Storytime! Mostly because holy shit this is weighing on my mind like mad, and I need to vent. Living in USA.
Someone in my life allegedly did something bad last weekend. I found out by getting a phone call from the local jailhouse on their behalf yesterday morning. I’m their contact, found their legal help, and been drug along part of the process. HolyFUCK is it absolutely insane the shit you have to do. The predatory-ass system has you completely fucked if you’re poor. A fucking five thousand dollar payment for bail, that they allow only the panicked voice of the detainee to inform you about, so you likely jump right in and take action and pay that bail before the arraignment trial where the prices can be reduced, or he can even be up and set free. Dont have the money? That’s okay! You can pay 10% if you put some substantially valued aspect of your life up for collateral. The referenced suggestions? A house and a car. Now if they fuck up before their trial, you lose basically everything. And lord, don’t even get me started on the sentence times. Threatening the lad with twenty years for some alleged not-severe crimes, the boy hasn’t even lived for that long, so he panics and talks before we can get legal council to him. Anyone with a single look from the outside can tell he’s not getting anything near that, but they wave it over his head like it’s a looking threat he’s gotta serve.
If any of you go through this process, I swear, it becomes apparent as day that this whole thing is built to incentivize you to remain in jail. To stay as cheap prison labor or whatever it may be. This whole process is fucked. I haven’t even seen the legal fees yet.
It’s all fucked up. My brother ended up on parole and it was designed to keep him from holding down a job. He’d have random drug screenings, which meant that each morning he’d call in to the system to find out if he had a drug screening. If he did, he’d have to drive to the county where he committed the offense and was convicted (2 hours away from his home) to wait a few hours to pee in a cup. Imagine holding down a job and not knowing until day of that you’ll need to take off most of the day. And they wouldn’t even let him do his drug screenings closer to home–theory was that the county got paid per parolee.
Anyways, my brother is a jerk but the system is needlessly cruel.
Storytime! Mostly because holy shit this is weighing on my mind like mad, and I need to vent. Living in USA.
Someone in my life allegedly did something bad last weekend. I found out by getting a phone call from the local jailhouse on their behalf yesterday morning. I’m their contact, found their legal help, and been drug along part of the process. Holy FUCK is it absolutely insane the shit you have to do. The predatory-ass system has you completely fucked if you’re poor. A fucking five thousand dollar payment for bail, that they allow only the panicked voice of the detainee to inform you about, so you likely jump right in and take action and pay that bail before the arraignment trial where the prices can be reduced, or he can even be up and set free. Dont have the money? That’s okay! You can pay 10% if you put some substantially valued aspect of your life up for collateral. The referenced suggestions? A house and a car. Now if they fuck up before their trial, you lose basically everything. And lord, don’t even get me started on the sentence times. Threatening the lad with twenty years for some alleged not-severe crimes, the boy hasn’t even lived for that long, so he panics and talks before we can get legal council to him. Anyone with a single look from the outside can tell he’s not getting anything near that, but they wave it over his head like it’s a looking threat he’s gotta serve.
If any of you go through this process, I swear, it becomes apparent as day that this whole thing is built to incentivize you to remain in jail. To stay as cheap prison labor or whatever it may be. This whole process is fucked. I haven’t even seen the legal fees yet.
Prison is just one more arm of the Capitalist Financial Extraction System. There is no crime that you can’t buy your way out of, if you have enough.
It’s all fucked up. My brother ended up on parole and it was designed to keep him from holding down a job. He’d have random drug screenings, which meant that each morning he’d call in to the system to find out if he had a drug screening. If he did, he’d have to drive to the county where he committed the offense and was convicted (2 hours away from his home) to wait a few hours to pee in a cup. Imagine holding down a job and not knowing until day of that you’ll need to take off most of the day. And they wouldn’t even let him do his drug screenings closer to home–theory was that the county got paid per parolee.
Anyways, my brother is a jerk but the system is needlessly cruel.