After a one-week hiatus, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returned and had a lot to catch up with, both with stories inside the U.S. and overseas. From vegetable resistance to horse-loving declarations and judges who can’t understand the meaning of the word “yeah”, there was a little bit of everything in the episode that focused on bail reform – a movement that has been disputed by Republicans but, the more reports come in, the more evidence there is that, surprise surprise, the prison system hits Black and poor people the hardest.
Before all that, however, you couldn’t expect John Oliver to keep quiet about former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s sudden exit from her position at the British government. This time around, the production team of the satire news show didn’t have to do much in terms of joking about it, since the British people themselves did it best: When the PM’s support withered even within her own party, a live feed of a lettuce was put up to show Truss’s tenure wouldn’t outlast the vegetable’s shelf life. And it didn’t. Truss left her position after only 45 days in office, which made her the shortest-serving Prime Minister in UK history. The lettuce, however, got a friendly wig and smile to celebrate its victory.
The Flaw in Cash Bail Bonds
In the main segment, the show tackled bail reform, a proposal that was already adopted in several states. The concept is simple: Allowing people who have not been convicted of any crime to await judgment in liberty – unless they are considered a serious threat or a flight risk. The proposal seeks to end or at least reduce the practice of cash bail. Of course, Fox News leads the discussion of revoking this measure by directly linking rise in crime to bail reform, even in those crimes committed by people who were not out on bail.
One of the questions that John Oliver proposes is: Whose interest is it to keep – or go back to – cash bail bonds? The reality is pretty clear to look at, and the show exemplifies it with a particularly cruel clip in which a judge raises one defendant’s bond from $1,0000 to $2,000 in a blink of an eye. How come, you ask? Because he didn’t like that she answered “yeah” instead of “yes”. Her crime: Misdemeanor for possessing less than two ounces of marijuana. She was also without counsel present.
Who Gets Affected Most by Enforcing Cash Bail?
The fact of the matter is that Cash Bail is a system that only works for people who can afford it. Poor people and people of colo are often subjected to months and sometimes years in prison awaiting conviction for a misdemeanor and sometimes even for crimes they didn’t even commit. For a person in that position, they’re left with sad and desperate choices like pleading guilty to be released early for time served, or hold on to their innocence and sinking into depression for a prison system that failed them and deprived them of their liberty.
You can watch John Oliver’s whole main segment below:
