How is the bail system a violation of the Equal Protection clause as charged in this lawsuit? As long as the bail is determined on the basis of the crime committed then that’s equal treatment. If they started checking your bank account then deciding how much bail to charge you, THAT would be unequal treatment under the law since your income level has nothing what-so-ever to do with your innocence or guilt in committing a crime.
Perhaps. But then there’s the whole excessive bail clause to the Constitution. It was put in there to prevent exactly this kind of abuse.
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Also, have you never heard of marginal costs?
It turns out, it hurts a billionaire practically not at all to tax them at 50%, whereas it hurts someone making, let’s say, $10,000 a year quite badly.
It’s basic microeconomics, and it really ought to be applied here. Bail isn’t supposed to be punitive. It’s supposed to be insurance. And it’s not treating people equally when only people with the ability to spend $5000 or more are able to partake while not letting anyone explain that they can’t pay, and also not giving anyone an opportunity for recourse.
It’s a bureaucratic machine designed to take human lives as input, and generate profit for the for-profit prison system at the final product, with those people’s lives ruined as the process waste.
Lovely.
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That clause was created to prevent the government from setting excessive bail aimed at single individuals. Thus ensuring equal treatment under the law. The bail must be the same for all. No special rates for anyone. All must be treated the same.
The point of bail isn’t setting a financially unscalable wall. It’s to prevent people from taking off and running. And it becomes pointless if you’re going to make bail impossible for the less well-off. And it becomes pernicious and evil when you imprison people because they’re poor. Which is what’s happening here.
Notice in the notable cases section of that Wikipedia article I referenced, how judges couldn’t even set bail in excess of 1% of a millionaire’s worth? That’s important. It should be applied universally, if we’re going to talk about less wealthy people. Why should Durst get off “easy” at less than 1% of his net worth, when a completely non-negotiable bail I can’t contest or even have my lawyer represent me in negotiation for of $5,000 would represent an eighth of my yearly income? How is that fair and equal treatment?
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Again, the point of the excessive bail clause is to prevent the government from imposing punitive bail on individuals. Such as, " I the King want you in jail, so we’ll arrest you for J-walking and then impose a 7 trillion dollar bail … and delay your trial for 10 years." – which is why we also have a speedy trail clause.
And conversely the court may not impose lenient bail. Such as a judge giving his cousin little or no bail because he is having a hard time making ends meet.
This is why we have an equal treatment clause. If we charge person X a bail of $5000 dollars for a DWI , then we must charge the next person the same.
And if you are worried about it not being enough bail for rich people - Judges have the ability to impose additional bail based on flight risk. So if a judge feels that 5k isn’t enough to insure a millionaire comes back to court the judge can increase the amount.
Why can’t it work similarly for industry?
“I the king am getting a shitload of hash, because I pay some assholes to build dungeons. And the individuals who don’t have money to make bail will rot in the oubliette. They won’t be able to defend themselves, and therefore I will become the richest king in all the land!”
Either way it’s corrupt as fuck. It’s all about personal gain. And the fact that it’s not about political prisoners isn’t as relevant as the fact that the people doing the imprisoning are profiting from incarceration. In the example of “I don’t like that dissident, so I’ll toss him in the dungeon” the imprisoner is profiting too.
In anycase, there’s no due process in this article’s situation. It’s railroading. And it’s wrong.
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See, that’s not what equal treatment means. Charging a pauper $5000 is not equal to charging a prince $5000, as it is punitive for the pauper and a pittance for the prince.
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It depends on how you define “equal”. If equal means the same exact template for everything, then they’re right. If equal actually takes into account equal outcomes, and people’s lives, and rehabilitation and harm done, then you and I are a little further away from completely wrong and ass-backwards.
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Almost every other part of the process takes the defendant’s individual situation into account. What charges to lay, what kind of deal the prosecution might offer, the jury’s verdict, the judge’s sentence (when not unconstitutionally hamstrung by mandatory minimums.) Why would one think that rigorous adherence to a fixed fee schedule is some kind of unassailable bedrock legal principle when setting bail?
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In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Calling a system where rich people walk and poor people sit in jail “equal treatment” is absurd. How exactly is it that you define the face value of the bail as “treatment”? The “treatment” part is whether they lock you in a cell without proof of guilt or not, and there is a vast inequality going on there.
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This is only technically true, sometimes the worst kind of truth.
We have our fair share of “imprisoned because poor” cases, the most important example are unpaid bus/tram/metro fares: If you dodge the fare multiple times and don’t pay the ticket (+fine) it’s in a legally sense repetitive deception. Typically the conviction is a monetary penalty, but then one was trialed because of unpaid fines. Welcome to the prison! The public transportation service in Berlin is especially aggressive when it comes to charges, Plötzensee Prison is full of fare dodgers.
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German incarceration about 62000 for a population of 80 million
US rates about 2 million for a population of 300 million, or in round terms 8 times higher per head of population.
You can see why the US private prison system wants TTIP, there’s a vast amount of money to be made in Europe. In theory under TTIP, private prison companies could sue EU governments to get the same kind of incarceration laws that apply in the US.
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I’m aware that the US outclasses everyone else when it comes to prison population. But Germany/Europe is not a land of milk and honey, we have a bundle of problems.
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American prison system: making everywhere else look good.
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are you white? I find that helps to keep my daily felony count down quite a lot.
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Of course we do. But we need to get them in perspective. Currently there is a lot of very negative feeling around the idea of Europe, and it is feeding the Far Right. But we do many things better, as well as some worse, than other developed countries, and we should recognise that.
We (well, I personally) don’t want to see us stampeded into imitating the worst features of other countries, which is why I am very anti TTIP. When it comes to the criminal justice system, Germany and Scandinavia all do a pretty good job, and I just thought that was something to be celebrated in this context. There are too many people who do not understand statistics, and you don’t want one of them making the equivalence of “Texas locks up poor people to get unpaid work from them. So what, Germany imprisons fare dodgers!”
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I have the feeling I added perspective - prison for unpaid fines was not dropped in 1868.
For me the biggest problem is the incompatibility between the precautionary principle used in the EU and the US-style postcautionary one. The second one makes it easier to introduce new products, so it will likely win in the current shareholder value über alles climate.
But TiSA will be even worse, “liberalising” services - health care is one of them, the prison industry can be seen as part of the service sector. This will be fun!
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The second one is also a bonus for lawyers, because post-sale disasters result in damages cases, often with high stakes.
I am assuming you have a particular company with a very aggressive attitude in mind?
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