Like a lot of pieces of the "justice" system, cash bail was more effective at creating poverty and crime than deterring it. The UK got rid of it years ago for all but exceptional circumstances.
Cash bail claims to be the middle ground between "we trust you enough to show up in your own" and "we distrust you enough to incarcerate you until this is resolved."
In the UK you always get bail by default, without condition.
The exceptions to this are pretty much just murder, manslaughter, sexual assault, and some drug offences.
In short not being bailed is an exception. This is done on the basis you haven’t actually been found guilty of crime yet, thus the state can’t limit your liberties as you’re innocent until proven otherwise.
That doesn't answer the question. You also get bail by default in the US, "without condition." However, the definition of bail is literally collateral or security that you provide to ensure your return. So to say that you get bail in the UK is just to say that the UK does the same thing.
There's this implication that poor people can't make bail because they're poor, which is utterly false and made in bad faith by most who imply it.
If a person is not released on their on recognizance in the US (i.e. without bail), then bail is set by the court based on 1) extent to which the person is a flight risk / risk to public safety, and 2) the person's ability to pay. Let me say that again, the amount of a cash bail is based on the defendant's ability to pay.
If a person is only a mild flight risk, then the judge will choose an amount that is within the defendant's financial means, but also sufficient to encourage them to show up. If a defendant proves they they are poor, then this amount is be very small. However, if they prove they are poor and the judge still sets a bail that they cannot reach without borrowing from friends and family or a bondsmen, then that also says something. It means the judge determined they're too much of a risk to trust on their own. The point of cash bail is often to make the defendant accountable to friends, family, bail-bondsmen... which encourages them to show up.
A confounding factor is that wealthy people are rarely a serious flight risk. An illegal alien charged with DUI may have friends who he can hide with, skills he can use to work anywhere, and the knowhow to "stay off the radar." An accountant who charged with DUI, however, can be tracked by their phone and bank accounts, likely has far more to lose by fleeing (a paid-off house, a family that lives in town with them, a job that reports their employment to government, etc.). These are all factors that go into the amount cash bail. So, it might look like "he's getting out because he can pay despite being charged with the same crime" when the real reason is that "the judge picked an amount he can pay because he's not a serious flight risk."
> That doesn't answer the question. You also get bail by default in the US, "without condition." However, the definition of bail is literally collateral or security that you provide to ensure your return.
No, the definition of “bail” being referenced is literally the temporary release of a person awaiting trial. The use you are referring to is also a definition of bail (and perhaps the one most commonly encountered in the US because of its unusual and excessive use of cash bail), a newer one derived from the older one and referring to the surety offered as a condition for bail (in the earlier sense.) But it is never given to people unconditionally, so it clearly wasn't the sense intended (it's given by the or on behalf of the person awaiting trial, on the condition that that person be released.)
Bail has proven to be negative over and over and the only ones who benefit are the people who loan money to bailees. Just look at countries that don't use collateral for bail and see their outcomes are -better- than in the USA (we're talking western 1st world countries here)
I think you should look at it in reverse. Why have cash bail? To save money and time.
But when the state becomes technologically advanced enough that catching the accused is inevitable cash bail stops being an incentive that benefits the government unless it can be used to actively generate revenue. By disallowing cash bail you are forced to hold everyone that is accused and if you were enforcing bad laws for revenue generation this becomes expensive, not profitable.
The bail system is very profit driven, even on the government side. The existence of bondsmen has tended to increase the bail that is set for nonviolent, almost civil offenses. What becomes exceptional then is basically just capital crimes.
For many crimes they just don't bother looking for you because you will eventually need to resolve the issue. This makes it seem like it is easier to hide than it is, but you're not really hiding. I guess what I am trying to capture is the difference in active vs. passive policing.
Have you ever tried to evade the law? You can't get a driver's license or nondriver's identification card, as the warrant prevents you from renewing or they stall you for arrest; you can't apply for social benefits, as you need ID; you can't take most jobs, as they are linked to your identity; and you can't get a passport and often can't leave the country. Going out can be hazardous as even if you don't need to provide ID you might get arrested for not doing so anyway, and social functions may request an ID either for serving alcohol or for admission.
