America's Peculiar Bail System
priceonomics.com
priceonomics.com
A lot of people without much familiarity of the legal system think things like "no innocent person would ever plead guilty!" but the way the US legal/justice system is set up right now, it is often the least-bad alternative to plead guilty to a crime you didn't commit than to fight it.
And I'd love to point my finger at one individual or set of individuals, but the reality is that the entire system is broken, and it isn't broken because of bad actors, it is broken because it is just poorly designed and implemented at its core (although moral prosecutors can help mitigate some of the problems).
The UK justice system is imperfect, but things like no plea deals, no monetary bail, and better pay for public defenders (although still too low, and they're still overworked) improve things a lot. Plus prosecutors aren't politically motivated and are interested in justice (elected prosecutors is another massive problem in the US).
The US criminal justice system is "scary." I feel bad for anyone who it victimises, in particular the poor.
The phrase "they are just x" gets thrown around a lot. They are just animals. They are just monsters. They are just evil. As if these qualities are discrete things that exist by themselves...
What can we do to convince people that criminals are not, in fact, "just" bad people?
For example, in the discussions about recent high-profile police shootings, a lot of people just dismissed the whole thing once they found out about that the victims were themselves criminals. A disturbing number of people immediately stopped having any sympathy the moment they found out that e.g. Michael Brown had just robbed a convenience store or that Eric Garner was selling cigarettes illegally. They would generally not come out and say that people deserve summary execution for these crimes, but that is essentially the argument that they end up making.
If you can't even convince people that small-time criminals deserve to survive an encounter with the police, then good luck convincing them that they deserve fair treatment in court....
It's less that these men "deserved" death for what they did or didn't do, and more that they made decisions that spiraled out of control and led to unfortunate consequences - in Brown's case, physically attacking an armed police officer; in Garner's case, refusing to go along with police when asked ("resisting arrest"). Neither crime is punishable by death, but when you take actions that lead to police escalating use of force [1], the consequences are unpredictable and generally not going to be good.
You have acknowledged that there are some nuanced reasons that knowledge of crimes committed by these men might change one's perception of the incidents.
You then refer to a non-specific, large group of people who's reaction to that knowledge completely lacks nuance. From this, you conclude these people are simple-minded hate-machines and lament their existence.
It seems to me much more likely that you failed to understand the nuance in their opinions, because you lacked either the willingness or the ability to relate to them and the way they think.
That's my basis for saying that. What's your basis for saying your alternative is more likely? It looks to me like you have substantially less to go on for your statement than I do for mine.
> "severe punishments to little to deter crime."
I have seen some evidence that this is the case specifically for the death penalty. I've seen little to suggest that it holds true throughout more general cases.
Nevertheless, even if we rule out deterrence as a possibility, we're still left with incapacitation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incapacitation_%28penology%29). That undeniably does work, and it works damn well. The thought of being locked up in a cell may not deter a free man, and it may not cure a captured man, but it will prevent that man from victimizing innocent members of the general public again.
You don't need silly concepts of supernatural souls or good and evil to benefit from incapacitation. No matter what we think of any of these issues, the fact of the matter is that Ted Kaczynski is unable to mail a bomb to people like you or I.
As I see it, one of the biggest problems with the American justice system is pre-mature release. We are releasing criminals before they are known to be rehabilitated. If we're going to go with rehabilitation, then we need to scrap the idea of determining how long somebody will be incapacitated (imprisoned) during sentencing. The duration of incapacitation should be determined solely by how long rehabilitation takes.
A doctor continues treatment for as long as treatment is necessary. You don't hear them say things like "Okay Mr Johnson, looks like you've got cancer. We're going to do chemo for 6 months, then you'll be done!" Rather, you get "we're going to start chemo, and we'll continue to monitor your progress."
We also need to set sane expectations for our own abilities. What is the false-positive rate for rehabilitation? Does that false-positive rate, when considered with the severity of the crime, work out to a risk that we are willing to accept? What if 1% of captured and rehabilitated murderers go on to murder again? Is that an acceptable risk? What if it's 5%, or 10%? Are there crimes so awful that no false-positive rate is acceptable?
Maybe that is better than our current system, but I think we should certainly aspire for better.
