Prior to reform, those within the court system often exploited criminals with unfair bail amounts (Berg, 1985). Bail could be raised in order to provide profits to these unjust jurisdictions and would plague on people of lower means due to the fact that they could not fight this discrimination (Berg, 1985). Jails at one time could be compared to poorhouses by reformers, stating that only poor individuals could not meet the standards that high bail amounts proposed (Takagi, 1975). Due to the individual’s right to bail not being described within the constitution, gray areas were created where abuse could permeate throughout the criminal justice system (Bak, 2002). While much of this unjust practice was performed in the era of revolutionary times, unjust and excessive bails were still an issue within the 20th century criminal justice system. Within the years of 1966 and 1984, bail reform acts were created in order to limit bails from being set at unjust and unreasonable amounts for crimes that often did not warrant such steep, and heavy monetary sanctions. The Bail Reform Act of 1966 created the first stepping-stone towards equality. While the 8th amendment did state that excessive bail was unconstitutional, and could be considered cruel and unusual punishment, it did not denote in which situations and for what crimes did people have the …show more content…
The reforms limited room for abuse and set up guidelines for when bail setting and detention was necessary. By raising bail just for the sake of raising bail, the criminal justice system would be regressing upon the reforms put in place to limit the exploitation of people’s finances within the court system (Bak,