They say crime doesn’t pay, and President Barack Obama’s administration is making sure that old saw comes true.
But not how you’d expect.
If Obama has his way, from now on anyone accused of a crime doesn’t have to pay bail!
In the latest example of political correctness run amok, the Justice Department now claims bail is unfair to low-income suspects – because it is discriminating against people with no money.
“Bail practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay for their release violate the Fourteenth Amendment,” the department said in a brief filed in federal court, according to NBC News.
As a result, anyone who can’t pay should just be allowed to waltz right out of the jailhouse … and cops are supposed to just trust that they’ll return for their court dates.
But while the suspects don’t have to pay, the rest of us could – because when the accused don’t show up for court, we have to pay overtime to overworked cops and deputies to go out looking for them.
In this specific case, a suspect accused of “pedestrian under the influence” in Calhoun, Georgia complained after being held for six days because he couldn’t pay his bail.
The case ended up in federal court, where the Justice Department didn’t take the side of our law enforcement officers.
They took the side of the suspect!
“Fixed bail schedules that allow for the pretrial release of only those who can pay, without accounting for ability to pay and alternative methods of assuring future appearance, do not provide for such individualized determinations, and therefore unlawfully discriminate based on indigence,” the agency said in its court filing.
The federal appeals court ruled for the suspect and ordered the city to release absolutely everyone accused of misdemeanors who didn’t have bail.
That ties the hands of local judges, forbidding them from treating each defendant on a case-by-base basis and allowing folks who they can trust to walk free while keeping the ones who might bolt locked up.
And in typical Obama Administration fashion, the move not only sides with criminal defendants over the legal system … it also threatens to undermine an entire industry and cost the nation thousands of jobs.
Until now, people who cannot pay – rich or poor – have been able to turn to bail bondsmen for help getting out of jail.
“Bail is a liberty-promoting institution as old as the republic,” former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote to the court on behalf of both Calhoun and the American Bail Coalition, according to Reason. “In fact, the text and history of our founding charter conclusively confirm that monetary bail is constitutional.”
For a small fee, a bail agency puts up the cash for you.
It works like a charm most of the time, and for the small percentage of folks who don’t turn up there’s always Dog the Bounty Hunter and his pals.
Now, the bail bondsmen and bounty hunters could be staring at the unemployment line as an “institution as old as the republic” falls in the name of political correctness.
Share your thoughts on the Department of Justice’s plans to abolish bail for lower income suspects. Comment below.
— The Horn editorial team
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