> "Having indeterminate sentencing would also be rife with possibilities of misconduct"
While that is true, I would argue that not incapacitating somebody for exactly as long as is necessary is itself injustice. It means that we will knowingly be imprisoning people longer than is necessary (obviously abusive) and it means that we will be knowingly releasing non-reformed criminals back into the public (I consider this to be abusive to the public.)
Incapacitation determined on individual basis is a precise tool, a very sharp knife. In the hands of an authoritarian regime, it could be very dangerous. But in the hands of a liberal lawful society, it allows the least harm possible for everybody involved.
We could deny ourselves these tools, for fear of what could be done with them (and in the process, cause certain unnecessary harm). Or we could strive to be the very best that we can be, and give ourselves the tools necessary to achieve that.
You write as if you genuinely don't know that USA imprisons a far larger percentage of the population than any other nation, now or at any time in the history of prisons. A humane person wouldn't even have to consider the grotesque and obvious faults of the system (racial disparities, entrenched prosecutorial misconduct, emphasis on victimless crime, etc.) to know that "pre-mature release" is the least of our problems.
Too many people get stuck into "grouping" people because it's cognitively easier. This makes it easier to strawman and hate a group.
I see that a lot.
Maybe you haven't, because society isn't built to put you down and keep you there, the way it is for some people. Check your privilege.
Either way, riots do raise awareness. You might hate the destructive people, but you do pay attention to them, and then you pay attention to the non-violent people who are with them.
I have, in fact, been that angry. I just haven't made the mistake of assuming that that anger, expressed in the form of violence, will get me what I want. Especially since a recent study on the subject shows that the radical interpretation of riots you have just espoused is not consonant with history.
Have you considered not making wild assumptions about me in an effort to invalidate my viewpoint?
I understand rage. I understand feeling helpless. I know those feelings. I have felt those feelings. I could go on and on and on, making all the declarations of sympathy and empathy and understanding you could possibly wish for here.
Yet, at no point did I come to believe that random destruction of property would get me what I wanted to relieve that all-consuming rage. Doubly so when evidence on the subject shows clearly that riots don't work. Whether or not I have felt a particular flavor of rage is immaterial to the question of whether or not riots are an efficacious means of producing social change. The former is a question of unknowable perceptions, while the latter is a question verifiable against reality to the extent that reality is objective.
Might I ask you to consider the basic question of "Do riots work?" Or the related basic question of if desperately wanting something to be true makes it so?
http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf
Long story short, violence does not make other people want to help you or give you what you ask for. It makes those other people do the opposite.
When people believe something the opposite of both basic sense and history for romantic reasons, I call them deluded. This is the case with those who argue that riots bring support to their viewpoints.
I'm also not sure that the correlation doesn't run the other way, and that the more right-wing an area was the more likely that people were being mistreated enough to riot.
I dont particularly support rioting, but its clear that in many cases, and the USA in the 60s this definitely applies, that the "fault" for the rioting can be clearly applied to those who are mistreating the rioters.
So, they're "in the right" yet trapped by an entire establishment that both intentionally and unintentionally mistreats them, up to and including well documented COINTELPRO false flag operations against the civil rights movement, and you think the salient thing to draw from this episode is that the people involved were stupid?
Those I know who hold to that notion do so because they find riots emotionally satisfying. To them, a thing that is emotionally satisfying must also be objectively productive, because it's incomprehensible that such strong emotions could not move witnesses to share, support, and solidarity.
That, and a bunch of radical pablum about how getting people talking about your cause is the same as actually effecting change and similar. Something about symbolic violence and making a statement usually crops up around this point. Occasionally someone argues that destruction of property is non-violence.
The human capacity for finding a way to ideologically justify whatever it is you want to do is truly remarkable.
In retrospect, I was a lot more tolerant of this flavor of toxic radical thought when I didn't live in an area they regard as a great place to go smashing things.
If that isn't a valid assumption - and I suppose it's possible, but I would like to think not - then there's a very different conversation to be had.
Others just like smashing things.
I've also seen people get very upset when confronted with the links I showed you. It's a treasured article of faith in some circles that riots produce desirable social change.
The delusion is not the goal. The delusion is the notion that violence will achieve the goal because said violence is emotionally satisfying.
If you find out please let me know. I work in the corrections industry and I deal with this concept on a daily basis and I makes me ill...
Running in the opposite direction as police shouldn't be a cause for suspicion or arrest.