If you do get out of the country, you'd have similar or worse problems in Canada, and Mexico is far less amenable to undocumented transients than it used to be. Going further south might be an option but you're now talking about relocating to a different culture at considerable expense. Unless you're a well-off murderer the cost-benefit is not in favor of this.
It's actually a lot easier than you'd think. You can move to another state and many problems go away. I've had a number of friends do this to allow the statuate of limitations expire for certain things.
For instance if you have a DUI arrest warrant in Washington, I know Arizona and California will still issue you an ID. I think a license too if Washington hasn't convicted you and removed your driving privilege.
It's quite easy to hide in other states for most crimes, the bigger the crime, the further you need to go. The problem is that, most jurisdictions don't have the funds/means to come get the person(let alone hold them until they can come), so they don't act on the notification when your name is ran, and don't ask the other party to hold you.
I know an executive of a company that has a Florida arrest warrant and travels very freely to every other state. He is not hiding, but he is also not dealing with his Florida issues. I know someone else who left Texas after sentencing, but before checking in to Prison for a decade. She still flies to Texas to see her parents under her new married name.
You might be amazed how many people are living in hiding from something.
> For instance if you have a DUI arrest warrant in Washington, I know Arizona and California will still issue you an ID. I think a license too if Washington hasn't convicted you and removed your driving privilege.
California won't issue you a driver's license. My mother sold her car because of this.
About 3 years ago she tried to revert to her maiden name when renewing her driver's license, which resulted in California finding an open Illinois DUI case from the 1970s. As she tells it, there was some miscommunication between her and the DA back then because she didn't realize it was still open until California sent her the renewal rejection.[1] Resolving the DUI from afar would have required more time and expense than she was prepared to spend.
Fortunately, by selling her car she solved two problems. She lives in San Francisco. Her apartment building has no parking, so she was street parking. Keeping and parking a car in the city induced too much anxiety. On balance she's happier and healthier taking the bus and walking. She works as a home assistant and can easily find clients close enough to not require transferring buses. For most people outside San Francisco, though, doing this would be (and is!) much more difficult and stressful. (I once worked with an engineer in Sunnyvale who had an open DUI case in Connecticut. He would bike and walk everywhere, which definitely did not make him happier, though perhaps healthier.)
Around that same time my dad would have been racking up DUIs across the country. For decades he drove without a driver's license. Fortunately he lived in a small town in Alabama and was friendly with the local police and sheriff's deputies. Elsewhere he relied upon the same strategy as many illegal immigrants: never speed and drive very carefully. He also generally avoided the interstates, which would add many hours to our Thanksgiving road trips from Mobile/Pensacola to Tampa.[2] I think at some point in the 2000s he bit the bullet and resolved things in Alabama, but considering he had (and has) open DUIs in several other states I assume Alabama didn't have reciprocal notification and enforcement.
[1] More likely she did what most people have done who end up in the same situation: ignore it and pretend it went away. That was easier back then.
[2] My job was to mind the cooler and toss him beers.
EDIT: Regarding simply getting an ID, some time after moving to SF my mom needed to get a new ID showing her SF residency to apply for some assistance programs. The DMV wanted a copy of her birth certificate from Illinois; her Social Security card and Massachusetts license weren't enough, I guess. I don't really know what the problem was, but apparently she spent several hours playing phone tag and then learned it was going to cost some surprising amount of money. I would have paid the money, but at that point I guess she was fed up and fell back on her old "ignore it" strategy. Fortunately (again), San Francisco had begun issuing city IDs, partly for the benefit of undocumented immigrants. Her city ID sufficed for her immediate needs. I don't know if she ever got a copy of that birth certificate, but she did eventually get a California driver's license.
Anyhow, apropos stricter voter ID laws, people shouldn't assume getting an ID is so convenient as to not constitute any sort of burden, especially if you're under time constraints, such as when showing up to a polling station and being told you need a different form of identification than you had been using for years.
