One would think this would be an easy target for budget reform, but it's going to be even harder for elected officials to take on issues like this post-Citizens United.
Recently I was trying to think of a term to describe the triaging decision that both private citizens and elected officials make in deciding which public policy issues are worth their time and energy to fight for.
(The specific thing that brought it to mind was the argument here on teacher contracts, and my sense that even if 90% of the public thinks it's too hard to fire teachers, the structure of contract negotiations means it comes down to a yes/no on the whole contract. If the elected officials acting on your behalf say no and walk away, you end up with a strike, and you have to pay a fortune for your kids to have daycare, etc. If they throw up their hands and say yes, then there's no leverage left to fix the broken firing system, and the whole system lurches onward for another five years.)
My engineer brother says it's a kind of process starvation. (Somewhat confusingly outlined in this Wikipedia article.) Becks's post reminds me that we need a pithier term for political debate.
Bail issues will probably never be important enough to a large enough segment of the public to outweigh the deep lobbying investment that they are worth to a narrow scope of players. Either we hope for a flash of public attention (a la the FCC a few years ago), or we come up with a way to name it so that we can at least point to the thing that is happening.
I killed the thread. Is it any consolation that I actually clicked through to the two parts I hadn't already read?
I just don't have anything useful to say. I mean, look at Philadelphia on that table. No, don't look.
I don't really have anything to add, but wanted to say thanks for linking it. Although, what a depressing read. The ways this country shits on the poor, just structurally, seem to be endless.
I had caught part of one of these stories driving home, and it was compelling enough that I pulled up the whole thing once I got home. But I hadn't realized it was a three-part series. Thanks for bringing the other two parts to my attention, Becks.
The bail bondsman who talks about trying block someone's release so as to get the bail? Horrifying.
What do other countries do for/in lieu of bail systems? What systems work better than ours?
5: I have no idea, but given the incarceration rates, they start off by arresting a whole lot fewer people than we do.
Unlike the publishing thread, this is one of those topics that really just defeats my attempt to be objective and distance myself from what's going on.
Some people I know recently went to see Derek, the son of Jens speak. I'm down with the kick-it-over part, and frankly, you spend enough time working with other radicals and you see what's so appealing about the propaganda that relies on actions rather than words, but I'll be damned if that joker has any more sense than anyone else about what to actually do to get from A to C.
We were talking at breakfast today about the "bad" (i.e. black) HS that a friend attended and another friend works at, and how it's been systematically underfunded and marginalized until it basically is just a warehouse. And what's the point? 500 or 600 kids pass through there every year, and not more than a couple of dozen have any real chance of making it. Why not just have a kid at 17, when you can name off a dozen people you know who were dead by that age? Why not deal, when it's the only point of entry into the economy? Why not carry a gun, when you know that everyone else is, and if it's him or you, then sorry, but you're damn sure it's not gonna be you?
And then these fucking parasites, with their smarmy "Jail Sucks" T-shirts and their handouts to crooked cops and politicians. When do they ever get theirs? Their kids are going to Grinnell and Oberlin and Carleton and learning Toni Morrison and Michel Foucault. It's disgusting. It's not right, it's not necessary, it's completely fucking indefensible. And every year they get richer and the kids they devour get poorer.
BURN THIS RACIST SYSTEM DOWN!
Other countries don't have for-profit bail bondspersons, for one thing.
Lobbyists aside, there is also the issue of public perception. There are a whole lot of people out there that are allergic to anything that might make life easier on "the bad people" even if it's ultimately in everybody's best interest and even if it involves ending a practice that there is absolutely no way to defend the fairness of.
There are a lot of polls out there suggesting that good portions of the general public is amenable to legalizing pot. Yet I can't escape the sensation that they are uncomfortable ever actually voicing that belief or pushing for legislation to that effect because it means giving people that actually smoke pot a pass and they hate people that smoke pot.
he structure of contract negotiations means it comes down to a yes/no on the whole contract. If the elected officials acting on your behalf say no and walk away, you end up with a strike, and you have to pay a fortune for your kids to have daycare, etc. If they throw up their hands and say yes, then there's no leverage left to fix the broken firing system, and the whole system lurches onward for another five years.
I understand where you are coming from here, but I am reluctant to call the power of collective bargaining a bug in the teaching system, when it is a feature in so many other industries.
Speaking of bailouts, I just walked down to this creek in a local park. I was wondering who would build six flights of granite steps down to a small creek and then bridge the creek with stone. Apparently, the WPA did it and the path is looking much nicer after 70 years than a Cash-for-Clunkers-Camry will look in 7. Why does nobody built anything solid these days? (Also, why are kids on my lawn?)
Rob, I think you're responding to something I didn't write. To be clear, my position is that the up-or-down nature of contract ratification votes has heavy costs for both teachers and those whose interests are represented by school districts. (However much of a nuisance a strike is for parents who send their children to public schools, the loss of salary is likely to be at least as burdensome for striking teachers.)
Either side could have aspects of the contract that they hate and want badly to change, and yet keep enduring, decade after decade, because in the end the "rational" decision is always to settle.
