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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
What is the conviction rate in Illinois? In California it's 72%. From what I have read. it sounds like there can be a lot of variability in this number depending on how you count conviction. Still, while many accused people are not guilty of crimes, at least in California, Florida (59%), Texas (82%), and at the federal level (93%), most people are?
It has to do with bail being viewed as "letting criminals go free". If there is a high conviction rate, then most of the people being arrested are eventually found guilty, and I would expect bail being viewed less favorably there. On the other hand, if conviction rates were low, it would mean the police were arresting a lot of people that did not break the law, and I would expect bail to be viewed more positively.
Washington state did this de-facto by refusing to put anyone except the most violent crimes in jail before their court dates. Yes, cash bail is dumb, but not holding anyone for anything less than murder is a bit ridiculous (and explains much of our current crime wave, I guess).
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.
Because you report shoplifting or any other property crime for the Nth time without the police even bothering to show up, why keep reporting it? Even an assault on the street isn't worth reporting these days. Unless you have some sort of immediate danger, you'll just be shunted around the phone system and maybe a cop will contact you a few days later at 10PM at night.
Friend, I asked for proof -- not conjecture. 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.
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).
Again, I've asked for proof and you've given me handwaved personal interpretations. So let me ask directly: what is your proof that dispatch time/reporting is less than it was 20 years ago?
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.
2 decades ago we were a bit more heavy handed about actual prosecution rather than announcing that the police had so few resources that they wouldn't be handling any new sexual assault cases in 2022.
I've cited plenty of evidence. It looks like some people have a certain reality that they want to believe is true, while the rest of us just suffer from having to live with the actual reality.
I'm not the original poster but I can confirm that in many maybe even most reporting crimes makes little sense.
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
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.
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.
The data you linked and the comparison you suggest (2014 vs 2021) shows a ~54% increase in homicides over that time period ((6.81 homicides / 100k people / yr) / (4.40 / homicides / 100k people / yr) ~= 1.54.
I'm bad at math today. 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 (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.
It's not my method, it's the calculation of the percentage increase, which is the way of comparing 2021 and 2014's homicide rates that you originally proposed.
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.
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.
> These are good at solving crimes, but not preventing them.
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.
>In the long run, solving crimes is preventing them because crime (especially serious violent crime) is Pareto-distributed.
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.
I don’t care what the rate was in the 90s… that rate should not be the point where we start caring about the ever increasing crime around us. “It’s not as bad as it once was” is not the marker we should use with crime
Are people held under suspicion of murder being released without bail? If not, how could that possibly be related to issues of minor crimes leading to de facto release?
We need to look specifically at the sorts of crimes sensitive to these measures right?
OP originally disputed the claim of a "crime wave", arguing with mistaken math that homicides--the most statistically reliable measure of crime--have only increased by 2% since 2014. (In fact it's more like 50%.)
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.
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).
Burden's on you to show there's "crime wave" considering "crime" is going down across the board, ignoring the spike that happened during covid and 2020 protests (which is normalizing back towards the downwards means). If you're able to provide a source that takes into account agencies not reporting NIBRS data, it's welcome.
It is one of those invisible waves, like sound waves or the wave of anger that washes over one when looking at a graph of crime showing a downward trend. As one of those intangible waves it can only be explained qualitatively not quantitatively.
I feel like "crime wave" is one of those loaded terms these days that's incapable of being discussed factually, just another victim of the culture wars. We don't live in shared realities anymore...
Peak crime was around the 1990s. Crime has been dropping ever since and no one really knows why, though some theories are interesting. All this crime wave talk is just news / politicians trying to scare us.
Yes, other theories are removal of lead in gasoline, the legalization of abortion, and my personal addition is video games gave restless kids something to do.
Also, our population tree has the largest male population alive is currently ages ~19-40, which is the demographic most likely to commit crime.
That was bound to happen, since many of the boomers are dead now. Just that when boomers were young, crime was also booming. Millennials weren't as big of a generation and didn't seem to do the same things.
I'm sure it was fewer in total number, we only had 211 million people in the US in 1973. As far as relative to the population, I'm not sure. Here's the population tree for 1973. The bulge at the bottom is probably responsible for peak crime in 1991 if you assume most violent crime is from people ~19-40.
It doesn't seem like much, but if you just move forward through the years, you can see a bulge moving up the graph. It's quite serious. Medicare, in the US, is seen as "being in a crisis", as the number of taxpayers, relative to the number of "older people who tend to need lots of health care", will shift.
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:
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:
The baby boomers got old, which is why we peaked in the late 1980s. Now, whatever lull we've had in the crime rate for the last two decades, things are revving back. Theories on why vary, some think it is just entitlement and lack of punishment.
People have been blaming entitlement and lack of punishment as a source of crime for 5,000 years though and yet nobody has ever shown that to be an actual cause. To me it just sounds like an excuse to ignore all the systemic economic and political problems of a society.
Sure, that’s right. I guess it’s just people used to fear getting arrested but it didn’t turn out to be a very useful deterrent. Now we have smash and grabs in busy grocery store parking lots at 12:30 in the afternoon because kids really know the police don’t care.
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.
>I guess it’s just people used to fear getting arrested but it didn’t turn out to be a very useful deterrent.
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.
> People have been blaming entitlement and lack of punishment as a source of crime for 5,000 years though and yet nobody has ever shown that to be an actual cause.
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!
Great that you stated something and then said "I guess", which kinda discredited it. I wouldn't bet on what you wrote is true. How about first checking some numbers. It should be easy to check how many people committed a crime while out, waiting for the trial.
For non-capital offenses whether to hold someone without bail at all or what the bail amount should be is explicitly not based on the crime the person is being accused of. The only determination being made at the bail hearing is how much of a flight risk the person is.
> 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.
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.
"we just don't want to put people in jail anymore."
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."
Historically before telegraph, telephone, and computerized records if you got arrested you could just skip out. And you might not need to go far either. If you lived in New York in 1890 you probably could just switch jobs and rent another apartment. So bail in order to compel people to show up to court.
Much harder to do that today. So much less need for bail.
> For non-capital offenses whether to hold someone without bail at all or what the bail amount should be is explicitly not based on the crime the person is being accused of. The only determination being made at the bail hearing is how much of a flight risk the person is.
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.
I think for any violent crime there needs to be some type of Bail. Something to add that extra responsibility and keeping that person in check. The bail does not have to be that high, but something is necessary. No bail is like legalizing all drugs, its too far in one direction.
I fail to see how a bail payment is going to make anyone behave any better. At best I see it making poor people desperate for money and thus more likely to resort to criminal enterprise.
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 they are violent and need to be kept in check, why not just keep them in jail? Otherwise, people with money get better treatment than those without.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 289 ms ] threadHow much money someone can afford to put up does not change those things.
(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.
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
Even the news would love a higher crime rate and they the most capable to sell the story and extract the profits.
Doesn’t it make more sense that the numbers are accurate?
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.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/sea...
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.
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.
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.
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).
Can you back up your claim with evidence?
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9fm6FErHkQ
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!
> 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-...
Much harder to do that today. So much less need for bail.
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.
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.