Western Europe doesn't have bail bonds, and seems to function quite well. People don'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's pretty rare.

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.

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.

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't make a lick of difference.

I mostly find your argument convincing, but keep in mind that there is no unitary "US government": most charges are under state law. This means that although the national government can know where you are down to the apartment number, you can be (legally) completely unreachable to the state that has ordered you to trial. The solution may be to just lock up the accused more liberally than in Europe, but I'm curious how Europe handles this problem in the Shengen zone.

You just extradite them, same as the American states do when someone flees to a different state.

I've yet to hear of someone being "untouchable" in another Shengen country. Are American state criminal laws that incompatible with each other?

Since you are the second poster to spell it wrong: It's Schengen.

The European Arrest Warrant sorts a lot of it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Arrest_Warrant

The people who will skip trial and go underground are the reason this system exists. These aren’t professionals with mortgages.

> These aren’t professionals with mortgages.

Really? What kind of people are they?

The kind who can't/won't make a living within the bounds of the law. I've known a few characters personally who have been in and out of jail, and they did not have mortgages or steady jobs that gave them skin in the game of Good Behaviour.

None of them were flight risks though.

If they're not flight risks and are not able to permanently disappear from the justice system's reach, then they're not the reason the bail system exists.

The main problem isn’t flight or cinemaesque disappearing, it’s simply avoiding arrest and being out in the community reoffending. If you’re busted for dealing meth and get released pending trial and then don’t show you’re probably just out there selling meth again, crashing at a buddy’s place and avoiding getting pulled over.

In Europe, the small minority deemed likely to reoffend are simply kept in jail pending trial. Are you saying that people likely to reoffend should not be allowed to do so unless they can afford the cash bail (which will be reimbursed once they show up to trial)?

Wasn't the purpose of bail an incentive to ensure people show up to their trial? How would expanding the scope of bail's purpose to "keeping people from reoffending" work?

How do they determine “likely to offend”. In use such a vague thing can easily boil down to “while people are less likely to offend than black people”. So those who could get out by paying bail now are eternally stuck.

Just being arrested for something doesn't make someone guilty of an offence. The for a trial is to determine whether the accused is guilty of an offence and whether or not they should be removed from the community to prevent them from re-offending.

In any case, drug dealers are more likely to have the cash to pay their bail and get back out on the street than the regular working poor.

Drug dealers are not rich or even middle class. That’s more Hollywood nonsense.

Western Europe barely works.

Bringing one data point: my ex landlord wasn'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).

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.

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.

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.

This could be used to compensate victims, but I don't have high hopes for the government ever doing that.

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.

The lack of prosecution has more to do with priority than lack of bail.

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.

Money is how people buy food. You need a super strong social safety net to say people don't deserve to buy their own food.

Didn't say it shouldn't be prosecuted.

Just that I understand that violent crime often takes priority.

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.

> but prevents people escaping

prevents poor people escaping.

FTFY. So it's not going to solve this problem - your guy would just pay his bail and be gone.

So because the London police aren't willing to invest time and effort into a crime that you feel strongly about, Western Europe barely works?

You provided one example. I'm going to guess this person could have just posted bail and ran regardless. Bail isn't foolproof, and if you have enough money, you can get out of it. Heck, simply having money makes your odds of getting found 'not guilty' much greater in the US.

The problem is that bail really doesn't work better than a lot of other sorts of interventions. Know what has a good track record? Letting folks go and having them check in regularly. Calling them to remind them of appointments and court dates. And this has the added benefit of not ruining innocent people's lives and it is a better use of taxpayer money.

Not forcing ruin on folks really does help society at large.

Making victimless crimes legal wouldn't help with keeping innocent folks out of jail. Everyone in jail before trial is innocent. It doesn't matter what they are charged with - before trial, they are innocent. Even if the crime committed had a victim.

Except that even studies by the US Department of Justice show that risk of financial loss has one of the lowest impacts on likely to appear in court. This is also not recent discovery, this was heavily researched in the 70s.

Ironically just releasing people as soon as possible actually has one of the largest impacts on making sure people show.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/32349NCJRS.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=5374...

Is it about risk of financial loss or about setting up a financial incentive for a third-party to bring the person in?

There's minimal third party incentive.

