<story><title>Abolish the Cash Bail System</title><url>https://arcdigital.media/abolish-the-cash-bail-system-3cf6476ecaae</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jokethrowaway</author><text>Western Europe barely works.&lt;p&gt;Bringing one data point: my ex landlord wasn&amp;#x27;t really the owner of the house and was scamming rich landlords who had too many properties to control them properly.
He also scammed tenants (eg. Not returning deposits).&lt;p&gt;The London metropolitan police jailed him, plenty of evidence and testimonies.
He was released nonetheless, he escaped to Dubai (where he has family), he came back to the UK and opened another real estate company doing the same scam under another name. I fished him using LinkedIn and checking his old LinkedIn contacts.&lt;p&gt;Metropolitan police was aware of everything as I was in touch with a detective.
He had the entire story, the new office location of the scammer, the website and photos showing the entire scam repeating itself and dropped the case.&lt;p&gt;The police has zero incentive to do anything about criminals, they just get more funding the worse criminality gets.
A bail system is not perfect, but prevents people escaping, or at least collect some money from people who want to escape law.&lt;p&gt;This could be used to compensate victims, but I don&amp;#x27;t have high hopes for the government ever doing that.&lt;p&gt;If we want to prevent innocents ending up in jail we could just make victimless crimes legal. Weirdly enough, nobody seems to get behind that.</text></item><item><author>kstenerud</author><text>Western Europe doesn&amp;#x27;t have bail bonds, and seems to function quite well. People don&amp;#x27;t run away, because running away from a criminal prosecution means your current life (house, possessions, career, friends, family, etc) is over. People who actually are flight risks (due to the nature of the crime, extensive assets out-of-country, etc) can be held in jail pending trial, but that&amp;#x27;s pretty rare.&lt;p&gt;OR consider it this way: How much effort goes into making someone disappear into the witness relocation program? Now consider how much bigger and organized the US government is compared to some drug cartel? The amount of preparation and execution required to evade the US government for any length of time is immense, and beyond the means of almost everybody.&lt;p&gt;In Germany for example, you get a court summons, and if convicted, you get a prison summons with about a month to tie up your affairs. None of this medieval hauling people away in chains BS.&lt;p&gt;Bail might have made sense in the Wild West, when you could just run a few states over with your stuff and start over under a new name, but nowadays a fugitive life cuts you off from everything. And if someone is crazy enough to go that far, a bail bond won&amp;#x27;t make a lick of difference.</text></item><item><author>bawolff</author><text>Pro side: I don&amp;#x27;t see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don&amp;#x27;t flee, in principle.&lt;p&gt;It makes sure people are less likely to run away while at the same time doesnt force them to sit in jail while they await trial.&lt;p&gt;It should be relative to your ability to pay, and the commercial bondsman industry seems messed up, but those are implementation details and not the core of the system.&lt;p&gt;*as an interesting note, in Canada its illegal to be a commercial bondsmand - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;laws-lois.justice.gc.ca&amp;#x2F;eng&amp;#x2F;acts&amp;#x2F;C-46&amp;#x2F;section-139.html#docCont&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;laws-lois.justice.gc.ca&amp;#x2F;eng&amp;#x2F;acts&amp;#x2F;C-46&amp;#x2F;section-139.ht...&lt;/a&gt; i think that helps make the bail system be much more sane.</text></item><item><author>ketzo</author><text>Absolutely. It’s one of the most cruel and predatory systems that I can imagine — regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Christ. Give me a break.&lt;p&gt;It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law. The vast majority of these individuals are awaiting trial but cannot afford the bail amount set for pretrial release.&lt;p&gt;That is &lt;i&gt;fucking crazy.&lt;/i&gt; That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jopsen</author><text>The lack of prosecution has more to do with priority than lack of bail.&lt;p&gt;Scams can be hard to prosecute, and the harm inflicted on victims is mostly financial. Personally, I would love to see more internet scammers (spammers in particular) prosecuted, but if I think hard about I can recognize that there might be crimes it more important to investigate.</text></comment>
<story><title>Abolish the Cash Bail System</title><url>https://arcdigital.media/abolish-the-cash-bail-system-3cf6476ecaae</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jokethrowaway</author><text>Western Europe barely works.&lt;p&gt;Bringing one data point: my ex landlord wasn&amp;#x27;t really the owner of the house and was scamming rich landlords who had too many properties to control them properly.
