The Crime Of Being Poor

13 years ago view-show 580,041

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The New York Times did this interesting article on how people who are commiting “quality of life” crimes are spending time in jail for merely not being able to afford bail.

  • Thousands of people arrested on low-level crimes in New York City spend days languishing in jail, not because they have been found guilty but because they are too poor to post bail, according to a report to be released on Friday.

    The report, which examines the bail conditions for people charged with nonfelonies like smoking marijuana in public, jumping a subway turnstile or shoplifting, found that the overwhelming majority of defendants in cases in which bail was set at $1,000 or less were unable to pay and were sent to jail, where they remained, on average, for more than two weeks.

Read the whole article here.