In most states the statute of limitations doesn't come into play if you're out of the state, for any reason. If you're inside the state but considered to be hiding, which might be inferred from your sudden failure to renew your ID and deal with your warrant, or a sudden proclivity for jobs that pay in cash, the limitations don't come into play either.
You have a warrant issued and you're fucked. What you're describing is how it worked 30-40 years ago, if that (early 90s was pretty much the end of running from warrants as everything became computerized). People got incensed at the fact people could skip out on (probably ridiculous) legal problems and tightened the thumbscrews. Sure, they might not pay to transport you, but they can refuse to issue you an ID until you transport yourself, and some states will charge you for the transportation and holding fees (though this has recently been challenged in Missouri).
I once had a warrant issued for my arrest because I forgot to take care of a “fix-it” ticket. I got the letter in the mail and even the stress of driving a car was incredible. All it takes is going just a touch too fast and your life would change in an instant. Any whirling lights created intense anxiety.
I only lasted about a week after I got the letter before I went to the station on my own time. Technically they were supposed to book me and then process the “fix it” paperwork (burned out headlight!) but in their words “the booking room is full and you’d just be released any way; but maybe next time take care of this faster?”
I did send my mom a copy of the letter informing me the warrant for my arrest had been rescinded...
Why would your life change so much/in an instant? Does your state mark your arrest for such a minor warrant in some permanent record or such, without being able to do much about it? You’re not being charged for a felony.
DUIs are more serious as one example. I don’t know the extent to how you need to inform people like employers about it, but it hasn’t seemed to affect life in the medium or long term for people I know irl. The biggest issue is losing driving privileges for a decent amount of time. Which isn’t likely in your situation. Or the ones I’ve been in.
I simply didn’t want my car impounded while I was cuffed and put in the back of a police car.
These were my undergrad years and I was in a different state studying (loosely defined). And there’s always a permanent record (short of expungement).
“The background check for the job shows you were arrested; can you please explain?...”
Honestly I don’t know how long stuff like that sticks around. And I’m also glad I never had to find out. It can be a funny story with a framed letter saying there’s no longer a warrant for my arrest. No Rick Perry mugshot pic circulating Facebook...
It sticks around forever. I'm not aware of any real expungement that exists anymore, too many people got mad that e.g. repeat DUI offenders would be sentenced as if they'd never had a DUI before. There's also 3rd party databases that nothing ever gets removed from.
In that case, not great, but in a lot of other cases the situation now is probably worse.
It regressively punishes poor people more than rich people though, thus it is inequitable. It serves no purpose for low risk, non-violent offenses as well. It's just a bad idea in most cases. It's good to drop the cash part and go strictly based on flight risk.
This seems like the kind of fact that would change over time.
The subset of people that get arrested and the means and incentives to get them to show up for trial have changed a lot over the years. Not to mention the nature of crime itself.
I don't think this is entirely true. The fascist† tendencies of those in charge created poverty and crime, but these tendencies are more the natural state of man than any personal moral failing.‡ In the early US it was pretty rare for law enforcement to actually do anything, because somebody had to pay for it. This was entirely intentional. Cash bail was a minimal check on getting somebody to show up but not having to spend the money to hold them. A more serious crime might be tried in a matter of days, and even then many crimes did not end in a prison sentence as that cost money. Unless you were a cattle rustler, pirate, or murderer you were probably coming back because the law was minimal, usually made sense, and the punishments likewise.
As government has grown there is more money to fund the police force, legal system, and penitentiaries. Cash bail has moved from a cost minimization mechanism to a revenue source. The larger component to this, I think, is the ease with which someone may eventually be caught; in the early US you could simply go somewhere else.
Now, the government is omniscient and all encompassing, and the power to destroy your life is available to any drooling policeman or prosecutor in any state. You can no longer escape a crooked local government by moving. States work together to enforce their smallest and most objectionable laws and any violation can severely restrict your ability to live your life within the country.
† I think evaluating a lot of societal structures for fascist elements makes sense, the main concept being authoritarianism and suppression. Something does not need to be entirely fascist to have fascist elements.