He also scammed tenants (eg. Not returning deposits).&lt;p&gt;The London metropolitan police jailed him, plenty of evidence and testimonies.
He was released nonetheless, he escaped to Dubai (where he has family), he came back to the UK and opened another real estate company doing the same scam under another name. I fished him using LinkedIn and checking his old LinkedIn contacts.&lt;p&gt;Metropolitan police was aware of everything as I was in touch with a detective.
He had the entire story, the new office location of the scammer, the website and photos showing the entire scam repeating itself and dropped the case.&lt;p&gt;The police has zero incentive to do anything about criminals, they just get more funding the worse criminality gets.
A bail system is not perfect, but prevents people escaping, or at least collect some money from people who want to escape law.&lt;p&gt;This could be used to compensate victims, but I don&amp;#x27;t have high hopes for the government ever doing that.&lt;p&gt;If we want to prevent innocents ending up in jail we could just make victimless crimes legal. Weirdly enough, nobody seems to get behind that.</text></item><item><author>kstenerud</author><text>Western Europe doesn&amp;#x27;t have bail bonds, and seems to function quite well. People don&amp;#x27;t run away, because running away from a criminal prosecution means your current life (house, possessions, career, friends, family, etc) is over. People who actually are flight risks (due to the nature of the crime, extensive assets out-of-country, etc) can be held in jail pending trial, but that&amp;#x27;s pretty rare.&lt;p&gt;OR consider it this way: How much effort goes into making someone disappear into the witness relocation program? Now consider how much bigger and organized the US government is compared to some drug cartel? The amount of preparation and execution required to evade the US government for any length of time is immense, and beyond the means of almost everybody.&lt;p&gt;In Germany for example, you get a court summons, and if convicted, you get a prison summons with about a month to tie up your affairs. None of this medieval hauling people away in chains BS.&lt;p&gt;Bail might have made sense in the Wild West, when you could just run a few states over with your stuff and start over under a new name, but nowadays a fugitive life cuts you off from everything. And if someone is crazy enough to go that far, a bail bond won&amp;#x27;t make a lick of difference.</text></item><item><author>bawolff</author><text>Pro side: I don&amp;#x27;t see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don&amp;#x27;t flee, in principle.&lt;p&gt;It makes sure people are less likely to run away while at the same time doesnt force them to sit in jail while they await trial.&lt;p&gt;It should be relative to your ability to pay, and the commercial bondsman industry seems messed up, but those are implementation details and not the core of the system.&lt;p&gt;*as an interesting note, in Canada its illegal to be a commercial bondsmand - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;laws-lois.justice.gc.ca&amp;#x2F;eng&amp;#x2F;acts&amp;#x2F;C-46&amp;#x2F;section-139.html#docCont&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;laws-lois.justice.gc.ca&amp;#x2F;eng&amp;#x2F;acts&amp;#x2F;C-46&amp;#x2F;section-139.ht...&lt;/a&gt; i think that helps make the bail system be much more sane.</text></item><item><author>ketzo</author><text>Absolutely. It’s one of the most cruel and predatory systems that I can imagine — regardless of the severity of your crime, your ability to go home and see your family is determined by your financial status? Christ. Give me a break.&lt;p&gt;It’s also one of those policies that I literally can’t force myself to imagine a “pro” argument for.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Today, three out of five people in U.S. jails have not been convicted of a crime. This amounts to nearly half a million people sitting in jail each day, despite being presumed innocent under the law. The vast majority of these individuals are awaiting trial but cannot afford the bail amount set for pretrial release.&lt;p&gt;That is &lt;i&gt;fucking crazy.&lt;/i&gt; That sounds like a Blade-Runner-esque dystopia. And it’s our reality.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rusticpenn</author><text>The goal is to let some guilty walk free so that innocent are not troubled. There are people who know the weak points of the system, sometimes they will escape, but its worse to have someone innocent of a crime in prison.</text></comment>