Why do we need to eliminate cash bail? Let’s dive in. This is a short (1:30 time limit) speech that I wrote for a class that mimicked judicial debates, so I needed to crunch as much persuasive writing as I could given the time limit.
By a show of hands how many of you have been in jail and needed cash bail.
Even if you have not been in that situation, it is a topic that you should care deeply about if you have any moral compass and empathy for the people around you.
The United States spends about 22.2 billion dollars annually to detain people in jails, and according to the Vera institute of justice over 60% of those people have not been charged with any crime yet.
In Colorado, there is a law that entitled individuals to a “speedy trial.”
How speedy you might ask? They should be able to get a court date within six months of their original plea.
Unfortunately, to plead not guilty, one needs to have a court date already to make their case. The “speedy trial” begins after the initial pleading of not guilty. If you cannot afford to buy your way out of the so called justice system, you’re likely going to be sitting on tax payer’s dollars, behind bars, potentially with real criminals, until such a point that you get a chance to corroborate your plea. For petty crime or small amounts of drug possession, this is both an irresponsible way to spend our nations money and an unethical way to treat our citizens.
The issue of cash bail is not an issue of whether someone is charged with a crime or not, but rather whether they are able to await their verdict while carrying on their regular life instead of sitting behind bars with people who have already had the chance to go to trial. When the determination between being in a cage and being able to resume your life is not a matter of ethics, but rather a matter of money, that is a serious problem. This becomes especially important for single parent households for obvious reasons.
The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world, yet 60% of these incarcerated individuals have not been charged with any crimes. So, circling back to the 22.2 billion dollars of tax payer money being spend on incarceration cost, 13.32 billion is being allocated toward people that have not been charged with crimes.
The statistics speak for themselves, and your moral compass should fill in any gaps. The cash bail system in the United States is deeply broken and unethical. If you care about your friends, your family, or your country, you too should care about abolishing this predatory and unconscionable system.
