[nkw]

I think most people with more than a passing acquittance with the bail systems in most states could agree with the title, but what I have not seen are any proposed solutions that address the underlying problems certain characteristics of our bail systems are meant to address.

For example, without the threat of forfeiture how do you ensure people actually show up to court?

Without bail bondsmen how do you fund the extra police/marshals/sheriffs to find and arrest those who do not show up for court?

Without the ability to set bond amounts based upon offense characteristics and individual financial circumstances and criminal history, how do you prevent especially violent offenders with a likelihood of committing more violent acts while on pretrial release from committing new violent offenses? Keep in mind there are some jurisdictions where you are constitutionally entitled to bail of some amount.

There is much (justified) lamenting on the evils of the use of the bail bond industry, but after bail reform in the Federal system which effective ended the use of the industry for the Federal criminal system -- do people really think the Federal system is better? If so why?

If you want to go the other direction and eliminate money bail, do you really want to police/prosecution to able to indefinitely incarcerate people until trial?

Do you want to seriously jack up the criminal penalties for failure to appear in lieu of money forfeiture? That is going to screw over a lot of people.

Again, there are serious problems, but I haven't heard significantly better solutions.

[mikestew]

For example, without the threat of forfeiture how do you ensure people actually show up to court?

Because my life is fucked worse than it already is if I don't show up. If that's not the case, then that's almost the working definition of "flight risk", and you don't release them for any amount of money.

[nkw]

> Because my life is fucked worse than it already is if I don't show up.

This is already the case, but surprisingly people (including those accused of crimes) do not always make choices which are in their long-term self interest.

> If that's not the case, then that's almost the working definition of "flight risk", and you don't release them for any amount of money.

So how do you determine who is a "flight risk"? Past FTA? Past convictions? Don't own property? No family ties to community? From the wrong part of town? Wrong skin color? These are the types of things that will end up going into detention decisions when you take the posting of security off the table and start trying to decide who is a "flight risk". The reason we have our bail system, including in many places a constitutional right to bail for non-capital offenses, is before that Courts would simply deny bail willy-nilly for certain crimes or people they didn't like.

[mikestew]

It's not always the case that it's worse if you don't show up. As an extreme example, if you're already facing life, running isn't going to make that worse (they're not going to execute you for skipping bail). On the other extreme, notice we don't have to post bail for a traffic ticket. However, if I don't show, there's now a warrant for my arrest. I was in no danger of going to jail if I showed up for my traffic hearing, but I'm most definitely going to jail (even if only briefly) if I'm pulled over with an outstanding warrant.

But let's go with your thinking. Let's use money, instead of those factors in your second paragraph. But you know what having money for bail might mean? You own property, have family ties to the community, are from the right part of town, and statistically probably have the right skin color. I mean, I see where you're going with this, but in the end I think it's a wash. You've either got money, or you are found pleasing to the judge's eye, and either way it means you're likely white and wealthy.

So I don't know what the solution is. But as others have commented, the UK seems to get away without having to post money for bail (though some have pointed out the exact problems you worry about).

[rayiner]

> I was in no danger of going to jail if I showed up for my traffic hearing, but I'm most definitely going to jail (even if only briefly) if I'm pulled over with an outstanding warrant.

And yet, people skipping court dates for traffic violations is extremely prevalent. In many areas, there are varying degrees of enforcement of failure to appear arrest warrants because of how common they are. (They'll have like amnesty days and stuff like that to encourage people to appear.)

The basic problem is that poor people have very little to lose by not showing up to court.

[dragonwriter]

> On the other extreme, notice we don't have to post bail for a traffic ticket.

At least in CA, the money you pay before or instead of trial on a traffic ticket is a default bail, and you have the option of pleading no contest and forfeiting the bail as your fine, or you can contest the ticket. If you contest the ticket, at your arraignment you will be assessed for the need for and amount, if any, bail much as for any other offense.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/8452.htm

[dragonwriter]

> So how do you determine who is a "flight risk"?

Since that's expressly a factor in deciding on whether to grant money bail and in what amount, that's not a new problem that eliminating money bail would raise, and money bail is (on top of all it's other problems)) imposingntial costs on different defendants people arbitrarily if we don't already have a reasonable solution.

So you can't really use that to question the elimination of money bail.

[ilovetux]

It is fairly common practice for someone accused of a crime for the first time to be Released on their Own Recognizance (ROR) without bail. I could easily see a system where you are outfitted with an ankle monitor with GPS and a radio beacon similar to house arrest but only activated after either 1) Failure to appear or 2) Detection of tampering with the ankle monitor.

[fatbob]

Don't those require that you stay within a certain area? For example, the monitor has to be able to communicate via radio with it's base station.

[ilovetux]

Currently yes. They actually require a land line to be connected to the base, but the technology exists and can be adapted to use mobile networks instead.

[dragonwriter]

> For example, without the threat of forfeiture how do you ensure people actually show up to court?

You do it the way Washington D.C. does, and has for a couple decades.

> Without bail bondsmen how do you fund the extra police/marshals/sheriffs to find and arrest those who do not show up for court?

With general taxes, rather than taxes on the criminally accused.

> Without the ability to set bond amounts based upon offense characteristics and individual financial circumstances and criminal history, how do you prevent especially violent offenders with a likelihood of committing more violent acts while on pretrial release from committing new violent offenses?

Money bail doesn't prevent that; pretrial supervision or outright bail denial can, and so that's how you do it, choosing the least invasive level of supervision that provides adequate security in the circumstances.

> If you want to go the other direction and eliminate money bail, do you really want to police/prosecution to able to indefinitely incarcerate people until trial?

Before trial isn't indefinitely except at the choice of the accused, because of the right to a speedy and public trial.

> Do you want to seriously jack up the criminal penalties for failure to appear in lieu of money forfeiture?

Yes, I want to punish the actually guilty in preference to punishing the merely accused. Do you seriously prefer the other way around?