A Deal With the Devil
Plea deals are bad ultimatums provided by the courts that could follow someone for the rest of their life. The inability to post a high dollar bail amount opens the door for anyone to take a plea bargain and to even plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. If they don't have the financial means to bail themselves out, they remain behind bars. If they plead guilty now, they can go free and attempt to move forward. What prosecutors don't want people to know is that their ability to find work, to vote, and even collect lottery winnings are adversely affected and in some cases revoked entirely by this so-called bargain in-lieu of prison.
This video, "A Deal With the Devil", delves into the problems with plea deals from a lawyer's perspective and from the perspective of plea deal victims. The take-away is that in this scenario no one wins but the DA, who contribute to mass incarceration at the expense of those who are often already living in poverty. And, as we've seen several times in our The Bail Trap: American Ransom series, the money bail is system is, again, a motivating factor in the number of plea deals offered to those awaiting trial.