Instead of running away, the more correct approach would be to refuse to be detained for questioning unless the police have reasonable suspicion that you have done the crime and to retain legal counsel, if needed. You can calmly stand up for your rights without acting rashly and invoking suspicion.
The police, naturally, appeal to themselves and overturn those rulings whenever they feel it to be expedient. They may also proceed from there to summary administrative punishments, such as arresting the suspect on bogus charges, holding him for hours, then releasing him without prosecution. You might beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.
Consider, for a moment, that if the person running is innocent, he will not necessarily be aware that a crime has taken place, or even that there are police behind him. If he stays put, he may be subjected to uncompensated inconveniences from the justice system, regardless of his innocence.
So the correct play is to immediately start recording, walk away until a cop tells you to stop, then positively establish that you refuse consent for any searches or seizures, and will not respond to questions without legal counsel present. The one and only thing you ask from that point is whether you can leave.
There is no longer any net benefit to hanging around anywhere that a cop can see you. Whatever protection you may have against people committing crimes against you is offset by the possibility of receiving a summons with a monetary fine attached, or possibly even having all your valuables forfeited.
I completely agree that police have to justify their suspicions and subsequent actions (searches, arrests and other actions), but saying that we, as citizens, should be okay engaging in suspicious behavior, just seems wrong.
We should hold those in law enforcement accountable for their actions and the exercise of the authority given to them, but we should also respect what they do and not make their job unnecessarily harder than it needs to be.
This is why a paranoid schizophrenic might become angry at someone watching videos on their phone on the bus. The listener believes himself to be doing a perfectly normal and harmless activity, whereas the paranoid believes that the watcher is beaming mind control rays into the bus driver's skull to make the bus late.
Of late, cops have been acting more like the paranoid schizophrenic, assuming that everyone is carrying drugs or terrorist bombs, and that the cameras and camera-phones used to record them are actually deadly weapons. This makes them supremely unqualified to determine what is "reasonable".
When I drive my car to work, and see someone running along the sidewalk, I do not assume they are running away from me. They might be exercising. Or perhaps that person saw a bee and is allergic to bee stings. Maybe their wife will be occupied for the next hour and their mistress is 3 blocks away. I don't know. I don't really care.
I don't have any reasonable grounds to impute motive to the running. Even if I know that there is a bomb planted in the sidewalk near them, I cannot assume that they are running from the bomb, because I cannot know that they know what I know.
If any reasonable person could conceive a plausible and probable reason for it, the behavior is simply not suspicious. And as a reasonable person, I might assume that people would run from the police in my municipality because they don't want to be confronted without cause, thrown to the ground, and hospitalized for spinal injuries causing paralysis shortly thereafter. It's simpler elsewhere; they just don't want to get shot, robbed (forfeiture), or even just have hours of their time wasted by police.
And you can't lower the standard when a crime is committed, because there is no magic mobile alert that goes out to everyone in the area whenever that happens. I have no way of knowing what external circumstances are in play that may make what I am doing right now seem more suspicious. The police can't beam their paranoia into other people's heads.
We can, and should, make their job harder, and demand higher standards of professionalism from them, right along with removing all the incentives for them to do their work in a lazy and slipshod manner. What they do now is currently so not-difficult that police departments can reject applicants who are too smart for the job.[0] The common functions that people actually want them to perform are also routinely handled by Brink's, Pinkerton, ADT, KBR, Chubb, Booz Allen, Securitas, etc., without any abuse of authority, because they have no more authority than their customers.
I'll respect what police do when what they do shows respect for the public, rather than unreasonable suspicion and violent hostility, with a nasty habit of looking the other way when one's co-workers do wrong.
[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/01/too_smart_to_... http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
The circumstances of your environment definitely make a difference in whether a reasonable person would be suspicious of the activity (even if you are unaware of those circumstances). If someone is lying dead in the street and a man was running away from the scene of the crime carrying a knife, a reasonable person would be be suspicious and not be thinking "Maybe he's got some hunting he's anxious to get to". (even if that's a plausible or even probable explanation)
Suspicion doesn't have the same requirements as guilt, which police officers should not be determining. You shouldn't be able to treat someone as if they are guilty, simply because you suspect them of a crime. Reasonable suspicion does give police license to investigate further and detain and do searches when necessary. (and we should definitely hold police officers accountable when they detain or search someone without reasonable suspicion)
As for the comment about showing respect, I think that sort of mindset will just escalate and make the problem worse. Lets demand respect for our rights and accountability in law enforcement, but lets not insult other people's intelligence and assume the worst, especially in broad ways that assume that all cops (or all cops in a certain city or area) are stupid, incompetent or evil.
