Well we are given the statistic that half a million people are in jail each day. The US population is about 330 million, so if what you are saying is accurate, the mean person can expect to go to jail once every 660 days.
Does that sound reasonable?
If that seems like an unreasonable proportion of your time to be spending in jail, it's probably also an unreasonable proportion of the population to be keeping in jail.
Re:Abolish the Cash Bail System
by nobody9999 on Monday October 12, 2020 @09:33AM
(#24754167)
>Those are all people that are presumed innocent under the law... They may spend only minutes or hours in jail as police gather and verify their information... Run their prints to see if their given name is false and their a criminal with a warrant for their arrest... Etc....
They may. But we're talking about those in pretrial detention, which excludes all the folks you're talking about. And the average length of pretrial detention is 50-200 days.
Would you be able to keep your job, pay your rent/mortgage and care for your children if you were sitting in jail for 3-6 months?
Those are all people that are presumed innocent under the law... They may spend only minutes or hours in jail as police gather and verify their information... Run their prints to see if their given name is false and their a criminal with a warrant for their arrest... Etc....
So the commenter saying the stats might be misleading is very accurate ... Jails have revolving doors, and that's probably a good thing. It would also be a good thing to eliminate cash bond, without changing jails otherwise -- because jails serve a very real and practical benefit to society for less-than-a-day holding off individuals while their identity is verified and their information/case is reviewed to determine if a bond of any kind will be even offered.