7 - Bail, Bills, and Criminal Injustice (w/ Lara Bazelon and Akeem Browder)
Hear the Bern
Bernie 2020
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Briahna explores how, as AOC recently put it, "justice is purchased." Thanks to cash bail, thousands of low-income Americans sit behind bars without any kind of trial, conviction, or sentencing — all because they cannot afford to buy their freedom. Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, explains how cash bail criminalizes poverty. Akeem Browder talks about how his brother Kalief spent three years in Rikers Island starting at age 16 simply because he couldn’t afford bail, and how the psychological toll of that experience led him to take his own life.
Bernie and AOC announcing their Loan Shark Prevention Act legislation: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/976956259362039/
ACLU and Color of Change report on the companies behind bail bond agents: https://www.aclu.org/report/selling-our-freedom-how-insurance-corporations-have-taken-over-our-bail-system
WaPo article on the companies backing the anti-bail reform effort in California: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/29/petition-drive-backed-by-private-equity-company-pays-signature-overturn-californias-new-law-ending-cash-bail/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are some 400,000 people in jail today. |
| 0:05.0 | You know what their crime is? |
| 0:07.0 | Poverty. |
| 0:08.0 | That's right. |
| 0:09.0 | And follow it through. |
| 0:10.0 | Poverty or what? They can't afford. |
| 0:13.0 | They gotta want to get bail. |
| 0:15.0 | Take a deep breath. |
| 0:16.0 | This is not Charles Dickens, England of 150 years ago, whatever it was. |
| 0:21.6 | This is America today. |
| 0:22.6 | Can you imagine, you know, you're talking about, thinking about things that people are not talking about. |
| 0:26.6 | There are people in jail today who may well be innocent, who can't afford to get out of jail |
| 0:33.6 | because they can't afford the $500 bail. |
| 0:36.6 | Americans love their own. because they can't afford the $5 million dollar bail. |
| 0:42.3 | Americans love their cop and lawyer shows. |
| 0:47.3 | Altogether, there's something like 1,700 episodes of Law & Order. |
| 0:53.3 | The reality show Cops is the longest running primetime TV show that's not about the news. And lest we forget, Dog the Bounty |
| 0:56.6 | Hunter, grace the small screen for eight seasons and several hundred episodes. |
| 1:02.4 | What does school get you? Staying in school gets you success. Not going to school gets you jail. |
| 1:12.6 | But shows like these can make certain punitive aspects of our criminal justice system seem ubiquitous and normal. |
| 1:19.6 | Even natural, when the reality is when it comes to how we treat the accused and convicted, the U.S. is an outlier. |
| 1:37.9 | This is Hear the Burn, a podcast about the people, ideas, and politics that are driving the Bernie Sanders |
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