‡ Though this should not be interpreted as accepting people should not try to improve.
Fascist is word losing its meaning. Its use should be limited to WW2 in my opinion. Replacing the word with authoritarian in your post would allow for the inclusion of other types of oppressive regimes.
Fascist has long been a synonym for authoritarian. I don't know why so many people suddenly take issue with it. Terms for social and political movements often come to refer to sets of behaviors associated with those movements.
> Fascist has long been a synonym for authoritarian. I don't know why so many people suddenly take issue with it.
"Fascist" means something much more specific than just "authoritarian". Far from suddenly taking issue with the misuse of the term, I have always chafed at its misuse.
That said, I don't agree with chrisdhoover that "fascist" should only be used in a WWII context. Real fascism existed long before WWII, and still exists today.
Fascism is a well defined political ideology that doesn't just boil down to authority = good, though. It's like if people equated having a strong head of state with monarchism. In doing so you throw away 95% of the ideology, and use it as a synonym for a much simpler idea.
Well, some people may just throw the term around, but if you read the definition, it’s easy to see why some people might think that we are on the brink of Fascism taking root in America:
“Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.”
I mean, we have supporters of the US President chanting “lock her up,” and propaganda outlets accusing US Democrats of being “treasonous” and “enacting an illegal coup,” which sounds like preparing the way for “forced suppression of opposition.”
We may disagree with them, but surely we can understand that some of the people using this word are sincerely attempting to use it in good faith.
Wikipedia goes on to discuss the relationship between Fascism and economic policy:
“Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.”
That sounds like the current US administration. The most interesting bit to me is this quote:
“Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.”
Does the US administration believe that liberal democracy is obsolete? As a citizen of a country where we bend over backwards to help people vote, I look at the voter suppression in the US and can’t help but think that America is more interested in “democracy theatre” than democracy, but that’s just an opinion, and I am aware that most Americans vigorously disagree.
Likewise, when the people of America elected Mr. Obama, and there was a vacant supreme court seat plus a hundred other vacant judgeships, I would have thought that the GOP-controlled senate refusing to hear any of the President’s nominations was a sign of their disinterest in democracy, especially in the will of the people who elected and then re-elected Mr. Obama.
But again... I imagine most Americans disagree. That being said, if someone does hold the view that the current administration, or various far-right groups out there have turned away from democracy, even if we disagree with them, can we not accept that they are using the word “Fascist” in good faith?
The word racist has lost its meaning and most of its power. Fascist is the new catch all insult/accusation for primarily the same groups. I'm a bit perplexed why the word bigot hasn't entered the common lexicon since it actually does apply to many of the situations where neither racist or fascist is correct.
Well, mud-throwers (regardless of their ideology) have always misused terms like that.
These days, the preferred insult from the radical left tends to be "fascist", and the preferred insult from the radical right tends to be "socialist".
Both sides are using them as a slang way of saying "scum". But their abuse of these terms doesn't (or shouldn't) actually change their meaning to the rest of us.
I don't mind the meaning of words changing, I just don't like words being thrown around to the point they are meaningless. Words like "fascism" and "nazi" have lost meaning, particularly on the internet, as they are frequently used by political ideologues to describe anything to the right of Justin Trudeau.
Abusing terms in politics isn't new of course but it's not something we should be encouraging or ignoring because there are some legitimate consequences. The obvious one is the disinterest/dismissal it generates when people legitimately do need to raise the alarm because people have been crying wolf incessantly. It also helps the legitimately bad guys to dismiss the attacks and pretend they are just like the moderates facing exaggerated attacks from an hysterical foe.
In my city of Bloomington, IN, we have a city run farmers market with known and admitted members of Identify Evropa (now American Identity Movement).
Digging into what they want mirrors a "white ethnostate" with strong Nazi tendencies. When the call theselves "volkmom" and talk of lebensraum, the idea of fascism isn't some 80 year old quaint idea.
Now, the city cannot remove her, as she has been accused of nothing illegal. And it's a government run market. But last week, was a protest that lead to the arrest (but not detained) of 5 protesters. That ended up in Newsweek.
This is an example of the generic-ified form being useful. They're not a WW2-era party that's time traveled to 2019, but they tick all the boxes. The person I replied to suggested limiting the term to discussion of WW2. I suggested that terms like this always go generic because the ideas never die with the movement.
New movements tend to take on the language of movements that inspire them, or people use those terms on them because they seem to (or do) share many of the same attributes. For example: people who call anyone who suggests a better social safety net socialist, communist, Marxist, or more recently: bolshevik.
Where are we in disagreement? Your example is one I would use to support my own point.
I had to bail someone out once. Both misdemeanors both set to statutory bail of $350. Since it was so low, I just went to jail with $700 to bail them out. The cashier said I had to pay $810 as there was a $110 fee to fund some police initiative. The $700 was paid back when the bailee showed up. The $110 was a fee lost even if the bailee was acquitted.
I never knew about this fee, when I complained to my city council member he said not to commit any crimes.
There are many rackets just finding inefficiencies in justice that I’m glad to see we’re slowly chipping away at them.
Once I was pulled over for a tail light out, and it turned out my license was expired. In DC, this means you immediately go to jail. Once I arrived at jail, they informed me that if I had $80 cash on hand, I could go free and show up for trial; otherwise it could take up to 24 hours for me to see a judge, who would then tell me I could go free until trial.
If I were someone else, without cash on hand, with a temporary job and kids, I would have missed work and not been able to pick up my kids from school and feed them, to say nothing of paying hundreds to get my car out of an impound lot. I realized then that the justice system is a machine that creates poverty.
That's not what OP is describing. He wasn't "in jail" in the sense that he was sent to prison for committing a crime. He was being held by the police prior to a trial. This is absolutely a bail/processing related issue being described.
"Wait, it's $80 *cash*? What if I don't have cash on hand, can I pay by card?"
"Nope - cash only."
"...Do you have an ATM?"
"Nope."
It's like a system designed to allow rich people to escape jail. My mind was blown. (Luckily, I was that rich asshole, as the day before I'd visited an ATM and pulled out more than I needed)
I wonder what happens if you're accused of a serious crime and the bail is set to $100,000. Do you have to bring them a fancy briefcase full of cash, since they won't take a check?
I guess it's obvious in retrospect but most of my panic here was that someone would need cash. If that was the case, and cards weren't accepted, it would be truly draconian.
This is a positive feedback loop. For feedback, "positive" means that feedback is in the direction of error and tends to quickly exacerbate things. "Negative feedback" is against the direction of error and tends to stabilize the behavior of the system.
Simplified: positive feedback loops increase things (plus); negative feedback loops decrease things (minus). Negative feedback can be good because it can reduce bad things, whereas positive feedback can be bad because it can increase bad things. But you can also reduce bad things, or increase good things.
No, that's not quite correct. Positive feedback can either increase or decrease the variable under control. As an example, consider an inverted pendulum. A small swing to the side of upright causes the weight of the pendulum to drag it further to that side of upright. This occurs in both directions of the stable point and is always positive feedback, regardless of the direction.
Awesome. Thanks for this. I really didn't like the visualization in the article since it was unclear if it was just a seasonal effect and there were no confidence intervals. The report is much, much better.
Perhaps useful to note that the results hold for minor/non-indictable offenses. However, I'm out of my depth on the more nuanced legal aspects in the report.
Chesa Boudin, San Francisco's new District Attorney and son of two former members of the Weather Underground, ran on a progressive platform that included ending cash bail. This is part of a broader movement of judicial reform advocates who advance their policies by taking the District Attorney's office. https://youtu.be/GbILs4N4bLE
Isn't one of the big issues with asset forfeiture that the police are able to do it without actually charging you with anything? Instead they charge the asset itself.
It looks like the change to the bail side might be good (avoiding pushing ever more people into poverty, which some believe pushes some people into more crime, etc.). But a little nervous about the use of algorithms here.
