It interesting right now. There is a strong push to reform the justice system by reducing the use of monetary bonds for pretrial incarceration and ensuring the rights of accused (but not convicted) people are protected. Meanwhile, judges who are doing exactly this are getting blasted on social media and in the press for putting the public in danger by not locking up people arrested/indicted for crimes.
I don't know if the public anger is necessarily at the right people. The idea that some prosecutors/judges have been soft balling repeat offenders has been happening for a while. Happens in my county. I remember one Houston guy talk about offenders getting plea deals over and over such that a criminal who has committed multiple felonies does NOT have a felony on their record and judges/prosecutors use that to justify a light sentence or plea deal for the next crime even though they have committed felonies before just never pled to that charge. That is only one facet and I don't really know if that falls on the DA's office, the elected judges, or the politicians.
I mentioned that first because the no-bail stuff comes on top of that. People are seeing far too many stories of criminals committing very serious crimes and they find out they were just released on bond or they were already on parole. Potentially some of these criminals could get several felony arrests and still not see trial for the first one. I don't know if criminal record is admissible in trial in my state, but I am beginning to think it should be a major factor. I feel like repeat offenders may be committing the majority of crimes.
And on top of all that is politicians have deliberately reduce penalties for petty crime/theft in some areas to the point that businesses are closing/moving as they can't deal with all the shoplifting.
I don't know that I have the answer, but it sure seems like the leftist judges and DA that are currently in office in Houston are not concerned about it at all. In some states, it sure seems like the politicians are doing their level best to promote chaos. A lot of that stuff isn't happening everywhere, but some of it is happening all over.
Overall, I like the idea of not treating people like convicted felons before trial. It would be a lot easier to deal with if the trial happened quickly and everything was resolved in a few months. Our justice system just isn't set up to handle things that fast (or so it seems). I think maybe repeat offenders should be treated differently, but I don't know if that is really fair either.
