
To Shrink Jails, Let’s Reform Bail - weston
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/opinion/kamala-harris-and-rand-paul-lets-reform-bail.html?utm_source=digg
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tlb
The real thing to reform is the wait time for trial. The article mentions
someone who sat in jail for 3 years waiting for trial on a theft charge. This
is cruel both to people who can't afford bail, and to people who can. It's
hard to move forward with life and make plans for raising a family or pursuing
education with a potential jail sentence hanging over you. Also, the deterrent
effect for a potential sentence 3 years in the future must be less.

Speedy trials would improve things all around.

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thisisdave
Reforming bail sounds like a good idea. I don't know why anyone would trust
Harris on the issue, though.

If she wanted to shrink jails when she was California's Attorney General, she
could have respected court orders requiring prisoners to be released.

Likewise, she could have stopped "defending convictions obtained by local
prosecutors who inserted a false confession into the transcript of a police
interrogation, lied under oath and withheld crucial evidence from the
defense."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazine/kamala-
harris-a-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazine/kamala-harris-a-top-
cop-in-the-era-of-black-lives-matter.html?_r=0)

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eropple
This is both interesting and unrelated to the bill.

There is not an issue on this planet, down to "is it raining outside," on
which I would trust Rand Paul. But I don't have to trust him when I can read
the thing. It's only eighteen pages long. (On my phone, otherwise I'd link
it.) Beyond that, there are plenty of organizations more than willing to weigh
in on stuff like this; you don't have to take the legislator's word on it at
all.

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thisisdave
As a non-lawyer, I'd expect to miss something important from the legislative
text.

Your point about relying on other organizations is a good one, though. I
generally take this approach, but I wasn't expecting anything to have been
published yet on such a new bill. It looks like the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense
Fund, and SPLC all issued positive press releases, though.

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jack9
> Kentucky and New Jersey, for instance, have shifted from bail toward
> personalized risk assessments

The cost of the New Jersey implementation, has been offensively expensive, to
some. Lawyers charge by the hour. The new bail system requires additional bail
screening/hearings. The inevitable delays (daily) have run up lawyer bills.
It's assumed that this will improve with better processes and routines.
Inefficiency, incompetence and incompatible systems being shoved together have
led to a strange brew that costs 1-3 million (per court) annually there.

The ideological question is whether the state or private industry should
profit from incarceration of suspects and what bar should be set for temporary
release pending a court date.

Right now, the bar (bail) is financial and a judge has to be arbitrary with
regard to assessed risk at arraignment. Working within the known bail system,
in california, some judges will assign amounts knowing what bail bonds will
cost. This has led to a strange inflation of bond costing and a glut of bounty
hunters.

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beisner
Cost overruns might be high right now, but I prefer that to a system that
disproportionately forces the poor and people of color to be removed from
society for (often) years at a time awaiting trial, whether or not they or
guilty.

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manicdee
To shrink jails, take them out of private hands and disbar any judges who have
received anything even remotely resembling a gift or kickback from a jail
company.