Agreed about the algo usage, but NJ's is much more open than in other states. The formula is available to the public. Obviously "racist data in, racist outcomes" but that's why it's super important to monitor the data put in and the outcomes and articles like this are part of it.
Like people in the article said, it's not perfect but it's a great improvement over the old way.
Asking from a cultural standpoint, but curious about the technical approach to an “audit” when the same people who biased the training data are ostensibly influencing the audit. Basically, who decides what’s “just” and how could that be reflected in a change to the algorithm?
The process/decision tree is open and transparent. There's still going to be the potential for implicit bias in the system, but there's no way to remove that entirely from the process (I guess unless you move to a luck based system in which the decision is just made randomly, but nobody would like that)
I have doubts the algorithm would be a decision tree, or capable of being contained in one. I feel like at some point it would use or be an ML model.
Would a model also be open and transparent? It would at least be open & testable, but I'm not sure about transparent for easily identifying any biases.
Good point, but that assumes the algo would need to be known, open/accessible, auditable, etc. If it is somehow hidden behind a proprietary curtain, then that's no good.
>Now, judges weigh whether to lock somebody up, slap an ankle bracelet on them or release them without conditions with the help of a public safety assessment.
This seems very reasonable. Either somebody is too dangerous to let out, or is safe but might flee in which case ankle monitor seems like a better bet, both because it keeps people from rotting in jail for being too poor to make bail and because bail isn’t as good a deterrent to flight as an ankle monitor. And if someone is safe and isn’t a flight risk, just let them out without bail.
I imagine that the kind of administration that's willing to end cash bail is also the kind of administration that pushes for community policing, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions.
Is community policing tied to fewer arrests? I haven't ever seen hard numbers on this. According to Derecka Purnell and Marbre Stahly-Butts[0]:
> Community policing is an empty phrase. A Washington Post report showed that law enforcement use of force in half of police departments with consent decrees. Asking police officers to strengthen community relationships — including by doing things like playing football with children or handing out ice cream — does not reduce their power to harm anyone.
> "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life"
The situation in the article does not describe anyone convicted of a crime.
They are posting bail so they can get out of jail while they await trial or whatever the next steps are.
The process of someone being arrested, not able to post bail, losing what job they might have, and other consequences simply for a petty arrest are well documented as are the incredible costs to society as a whole (way beyond the cost of bail).
As for "careers", that's a very strange way to describe how crime comes about.
> The general move towards "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life" is quite disgusting.
I don't see any such overall shift occurring. What I do see is a positive evolution that deprioritizes victimless crimes such as doing drugs which preserves our resources so they can be focused on crimes with victims.
>I don't see any such overall shift occurring. What I do see is a positive evolution that deprioritizes victimless crimes such as doing drugs which preserves our resources so they can be focused on crimes with victims.
I agree with regard to public opinion but the people who set policy keep trying to sneak policies that decriminalize petty crime with a victim into policies that are portrayed as reducing victimless crime.
Anecdotal example:
A local to me DA with political ambitions released a list (not sure if it was a proposed list or final list) of crimes he wasn't gonna prosecute. The list was mostly sensible but it included things like "theft under $250" which is insane because without the risk of prosecution the ROI on petty theft becomes positive and you are basically encouraging it. Predictably, there was widespread backlash against this (proposed?) policy. I think this kind of thing is what the GP is talking about.
Probably because "theft under $250" shouldn't be a jailable offense but an infraction or low-level misdemeanor involving a fine and community service. Putting someone in jail over $250 or less isn't good for society - cost or morality wise.
Sure, but the DA doesn't prosecute infractions so the law the DA is talking about must have the crime be something prosecutable, when it could just be something punishable.
We can probably agree it doesn’t make sense to go through the cost and effort to prosecute someone who stole $0.01. And it does make sense to prosecute someone who stole $1,000,000. So there is some threshold number on the border between “makes sense” and “doesn’t make sense”. What is that number and how do you calculate it?
I reject this framing. There is more to life than dollar value. Petty thiefs destroy social trust and cohesion, and this destroyed trust has bigger value than the value of items they stole.
