Talk:Bail

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Initial comments

Anyone have more info on what the current US bail laws are? All that's in the article is just a legal citation. Anyone have a copy of the USC onhand? Thanx 68.39.174.150 20:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What about Canada?--Sonjaaa 17:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Bond and Bail interchangable?!

I've been hearing on my local NBC news station, the terms Bond and Bail used interchangably. Is this correct? A direct quote: "..the judge set bond at $300." That does not sound correct to me. Wouldn't the judge set bail, and then the accused would pay a bondsman? Just as the artcile states?

This is something that has been bothering me for a long time. If it turns out bail and bond CAN be used interchangably, we should probly add a section about that to this article. --Quasar 14:02, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

---

--218.248.1.74 05:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC) Bail and bond are not interchangebly used.Bond is a precondition for Bail , Bail is an legal act of releasing an accused while Bond is a surety which the accused indirectly pledges to the court of law. Arif

--- So could you say, "The bail is my bond." But not say, "All forms of bond are bail." If my understand is correct there are many things that could constitute a 'bond' to appear in court, and one of those would be bail. Is that correct? 216.228.250.254 22:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)Daniel

It would be nice if the article would explain the difference. Prometheus^-X303- 16:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This topic was a while ago, but I think it depends on the jurisdiction. I know bond to refer specifically to surety specifically. If a judge sets bail without restriction, then it can be paid by "cash" (though possibly by any means that certainly supplies money, not currency per se) or by bond, that is, surety. If the judge specifies "cash only", then surety is not allowed. So in that since, setting bail is the requisite for posting a bond, but not all defendants are permitted to obtain a bond. IMHO (talk) 00:17, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Recognizance

The definition for recognizance says that "Recognizance [is] a promise made by the accused to the court that he/she will attend all required judicial proceedings and will not engage in further illegal activity or other prohibited conduct as set by the court."

Since the accused hasn't, by this stage, been found to have engaged in any illegal activity is it correct that the definition prohibits the accused from committing further illegal activity?

Ironcorona (talk) 18:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

It is incorrect according to the Bail Reform Act of 1984 in the US(as amended in 1996) 18 U.S.C. sec. 3142(b).

Release on personal recognizance or unsecured appearance bond. The judicial officer shall order the pretrial release of the person on personal recognizance, or upon execution of an unsecured appearance bond in an amount specified by the court, subject to the condition that the person not commit a Federal, State, or local crime during the period of release, unless the udicial officer determines that such release will not reasonably assure the appearance of th person as required or will endanger the safety of any other person or the community.

The absence of citations is a clue to any wikipedia law article that the information contained therein may not necessarily comport with the actual law. Of course the presumption of innocence may not exist in some jurisdictions using a bail system, but in US jurisdictions it is retained. Legis Nuntius (talk) 18:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Bail set by county not state

The sentence: "Some states have very strict guidelines for judges to follow, with a published bail schedule.[9]" with the link to LA bail schedule misleadingly suggests that CA has uniform bail rates from one city to the next. This appears to be false e.g. San Bernardino County sets different rates. (I do not know what is the true statement). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.134.248.159 (talk) 01:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Pretrial release

As discussed in the news article "Bondsman Lobby Targets Pretrial Release Programs", in the United States, pretrial release is an alternative to setting bail, and bails bondmen don't like it. The Wikipedia article doesn't mention this option at all, and it seems worth adding. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Do youth not get them?

I don't remember getting any bond hearing when I was arrested as a youth and sent to a juvenile detention center. 184.96.214.236 (talk) 05:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Bail Bonds are not available in any state in the United States Bail is only set for those the age of 18 and older — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.51.105.98 (talk) 00:09, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

In my state juveniles are not eligible for bail. They get a detention hearing to determine whether or not they are a flight risk, and then they are (hopefully) sent home. Zi Shy (talk) 17:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Immigration Bail

? 188.222.6.122 (talk) 19:48, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge of Jump bail

I don't see that Jump bail is notable enough to warrant it's own article. Any opinions either way? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:07, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

• Conditional, limited merge. The second section of the Jump bail article can easily be merged into the United States section of the bail article. The first section could be merged in, but only if referenced. The third section can either be merged in, or merged into Bounty Hunter with a mention on this article, but again, only if referenced. If the content remains unreferenced, then it should be nominated for AfD. Singularity42 (talk) 10:50, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

My orignal plan was to only merge the referenced bits, should have said that, and thanks for the idea about Bounty Hunter, then redirect the rest to Bail, rather than do an AfD. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 11:18, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Redirected without merge - given that it's all unreferenced. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 04:17, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge of Bail reform