I can imagine that after fighting to escape a brazenly unfair, discriminatory, hateful, pre-trial detention, I wouldn't be inclined to go roll those dice again for trial. Well, I would because I'm rich and look upper class.

I don't know. I think it is much better that a few folks don't show up to trial than to criminalize being poor. If I remember correctly, we can reduce folks not showing up by simple measures, like calling to remind folks of trial dates and making sure folks have transportation to get to trial. Why the heck would we put low-and-medium risk folks in jail, to be put in a position to lose their job, house, and freaking children, when we can do these other things that don't criminalize poverty while having less disruption of life?

If folks are found not guilty after spending weeks or months in jail (while being low to medium risk of fleeing), shouldn't we then shoulder the responsibility of fixing the life we've left in shambles? Especially since there was, indeed, other options we could have taken? We don't: At least in Indiana, even if you are found not guilty, you have administrative costs taken out of the bail amount you got back. And that's if you were lucky enough not to be forced to use a bondsman - then you won't get anything back (Yes, folks are court-ordered to use bondsman).

I don't think we should be asking for a surety for low risk at all, and medium risk is iffy - and this is just for felonies. I don't see a good reason to hold anyone for a misdemeanor.

I'm not certain that removing bondsman would make the US system more sane, though it does mean that you aren't charging an actual fee to get out, but instead returning (most of) bail if found not guilty.

Bail system is indeed inhuman. In the country I am from this does not exists. You could be jailed until court when there is high risk that you will continue to commit crimes or when you would hurt the investigation. No amount of money could reduce these risks. When you are found not guilty then there is a compensation for days spent in jail.

> shouldn't we then shoulder the responsibility of fixing the life we've left in shambles?

Especially if the charges are just dropped. That's got to be sooo hard - your life is a complete mess, everything you worked for is destroyed, because of... what? Some bureacratic mistake? A cop who wanted to get into the warm to do some paperwork? An overzealous politician wanting to "get tough on crime"?

I wonder if the system would change if the state had to pay people waiting for a trial their normal salary while they waited? So at least they could keep up with rent/mortgages and other payments while they waited.

What does forced to use a bondsman mean? Just that you can’t post your own bond from your pocket (which some jurisdictions allow, but how often does one have a bail amount of money in their pocket)?

I bonded someone out a few decades ago and instantly became a bondsman by so doing. (I have no other connection to the industry before or, thankfully, since.)

Based on the stream of paperwork I received threatening me with loss of bond money I posted, I’m not sure he ever returned to take care of the matter.

That is exactly what it means: Sometimes, the courts won't allow you to just post bail, but force you to pay a bondsman. There is no choice. (My brother had this stipulation when he was 17).

And it isn't that you can pay for them out of your pocked. You would have had to go to a business, pay them, and they pay the courts.

The specific question is “can you be his bondsman as I was for my colleague?”

No.

You'd have to go to a 3rd party that is licensed by the state. You can usually find the businesses around courthouses or jails. They are often open 24 hours a day and fairly brightly lit.

Ah. There were a half-dozen of those on the way to the jail. I seem to recall my colleague had a choice of posting $300 with a commercial bond agent who would then post the $2500 with the court or anyone could post the whole $2500 in cash at the jail directly. (Was in Florida in Feb 1997.)

And in some cases, that is allowed, but not always.

I'm to the point I think it is all a scam, and I'm ashamed we've let it get to this point.

Bail bonds fees are about 10% of bail bonds. You don't get any of your bond fee back because you got a 90% discount on bail. It's essentially a payday loan, with all the pros and cons.

Yeah. I might not have as much issue with it, but the courts sometimes order you to use one. It is essentially a tax on being arrested at that point.

You can get forced to use one, have your charges dropped or found not guilty, and then not get your fees. Then again, you'll have administrative fees taken out even if you pay out of pocket.

>I think it is much better that a few folks don't show up to trial than to criminalize being poor.

>Why the heck would we put low-and-medium risk folks in jail, to be put in a position to lose their job, house, and freaking children, when we can do these other things that don't criminalize poverty while having less disruption of life?

Keep in mind, it isn't easy to suddenly and accidentally get thrown in jail. If the violation is minor and non-violent, then by the time it gets to that point, the person will have had many chances to straighten up (more often than not) and simply chose to ignore the warnings.

But it is easy to get thrown in jail. This is especially true if your skin isn't white enough: How many stories do you hear of folks being in jail for having the description, "Tall black male?".

