried to steal her keys. Had to handle that one myself too and put the fellow on the ground. To their credit the cops did show up again after the fact to actually haul the idiot off and charge him. If you gift wrap an incredibly clear cut case and apprehend the bad buy the cops will after the dangerous situation is over act as a glorified taxi and move the bad guy for you. A whole lot of work to move one addict from a cell to a drug treatment program he hopefully completed.
Anecdotally it does feel like its getting worse in the last several years.
Doesn’t it make more sense that the numbers are accurate?
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/sea...
Please back this up with some form of proof.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/mayor-bruce...
We simply have less cops (and more people) in 2023 than we did in 2003.
1. Many less police than 20 years ago
2. Police still have to take reports for these things, not to mention they have other things they have to do.
3. Overworked police have to prioritize what parts of their jobs they get done.
There is no conjecture about it, it simply is. And it explains how Seattle reported crime was down 4% in 2022 while homicide was up 24%.
> With everything related to policing, these things are never as simple as "simply have less [sic] cops". Reporting requirements change, dispatch systems change, unit composition changes, etc etc.
Those things change very slowly, if at all, over 20 years. They still need people to pick up the phone, and online reporting isn't applicable to larger crimes (they'll tell you that you can't file online and must call the non-emergency number).
Mind you, I professionally do reporting work with police/jail data and I have intimate and often granular familiarity with much of this. Like I said, this stuff is never as simple as a couple numbers here and there. I wish it was, since that'd make my job a LOT easier!
So as a courtesy to me and yourself, please raise your standard of proof and give me something with actual substance.
Can you back up your claim with evidence?
> Washington is a right-to-bail state, meaning a judge cannot hold a suspect without bail except in cases where the crime is punishable by the possibility of life in prison and there is “clear and convincing evidence of a propensity for violence,” meaning the suspect is likely to be a danger to the community if they are released.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/washington-state-fe...
Why bail isn't being issued at all has more to do for the current push for equity, and also, we just don't want to put people in jail anymore. So they are guaranteed release with bail, and often that is reduced to no bail if the offender is indigent.
This is laughably far from the truth. There are loads and loads and loads of people who want to put people in jail. You can see that very clearly by looking at the number of people in jail. Here's [1] an article about rising populations in a Seattle jail:
"The overall population at King County’s two jails fell from over 1,900 to about 1,300 during the pandemic, as the county moved to increase alternatives to incarceration. But since then, the jail population has crept back up to about 1,600."
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/king-county-looks-...
This isn’t true in general; someone else posted details about Washington, but many state systems have limits (and it usually isn’t just “capital offenses”) on offenses where bail can be denied, and for all others bail must be set (that doesn’t mean the terms will be acceptable). As such, the decision as to whether bail will be offered at all does, in fact, often explicitly consider the offenses charged.
Much harder to do that today. So much less need for bail.
A lot of the opposition came from the previous Chicago mayor who publicly believed that people accused of crimes are guilty. She used to be a prosecutor.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/06/07/lightfoot-says-peopl...
Also your analogy isn't so effective when many people do think drugs should all be legalized to both reduce harm to users and cut the cashflow out from gangs and criminal enterprise.
If you are homeless and have nothing maybe 5 or 50 bucks should be sufficient.
How much money someone can afford to put up does not change those things.
Also, eliminating cash bail (the requirement for up-front payment of cash for release on bail) doesn't necessarily have any impact on the penalties for violating bail. (While the federal system retains cash bail as an option, it doesn’t have the regulated minimum percent of the bail penalty as an up-front payment system feature that most state systems have in one form or another, and its quite possible to have 0% cash bail in a situation with a specified money bail penalty, and—aside from occasionally producing confused public commentary when people unfamiliar with the federal system read news about a case like that—it works fine.)
(extended family works for a bondsman in a Midwest state, familiar with the system)
How we get people to appear for their court date when they have no reason to, is another story all together, and I have no idea. Obviously, someone living unhoused in society without assets to freeze or a home to confiscate, doesn't have much reason to show up. They are also the ones that couldn't pay bail anyways.
All bets are off if you make it to a federal offense (e.g. stealing USPS mail). The feds don't mess around.
Or are you suggesting that incentives don't actually exist, and you can't change anyone's behaviour ever by offering them rewards or punishments for acting in certain ways?