This is why the cop will need to claim in his report that the running individual appeared to match the description of the suspect, however vague it may have been.
"Be advised that the suspect is... human, with a height, weight, skin color, and gender."
"Roger that, dispatch, I see someone matching that description now. Moving to intercept."
In your example, the suspicious factors are "wielding/brandishing a weapon in the absence of a known threat" and "possible suspect or witness to a violent crime". Since the person could be a frightened witness who pulled the knife in self-defense, it would be inappropriate to shoot him in the back 0.5 seconds after ordering him to drop the knife.
If the very same person did the same thing in the woods, near a dead deer, the suspicious factors would be "this is not deer season", "there was no gunshot", and "he isn't wearing safety orange". There are plenty of factors there to justify an investigatory detention beyond the direction and magnitude of a person's motion vector. But they must be relevant to a specific crime.
In the street example, the suspected crime is manslaughter. In the woods example, it is poaching. Without the body, the cop would have to fall back on, perhaps, city ordinances regarding the blade length of knives carried in public. Reasonable suspicion requires that the target be suspected of something specific.
If a cop chases down someone who ran from him upon spotting him, what is the suspected crime? As far as I know (not a lawyer), it is only a crime to flee from police custody if you are already suspected of a different crime, for which they already have reasonable suspicion to detain you. You can't be reasonably arrested solely for resisting arrest, because the arrest cannot occur prior to suspicion for an arrestable offense.
That's why you sometimes see reasonable articulable suspicion. If the cop cannot say why he chose to arrest you at the time of the arrest, it might be a bogus arrest. "Being a suspicious person" is not by itself a crime.
As for respect, the public owes the police respect in the same way that they owe restaurant waiters a 15% gratuity. If the waiter pees in your soup, you shouldn't leave a tip. If a cop fails to uphold the public's mandate for policing, he shouldn't expect any respect. That obligation flows only one way. If the public does not respect the police of a particular polity, it is because those particular police are providing them with poor service. It is not our responsibility to "save their tip".
In the waiter analogy, the customer does not leave a tip, so the next time he visits the restaurant, the waiter pees in his soup AND suckerpunches him in the face, then complains loudly when the customer not only fails to leave a tip, but also declines to pay for the soup.
Also doesn't the reasonable suspicion have to be specific to the length of detention or the breadth of the search? Being stopped by police so they can verify your appearance, see if there is any obvious evidence of involvement (such as blood) or ask any nearby witnesses if they saw you committing a crime should require, in my thinking a lower threshold of suspicion than if they are handcuffing, arresting, detaining and bringing you into a police station for a lineup. (Just in the same way that doing a search for drugs in someone's car doesn't mean that the police can also search that person's house).
As for the person holding the knife and being shot. I am of the opinion that the person should be posing a clear threat to police to justify such excessive force. The police should avoid escalating the situation and should take a defensive stance, if at all possible, to see if the situation can be handled with less force.
I don't think the waiter/cop is a good comparison. You might have a better comparison with a personal body guard, but I don't see someone serving you food and someone who puts themselves in harms way for your safety at the same level, even if they are both being paid for it.
For me, trust is better established and progress happens when both parties try to work together and move forward in good faith. I don't think a "I won't respect you until you respect me" attitude will get us anywhere.
Police-related occupations are the 15th most deadly jobs in the US, at about 0.0001 workplace injury deaths/worker-year. They face .000035 homicides/worker-year, about double the rate of restaurant managers, retail supervisors, and cashiers, and half that of cabbies and chauffeurs.
The majority of police deaths are, in fact, traffic accidents, as befits an occupation that spends a large amount of time driving (especially with such a miniscule chance of actually getting any moving violations).
So I think it safe to assume that if the cop worked in an open-to-the-public building all day rather than a car, the occupational risk of death for him would be only slightly higher than the waiter. But the waiter is paid $5 per hour from voluntary customers, and the cop may get over $100k/year (including overtime) out of taxes, whether you like it or not.
