HenryKrinkle posted:

had to make sure this wasn't an actual D&D thread

It *is* an authentic D&D thread, however.

getfiscal posted:

something this reminded me was something someone posted about recently which that a lot of judges impose small bail conditions on poor people to keep them in jail. these are almost always for petty crimes too, so like a person will steal something from a convenience store and then have to sit in jail because the judge set bail at $50. i'm not really sure the details though or if there's an opportunity there to, say, raise an amount of money in a community and then front bail money.

there is a charity in the bronx that does exactly that but they weren't allowed to without a fight

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/nyregion/helping-poor-defendants-post-bail-in-backlogged-bronx.html posted:

Judges typically set low bails for misdemeanors like hopping a turnstile or stealing a backpack. But in neighborhoods where savings are scarce, many cannot pay. In 2012, a total of 4,378 people arrested in the Bronx had bail set from $50 to $2,000, according to data compiled by the Criminal Justice Agency for The New York Times. Of those, 89 percent did not post bail at their arraignment. Of those who stayed in jail, 43 percent were incarcerated until their case’s disposition. The median time in jail was 11 days; the average stay was 40 days.

(According to the Criminal Justice Agency, defendants in the Bronx have the hardest time making bail: In 2012, 14 percent of nonfelony defendants in the Bronx who had bail set at $500 or less were able to post at arraignment. That number was 15 percent to 43 percent in the other boroughs.)

An experimental program aims to help some of those people avoid jail time or a hastily made guilty plea by paying bail for poor defendants charged with misdemeanors. The fund is a project of the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit provider of legal services.

Not everyone qualifies. The program, which is known as the Freedom Fund, provides bail only for people accused of misdemeanors, paying as much as $2,000. And participants must demonstrate that they have roots in the community, and therefore are likely to return to court.

The goal is to give the people with means and those without the same opportunity for a trial.

“What we’re hoping is: It just brings back a little more fairness,” said Robin Steinberg, 56, the executive director of the Bronx Defenders, who started the fund with her husband, David Feige, in 2007.

During a period of about two years, the fund paid the bail of about 150 people. Ninety-three percent of them returned for every court date.

Then, in 2009, a judge questioned whether it was legal for a charitable organization to pay a defendant’s bail, arguing that such a group would need to meet the same regulations as a for-profit bail bond business. The pair, unable to meet those requirements, shut the program down.

But their desire to keep the fund going persisted. “We decided: Let’s change the law,” Ms. Steinberg said.

The couple rallied a bipartisan group of lawmakers, who approved a bill signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2012 that permits nonprofit groups to pay the bail for defendants accused of misdemeanors.

The Freedom Fund reopened in October.

TG posted:

daddyholes posted:

freedom fund will never be allowed to expand past misdemeanors because it cuts into the bail bonds business which owns much of the west of the state

they are seriously the worst people ever and i hate them so much

one of my good friends irl did bail bonds work for a while and his hatred of literally ever single person he ever worked with is infinite and uncontainable. he delivers coffins now

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/occupy-wall-street-activists-sue-over-occupywallstnyc-twitter-account/ posted:

On Wednesday, three years to the day since the beginning of Occupy Wall Street, one of its former leaders has sued another leader over a disputed Twitter account.

@OccupyWallStNYC has 177,000 followers, and it's apparently controlled by Justin Wedes, a self-identified "educator and activist based in Detroit, Michigan" and a "founding member" of the New York City General Assembly. Wedes did not respond to Ars’ requests for comment.

According to the suit, which was filed by the OWS Media Group in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Wedes "hijacked" the account in early August 2014, "making himself the sole person in control of the Twitter Account."

The suit demands that the court declare the OWS Media Group as the account’s rightful owner (bar any future transfer of the account), compel Wedes to return it, and award $500,000 in monetary damages.

The account was originally created by the Canadian organization AdBusters, which helped spawn the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. As the protests grew, AdBusters handed the account over to Marisa Holmes, a local activist. She expanded the circle of people that had access, including Wedes.

Holmes is now a director of the OWS Media Group, an organization that sprung from the protest movement.