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Will this work to eliminate Bail Bonds?
Under the guise of racial inequity, there's mounting pressure to eliminate the practice of requiring cash bail for many criminal cases. The other side of the coin is that defendants would them be more likely to skip their trial -- leaving the victims of crimes hanging.
Proposal: For most criminal cases, eliminate cash bail BUT if the defendant does show in court, s/he is immediately found guilty as charged and sentence is pronounced. Then, when next found by police, the now guilty criminal can be immediately jailed for the full term of his sentence.
Obviously, significant resources now used by law enforcement to manage prisoners awaiting trail would have to be re-allocated to skip tracing and looking for missing defendants. However, this would reduce the jail population, perhaps by several hundred thousand.
A judge would still be able to impose cash bail, or remand a defendant to immediate custody, if while awaiting trial the defendant is charged with further criminal incidents. A judge could also remand to custody any defendant thought to be a violent risk to others, as well as non-citizens. But no bail should be the norm for most crimes for most citizens. It's fairer.
What say you? In many cases, would this adequately balance the rights of the accused and the rights of society?
Update: after approx. five hours, I do not find a response worthy of "Best Answer" -- yet.
6 Answers
- 1 year ago
See, I don't even know how the bail bonds system works, (don't intend to find out either) but I can see one real real hiccup in your system. IF the system in a country has gotten so corrupt that the only chance for survival is to skip bail and flee the country with your life in your hands, well your solution would send the country more toward a central American nation-at-revolution model of justice. So I say no, make it to where the accused upon winning their case owes nothing. That's it. It sounds like your solution skips right over right to trial by jury if they got afraid and ran. Running away isn't necessarily admission of guilt, it is admission of FEAR! If you dropped a potted plant on the mob boss' brother's head and killed him accidentally, and you knew the mob wanted to kill you in turn, would you, could you run away? or would you like, try to explain it to them? Maybe make your case and see how it turned out? Well maybe.
If someone is really convinced that the whole government is a bunch of mobsters with arbitrary power of life and death over them, and it's no problem for them (in fact it's cheaper and easier to eliminate you), and they really believe this, maybe because of prior experience, then it might be excusable for someone to run away from what they sincerely believed was a patently unjust system. Travel between countries is not as easy even as it used to be.
Skipping right over trial by jury because the accused ran is not right because it ignores the state of mind of the accused, and would give people different rights based on their state of mind.
I will say that people with different amounts to lose will react differently to bail or the lack thereof. Some guy sitting on a lawn chair in an empty weekly rental apartment has less to lose by cutting and running than say James Avery. A guy like him might stand and fight the charge. It really would all depend on your perspective, but we can't have different right for different people.
- CliveLv 72 years ago
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! You have just proposed to eliminate the right to a fair trial.
What works perfectly well in the UK is either you are released on police bail - what you would call "bail on own recognisance" - or if the court feels there is a risk that you won't turn up to court next time, it jails you.
Why are you so insistent that just a charge means people are convicted? You must be a communist.
- Anonymous2 years ago
no, when you post bail your lawyer has first dibs on that money incase your not paying them
its in the fine print at the bottom of the sheet you sign
the lawyers that make the laws aren’t going to screw themselves out of your money
they are in jail and don’t have access to any of their money - have you never been arrested?
