Kind of, but they're not considering whether they're law abiding or law breaking in the total, and then working from there to get a violent crime rate. So I'm not totally sure what your point is still. As a whole, it is demonstrable that illegal immigrant bring our overall violent crime rate down by virtue of commiting less violent crime per capita than legal immigrants and the citizenry. Defining it can be tricky. Should we count speeding tickets? jaywalking? Loitering? Most non-violent crime statistics look to property crime, but the rates are lower than violent crime and follow a similar but weaker trend. I don't buy it. You can make a correlative argument, but it's quite clear when you look outside the bubble of the U.S. that incarceration rates alone are not preventative of crime. The US is actually a fantastic outlier for that, having by far the highest incarceration rate with similar countries and still having one of the highest violent crime rates.
Obviously we are interested in violent crime rates here. If you count the crime of entry and label everyone criminals in a binary manner, you make learning anything about the impacts of illegal immigrants on local crime rates impossible. I suppose that could be the point in a lot of conservatives minds though. Why learn and study when you can fear monger and throw labels around?
Sigh...I appreciate you proving my point and analysis of your agenda. AND, I did it without Charts and stuff. You are welcome. Signed: Old white Guy
This thread is not about immigrants. It’s about Bail Reform. We are not interested only in violent crime rates here, although you may be. Most importantly, criminal activity left unchecked will not abate. If not punished for harming others in some way, one will do so again, and likely with increasing frequency and severity. The punishment for such actions should be proportional with either or both of two separate elements in breaking the law, and the second of the two is extremely important: The severity of the offense The propensity to repeat breaking of the law, regardless of whether the nature of the subsequent offense is similar to the previous offense(s). Breaking the law more than once, no matter how insignificant the offenses seem, displays a consistent disregard for society’s rules, and a tendency toward more of the same. The second element frequently results in incarcerations which appear unjust, primarily because it is the repetitious breaking of the law, and not necessarily the nature of the subsequent offense which draws less lenient sentencing. This easily escapes public discourse, and leaves lots of folks with the impression that many in prison have been disproportionately punished.
Indeed, we got off track. I guess what I would say to the rest of your post is why have bail at all? It doesn't mean they don't go to prison eventually. In the meantime it only means that poor people are locked up for an indeterminate amount of time for something they may not have even done. One way I'd potentially reform it outside of cashless bail is by making it proportional to wealth. A person with $200 in the bank must pay $20 to get out. A person with $20,000,000 in the bank must pay $2,000,000 for the same crime. As a hypothetical, how does that sound?
One of the factors used to determine the amount of bail is the likelihood of the accused to skip town. If the accused doesn't have a good job, and has little reason to stay rooted in the area, bail is set higher to make sure he / she returns to face the charges. The wealthy who are a flight risk generally post extremely high bail, and the poor who are not a flight risk post generally don't. Other factors come into play naturally, but the ability to afford the bail set in each instance is not one of them.
You're right, but I think the crux of my issue with bail comes from the following section: That tactic doesn't work unless it means they can't post bail and are required to stay imprisoned for something they may not have even done. That's the whole problem here, that bail is making the poor into second class citizens and robbing them of the presumption of innocence due to their financial situation.
Well ... technically .... they get the presumption if innocence - and the certainty that their life gets ruined no matter how the case turns out.
You are wrong . . . Bail does not treat the poor any differently than the wealthy. Rich and poor alike are considered for their likelihood of flight from prosecution, and their bail is set to make sure they will not walk away from the money they must post. That the poor have little or nothing with which to secure their freedom from jail until trial does not mean they are discriminated against . . . Ill-prepared, perhaps, but not victims of the bail system. Consider wealthy individuals in the same position, some of which you would be upset by if bail failed to keep them from skipping trial. Society is not better off releasing defendants without posting bail . . . The past couple of years have proven that beyond doubt. We don’t have to like the bail system but, until we come up with an alternative that is no less effective in guaranteeing defendants appear before the court, it is what we have. What other ideas do you have?
It absolutely means that you are treating them as guilty before a fair trial. If a trial takes months to happen, they cannot work from jail, they cannot pay rent from jail. What job is going to say: "okay, we believe you didn't do it, but because you can't post bail take a few months off" The bail system further ruins the lives of the poor and robs them of the chance to build their life and make positive changes. That's undoubtedly true. I disagree, and so do the statistics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.08664 You may have anecdotes and media frenzy on your side, but you'd be hard pressed to find a statistical analysis showing cashless bail leads to increased crime.
LOL, Answer the question Gene. Are the folks invading our country breaking our laws? Then you can go back to your charts. Just remember. DEAD CRIMINALS DO NO CRIME. PS we don't need to feed or house them either. Harvest their bodies and grind up the rest for dogfood.
GeneWright, posted: "You may have anecdotes and media frenzy on your side, but you'd be hard pressed to find a statistical analysis showing cashless bail leads to increased crime. Question. Do you think cashless bail prevents the same person from committing another crime before their trial?
No I think it is just as good at preventing the same person from commiting another crime as cash bail in most cases. We're concerned with a minority of people (though not a small minority) who can't post bail being detained indefinitely without due process. We've essentially created a debtor's prison program where poor people are imprisoned for being too poor to pay arbitrary debts the government assigns them.
It seems to me that rich or poor, a very small percent of folks arrested for something turn out to be innocent - especially all the ones (probably a majority) with prior criminal records. Does that sound reasonable?
Around 9 in 10, but I'd remind you that future outcomes shouldn't deprive rights in the present. We are all still innocent until proven guilty. I'd also say guilty pleas are not necessarily all guilty. Our bail system encourages guilty pleas for crimes people did not commit. Imagine you've spent a week in jail for a crime you didn't commit and you cannot post bail. Your lawyer tells you that you could fight it in trial, but there's a 3 month wait for a court date. However, if you plead guilty today, you could go home immediately and get off with paying a fine. You have family that you miss, you haven't lost your job yet but you would if you didn't show up for another 3 months, and you miss your home. Wouldn't you plead guilty in that situation?
Fairytale! I strongly encourage you, and those that believe the same things you do to spend some time in a courtroom. Not one visit but at least one session per month for a year. Your pixie dust unicorn fairy fart rainbow perception of the justice system and those charged will change.
What happens most of the time Gene? That the majority of arrested individuals are innocent or are they are serial criminals?
It doesn't matter what happens most of the time. I'm saying I agree with the Blackstone that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." I also believe in innocent until proven guilty, do you?
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Guilty-Pleas.aspx Check out the national registry of exonerations. Exonerations are exceedingly rare, but in a 2015 report in the link above, 15% of all later exonerated people had pled guilty despite being innocent.
