The conversation about bail reform should be about the role of money but instead keeps zeroing in on crime. Anti-reformers seem to like the confusion.
If he doesn’t have the bail money, the suspect goes to jail. He will wait there for two to five days until he’s brought before a judge, is formally charged, perhaps gets a court-appointed lawyer and can finally argue that he’s safe to be released because of his ties to the community and his job. But he’s been in jail and missed work so he may well lose his job. He was away from his family. He has been confined to unsafe and miserable conditions, which is traumatizing.
The presumption of innocence is an ancient principle, but in Los Angeles — in fact, in much of California and around the nation — it is little more than a slogan. People who are arrested are treated as if they were guilty, long before they have any opportunity to present their defense. They are fined, jailed or both, without a defense lawyer, without even a prosecutor, without a judge.