Additionally, remember that the goal of prosecution and punishment is to deter crime, and so you should not only consider the cost of prosecution vs the cost of stolen item, but also the cost of all the crimes you enable when the thieves learn there is no punishment for petty crime.
I’m not sure but it sounds like you’re arguing that the non-monetary cost to society of petty theft in general justifies prosecution of any amount stolen. This seems like a much more extreme view than I was even arguing against. I believe the threat to “social trust and cohesion” is at least directly proportional to the monetary amount stolen and therefore there is still a lower bound to what makes sense to go after. I don’t know how you’d calculate that bound though given the non-monetary cost is hard to quantify.
It is immature to attribute financial cost to everything. What you say is social trust and cohesion is what accountants call goodwill, the value above the net worth of a corporation or something operating that is uncountable.
Prioritizing social trust and cohesion through omitting or ignoring by misdeeds of institutions or individuals that are too big to fail seems like extra effort to achieve nothing. It isn't real trust and cohesion, it is deception and coercion.
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying, but I stand by my assertion that it is a waste of the state’s limited time and budget to prosecute someone over stealing a penny. I’m honestly surprised that this seems to be a massively unpopular opinion here.
Yes, I think it does justify that. I think we should prosecute every case of theft, unless the victim explicitly asks that we don't. Of course, the punishment should be proportional to the crime (so that e.g. first time shoplifting offender could get 1 day of jail time), but we must prosecute every case if reasonable, most certainly if we know who the perp is, and have solid evidence of the crime, and we must escalate the punishment for repeat offenders.
If people stealing packages were reliably subject to fines exceeding the value of the packages, they'd stop stealing pretty quick, and it would be cheaper for society than putting them in jail.
If you read the article, it will be clear to you that the package thief described in the article is not going to pay any fine, ever. She doesn't pay rent, and doesn't make any money other than through theft. She doesn't even show up for court summons, which results in police forcibly arresting you and bringing you to court. How do you expect person like that to pay any fine?
Fines work to deter crime of people who have something to lose, but those who have nothing, and live off crime, don't care about the fines.
Then she should be charged with a different crime (failure to appear in court, aggravated petty larceny or whatever you want to call it) not for stealing $250 or less.
I think that for smaller crimes it would be good to randomly prosecute, say, 5% of all instances of that crime (assuming a truly random choice is made). This stops career thieves from getting away with things forever but reduces the burden on society to prosecute every instance.
> There is always a victim even if it is yourself.
That's simply nonsense, and incredibly authoritarian.
In any free society the state simply shouldn't be probing into the private lives and bodies of citizens. If an adult makes the informed decision to do something to their own body, they are not a victim. Thinking otherwise strips people of their agency.
Although I agree with what you're saying, the philosophy isn't so clear cut; even some strands of libertarian thought recognize harms against oneself, but the "oneself" is in the future, and could be considered a separate person. By an extension of the harm principle, it could be permissible to illegalize things which cause harm against people in future - the sale of cigarettes, for example.
By your logic the government should be banning sugar, forcing people to exercise, and on and on. Using the welfare state as an excuse for the government to control the private lives of citizens is pernicious to individual liberty at best, and totalitarian at worst. A safety nets don't exist to allow for the state to be an ever watchful and scolding parent, but rather to provide a floor so that people don't fall in to miserable situations.
Furthermore, the idea that one's actions in private, concerning only their own body, should make them a social outcast is laughably puritanical. Inclusion in society is about how one engages in the public sphere.
If the victim is yourself, either you were coerced (and the coercion should be the crime) or you consented (and it shouldn't be a crime). If I kick myself in the shin, is that battery, now?
Parent said doing drugs, not dealing or driving while doing. Both dealing (in the victim-ful sense of black and gray market dealing) and driving while intoxicated are still heavily prosecute, no one is easily forgiving those
Most people doing drugs are driving with them as well. Addicts aren’t going to stop just because they need to drive to the store.
Not all drug users are addicts but addicts, especially functioning ones, are doing the day to day stuff everyone else does.
