No, it's the bond. It has fuck-all to do with "backed-up" court systems. You are talking to someone who does this every day and has for years.

If I drug you into jail on some pot charges and slapped you with a realtively-small $10,000 cash-only bond (IE = you have to pay $10,000 to the courts, no bondsmen allowed), where are you going to get that money? You aren't. And so you sit in jail for months. And months. And months. And months. And that's IF you ever actually get out.

And the prosecution leverages this to say "Well, plead guilty to this minor felony and take probation." So people take that...except you've already lost your job, you now will never get another job because you have a "felony conviction", and now what? Now you're fucked, aren't you?

How long do you think you could sit in jail before losing your job? Let's say you're a poor mother of 2 kids who can't afford to pay a speeding ticket, so you get drug in on a warrant on Friday at 3pm. You don't get to see a judge until Monday at 4pm. You work two full-time shitty minimum-wage jobs, you think they're still there for you on Monday? What if you can't afford bond are stuck there another week? Then what? What happens to your kids, your life, anything?

And this is on top of the well-proved fact that bond has nothing to do with people showing up at court. Not only does it not ensure people show up, states that do not have a bond system have a much smaller percentage of people fail to appear at hearings.

I watched a guy spend 4 days in jail for a Jay-walking ticket. I also watched a man who murdered the infant son of a famous football player walk out in less than 12 hours because his daddy footed his $1,000,000 bond.

It isn't about backed-up courts, it's about punishing the poor for being poor and rewarding the wealthy murderers with a get-out-of-jail-free card (just like Robert Durst got)