You act like everyone can avoid all things: Have you never met anyone put in jail for not paying child support when they don't have a job... in part, because they were put in jail for not paying child support?

Or... you can live in a weed-friendly state and forget you have some in your car while traveling. Jail for drugs now. Heck, you can be jailed for being in a house with drugs, even if you weren't doing drugs yourself. "Visiting a common nuisance" is a thing they charge folks with [1]. I don't think it is as common now, but at one time, it wasn't uncommon to get arrested while walking home drunk for public intoxication, even though driving would have been criminal. Indiana cops used to wait outside bars to arrest folks for this. While it might be prohibited now, this ruined lives and stuff like this still happens.

You don't have, "many chances". You just get caught or you don't, and you can get caught your first time. It happens. For some things, simply living in public housing increases your chances because of heavy police presence that isn't there for nicer neighborhoods: Sometimes nicer neighborhoods have conditions that make getting caught less because you are smoking weed in a spacious backyard rather than on a balcony where others can see and smell.

[1]https://www.in.gov/meth/files/Visiting_or_Maintaining_a_Comm...

>But it is easy to get thrown in jail. This is especially true if your skin isn't white enough: How many stories do you hear of folks being in jail for having the description, "Tall black male?".

I'm sorry to break your narrative, but this is NOT true in my experience at all. 99.999999% of the time, if you end up in jail, you knowingly engaged in questionable activity or associated yourself with criminal deviants. Doesn't matter what your skin color is despite the imbalanced frequency of reporting in the US.

Everyone arrested is innocent. You seem to forget that.

Maybe you just don't have much experience, or don't realize the vague descriptions police will use to bring folks in. Systematic racism makes this more likely if you aren't white. Systematic racism is a big issue.

You can be arrested for being homeless or stealing food if you are starving (not everywhere has available shelters nor food pantries to go to, nor do shelters provide safe places for a family). I don't think this is being deviant. They'll sure charge you bail, though. And again, sometimes it is just a mistake. Live in a legal state and forget to take those joints out of the care before going to an illegal state? Well, now you have a drug charge. You can't teach nor be a pharmacist now.

People get arrested for "drugs" that aren't all the time (leaves, candy, etc), but I'm guessing you haven't spent much time around the sort of person that gets stopped for this sort of thing (generally, just young and alternative-looking with a crappier-than-average car). Some of them go to jail waiting on the stuff to be tested.

Your experience isn't broad enough. Just because you haven't seen these things in your corner of the world doesn't mean it is false.

>Maybe you just don't have much experience, or don't realize the vague descriptions police will use to bring folks in

>but I'm guessing you haven't spent much time around the sort of person that gets stopped for this sort of thing

>Your experience isn't broad enough

This is awfully presumptuous.

>Live in a legal state and forget to take those joints out of the care before going to an illegal state?

It is common knowledge that marijuana is not legal everywhere and there are a lot of restrictions. Honestly, "forgeting" your drugs in your car deserves a drug charge if you transport it somewhere illegal. People should be expected to maintain a minimum degree of personal responsibility in a civilized society. This includes following basic rules.

I can't speak on the experiences of the homeless.

Yeah, presumptuous, but based off of the words you chose to type - and continue to type.

Often, I find that discussion of "personal responsibility" often comes without a minimum of empathy or understanding. It is really easy to become comfortable with some things you buy regularly to be in your car, and really easy to forget that it is in your car. People forget things all the time. This is a common human error, and penalizing folks for life for a simple error seems harsh.

And sure, you can't speak on being homeless, but you can read about it and emphasize, at least. If anything, you can pretend you are planning on being homeless. Most of the stuff written won't enlighten you on being in a big city, and are written by folks that managed to come out the other side. Like this. http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/2004/10/introduction-...

Do you work at a jail? You must have lots of firsthand experience if you can calculate that frequency with precision to the millionths.

"99.9999999%" means "almost always". It isn't a precise calculation, which you know. Just look at the US arrest statistics. See how many total arrests there are annually and ask yourself how many of those could be for "no good reason". Even if it's a high percentage like 10%, it is still very unlikely to occur to the average person.

> it isn't easy to suddenly and accidentally get thrown in jail.

No one accidentally gets thrown in jail, its always an intentional act by another person.

And it is very easy to suddenly get thrown in jail, particularly if you are poor and/or non-white.

> If the violation is minor and non-violent, then by the time it gets to that point, the person will have had many chances to straighten up (more often than not) and simply chose to ignore the warnings.

That's...very much not true. It might be true if you are referring to post-conviction incarceration, it is very much not true when talking about pre-trial confinement as a means of ensuring appearance. Plenty of minor and non-violent offenses are arrestable, rather than merely citable, even if the accused has no prior record.

>No one accidentally gets thrown in jail,

Just as no one accidentally falls on a crucifix in the shower.

https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/catholic-priest-hospitalize...

This is clearly not a universal truth in the US justice system. It can be very, very simple to be suddenly and through no criminal fault of a defendant’s own that they end up in jail. [1]

1 - source is myself, my clients, and my jurisdiction’s arrest statistics, along with many,many media reports hat prove your point not true.

There seems to be a lot of confusion over this. I suppose because many people here don’t have direct experience. I’m wondering if there’s a good public source for arrest statistics and records that would go into more detail.

I would seriously doubt a good source exists. In fact, I am as certain as a single person in a single jurisdiction can be, that the records required to generate those statistics would require information unwillingly released from multiple governmental entities and that those entities would make it as hard as possible to generate meaningful data.

> Keep in mind, it isn't easy to suddenly and accidentally get thrown in jail.

Have you not paid attention to any protest in the US whatsoever in the past 10-15 years? It's VERY easy to get thrown in jail, even when judges have ruled mere months before that it's illegal for police to keep arresting protesters.

A ruling that you can’t be arrested for protesting does not mean you can’t be arrested while protesting.

Batter a cop? You’re probably going for a ride even if you were at a protest, which seems fairly reasonable.

We have plenty of examples of peaceful people being arrested, though. Including journalists. All you really have to do is be there, and then you can be taken in with a slew of excuses.

What solution would you propose? That protests are 100% ironclad arrest-free zones? That seems...unworkable.

There is more than one way to handle protests. You can stand by and observe, only really going in when something is amiss... or show up in riot gear as your first option. The second choice has been the choice with BLM protests - but is rarely the choice with, say, anti-abortion activists. And you know, I don't get it: If an African-American man can keep his cool while having to police an KKK march, why can't cops in general keep their cool with these?

Part of the issue is that folks are protesting the police themselves - namely, the systematic and blatant racism and police violence. The prudent measure, minimally, would be to have a background presence since they've not actually jumped on the chance to make real change. The Rodney King riots happened in 1992: We've had decades to try to change the face of policing. If anything, perhaps we should have started real change after any one of the incidences. Changed police immunity. Required more training. Try to reduce officer stress and weed out folks that were racist. Abolish police gangs. But that's much harder, and won't stop a protest while it is happening.

But it would actually stop them.

I would rather see 10 guilty people flee before their trial and escape justice, than see one innocent person get stuck in jail pre-trial because they couldn't cough up the cash for a bail bond, causing them to lose their job and ruin their life.

Means testing flat-out doesn't work. There are plenty of people who get caught in the system who can afford exactly zero dollars for bail, and I find it damn near impossible that any system set up to make this "fair" would ever allow for the possibility that they need to let a person go with no bail paid at all.

> This is why poor black neighborhoods are crime ridden and victimized.

Are you claiming this is unique to black neighborhoods? Why would there be a racial component to this issue at all?

> Your own efforts to believe in racial justice by any means undermine the outcome itself.

You appear to be the first person in this thread to invoke race.

You posted several flamewar comments in this thread and unfortunately have a significant history of posting race flamebait to HN. We ban such accounts, so please stop that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You've also been using HN primarily for political battle for quite some time. That's against the rules here, and we ban such accounts—we have to, or else political flames will take over this place completely. If you want more explanation about that, see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... Either way, please stop doing this on HN.

It's not that we don't want to talk about race, it's that we don't want to talk with a racist.

Arent people often let go without having to pay bail? At least i think that's how it works in canada (where im from) if they dont think its likely you will try to run and its not a particularly serious offence

If the downsides weren't so significant, then sure, the pro side makes sense.

But the downsides are incredibly significant - that you have huge numbers of people who spend time in jail or spend money for a bail bond, who are indeed innocent, is a sign of a fundamentally broken system.

> It should be relative to your ability to pay

Sure, this would help, but I suspect it would still end up often unjustly impacting those who are poorer and innocent.

If people don't show up for trial, charge them for that then.

But pre trial, while presumed innocent, aside from unique high flight risk scenarios? The bail system is terrible, and fundamentally unfair.

Edit: to be clear, making it relative to ability to pay, and eliminating commercial bail bondsmen would be a big step in the right direction. I still think that's rife with issues, but it would be significantly better than what we have now.

Fundamentally the idea of a surety doesn't work for the really poor. If you don't have anything to put up as collateral, you don't have anything to loose by skipping bail.

The flip side of that, is if you are really poor you have less resources to use making your escape, so maybe the bail system is less needed.

But just because the bail system doesn't work well for poor people doesn't mean its also broken for middle class people.

> If you don't have anything to put up as collateral, you don't have anything to loose by skipping bail.

That doesn't seem correct. Wouldn't that really only be the case for guilty people, whereas innocent people would turn up in order to be proven innocent - assuming (perhaps wrongly) that they'd win?

I don't think poor people in the US would assume they win. And that is one major factor: when there is little to nothing to gain by staying Wwithin the system, but a lot to lose, why would you stay?

Another issue is that showing up isn't free. At the very least, it costs time. Remark that defendants typically aren't compensated, even if acquitted. If you're poor, you might not be able to afford to attend.

> you don't have anything to put up as collateral, you don't have anything to loose by skipping bail.

This right here is the problem. Addressing this would probably solve the bail issue too.

The question should perhaps be: is America ready to do what it takes to address poverty?

You could reduce some of the downsides by reducing the amount required for bail by day and by adding limits for how long someone could be required to stay.

Also an automated system to calculate bail and maximum duration (as in not the judge deciding) might reduce some bias, so some categories of potential crimes don’t end up in jail while awaiting trial unless it’s a repeated offense.

Another approach could be to account for the pre trial days more favorably for the defendant: x days pre trial count for 2x days if convicted or need to get reimbursed at the higher of minimum rate or more than the loss of income. This approach would require a way to make sure judges don’t collude though.

> You could reduce some of the downsides by reducing the amount required for bail by day and by adding limits for how long someone could be required to stay

Either the amount is sufficient to prevent the accused from hopping on a plane to Bali, or it isn't. If a lesser amount would have sufficied than that should have been the amount in the first place.

Bail isn't meant as a punishment, its meant as a way to ensure you don't leave town. If you could just wait it out, everyone who wanted to run would just wait it out, and you would end up bssically creating a system that just hinders "good" people while not serving its purpose of preventing people from skipping out.

I honestly don't really see the pro side.

Assuming the accused is guilty and financially well able to pay for bail, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me to just drop some cash, write it off, and be able to leave and never show up for trial.

Assuming the accused is innocent and financially unable to pay for bail, they'll end up in jail without ever having committed a crime.

Like so much else in the US, it's showing heavy signs of a plutocraty, where money even decides if you'll be subject to the judiciary system or not. In almost any sane judiciary system I know there will be a pre-trial hearing to determine the likeliness of the suspect fleeing or obfuscating evidence, and only if this risk is arguably given, only then the suspect would be put in investigative custody (and that time served will be either counted towards the sentence, if guilty, or damages repayed to the suspect if proven innocent)

It's not like you can forfeit the bail, skip the trial and then just walk away scot-free. There's now a warrant out for your arrest and an additional charge, and you've torpedoed pretty much any chance of leniency.

If it's a serious enough crime, they will come looking for you, and you will not be offered bail a second time. If it wasn't too serious, they might not come looking for you, but you'll have an active warrant so any traffic stop, background check, etc is going to be a huge problem for you. Arguably a worse punishment than whatever you would have gotten if you just showed up at trial.

Maybe if you're planning to never visit that state again or if you're leaving the country entirely and never want to return it might work out, but generally committing additional crimes after you've already been caught for one crime isn't a good idea.

"leniency" is mostly a myth though, and affected people know it. Leniency is probation which is an expensive trap to haul you back in on nonsense reasons like missing a bus or talking to your cousin who has a criminal record.

of course, but how does this stop anyone from _fleeing_ once bail is made or from obfuscating evidence whilst awaiting trial?

All those things I said stop them from fleeing? I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, you can flee, but you're going to spend the rest of your life as a wanted criminal. It's not exactly easy.

