General Assembly had the authority to eliminate cash bail and replace it with a system in which people are detained pending trial only if they pose a threat to the public or are a flight risk.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Hopefully it's not easy to prove someone is a flight risk so they don't just apply that to most people.
Cash bail does not work. My dad has a friend who got caught for raping kids. His bail was $2 million. The parents paid the 10% up front. The guy was put u set house arrest. He always needed to be watched. No kids anywhere near him. During the sentencing of the trial this child rapist ran off out of the country.
Also Sam Bankman-Fried.
I hope you mean your dad HAD a friend...
Yea, and guess what... Now the parents are on the hook for 2M.
At least there were repercussions for running.
After cashless bail, if that guy's judge got the right bribe, or even a sympathetic judge... he'd skip the country for free.
The options are not cash bail or nothing. If someone is considered a flight risk or a danger to society, they can be held until trial. Sounds like the judge made the wrong choice in this case.
Do you think that before this ruling, someone that could successfully bribe a judge wasn't getting special treatment?
Would someone mind explaining like I’m 5? Is this a catch and release program except for those that pose a risk to the public? Eliminating jail bonds?
Other countries do this. Bail does not exist. If you are a risk you are held. If not you are let go until trial free of charge.
The issue is the bail system traps poor people. The Atlantic - The Dangerous Domino Effects of Not Making Bail
Cash bonds unfairly affect people with lower incomes. Eliminating cash bonds makes it so people will be released unless they are a risk to the public or are a flight risk from trial. This should reduce the inequality in treatment by the justice system based on income.
When you can pay for your freedom pending trial, it means that arrests will result in extended pre-trial incarceration disproportionately for poor people. Which further means that police can use the power of arrest - not conviction - to imprison people they find undesirable, based on specific officer biases. Pre-trial incarceration impacts the lives of poor people disproportionately, too, as they are more likely to lose employment, or lose enough work that they can't pay rent or a car payment, lose custody of children, etc. Not to mention that Illinois has never had bail bonds, so if a judge sets bail at $1000, you have to fork over $1000. I have that money available to me; plenty of people simply do not. Depending on the charges, it's also an incentive for poor people to plead guilty even if they know they are not, in order to get a shorter sentence or probation. Edit: And doing so means they now probably have a felony on their record, which will impact their employment opportunities and child custody for the rest of their lives.
Cash bail disproportionately punishes poorer people who have not been convicted of a crime.
Is this a catch and release program except for those that pose a risk to the public?
As an ELI answer: If you're rich, you can afford infinite bail already so for the rich its already "catch and release". So the only ones it was preventing from being the same is the poor that don't have infinite money.
This change makes it equal to both groups now. Whether we should allow release at all and under what circumstance are different and valid questions to ask, but we shouldn't be treating groups to different sets of rules.
L̶o̶a̶n̶ s̶h̶a̶r̶k̶s̶ Bail bondsman in shambles
People call landlords parasites, and they are.
But the entire bonds industry is bullshit.
If someone is going to skip, they pay the 10% to a bondsman. So overtime bonds increased to 10x what they should be. Except now you don't get anything back.
For most Americans it's a flat fee to get out of jail.
Especially with how long cases go, not many can afford to wait a year for that money to come back after trial. Or to spend the year in jail waiting.
Here's a video of John Oliver talking about the problems with the cash bail and here's another one talking about bail reform.
The court's decision today holds – as my office has consistently advocated – that the General Assembly had the authority to eliminate cash bail and replace it with a system in which people are detained pending trial only if they pose a threat to the public or are a flight risk.
I'm not too knowledgeable about how the system works, but isn't this kind of what we did, just now without any requirement for bail?
This seems to remove the only encouragement to return to court without an appropriate replacement.
To my knowledge, I thought bail was basically a 'loan' that you get back when you return to court.
Cash bail drastically over affects poor people. If you dont have money to put up or assests to leverage, you hsve to take a loan that costs 10% of the loan total, i.e if you need 50k, you still need 5k to give up.
If you cant do the above like many poor people, you are stuck in jail while not being convincted of a crime. This almost always costs you your job, your home, all your belongings, your car, custody of your children, on and on. There are countless horror stories of people spending years in jail awaiting trial to be aquiteed and released, having lost everything they have in the world while being found not guilty of the crime.
This system ends that. If youre a flight risk or violent, you stay in jail. If not, you can carry on your life until youre convicted, which is both just and reasonable. It puts the poor and the rich in the same justice system, and thats a good thing.