Maybe if someone has nothing to lose they are a flight risk, but if they have $100k on the line, they won't be?
So someone with a net worth of $20k might be released with a $10k bail, but someone with a net worth of $20M would be released with a $10M bail? Is that not how it works?
It's not "solely" because we're talking about someone already committed a crime. This punishment is not JUST for a poor person, it is for a poor person who is a criminal. Whatever judgement we attribute to the matter, saying this is a punishment for being poor is effectively saying poor people are basically criminals.
This isn't a double standard between rich and poor, but rather a double standard between rich criminals and poor criminals, which in my opinion is lower in priority compared ot things like helping poor people who don't commit crimes and are good people.
A cop was in a bad mood, gave excessive charges to someone, the judge then gave the person a $500 bail which couldn't be afforded. Let's say something like getting pulled over for a broken tail lite and the cop smelling weed, found half an oz of cannabis, then arrests them with charges for attempted distribution. This is a common scenario.
Because that person, as an individual (and not an abstract entity like you've leaned on) cannot afford to pay bail, they're then put into jail for eight months while waiting for trial. Had they had $500 in savings to pay for bail they would have been able to continue working, look for a job, maintain social relationships, etcetc. But they're poor, so now they're stuck and their life is being progressively ruined... all because they wanted to smoke some weed. What is actually gained from keeping this person in jail for eight months and ruining their life? In what world is it worse to waive that $500 bail and let them continue living their life?
Mind you, while the person is in jail, their defense attorney's interest is simply to get them out of jail. As such, constitutional violations (or even basic procedural violations!) will be considered a distraction just to make sure they don't spend an undue amount of time in jail. As in, why push for hearings to address contsitutional violations if scheduling those hearings will take three months, followed by a year of followup? All the while, the trial is continued to be delayed. This happened a LOT when the pandemic was at its peak -- human rights violations couldn't be addressed because the courts were dealing with COVID restraints and arguing anything but the very narrow slice of the specific charges would cause harm to the person. Tons of people just sat in jail all because the courts were overbooked, a large percentage who were found not-guilty, or charges were dropped, etc. Many because they couldn't afford bond.
Also mind you, there are organizations like Chicago Community Bond Fund who will pay someone's bond if they can't (through a revolving door fund). If those organizations are able to pay peoples' bonds, then what purpose does a bond actually serve?
It's not ideal that someone got caught for something minor and can't afford bail, however that safeguard is in place to deter the actual criminals. If the law accounts for this and only removes bonds from low level crimes and only first time offenders, then I would agree with that.
Um, bail is for people who are awaiting trial. It's for people who are suspected of having committed a crime. It is for someone who might be a criminal.
Innocent until proven guilty.
And yes, the law typically makes a distinction, but that's ultimately state dependent. But frankly, if you didn't already know that, then you should seriously consider spending some doing some bottom of the barrel fundamental research that you clearly haven't done. Until you've done that research and can actually argue from a position of basic knowledge on this topic, then I can't see you as anything other than a cruel, vapid person. Do better.
Good luck.
Let's say I'm selling my car privately on craigslist and the guy wants to drive my car. If he gives me his ID or the keys to his car, I'll let him take it for a spin. (Let's assume I don't want to ride with him because I'm doing something else). Most likely, he'll return because the headache of stealing my car is greater than the worth he'd get out of taking it. Sure, the odds aren't 100% he'll return it but they'll be high. Now if he shows up, has no ID, has no cash deposit, or anything else he can leave with my, the temptation to just take the car is definitely more than when I have something of his.
Cash bail has definitely been corrupted but I do think it serves a purpose of keeping people honest just like a lock on your house keeps people honest.
The argument against it is that it makes life harder for everyone except those who have spare cash hanging around.
Coincidentally, those who have spare cash hanging around may not value it as highly as their freedom, so they maybe are still likely to ditch and run?
Which means that bail is really only a good motivator for that sweet spot of accused criminal who both has enough cash available to be able to put it up, and has so little cash available that getting their bail back quickly is hugely important to them. Except that they dont get it back quickly anyway, it can take quite a long time...so ehh...
There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
https://www.usccr.gov/news/2022/us-commission-civil-rights-r...
> More than 60% of defendants are detained pre-trial because they can’t afford to post bail.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
> As many as 500,000 people are held across the country in local jails because of their inability to pay bail, mostly for low-level offenses.