Letting people go home without bail would include the same risk of fleeing, without the additional financial incentive. So, if the concern is people skipping trial, how does that help?

Not a lawyer, but I believe police are supposed to collect evidence before they make an arrest, to provide justification for the arrest. If there are places they still need to search, they can probably lock them off, but I think most of the evidence should already be in police custody.

>All those things I said stop them from fleeing? I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, you can flee, but you're going to spend the rest of your life as a wanted criminal. It's not exactly easy.

But, this is true with or without bail.

Right, I'm not arguing for or against bail. The comment I was originally replying to seemed to imply that bail creates a system where rich people can just commit all the crimes they want, forfeit the bail, and then go on with their lives like nothing happened. I'm just saying that's not at all the case. Just because you've paid the bail doesn't mean you're free to go and you won't suffer any consequences for the crime.

> Assuming the accused is guilty and financially well able to pay for bail, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me to just drop some cash, write it off, and be able to leave and never show up for trial.

I don't support cash bail, personally, but it's worth noting that some amount of the bail money can be converted to a bounty for the apprehension of those of the accused who go on to skip trial.

From a non-US person, the whole Bounty system, now that is where things truly hit the Blade-Runner-esque dystopia level.

3rd party bounty hunters are a pretty rare thing. Most of the time it's the same bail bondsman who facilitates a suspects release that comes looking, since the bondsman doesn't get their money back from the court until the suspect shows.

Which is the whole point.

And that bondsman likely required the suspect to list and confirm the name, address, and phone number of every family member, employer, and close contact they have.

Probably 95% of cases are the bondsman just calling the suspect's family to get them to encourage compliance.

An angry moma is going to be more effective than any manhunt.

Not really, it’s not as if it’s an old west wanted dead or alive thing. It’s actually pretty mundane. They even made a crappy reality TV show about it.

> it's worth noting that some amount of the bail money can be converted to a bounty for the apprehension of those of the accused who go on to skip trial.

Hahaha, bounty hunting certainly makes for good movie scripts, but in practice I imagine that it's quite a bad idea.

Leave law enforcement to the police, they are already bad enough at it -- I can't imagine you want poorly trained civilians without uniform to employ violence to apprehend suspects.

What happens when a bounty hunter mistakes the identify of someone who then decides to exercise self-defense against a kidnapping attempt?

The fact that this doesn't constantly cause massive problems in a country full of guns and "stand your ground laws" is amazing :D

which might also work without bail, as incarcerating the accused would cost tax money anyway - so it doesn't work too well just as an incentive for showing up, but also doesn't hinder the accused from fleeing or destroying evidence once they do pay bail.

Using private companies for law enforcement purposes, as opposed to using accountable public employees, seems like a completely unnecessary idea. It does create a powerful lobbying industry, which makes it even harder to reform.

The unstated "pro side" is simply being mean to and destroying the lives of entire classes of people you hate.

How do you reconcile this with the presumption of innocence? Is it ok to make an innocent person pay a burdensome amount until they are exonerated?

In a vast majority of US jurisdictions, the presumption of innocence is a ‘right’ that only exists for the defendant’s lawyer to y’all about at trial. Almost all law enforcement interaction and pre-trial court proceeding operate under an inference of ‘named defendant is more likely guilty than not’.

I don’t like imprisoning people because just they are poor.

> Pro side: I don't see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don't flee, in principle.

In the UK you get bail automatically unless you are a flight risk. The burden of proof is on the prosecution.

Why should the burden of proof not be reversed in the US? What good does it do to automatically assume that everyone is a flight risk, when we know that most people are not?

Because while you are technically innocent until proven guilty, society treats folks that are arrested as guilty unless proven innocent - and even then, if they were acting properly, they think they wouldn't have been arrested.

Example: a background check sometimes produces an arrest record (not a conviction), and that can cost a job. Background check companies don't have to be licensed, and no one keeps track.

But you are correct: The burden of proof should be reversed. We know most folks aren't a flight risk and gentle measures - such as having folks check in and calling folks to remind them of court dates - have good results.

>Pro side: I don't see anything wrong with requiring a surety to ensure that people awaiting trial don't flee, in principle.

And if you can't scrape together $500 or $1000 for bail, how far are you going to get if you try to run away?

It seems to me that those who can afford bail are much more likely to flee than those who can't.