On an early June episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, he took on the issue of the bail system in the United States. Quite a lot of the information that he shared on the Bail System was in fictional responses and of course it was done in a satirical nature. The truth is that this information was more than just a simple comedy act instead it brings up a very good question about the state of the bail system.
Of course the show is only 30 min. and all of it can only spend a small amount of time talking about a system like bail which is extremely complicated. The example that it gives in the episode is a man that was jailed for driving with a suspended license. If the man who is jailed is unable to pay $1000 bond he has to continue to sit in jail. Not involved in this story is why the man’s license was suspended, the crimes that he had committed in the past or even how he was pulled over. Oliver doesn’t discuss if the man could’ve added DUI, multiple traffic violations or if he was arrested for dangerous driving.
The story also is a bit fishy when we consider that if a man can’t afford to pay $1000 bond, how could he managed to afford the cost of maintaining a car, insuring a car or otherwise.
Oliver used this story followed by a statistic that 38.5% of persons taken into custody in the state of New Jersey can’t afford to pay their bail. It seems a bit impossible that 38.5% were unable to pay bail but more likely that this percentage of persons in custody had other circumstances for which they were unable to pay a bond.
This inability to pay bail could stem from outstanding warrants, warrants on crimes that they may have committed in other jurisdictions or other factors that can prevent someone from paying their bail upfront. There are also some offenders that simply choose to spend the time in jail. There are also some repeat offenders that are unable to retrieve bail from a family member or friend. There are also people being held in county jail systems across the US with an immigration hold that have also committed local crimes which have bail but since there’s an INS hold they can’t get out. What about the inmate serving a sentence on 1 case while having bail on another case? Is that part of the 38%? These are the details that are left out of the argument John Oliver makes.
Included in the bail argument was also a harsh criticism of pretrial services. In a video spoof Oliver demonstrates just how easy the process of appearances in a trial can be. He also stated that many of the employees which are tax funder paid at pretrial services essentially do nothing all day. This couldn’t be further from the truth as John Oliver himself has never had to work as a mediator through nonviolent transitions with people who are committing crimes, appealing in court and potentially posting bond.
While it is clear that John Oliver is making a satirical point about the system, the current Bail System is far from broken and is in fact extremely beneficial. While there are many people in the United States that have zero tolerance for nonviolent crime and feel as though people should be held accountable and require jail time for their actions, it’s important to note that there are thousands of warrants across the United States out for individuals who failed to show up for their day in court. This costs the government millions of dollars every year.
Without some system in place to make sure that people appear for trial even if released from custody offenders will have absolutely no obligations to carry out state law and this will only lead to an even greater level of spending on the part of taxpayers. The bail bond system is necessary and while John Oliver may have gotten us thinking about some issues with the system, without it we would be far worse off.