Doesn’t matter if we like it or not scientists are trying to develop a THC test for driving in legal states. It’s going suck for a lot of people until they get it right.
FYI, I believe in a form of decriminalization for drug use. I call it carrot or stick.
There’s a test and a legal limit for alcohol. At the moment for drugs, even prescribed ones, any amount is enough for a DUI. In my state, I can legally have 3 beers in an hour and drive but couldn’t have one hit of a joint and legally drive.
I didn’t say what you alluded to in your last paragraph. Legally people can and do drink and drive, it’s illegal to consume drugs and drive in any amount (in my state).
My personal experiences in high school and college lead me to believe a lot of people think it’s ok to smoke and drive and to some extent do other things. While they will avoid drunk driving just because it’s much easier to detect alcohol.
The last thing you should do is listen to people who "deal with [crime] on a daily basis". They have no exposure to the overall extent of the problem, and are instead exposed to a hyper-concentrated dose of the worst criminals, often by the very nature of the job. Your society could be experiencing an immense and historically unprecedented reduction in crime, and yet the people who deal with criminals as their full-time job will (from their perspective) still see the world as a hive of scum and villainy.
The problem is that so many crimes are stupid. How many people have been arrested for marijuana, and now the most recent polls say only 8% of Americans think it should be illegal. When the government makes generally-acceptable activities into a crime, naturally terms like “criminal” start to have a weakened negative connotation.
Does NJ still do civil asset forfeiture? That's another weird thing about US policing for my German mindset, and as opposed to cash bails it doesn't even have a cool Lee Majors TV series attached to it.
I do remember that the municipial nature of PDs was also a bit troublesome to me.
No training standards, not larger-scale oversight, a lot of "we have always done it like this here", a lot of "I know the DA and the judge because we go to the same BBQs", incentives to contribute to the (very local and therefore very noticeable) general fund through fines and civil forfeiture, the list goes on. Basically a police that is the strongest gang in town rather than a professional and slightly anonymous representation of the law. Which in the end makes it less likely that the law applies the same to all, irrespective of the person.
It would be nice if we could "trust" some group about the social impact of policy changes, but people have a terrible track record at that. Running an experiment is the ideal, and not always possible, but here's an experiment and you're choosing to discard the results.
It's not as if this is the only data point. There are both countries that never had bail, and ones that similarly curtailed it. No disaster is apparent in either case.
>The general move towards "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life" is quite disgusting.
Depends on the crime, doesn't it? Like most things, it's a spectrum. I would agree with you on murder, rape, arson, etc. Not so much on most drug charges. Political posturing has made drug charges, which were typically petty crimes, into felonies. You would be amazed at what are felonies today.
My next door neighbor works for our sheriff's department, and I hear a constant stream of incredible stories detailing horrific crimes committed by people out on bail or who were let out of sentences ridiculously early.
Unfortunately, there are enough of those stories to keep the pipeline full. However, selection bias is the problem. Your neighbor probably doesn't realize or even encounter the (most likely) far more numerous cases of "person out on bail / released early goes back to normal life and things are fine."
Same reason I don't watch prime time news unless I know a particular story will be covered (hapy local event things, basically). Sensational sells, happy normal everyday life far outnumbers all those stories but who watches the nightly news to hear "man woke up, went to get his newspaper, and saw the first bloom of the year - much happier today"?
Point of order: If I was going to tell someone a story, I'd probably tell the dramatic one ("guy out on bail murders bus of kittens by driving it into a cancer ward") vs boring ones "a man out on bail went to court and was found not guilty".
Data points are much more interesting when talking about how to create functional systems and allocate resources than some emotional tale. If my town spent millions of dollars buffing up their homicide department when we only see common assaults in 99.999% of the time, I'd be pissed as a taxpayer.
These stories stick in the mind. You won't hear the stories about how something didn't happen, like someone with an expired license was let go and allowed to get home in time to keep their job and therefore didn't end up stealing because they lost their job and had no other way to earn money.
Going to jail can have a huge ripple effect on an individual and their community that isn't accounted for.