In the example above, the elected officials represent more members of the general public than the teachers do. And in the bail situation, the set of members-of-the-public-who-have-no-meaningful-contact-with-the-bail-system is much larger than the set of those that do.
In both cases, public policy would be better served if the system were changed (better bail process; better bad-teacher-dismissal process), but the capital required to provoke system change may never be acquired -- because of process starvation.
Planning for the future doesn't help the speculators shareholders, Moby.
I didn't even realize there were places that didn't do pre-trial non financial releases.
http://www.criminaljustice.slco.org/Pretrial/JailScreening.html
Hell, we don't even book guys for a $120 dollar shoplift unless he's also got warrants, or is fighting us, can't verify his identity, etc. Low level misdemeanors are a cite and release. Not in a million years could I get a guy in jail for months on a misdemeanor.
Further to 14, one aspect that I don't think the NPR stories touched on are the prison guards' unions. There is a very strong incentive to build more beds and keep them filled, because the guards' jobs are generally "good" jobs with benefits and the prisons are often in rural areas with little industry.
Sorry, that should be:
In some jurisdictions, there is a very strong incentive...
Obviously SLC isn't one of them.
It's a racket, gswift. Pretty unforgivable.
Natilo, just yes. Like the child sexual abuse thread, this is another where I don't think I have the distance to talk about it, but I'll be watching closely.
My engineer brother says it's a kind of process starvation. (Somewhat confusingly outlined in this Wikipedia article.) Becks's post reminds me that we need a pithier term for political debate.
The classic treatment of this problem was in Mancur Olson's 1965 book The Logic of Collective Action . He develops the reasons why small organized groups so often dominate large unorganized ones in democratic politics -- it's a variant of the public goods problem. One of the great works of rational choice theory as applied to politics. Every day I observe government reminds me how true it is.
19: Except is this really a collective action problem? In most areas of the country, one or two judges could stop most of the problem by themselves.
Maybe it's just that I'm most familiar with the legal system in small towns, but I've certain never heard of anybody with more than a few days in jail pre-trial on a misdemeanor. Even the guy who stole the flashing lights from the cop's car went home without bail (though he did a few days after the guilty plea).
Well, yes it is, in the technical sense that the collective action problem is defined in rational choice theory. Check out the link.
Depending on the institutional setup, individual bureaucrats might have autocratic power to institute more efficient policies and do an end run around the collective action problem in democratic politics. But the same things that give the edge to narrow interest groups in democratic politics give them outsized influence on bureaucrats too --- e.g. many judges are elected and need money for their campaigns. If unelected, they could be bribed.
The third part of the NPR story that Beck linked shows exactly how the bail bond lobby can dismantle non-financial release programs. A textbook case of how a narrow interest group is successful in promoting something that is probably inefficient from the broader public interest perspective. The collective action problem is that no one in the broad unorganized public has the incentive to organize to stop this, because the benefit is too low for any one individual. Of course, the county commissioners could do their job better...
I was very impressed the first time I read Olson also. I still am. But, everything has some element of a collection action problem and the idea seems less applicable to this than it does to many of our recurrent or recent topics like public schools, unions, or digging-up Kennewick Man.
Being too poor to come-up with $200 bucks and not even knowing anybody with $200 bucks is not a state that is fixed by successfully combining with other people in the same situation. Being a tax-payer stuck with extra bills because a government agency is poorly run is a condition that is perfectly and positively correlated with breathing.
These prisoners are a group that require external help from somebody seeking a non-specific gain and this is not something that Olson spent much time with. Every problem can be reduced by assuming rational utility maximizing, but I don't think that is the best option.
And in the bail situation, the set of members-of-the-public-who-have-no-meaningful-contact-with-the-bail-system is much larger than the set of those that do.
Clearly, we're not sending enough people to jail.
Just in case the thread isn't quite dead: I learned recently about an organization that's doing a lot of good on the ground in the midst of this rotten system, by doing something like microfinance funding of bail (along with (bilingual) advocacy through the pretrial phase). Their clients have a great record of appearing in court on the set date (despite the fact that it's not the clients' money on the line; it's almost as though the large majority are decent people who will reward your trust in them...), so ~90% of the money can get cycled back in to help more people. It's not as good as structural change, obviously, but they're good people to send some money to, if you're so inclined.
What do other countries do for/in lieu of bail systems? What systems work better than ours?
Well, FWIW we have bail. But we don't have bail bondsmen. In theory the court sets the bail according to the accused person's means. Or refuses it if the police make a case that the defendant would default. If you jump bail, the police come after you and you don't get a second chance. Most people get out on their own recognisance.
Whether it's better or not I couldn't say. It's what we're used to and there aren't too many complaints.
This issue really pisses me off.
The pre-trial release programs are outstanding and allow people to get released without paying huge sums and rehabiliation can get started.
The bail bondsmen are wrong on this issue. They are trying to get more money, nothing else. Plus, their lobbying is full of mistruths.
The majority of people who dont show for court are caught by the police, not bails bondmen. Bails bondsmen do not perform the services as pre-trial programs, yet they are lobbying legislatures and acting like they do.