In a 5-2 ruling Tuesday morning, the state’s highest court overturned a ruling by a Kankakee County judge that the law ending cash bail was unconstitutional. The end to cash bail will now go into effect across the entire state on Sept. 18, according to the Illinois Supreme Court ruling.
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.
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…
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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?
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.
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.
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Why do you think it will increase petty crime?
It depends on how it’s enforced.
Where I live they ended cash bail for any non-felony offense and it’s led to repeat offenders being picked up, released and they’d offend again, where they get picked up and then released again.
It’s a complex issue, many of these people need mental health help, and putting them in jail isn’t the solution, but allowing them to continue to walk free when they’re known re-offenders isn’t helping either.
Is the problem that they are just releasing all non-felony offenses instead of evaluating them in place of the cash bail process?
Because using cash bail was just evaluating and adding a layer that costs the accused money based on their risk, and without it they should still be taking the same steps to determine the risk.
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The cops just aren’t interested in dealing with the fallout of picking up people for petty / low level felonies. It both political and resources keeping them from getting involved.
That sounds like a police oversight problem, not a bail problem.
Let’s say I’m pissed and go sit on my ex’s porch. The cops pick me up for Tresspassing, I get released and go sit right back on her porch. If I’m not threatening or being violent, that’s a completely plausible situation.
If you’re not threatening anyone but you do it again, that’s a violation of your bail conditions (presumably they would have told you to stay away from her and her house/work/whatever), and you’d sit in jail until your hearing.
Sounds like the police where you live kinda suck at their job.
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Someone hates the constitution
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Police will enforce the law because that’s what police do. Locking up poor people without a trial is a bad idea. Book them into the system, then see them at their court date. If the don’t show up, they become a fugitive. It just means these seedy bail bond companies charging huge rates will have fewer poor people to prey on. I think only the richest should have to pay bail.
Police will enforce the law because that’s what police do.
That’s painfully naive considering we’re in year three of a deliberate slowdown
It’s great to see people that genuinely think that imprisonment without trial is the way to go. Really warms the heart.
when they know they will see that same person back on the street within a day?
The blame for that lies squarely with the judge’s decision to release them. The only factor should be whether they’re likely to be a social harm, not whether or not they happen to have money for bail, which is a completely unrelated matter.
Why would police enforce laws when they know they will see that same person back on the street within a day?
Because they’ll eventually be convicted? Or are you asking why police will bother arresting people they don’t think will be convicted? Because the answer to that is really simple: they absolutely should not, because we’re not living in a police state (in theory, anyway).
You realize you’re arguing for imprisoning people who’ve been convicted of no crime, right?
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.
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What? Yes, you get the bail money back. Otherwise, a bail bondsman would just be throwing that 90% away every time.
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You know I can see the timestamps, right? You posted the comment at 17:09:18, I replied at 17:20:56, you edited at 17:24:00.
Even if you edited multiple times and that’s only the most recent one, yes, in whatever time it was between me opening this post and submitting the comment, I did spend some time reading about bail, first just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, and then just out of curiosity.
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Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of a douche bag?
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I have no idea what time I read your comment, so I have no idea how long I spent reading about bail, but sorry for being curious I guess.
Lol I like that you talked shit about their lack of understanding of the criminal justice system, yet you clearly didn’t understand how bail works. Please try to do better in the future
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Please try to understand something about the American criminal justice system before you comment on it.
I wrote a comment starting that I’m not knowledgeable and asking for more opinions.
You told me I don’t understand it, need to read up more and that you have the answers. Then you have people correcting you and you need to edit and correct your comment.
Seems like I have the right amount of confidence in my response, and you are way too over confident.
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Sounds like you just need to read up on some of the American criminal justice system before you comment on it!
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Here’s a video of John Oliver talking about the problems with the cash bail and here’s another one talking about bail reform.
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