Currently working on merging Bail reform into this page. Hardly anything links to it, and it requires a lot of overhaul anyway. Going to put it in the United States section of Bail because it's very United States-centric. Zi Shy (talk) 17:46, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually, now that I've started merging, I've realized that the United States section is going to be way too long. Going to create a page called Bail in the United States. Zi Shy (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Possible changes

Bail Reform

Based upon the value long ago proclaimed by the Supreme Court, “In our society, liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception,” the goal of many bail reform groups in the United States such as Equal Justice Under Law and the American Civil Liberties Union is to bring about change to the traditional money bail system.[1] Wealth based detention has certain consequences seen through the effects of overcrowded local jails and drained local budgets to keep those individuals detained. On any given day in the United States, there are about 500,000 human beings in government jails because they cannot afford to pay money bail.[2]

In San Francisco, Equal Justice Under Law (civil rights organization) filed a lawsuit in 2015 that sought to end the money bail system in that district. Sheriff Vicki Hennessy was added as a defendant to the original case that involved the state and city. Hennesey said in a statement: "However, a system that allows one person access to immediate freedom through the payment of cash while another person with the same criminal history and charges who lacks financial resources remains behind bars seems unfair to me," as a response to the bail system that she agrees should be changed.[3]

Opposition

The California Bail Agents Association are opposed to recent progressions made in the Santa Clara County when their Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to drop bail requirements for hundreds of inmates awaiting trial. They pointed to recent increases in California’s property and violent crime rates in 2015, which rose 7.2 percent and 7.6 percent respectively.[4]

Maxwell moilanen (talk) 06:13, 20 November 2016 (UTC)Max

"Ending the American Money Bail System".

Jump up ^ Karakatsanis, Alec (2015). "It Is Time to End Poverty Jailing". Public Administration Review. Jump up ^ "Bail reform gets support in San Francisco". Jump up ^ "Supervisors to Vote on Sweeping Plan to Reduce Money Bail System".

to do

I am working on this article but it is a mess. To do:

• bail vs bond terminology -- clarify
• find sources & add a global perspective for non-common law countries: Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe etc.
• add a further reading section
• clean up & check citations; add more general citations
• possibly split out England/Wales section to a stand-alone article, like the Bail in the United States article
• re-add a section about (global) bail reform efforts

-- phoebe / (talk to me) 23:48, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

United Kingdom

The lead section describes bail as a sum of money. This doesn't seem to describe the situation in the UK at all. As I understand it, in the UK, "bail" merely means the set of conditions attached to releasing a suspect either before or after charge. These conditions may include a monetary deposit (in legal terminology a surety); historically the police or court bailing a suspect was required to take a surety, but this has not been the case since the Bail Act 1898. Police who arrest a suspect may a) have the suspect charged, then held on remand; b) have the suspect charged, then released on bail pending court proceedings; c) release the subject on bail but without charge, in which case one condition will likely be to return to the police station at some specified date; or d) release the subject without bail, probably because they've decided the suspect is not guilty. Thus "bail" no longer has the specific meaning of "a sum of money" in UK usage. Hairy Dude (talk) 01:43, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't that happy with the word 'may' in the By Police before charge section:

However, they may not require a recognizance, surety or security (i.e. money either paid on release or promised, perhaps by a ::third party, in the event of breaching the other conditions or absconding), or require residence in a bail hostel

'May' is ambiguous, does it mean they refrain from an option or can't impose such things ?

I came specifically to see if British bail practice included money, after having read a couple of interesting PDFs on the American system ( High Cost, Pretrial ) but learnt more from the poster above.

And... was money generally demanded in England/Wales before the 1976 Act ? Admittedly I don't know that much about the court system, but I've never heard of money being a factor in bail here.

Claverhouse (talk) 15:21, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Should the article be split? Bail in the form of money might be a different topic from bail in the form of restrictions. Anywikiuser (talk) 09:18, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I think it would be overkill to split the topic. Beyond any required payment, bail is always conditional such that a violation of the terms of the bail may result in detention. Arllaw (talk) 17:57, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I have rewritten a good amount of the history section to give a better overview, add sources and accurate references to the historic legislation. I will go on to update the modern bail principles too as they aren't all correct and the law, given how complicated it already is, could do with stating more straightforwardly. User:MKT92 (talk) 14:27 28th October 2020 (GMT)

UPDATE - I have produced a standalone article which is currently under review. MKT92 (talk) 17:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Map Request

Mapmaker345 (talk) 19:07, 28 December 2018 (UTC)