🇺🇸 Why do you think repeat offenders (criminals) get low bail and a Get Out of Jail free card?

[sage2021]

This really baffles me. Why do criminals that commit crimes over and over again get out of jail before the next day? No matter the crime, even a mass shooter that shot multiple people gets low bail - $25,000 and gets out of jail right after bail is posted then turns around and commits more crimes and gets away with it time and time again. There were 142 mass shootings in America so far this year and it's only April. Who are these people doing things like mass shootings? And why aren't criminals spending time in jail anymore. I don't believe it's so the jails don't get over crowded either. Will you she'd some light on this by giving your opinion?

[josephinelcajon]

The justice system is for profit. Short term do not pay. Long term state terms get federal money plus they work the inmates slave labor. Charging full pay while giving the inmate pennies! Its a business not rehabilitation!

[joeldalton]

Like this?

[sage2021]

@joeldalton I think this is the guy I gav in my example. Not only is he not doing jail time, but he got to go back to his work today like nothing happened. 😕

[joeldalton]

Liberal judges. But as @Shamalien said... we need to stop criminalizing everything so we can focus on real crimes.

[nightdrot]

Actually, the intellectual origins of the divide between those who believe in bail reform and those who take - for lack of a better term - a "law and order" line runs all the way back to the origins of Western civilization. The pendulum swinging over the centuries in response to particular circumstances.

To start, Western civilization began with Thomas Hobbes and the idea of the "Leviathan." Life in the state of nature was "nasty, brutish and short" and so the state came down with a heavy hand. This then followed by John Locke.

Whereas Hobbes saw man as a brute to be managed in order to make civilization possible. Locke saw man as a basically mildly diffidently social being. If law is made in conformance with natural law, then a relatively well ordered society will follow.

To which then came Rousseau. Rousseau argued that society corrupted man and that his spontaneous goodness would be thwarted. Thus law must give wider scope to human nature, this thereby conducing to a social order made in conformance with man's nature. This, in turn, resulting in a man who is spontaneously good and a harmonious social order.

So how then does all this relate to the current situation? First, it must be noted that Western civilization swings back and forth between these theoretical viewpoints - thankfully not Hobbes very often.

After the chaos of two world wars, a global economic depression, the Korean War, the organized crime associated with Prohibition and other factors, society was ready for a period of RELATIVE - it is ALWAYS relative - calm and stability. Thus followed the peaceful placid 1950s.

However, by the 1960s society was growing restive. The old joke was all President Eisenhower brought was peace and prosperity and that was boring. Thus came the 1960s, a decade in which crime began to rise, the police were routinely referred to as "pigs," and all the other upheavals of that decade and the decade that followed.

This translated into a decreasing respect for law and order. It also bought into Rousseau's idea that man was basically good but was corrupted by society. So the emphasis switched from law enforcement to social reform. Suddenly, the criminal was not a criminal, but a victim and therefore to punish him not only was unjust, but perpetuated the crimes of society.

Predictably, social upheaval resulted. Some of it to the good to be sure. (See also the civil rights movement.) However, the echo effect was rising crime, drug addiction and other social pathologies. Such that by 1978, a survey by Gallup found that 77% of ALL women did not feel safe walking alone in their neighborhoods at night.

The backlash began in the 1980s with a greater emphasis on "law and order." It took several decades to "un-ring" the bell, but by the early 2000s, crime rates had fallen to levels not seen since the peaceful placid 1950s.

At which point, from the comfort of a relatively low crime society, the emphasis switched back to prison reform, bail reform and other such "reforms." The purpose of which was to - at least nominally - address the injustices society had visited on the individual, especially racial minorities and the like.

Predictably then, as night follows day, crime rates have begun to rise again. Man the social being is only a social being up to a point. When law presumes the injustice of society, what follows then is low bail and "Get out of jail Free" cards.

This is a brief summary of how the nation got to where it is. The pendulum will swing back and forth as society, however unconscientiously, pivots in response to circumstance and the theoretical premises on which it was founded.

This pivoting back and forth to continue until social exhausts the cultural and social capital on which it draws. Suffice to add, as the last decades have shown, there is no way to know at what point that exhaustion will come. There may be many swings left in the pendulum.

[OlderAndWiser]

People who like to get on a soap box on issues such as this tend to engage in hyperbole and grossly overstate a situation. Do you have examples or statistics to support your argument?

[Lliam]

It's ironic that Democrats can't shut about gun control but do little to those individuals who use guns in the commission of crimes.
There are exceptions, though. If a shooter is white and Republican, they throw the book at him, even when he only used the gun to defend himself, as was the case with Kyle Rittenhouse.

The judicial system (in liberal regions) not only gives light sentences or plea agreements to gangsters and other violent criminals, they find excuses like overcrowding and covid to release them from prison. All the while, people continue to languish in prison for non-violent offenses.

I actually don't think the goal of liberals/Democrats is to stop violence and keep citizens safe. If it was, violent criminals would be kept in prison. I think violence benefits the Democratic party because it can continue feigning concern over violence in order to push for gun control and increased authoritarianism.

[HighValue]

In CA, there are DAs that release criminals and refuse to prosecute some of them. Being soft on crime just increases crime. If you look at the recent rise in violent crime especially, it is mostly in democrat run areas that go easy on criminals.

Democrats support violent criminals, just like in Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, etc.

[caitycat21]

Congratulations. You’ve just figured out that the criminal justice systems rigged, the prison industrial complex relies on the labor of poor people who commit crimes due to their situation. And instead of focusing on rehabilitation it focuses on abusing and dehumanizing people. Of course they are going to reoffend - prison didn’t change them, it just made them worst

[caitycat21]

“The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.”

- “Are prisons obsolete” by Angela Davis

[Aerissa_Jade]

I've seen a guy on his 12th DUI get weekend jail time and his fine increased but a young college girl with her 1st DUI get 10 months in jail.

Neither one crashed or hurt anyone, seems like they throw the book at many first time offenders but let repeat offenders get off easy, in the name of trying to
rehabilitate them or keep them from losing their jobs. As for mass shootings, seems a great deal are gang related.

[Surely]

I think that it is the Democrats way of bringing down this country. Why I couldn’t guess.
They made their fortunes here?

[CaptainSmartass]

Because they provide the courts with repeat business.

Simples...

[Jerre]

Usually because it is a Democratic Gov where they live and the. DA is certainly A Democrat

[Shamalien]

Too busy incarcerating people who just wanna do some drugs and not hurt anyone

[exitseven]

Democrats are pandering to their base (criminals).

[FunkyMonkee]

Politics!