Here’s a
link to a short but powerful documentary on bail. It's called Limbo. Please note, as you watch, how
incredibly sane the jail commander sounds as he explains that the people swept
up into the discriminatory money bail system are actually our family, friends,
and neighbors.
This is, of
course, in stark contrast to the thinking of the bail insurance company lobbyists, who, when
pressured recently, have decided to change their rhetoric to mirror various
right-wing “tough on crime” sites that apparently don't think we lock
enough people up. I honestly get the feeling that those groups aren’t so much
conservative as they’re just full of hate for people generally. Conservatives
want to follow the constitution. These people are just pissed.
The problem
for the bail lobbyists, though, is how to square the various ideas they’re parroting
– like the idea that there are no true “non-violent offenders” and that being
arrested makes someone a criminal that somehow deserves a litany of pretrial
abuses – with the more prosaic notion that they’d kind of like everyone to get
out of jail by paying some money. The more they’re pressed, the more you see
that they really just don’t like criminals, which, to them, includes “accused
criminals.” Well, what if those accused criminals have a bit of cash? “Oh,
well, then that’s different. They may not be nonviolent, but at least they’re
rich enough to pay us.” Crazy.
I might be
wrong, but I think bail agents and I have a few things in common. For example, I
believe we all like the right to bail, the presumption of innocence, and the
various foundational American rights articulated by our state and federal
constitutions.
The bail
insurance companies haven’t really bought into all that, though. And because
they don’t like criminals, but they do like taking money from the people they
call criminals, they’re having a hard time coming up with coherent arguments now
to keep the present system in place.
