How Bail Really Works
It’s a Woman Thing
Hug-A-Thug prosecutors, judges and media elites who advocate abolishing bail have several things in common:
1. They have never been arrested, bailed or bonded.
2. They have never set foot in a 24-hour bail bond office since they are congenitally averse to buildings with blinking neon signs, linoleum floors, metal folding chairs, people with B.O., and the sounds of inmates’ relatives shouting, wailing and crying.
3. They can become unsettled by quart-sized cannisters of oleoresin capsicum (pepper) spray on the desks not to mention, tucked discretely away on the bond agents’ persons, medium- to large-caliber pistols cleaned and oiled in quick-draw holsters.
The Left’s thinking about bail assumes that crime is not an eternal fact of the human condition but rather a psycho-social illness. As such, they believe it can be cured. Bail, in this view, is an unnecessary pre-punishment of the accused. If freed with a signature and a frank talking to, robbers, muggers, rapists and the criminally insane will return for trial gladly, with a smile on their face and a song in their hearts. At sentencing, a kind and caring judge will direct them to hug it out in group, talk it out in psycho-therapy, or float it out in a Thorazine dream.
Abolishing bail is nonsense. The dead bodies of America’s murdered and the mutilated bodies of victims who have been stabbed and bludgeoned give the lie this notion, as do hordes of drug addled homeless and the babbling mentally ill who roam the ruined streets of once-great cities.
The reason cash and surety bail work in the real world is that the money is rarely paid by defendants themselves. Most have no money. Others recently had money, but no longer. For example, when dope dealers, who once drove drive around in swanky cars pimped out with $20,000 rims and low-rider shocks, get arrested, what often happens is this: Their baby mommas, homies and carnales rush to the crib to grab any cash and stash that might be stuffed in boxes or secreted under floorboards. The defendant’s car, usually titled in someone else’s name, is sold after hidden dope has been scavenged. The huge 4K flat screens and ab-fab sound systems fly away as if on wings.
Thus, kings of the street, who recently had been carrying C-notes in fat rolls, suddenly can’t afford Twinkies from the jail commissary. (The cash, bank cards and jewelry that suspects have on their persons at arrest are locked into jail property and cannot be used for bail.)
Bail and the bonds therefor generally are paid by female relatives. Go to any bail bond office at night when the cops are packing the jails, and you will see gaggles of women huddled together discussing how they can pool their meager funds and modest credit lines to pay the bond. Some, foolishly, will sign liens on their homes in the benighted states that allow such enormities.
Bail is set to guarantee the appearance of defendants at future hearings and trials. It is also discourages commission of new crimes. It comes with conditions. These usually forbid committing crimes, using controlled substances, possessing firearms, and associating with felons.
Women enforce bail. They make miscreants stay at home rather than bang, ball and bone in the streets as once they were wont. On court day, they shake defendants awake at the ungodly hours of six and seven. Then they get them washed, shaved and deodorized. Next, they lay out non-hoodlum clothes, often the gray, pin-striped “jail suits” that Walmart sells by the train load. They knot the ties, naturally.
They make sure defendants are fed, caffeinated and nicotinated—no smoking in court! Lastly, they drive defendants downtown and deliver them blinking and dazed to criminal court to hear “All rise!” at nine a.m. sharp. Most have lectured their defendants on why it is wise not to have “Fuck You!” tattooed on forehead and knuckles. Ditto for flipping off judges.
When the women fail and defendants bolt, bench warrants issue. BOLOs (Be On The Lookout For) bulletins go out over the radios and police Intranets. Cops and bounty hunters pursue. Judges forfeit bonds and bond agents forfeit the sureties. The women lose their cash and sometimes their cars, their houses and their minds.
When fugitives decide not to submit to re-arrest and instead draw firearms and knives or try to run cops over with cars, they may catch a full mag of 15 bullets from the cops’ AR-15s (17 from the Glocks). They often die horribly and noisily in the streets.
Therefore, blessings be upon these women, termagants and harpies though they must be. Their nagging, screeching and finger-wagging make bail work. Somehow, they get disorganized defendants who do not have watches, have never used a calendar, and who can’t spell “schedule” in front of judges on time in not-too-addled condition.
None of this is nice; none of it is pretty. But bail does work, most of the time.
The alternative? Walk at night through the downtowns of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, or Louisville. Don’t forget to wear Class 2 armor under your shirt with rifle plates inserted. A Class 3 helmet under your hoodie would not be out of place. After this Ambulatory Attitude Adjustment, you will agree, I guarantee, that bail is the lesser of evils.
The Left, whether through misguided idealism or ill-disguised hatred of America, have transformed our cities into the hells that once were described only in the poetry of Dante and Milton and were unknown in the prosaic precincts of life.