Innocent till confirmed responsible is a wonderful credo. Unfortunately, individuals who haven’t been convicted of a criminal offense are handled in methods which are darn close to prison comparatively usually. For many poor folks, money bail is the well mannered method of claiming maintain your ass behind bars — folks have had their freedoms connected to tons of and even 1000’s of {dollars} earlier than trial. Thankfully, Illinois practiced the great sense to eliminate money bail. The outcomes have gone swimmingly. From the ABA Journal:
The jail inhabitants is down in Cook County, Illinois, and pretrial detention hearings are getting longer all through the state after a legislation eliminating money bail took impact.
Illinois grew to become the primary state within the nation to remove money bail after the state supreme court docket rejected constitutional arguments.
The system isn’t good, although. Smaller counties are having issues coping with the detention hearings which have change into longer for the reason that act’s passage, however I feel that the reply there may be to collect extra sources somewhat than to carry again a coverage that violates the Constitution.
One of the bragging factors of our peculiar division of federal and state authority is that every of the sovereign states can act as “laboratories of democracy” and take a look at out new approaches to legislation. For solely being a month out, there have already been nice outcomes. My hope is that the outcomes of this explicit expriment are fruitful and unfold over to different testing areas like New Jersey and New York.
How Elimination Of Cash Bail Is Working In Illinois After 1 Month [ABA Journal]
Chris Williams grew to become a social media supervisor and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to becoming a member of the workers, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ within the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri lengthy sufficient to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who can not swim, a printed writer on essential race principle, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for biking that often annoys his friends. You can attain him by e-mail at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForHire.
