We have been discussing the mostly manufactured controversy about cash bail — specifically, the progressive narrative that it “criminalizes poverty” and is, of course, an iteration of our indelible systemic racism. I’ve recently written about it here and here, and I think it would be useful to take note of how bail works in Michigan, using last week’s mass shooting at Oxford High School for that purpose.
For context, recall the situation in Waukesha, Wis., where Darrell Brooks allegedly (we have to say “allegedly” at this point) killed six people and seriously injured dozens of others by ramming his speeding SUV into them. As I’ve explained, though the federal Constitution does not require bail to be set, it requires that, if bail is set, it not be excessive. Wisconsin’s law, however, does mandate the setting of bail. Consequently, the state indulges a charade, in which, when common sense says a person is too dangerous to be released on bail, bail is nevertheless set, but at an unrealistically high amount — i.e., an excessive amount — that the accused cannot make. In Brooks’s case, after he drove his SUV into the Waukesha Christmas parade, his bail was set at $5 million. (The reason he was out of prison and free to drive in the first place is that he had been set free in November on outrageously low bail despite two pending violent felony cases in Milwaukee and a Nevada arrest warrant for flouting sex-offender restrictions.) Now, if Brooks were to scrape together his new bail of $5 million, you can bet Wisconsin authorities would raise it to $10 million or whatever it took to keep him detained.
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