Running head: MONETARY BAIL 1

Monetary Bail

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SHOULD MONETARY BAIL BE ABOLISHED?

Imagine being in a cell for days, months, week and even years waiting for your day of

trial in court, and you have not been found guilty whether you committed the crime, simply

because you are not able to make the bail. In my view, I think that the money bail should be

abolished because it has been used mainly to criminalize poor people. In the documentary, it is

clearly shown that if you have the money you can buy your freedom which is different to the

person who is poor and will sit in jail even if innocent simply because they do not have money

(Dewan, 2015).

In the United States, the poor and the racial discrimination have faced the consequences

of bail because bail terms are set in courts which they cannot afford forcing them to spend the

rest of their life in jail. When a person is arrested, you are accused by the police of the crime you

have committed whereby you will be taken to court and bail term set by the judge no matter how

the case is severe or small (Robinson et al. 2018). Your freedom will depend on whether you are

poor or rich, the rich will give out the bail, and his case will be heard when at home while the

poor will remain in jail because they are given bail they cannot afford. Therefore the majority of

people sit in jail because of low-level crimes on low-level offences as a result of not able to

afford the bail.

The rich people will have the freedom of committing offences. They know that when

they are taken to court, they will give out the bail and enjoy the presumption of being innocent

which is vice versa to the poor person who will sit in jail as a result of petty crime because they

cannot afford the bail. Sitting in jail has several consequences such as; a person losing a job,
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your kids were taken away from you because there is no one to take care of them and eventually

when you come out of jail you are likely to be homeless (Dewan, 2015).

According to Dewan, (2015), in the United States majority of people are in incarceration

waiting for pre-trial detention because the bails are set which they cannot afford. More and more

people continue to be in jail, leading to mass incarceration. Being in jail ruins a person’s life and

cause destabilization to the point that even when one comes out of jail, they are more likely to be

re-arrested. This may come as a result when one spends extended time in jail, the system of

criminal justice will be with you because, in jail, you mostly interacted with the people who are

jailed. Therefore when one is arrested for the first time, you are likely to be in jail more and more

time due to the effect of staying in jail, this comes simply because the person could not afford the

bail.

Conditions in the jails have become even worse due to the pandemic of COVID-19

whereby the inmates have not been able to keep social distance and even wash their hands as put

by the government. This has led even to some inmates dying as a result of the virus because they

cannot be able to access quality health care (Flanders and Galoob, 2020). Today due to the

spread of COVID-19, when a judge set a bail term mainly to the poor person, it is like a death

sentence because the conditions of prisons have become even worse.

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References

Dewan, S. (2015). When Bail Is Out of Defendant’s Reach, Other Costs Mount. New York

Times.

Flanders, C., & Galoob, S. (2020). Progressive Prosecution in a Pandemic. Journal of Criminal

Law and Criminology, Forthcoming.

Robinson, D. G., Sassaman, H. J., & Stevenson, M. (2018). A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR

JUDGES. Judges’ Journal, 57(3).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aao0q593DoI