Bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless of guilt or threat
In my experience by far the worse part of the totally racist and unfair US bail system is the fact that...<p>...<i>if you can&#x27;t bail out, you don&#x27;t get any REAL credit for the time you have spent locked up when you finally go to court and  get sentenced</i>, which really rubs injury into insult and flies 100% into the face of &quot;innocent until proven guilty&quot; bullshit we are all told is the way the system works.<p>Before everyone goes off on how wrong I am, please hear me out from my POV of over 30 years getting arrested for minor shit all over the US.<p>For the record, I have probably done time in like...12 different county jails and been through the systems in each of those places, and have been to state prison twice (no bail issues in prisons, so I&#x27;ll leave them out).<p>So back to my outrageous assertion...am I really saying that the judge gives you NO CREDIT for being in jail, away from your loved ones, your job (hopefully you had one), and your freedom, for all those weeks that you will wait to see him and have your case disposed of?<p>Yes that is exactly what I&#x27;m saying, and here is why.  Let&#x27;s say 2 people get arrested for, say, felony ketamine possession on Jan 1, 2019.<p>Richie Rich cries to mommy and get bonded out 10 hours after the arrest, and the bondsman gives him his first court date (there will be many BTW) 5 weeks out on Feb. 3rd.<p>Joe Street is from out-of-town and the police forget to let him get local numbers from his phone before its stowed away in his property, thus leaving him totally helpless as far as calling <i>anyone</i> because who in in the hell remembers out-of-town numbers these days, right?<p>[I use this example because this exact situation with the phone happened to me last year here in Vegas]<p>So Joe is officially fucked.  He too gets a court date for Feb 3rd and has to sit in jail until then.  Trust me.  If you have never been to county jail 5 weeks will feel approximately like 2 full-fucking eternities to you.<p>You can&#x27;t believe how bad the food is...how uncomfortable the beds are...how bad your cellmate snores...what assholes the COs are...<p>And mostly how incredibly shit the phone system is...it&#x27;s expensive as hell (3 bucks for 15 minutes I&#x27;ve seen) and often the speaker or mics dont work that well due to people smashing it on the wall in frustration.<p>So you go to court FINALLY Feb 3rd, and there is Richie Rich!  Oh man, he sure looks good in his street clothes and all groomed, while you look like pure crap with your ill-fitting jail garb..well at least you will be going home today, you think as you happily sit in the freezing cold holding cell and listen to people right next to each other scream at almost the top-of-their-lungs to just talk about their situation.<p>Your head is pounding and you have been up since 4am sitting on hard-ass concrete for 5 hours...but HELL YEAH YOU ARE GOING HOME TODAY I&#x27;ll take whatever probation they give me today..who cares how much I just NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA THIS JAIL!<p>And then, of course...you never even see the judge.  This is &quot;arraignment&quot; dipstick and everyone knows you can&#x27;t plead at arraignment.  Your totally overworked assigned public defender hands you his card and silently signs &quot;call me&quot; because its so fucking loud still.<p>Then, in horror, you look down at the card and see your next court date is 3&#x2F;18...HOLY SHIT ANOTHER 6 WEEKS ARE YOU KIDDING???<p>So I could go on relaying horror after horror, but I will stop here and get to the damn point.  At the end, <i>both you and Richie Rich get 3 years felony probation!!</i><p>Let that sink in...you have sat in hell for maybe 4 months (sometimes 8 or 9!!) while Richie has been doing his thing in the real world, yet you both end up with the same sentence.<p>And that&#x27;s what I mean when I say that <i>you basically get no credit for not being able to bail out.</i>  This is a 100% true story and I have seen it play out just like this perhaps a hundred times.