The burden is 100% upon police departments to monitor public opinion and adjust their behavior accordingly. They are the employees. The public is the employer. When they do not respect their employers, that is insubordination, not just discourtesy.
I'm not going to give anyone a trophy just for doing their job correctly. But I will surely react when they do it incorrectly. Respecting the public is part of the job description. So yes, definitely, they have to show that respect first, and also take it stoically whenever people give them the finger and oink at them. If you cannot remain calm and professional in the face of insults, you are not well suited for police work.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales
Most people would think just the opposite. If you run then you are guilty of something, or trying to hide something. If you are actually innocent, then that can be sorted out when the cops question you, but either way running away isn't some kind of get out of jail free card to avoid the police.
You can see how well that worked out for Freddie Gray.
You don't think that people who commit crimes choose to commit then?
What is controlling the minds of murders, rapists, arsonists, ect if not the people performing their actions?
Instead of addressing problems in a way that would be most effective for the individual and society, we are so afraid of having "bad" people on the streets, that we lock them away, sometimes for years, without a lot of evidence that we are doing any good (in fact, there is evidence that once someone enters the prison system, they are likely to commit crime once released)
On the political side, we are unnecessarily removing transparency from the government and sacrificing constitutional rights in the name of protecting ourselves from terrorists and people involved with criminal activity. The potential for abuse with this type of action is huge, especially if you get the wrong people in power.
I don't think we'll fix these sort of problems until we change our mindset and get money out of politics.
I would further argue that prosecutors' motivations are very similar in both countries. At the highest levels, the prosecutors are subject to political pressures and incentives whether due to direct elections, appointments, or oversight; at the lower levels, the lawyers are part of a bureaucracy with all that entails.
On the flip side, I think a lot of people with only passing familiarity with the legal system think innocent people regularly plead guilty. I have lots of friends who are public defenders. My impression is that they rarely encounter people who aren't clearly guilty of what they're charged with. When they rage about injustice, it's about how extreme the penalties are, the lack of sympathy for juvenile offenders, etc.
"I think the federal guilty plea rate is in the 90-95% range, with the remainder being trials and the occasional dismissal or other resolution.
How many of those are actually guilty? I don't know. Many of them did something. But a not-insigificant [sic] percentage of them didn't do what the government says they did."
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1aokls/iama_federal_cr...
Whether a case is criminal or civil more than 9 out of 10 times a case will not go to trial. This is not necessarily indicative of any problem in either criminal or civil...in fact in most contexts it makes a lot of sense.
For example, as a criminal defense lawyer, if the Gov has a really shitty case against my Client (not saying they are necessarily innocent), guess what it will never go to trial, b/c either the case can be won on pretrial motions or I can have a case broken down to a lesser charge and it makes sense to work that out (plea) rather than risk the conviction on the original charge. Further, your statement "no innocent person would ever plead guilty", also inaccurately depicts a system where there is only two options guilty/not guilty, over looking a withholding of adjudication which is going to be applicable in the majority of misdemeanor cases and even some felonies. On the other hand if the State has a slam dunk case against my Client, it again makes no sense to go to trial and expose my Client to the maximum sentence when I can work out a plea at the minimums (or close to) under the law, this serves the interest of my Client as much as society (saving tax payer dollars on unnecessary trials, think arbitration/mediation in the civil context). Only in those cases where the plea offer is equal to the maximums under the law, or where the Gov has a shitty case but the facts are so egregious the Gov would rather take it to trial and lose than give a minimal plea does it make sense to go to trial.
Unfortunately the World is simply comprised of haves and have-nots, where the poor (as you call them) get the short end of the stick...certainly this is true in the justice system as you note, but it is no more true in law than anywhere else (medical care, transportation, education, employment, ect...). Only the potential Gov abuses in the justice system have higher consequences, and that in part is why in 1963 SCOTUS ruled defendants have a Constitutional right to a lawyer who otherwise could not afford one(establishing the first PD office). Talk about scary...we have a Constitutional right to a criminal lawyer, but not to see a Dr. if we are sick.
People should be allowed to plead guilty if they're certain that they'll be found guilty in court, and don't want to go through with the hassle. But I don't think they should in any way be rewarded for it with a lighter sentence, because that situation is indistinguishable from punishing people who insist on a trial.
