>>Take the instance of bail. _Any bail at all_ is impossibly large for
>>many.
>
>And yet what does one do? I am opposed to carcereal policies. But some people should be kept off the streets, and while (what Bill doesn't grasp) pretrial detention isn't legally punishment,
Firstly, I didn't say it was. I merely said that refusing bail without any cause, as California apparently does, involves imprisonment without trial. It was you who got confused and thought the issue was whether this was punishment in a legal technical sense.
Pre-trial detention is necessary in some instances, few people would deny that. Some people represent an unacceptable risk, either to the public, potential witnesses, or simply a flight risk. Most people accused of petty theft would not fit into any of these categories, unless they face Draconian penalties.
But in any case, blanket refusal of bail for those accused of petty theft does amount to punishment without trial, whatever the legal niceties might be. Simply because, in most instances, the time they will spend in jail awaiting trial is probably the same as the sentence they can expect if they are found guilty.
The issue isn't whether they will eventually get their day in court, the issue is that their day in court cannot have any bearing on the outcome. Since the punishment has already been meted out by that time. In fact of course, the police don't have to waste the court's time at all, they might simply drop the charges just before the trial date.
Such a law gives the police and prosecutors total power to arbitrarily imprison anyone they want, prior to, if not entirely without any recourse to the courts. They merely have to file a trumped up charge, based on evidence that they know will never be challenged in court, because they control whether it can ever get into court. Bob's your uncle - you're locked away at their pleasure.
This is the kind of arbitrary power that the Magna Carta deprived princes of, yet California legislators have apparently been able to give the power to petty officials.
It is tragic (and perhaps significant) that someone claiming to be a civil rights lawyer can't seem to grasp that.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas