
America's Peculiar Bail System - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/americas-peculiar-bail-system/
======
Someone1234
America's entire justice system seems unfair to the poor. Or to phase it
another way, I literally don't believe the poor get a fair or speedy trial,
but do believe the rich can. Bail is a big problem. Plea agreements and their
relationship to public defender's workload are another massive problem.

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.

~~~
jcromartie
Americans also have a uniquely individualistic philosophy of life. They are
big on "personal responsibility" and free will. I see lots of people with no
sympathy for people who are caught up in the justice system, based on a belief
that they "chose" to do whatever they did, and are inherently evil and deserve
whatever they get. We love retributive justice here in the USA. That will be
very hard to dislodge. It seems abundantly clear that there is no such thing
as truly (i.e. supernatural) free will, and severe punishments do little to
deter crime.

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?

~~~
mikeash
I don't know that this is uniquely American, but I agree that this happens and
I think it's pretty scary.

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....

~~~
theorique
_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._

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.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum)

~~~
mikeash
That's a different thing altogether. I have problems with that approach as
well, but it's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about people who
literally cease to care about Brown's and Garner's deaths the moment they
found out that they were criminals. Not even getting into the specific police
interactions, just straight to "well, he had just robbed a convenience store,
so who cares?" I understand that you presumably don't believe that, but I saw
a lot of people who did.

~~~
hsod
Have you considered the possibility that these people don't exist (or exist in
very small numbers), and you've decided there are a lot of them due to some
kind of confirmation bias?

~~~
mikeash
Yes, but I (obviously) don't think that's actually what's happening. Why do
you bring it up?

~~~
hsod
Because I think that is what's happening.

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.

~~~
mikeash
I've seen many people state this opinion, sometimes in nearly the exact words
I "quoted" above. It's possible that they're very small in number and I just
happened to encounter a large proportion of them, but I think it's unlikely.

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.

------
jimrandomh
Suppose someone is arrested for a crime they didn't commit, bail is set, they
get a bail bond, they show up to court and are acquitted. The fees they pay on
that bond are a de facto fine. This weakens juries' power to acquit and gives
false arrests teeth.

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.

~~~
rmah
Many states do just that. This is called the "Grand Jury" system. Every case
is brought before a Grand Jury to determine if enough evidence exists for the
case to go to trial.

~~~
MaysonL
And, as the saying goes, whomever the prosecutor wants indicted by the grand
jury, up to and including a ham sandwich, will get indicted. Exceptions to
this rule fall into the man bites dog category.

~~~
Crito
True of Federal grand juries. Less so of state grand juries.

------
nickpsecurity
Excellent overview of problems in the bail system. Here's a nice supplement to
it from the other side by a judge. The two together show why the situation is
_extremely_ one-sided if the accused is poor.

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-
inn...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-innocent-
people-plead-guilty/)

------
jtchang
And if anyone is curious this is the bail schedule for san francisco:

[http://www.sfsuperiorcourt.org/sites/default/files/images/13...](http://www.sfsuperiorcourt.org/sites/default/files/images/131224.Bail%20Schedule.Final_.pdf)

------
ploxiln
<quote> 77% of people charged with a misdemeanor in New York City were
released on their own recognizance, and the other 23% were offered bail.
Within that 23%, bail amounts widely varied: Of the 26,459 cases in which bail
was set, 19,137 -- or 72.3% -- the bail amount was $1,000 or less. “Despite
[this] relatively low bail amount,” writes the report, “the overwhelming
preponderance of defendants required to post that bail amount were jailed
because they could not do so.” </quote>

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.

~~~
rpedroso
The minimum wage in New York is $8.75. Someone working 40 hours/week for 52
weeks/year, which is a generous estimate due to how many minimum wage
employers hire and schedule employees, would earn $18,200 every year. After
15% in federal income taxes, that leaves us with $15,470. Let's assume they
pay nothing in state/local income taxes. Let's also assume they live alone and
have no children or family to care for-- all their expenses are their own.

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.

~~~
tanderson92
Not to put too fine a point on it, since overall your calculations seem fair
and your conclusions reasonable: but at $18200 with $10300 in deductions and
exemptions the person's AGI would be only $7900 and hence all of their taxable
income falls into the 10% marginal tax bracket. Of course this neglects
payroll taxes (you did as well) but also ignores the EITC so suppose these
roughly cancel. This results in the tax burden being $790 rather than your
calculated $2730. That $2000 is a huge deal to a minimum-wage earner. Your
back of the envelope calculation in this specific area was off by 450%.

~~~
rpedroso
Yeah I figured I would be off by a fair bit off when it came to the income tax
math. I'm not sure whether there would additionally be some tax burden due to
NY state income tax and NY city income tax. You're right that $2000 is huge to
a minimum-wage earner -- that's almost 11% more disposable income.

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.

[1]
[http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2013.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2013.pdf)

