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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

This is better for everyone. Either someone is safe to release pending trial, or they aren't. Either they're a flight risk, or they aren't.

How much money someone can afford to put up does not change those things.

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Under what obligation does someone have to return to court other than the threat of a FTA warrant?

That’s it, same as if a bounty hunter comes for you due to cash bail and a bail bondsman. That dance is an unnecessary private industry Rube Goldberg contraption when you already have a judiciary who can determine boolean bail and law enforcement for retrieval.

(extended family works for a bondsman in a Midwest state, familiar with the system)

The bounty hunter isn't going to collect any money since there was no cash bail involved...so we don't even get that anymore. No one cares anymore if you don't come back for your court date, you just go somewhere else and even when you are re-arrested for some other crime, they simply don't care.

It sounds like you’re saying cash bail fixes this because they can’t afford the bail and are held indefinitely until their court date.

The only point that I made here is that without cash bail, there are simply no bounty hunters to consider at all. They don't exist, because there is no economic basis for their existence.

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.

Does it really work like that in the US? You don't get judged in abstentia? Also, suspended sentences aren't automatically unsuspended if you get arrested a second time for similar crimes? I thought suspended sentences were a big thing in modern countries.

It is usually just petty crime, and even if they make a judgment, they are just happy enough that the person is now some other jurisdictions problem. So let's say you have a warrant in Sitka Alaska, but in the mean time you've moved to Seattle, Sitka is like "this guy is Seattle's problem now, whatever we decide here we aren't going to pay to have them sent back." They won't hold a trial in abstentia, they'll just issue a bench warrant and move on to the next case.

All bets are off if you make it to a federal offense (e.g. stealing USPS mail). The feds don't mess around.

Getting arrested (again) with an open warrant used to be a big deal. Now at least in King County WA...plenty of people are getting arrested with warrants already out because they didn't appear in court (usually in another state that isn't interested in extraditing)...and they are simply being released again with a new court date. It is a bit ridiculous.

Your tax dollars at work

The question confuses obligation with consequence.

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.)

Maybe if someone has nothing to lose they are a flight risk, but if they have $100k on the line, they won't be?

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?

Same exact question can be asked about someone who's poor with a $500 bond. That same $500 will be trivial to pay for someone who's not poor. In what world is this anything but systemic punishment for being poor?

Just because a good portion of criminals are poor, doesn't mean that a good portion of poor people are criminals. Thinking that poverty causes crime is treating poor people like animals that have no freewill, and are at the whims of their environment. In fact, most poor people are not criminals, so punishing criminals IS NOT punishing poor people.

Are you seriously suggesting that keeping a person in jail for two years, who hasn't been given trial, solely because they can't pay $2,000 isn't effectively a punishment against being poor?

> solely because they can't pay $2,000

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.

To be honest, you're really straining that needle threading by relying on abstract terms. Let's get down to real people who exist in the real world.

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?

Ok sure, let's say that person benefits from no bond, and can continue their life. Now consider a scenario where someone who drinks and drives get arrested but are let out immediately, then they do it again and get into a serious car accident. Or how about a serial car thief that is let out and continues stealing more cars. It seems likely to me that the community of poor people who, for the most part, are not criminals or criminal suspects, would suffer the most just because we have these other edge cases of someone smoking weed and not affording bail... which is why I think it's important to make the distinction between the potential criminals and poor people.

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.

I highly recommend that you watch a public bond hearing. It's long and boring, but I promise you'll learn a lot from it.

> 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.

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.

Sure, then there is a distinction between criminal suspects and poor people, which means those mostly affected by the bonds are poor people who are also criminal suspects. The question is then are the majority of those criminal suspects guilty, if no then this is really inefficient and/or corrupt law enforcement, if yes then eliminating bail has the potential to release these criminals and risking more crimes... just because some of them are committing low level crimes and can't afford bail. Now if the law accounts for this and makes a distinction between low level crimes and first time offenders, then I guess that would be fine.

What would be an "acceptable" percent of people who, despite not committing the crime they've been charged with, spent 6mo in jail to you? 5%? 10%? 20%?

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.

I thought bail values were set based on an estimation of the defendant's worth?

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?

The more you stand to lose by fleeing, the less of a flight risk you are.

I don't know if I agree with this comment. Small things like cash bail keep people honest and you're assuming a binary scenario.

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.

Do yourself and watch a public bond hearing. Guaranteed you'll be surprised by not just how much it's been "corrupted" but also how routine it is.

Thats pretty much the argument in favour of it.

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...

What percentage of people granted bail are unable to post it for financial reasons? I don’t know the answer, but if the system is a good fit for the vast majority of people who ever get arrested, then I would consider that a good system.

There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

It's incredibly high:

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.

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