Every person accused of a crime should have the right to a trial if they want one, and they should never be subject to additional punishment for insisting that they get it. As it stands, insisting on a trial when you're guilty is de facto a crime punishable by potentially years in prison.
This is not strictly a rich versus poor thing, either. Even a person who can afford an excellent lawyer can be potentially faced with the choice of a certain lesser prison term or a trial and an uncertain greater prison term.
I explained this to Nitrogen in this thread. Everyone is looking at this in a vacuum and thinking, "if the Gov offered a lesser sentence with a plea, but sought higher sentencing after a conviction at trial, then they are being vindictive." But they are not being vindictive, because that's what they wanted and may have been appropriate all along. Alternatively, a plea would not exist if the Prosecutor said the plea is "x", but you can go to trial and get a free bite at the apple and if you lose I promise to only seek "x", because everyone would go to trial. The real negative of a system like that would be maximums across the board which would neither serve society or most defendants.
Why would the alternative be maximums across the board? Doesn't the judge still get discretion in sentencing after a trial?
This is exactly the kind of things that a lot of people find incredibly odious about the US justice system.
If the state has a slam dunk case against your client that justifies the maximum sentence, then the state should seek that. If the state does not have a case that justifies the maximum sentence, then the maximum sentence shouldn't - and in most countries wouldn't be - on the table in the first place.
That this is even possible gives US prosecutors strong incentives to dangle the threat of high sentences in front of your clients whether or not they are justified in the interest of pushing your clients not to go to trial. Especially when they face defendants with weaker representation. To me, this does not serve justice at all - it serves to create further injustices.
Having a slam dunk case in no way justifies the maximums. In many instances the Gov has a slam dunk case they still offer the minimums, because that is what the facts justify.
Whether or not the Prosecutor dangles the maximums to get you to plea to less, that has no bearing if the facts justify the offer, you can always open plea to the Court and cut the prosecutor out of the equation. There are other safe-guards.
That wasn't what I implied, though I realise the wording was ambiguous. What I meant was "a slam dunk case where the facts justifies the maximum sentence". So both that the case is a slam dunk and that the maximum sentence is justified.
Is justice served by re-victimizing a rape victim on the stand when you can get a plea for a lesser felony? Why go through the expense and risk of acquittal for a murder when you can get a manslaughter plea?
Most countries that don't allow or severely curb backroom plea deals will still take into consideration guilty pleas and other behaviour from the defendant that reduces the impact on the victim by e.g. reducing the need for a victim to take the stand.
But importantly, the basis for any request for leniency will then be subject to proper independent scrutiny.
Conversely, coercive attempts at extracting guilty pleas by having prosecutors dangle high sentences in front of someone also creates a substantial risk of miscarriages of justice in the opposite direction too, by getting innocents to accept pleas in the face of overzealous prosecutors or fake allegations.
> Why go through the expense and risk of acquittal for a murder when you can get a manslaughter plea?
Because if acquittal is a genuine risk, then it should be up to a court to determine if the evidence even holds for manslaughter.
The goal should not be the highest number of convictions, but justice. The moment it becomes about the highest number of convictions, justice has already lost.
Isn't this (plea to lesser charge) a part of the problem the parent post was describing, that the sheer might and vindictiveness of the criminal justice system intimidates innocent (or even guilty) defendants into pleading guilty? If justice would be served by a lesser charge or a lesser sentence, how is it fair to increase the charge or increase the sentence because the defendant wants to exercise their constitutional right to a trial?
>intimidates innocent (or even guilty) defendants into pleading guilty?
Again this is a major misconception, in most instances of misdemeanors and even in some felonies there may not be a guilty plea, there will be a no contest plea ("I am not saying I did it, I am not saying I didn't do it, I am closing the case in my best interest") and in exchange the Gov will recommend a withholding of adjudication (This is not a finding of guilt, but an acknowledgement by the Court the defendant closed their case in their own best interest...almost a middle ground between guilty and not guilty).
That is precisely the problem. If I am wrongfully charged with a crime, and my best option is a plea bargain, then it is effectively irrelevant whether I was innocent or not - I am screwed the moment I am charged. It's removing the "justice" part of the justice system.
Having less money means that you end up with lower quality food, water, air, sanitation, housing, education, medical care, legal representation, law enforcement, transportation and probably a dozen other things that didn't immediately come to my mind.
