I'm not suggesting we throw these people a celebratory party, but they're no Ted Bundy or Buster Edwards. Most of them would - if they had woken up on the right day and showed something resembling remorse for whatever they did - never have seen the inside of a jail cell. They'd have been given a fine or some type of "community pay back" type sentence like they have to clean graffiti off walls or pick litter from the side of a road, and told not to get into trouble again. Some of them won't. Some will.
Crown Courts deal with more serious offences, and obviously if it's alleged you are a real danger, that you will most likely offend seriously again if released, or you have means and motive to flee, they'll just imprison you "on remand".
But there isn't this business of "Oh well we'll just assume everybody is a flight risk and demand piles of cash for their release" which is just obviously corrupt.
I live in an English city and once in a while (when there was not a pandemic) I would walk into the city centre and attend some trials in one of our courts.
The last session in Magistrate's court most weeks is people who were supposed to be there for an earlier session and didn't show. So how are they there now? Well when they don't show the court orders police to arrest them, they get arrested and then to guarantee they appear they're sent to the cells until their case is called. Most of them look pretty sheepish. We are not talking about criminal masterminds here. You have a 10am court appearance, Police knock on the door at 2pm, your mum lets them in, they arrest you. Oh, shit, that was today? Oh, your phone has fifty messages from your lawyer asking where the fuck you are. Oops.
So this makes me think the most valuable tool for this problem would be a way to get defendants to actually do the introspection when a court asks them: Can we trust you to show up on this date and this time? Can they? Or are you just hopeless and it would actually be better to just imprison you a day or two before so that you're available?