How to solve United State's unjust bail system.

Bruce MM

Thy Nguyen

LA 207.05

Oct 29 2019

Why is the U.S bail system unjust?

The founding fathers of the United States has cemented into the minds of Americans that justice and equality are the only values, represented by the U.S justice system. Every president until date has assured the citizens that, the laws of the justice system and the subsequent punishments for criminals were all voted for everyone’s best. The criminal justice system are the set of agencies, bureaus and processes that are established by the United States government to control crime by punishing people who violate the law. Even if the leaders of America pleads to the citizens that the justice system screams out justice, there are blind spots within the U.S justice system. To be specific, the bail system that has been established by the United States congress is one of the most corrupt laws that has ever been established because the money paid for bail is a fixed amount, therefore it creates financial stress upon family and demolishes a person’s credibility amongst society.

To be able to get out of jail after being arrested, the person who has violated the law must pay bail to be released. The violator usually pays bail to the government get out of jail, in promise to return to the court trials whenever scheduled. Posting bail can be charged in a few ways such as paying cash, check, signing property, land ownership and bonds. The amount of total payment is then calculated by the judge, in addition to the gravity of the charged crime. “In the United States, nearly 70 percent of the people held in local jails are there for one reason: they don’t have enough money to pay bail.” (May, K.T) The absolute disadvantages of bail would be that everyone who are charged with the same crime will pay the same amount of bail, no matter what your financial status is. This is truly unfair because, if the bail amount is a fixed priced, a person with a wealthier financial income can bail out in no time, while all the other poor criminals are waiting in their cells until the court trials.

In the United States of America, the smallest amount of bail starts from 1000 dollars and that is for underaged drinking. A thousand dollar might not be much but people should keep in mind that this is the lowest bail amount in the United States bail system. “When justice is blind to everything but profit, actual guilt has no bearing on your sentence.” (Chen. M,) The prices will continue to shoot sky high as the degree of seriousness is later evaluated by the judge. After the total amount of bail is given to the criminal, the families would go through financial stress, just to pull the convict out of the prison cell. The majority of criminals in the United States are financially stressing over the amount of bail that is too expensive for them. Most criminals do not have the money to pay bail so they would usually spend their time in prison, until the court date.

The fact that every single person that commits the same crime are charged

Work Cited

Chen, M. (2017, May 12). Our Bail-Bond System Is Broken. Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/our-bail-bond-system-is-broken/ .

May, K. T. (2018, August 31). How the bail system in the US became such a mess - and how it can be fixed.