Whether you’ve committed a crime or not, you can be sent to jail even if you’re just a mere suspect. And there, you are treated like a criminal. No matter how absurd this sounds, this is just the reality of our police system.
Booking in jail time simply means that your ‘visit’ to the police station is being made official, your profile is being entered into police records and you will be kept in a cell until the trial or bail.
County Jail Intake Process
When a suspect is being brought to jail, there is an intake process- formally known as the booking process.
- Recording information: The first step to the booking process is the police officer records all vital information of the suspect. This step will record their name, age, date of birth, driving records, home address and literally everything related to their identity.
- Mugshot: To tally with all the information recorded, the police take photographic evidence of the suspect through mugshots. Suspects are required to pose sideways and portrait for their picture to be taken and entered into the records file.
- Confiscation of personal items: The suspect is required to hand over all of their personal belongings like wallet, phone, keys, jewellery, shoes, clothes or anything else that they have on them.
- Fingerprint: The police officer then proceeds to record the suspect’s fingerprint and add it to the record file. This is a major part of the jail intake process; fingerprints are an essential evidence.
- Full body search: This is done to make sure the suspect isn’t bringing any drugs or substance into the holding cell.
- Warrants: When the police enter a suspect’s information in their database, they’re often able to tell if the suspect has any outstanding warrants. Sometimes it matches with an unrelated crime and unexpectedly builds up evidence.
- Incarceration: After everything in the booking process is done, the suspect is sent to the cell where they await further decisions like trial or bail.
How long does Booking take in Jail?
The booking process has a lot of steps, and each one of them needs to be carefully examined and recorded without error. This means that the job is going to take time. You can’t expect the whole process to end in a couple of minutes, regardless of how frustrating it seems.
Depending upon the amount of arrests in the station and the amount of booking officers available, the process can be done quickly in either an hour, or may take as long as four hours too. It kind of depends on your luck as to how quickly you get done with booking in jail.
Jail Process
Once a suspect is booked in jail, the jail process starts. This refers to the time they spend in incarceration awaiting bail. Bail alludes to cash deposited with the court to help guarantee that the suspect doesn’t escape the locale and shows up at future legal disputes. Bail and bond conditions can change extraordinarily relying upon the jurisdiction, the charges at issue, and insights concerning the suspect. Courts decide bail during the bail hearing, where they look at the authenticity of the proof and different relevant aspects.
The sum and terms of bail by and large compare to the reality of the charges (or suspected acts) and the probability that the litigant will show up in court as planned. The court additionally will think about the historical backdrop of the individual, for example, their criminal record, financial assets, and physical and state of mind. In certain occasions, especially when a suspect is considered potentially dangerous, the court will deny bail altogether.
Conclusion
Crimes these days have become so prevalent, common and equally dangerous making this world a dangerous place to live in. Crimes like arson, assault, embezzlement, rape and murder have become so common these days, it feels like we’re living in an inferno.
Anyone can be a suspect. The police can have any sort of evidence or any type of grounds to connect you to a crime you may or may not have committed. Thus, when a suspect is arrested, he or she goes to an entire booking process in jail.
The booking process is a detailed version of recording information of the suspect and officially entering the arrest into records. This is recorded for the crime as well as any future crimes to where the said person could be of help. The process normally takes between one to four hours to complete before the suspect is sent to their cell.