Societal problems don't spontaneously develop overnight and it won't be quick or easy to address them without causing a lot of other problems.
Still, we should be aware of them and their causes.
The poor never get trials.
The vast majority of cases are pled down.
Prosecutors and other officers of the court punish those who refuse to waive trial and plead guilty, and this forces most (innocent and guilty alike) to take the bargain.
Plea bargains are sometimes useful to prosecutors, allowing them to serve justice at times when there is real risk that a criminal would be acquitted. But it's a tool that is prone to outrageous abuse.
I propose that prosecutors be prohibited from offering plea deals to more than 3% of their cases in any given calendar year, and that any excess of such be sufficient to disbar them or even carry criminal penalties.
One way to improve things would be to allow juries to rule, not just that a criminal case wasn't proven beyond reasonable doubt, but that it was weak enough that no arrest should have been made; and in that case, make the government liable for bail bond fees, rather than the defendant.
Someone is arrested for a crime they didn't commit. Bail is set far above their ability to pay. A year later while awaiting trial, they are given the option to accept a plea deal for time served and a criminal record, or wait another year for the trial to take place.
If you are found "not guilty" in a criminal trial, the state should have to pay all your costs.
I agree. It would disincentivize prosecutors from trying to hammer people with marginal cases.
Civil cases are a different story.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-inn...
http://www.sfsuperiorcourt.org/sites/default/files/images/13...
How much cheaper can bail get? You can hardly get an apartment anywhere in NYC for less than $1000/month. These people must make and spend more than that in a month - it's just the strangely Average American Lifestyle to spend money as soon as you get it.
Any amount that these poor people could afford isn't going to be an effective bail. These kind of people can only afford something that fits in a week's paycheck, and losing a week's paycheck isn't that big a deal, they've done without before.
Assuming that they pay $1000/mo for their apartment (let's be generous -- this includes rent and utilities), that leaves them with $3,470 every year to cover all other living expenses.
If I spend $50/week on food (which is conservative for NYC), that adds up to $2400, which leaves us at $1070. At that salary, if you spend more than $70 in a YEAR on clothing, healthcare, toothpaste, public transit), then you won't be able to afford $1000 in bail. I spend more than that every year on public transit alone (MTA 30-day pass costs $116.50 -> $1398.00/year).
It's really not hard to see how a $1000 bail can be out of reach for the poor in New York.
On the flip side, minimum-wage earners are more likely to be employed part-time instead of full-time, but only 10% and 2% respectively of those groups are paid minimum wage or below, so it's pretty tricky to come up with a good estimate here.[1]
My main goal was to illustrate that the poor spend disproportionately more of their income on basic needs compared to the middle class, and inspire some empathy when we discuss the economics of poverty.
The first $6000 of income is the standard deduction and is taxed at 0%. Then, the next $10,000 is taxed at 10%, and the remainder up to the next $30,000 is taxed at 15%. You have substantially overstated the amount of taxes this hypothetical person is paying. And that's not taking into account that they probably qualify for the earned income tax credit.
I doubt all these people who can't afford $1k bail make within $2k/yr of each other. They might make $25k/yr or $30k/yr, but whatever it is, they'll never have $1k saved.
It's your prerogative to think I'm "blaming" poor americans by stating this, but it is also the reality of how these people live, as you would agree.
The point is, no bail amount would work.
My point in writing my comment was to emphasize that the poor pay disproportionately more of their income towards basic needs than the middle class. My hope was that I would provoke some empathy when discussing the economics of poverty.
I don't disagree with you that bail is a tricky issue -- for it to accomplish its goal, it has to mean something. But on the flip side, there are people living in New York City who cannot afford bail and get stuck in the justice system for years without recourse, without a speedy trial, and that seems unjust to me.[1]
A little empathy goes a long way.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law
Also trying to not meta-comment too much ("I know I'll get down-voted but...")
Additionally, Republicans don't trust giving poor people cash, so the meager welfare system we have involves things that can't be used for bail (food stamps, discounted housing, medical care, etc).
Consider yourself lucky if you can afford an emergency fund, but most people live paycheck to paycheck.
The real issues are that the poor commit more crimes and that they also are more heavily targeted by the justice system, plus that the US have larger problems with poverty than Sweden.