Isn't this what Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the US Constitution is all about?

I think this is a really good idea, and feel like the DA's would be more accountable for their work. In Dallas in particular, you can google it on Google news, but we had about 30 citizens locked away and many went to prison before it was realized that all of the drugs they were accused of having were actually sheetwork ground up into powder. Dark day in the City of Dallas, and it was horrible that this happened to these people. With a system such as is proposed this in all likelihood would never have happened. And in Illinois, the Governor commuted the sentence of virtually every prisoner on death row in that state because the majority of cases they had time to review all had improprieties (sp?). Never in history has an entire states death row population been removed and converted to life sentences. Some DA's see the number of convictions they get as their ticket to glory and riches, and sometimes it is at the price of innocent lives, when a more careful investigation would have cleared the person on a timely basis. Although this would require a lot of what ifs and thought, the concept is great.

I think that another benefit of this idea would be in inmate behavior. If you're incarcerated before judgment and there's the chance that you will be found not guilty (either by actually not being guilty or by a great defense), I could see a marked improvement in inmate behavior. If you behave wrongly in jail before being found innocent, your compensation is revoked.

This could also help in not paying repeat offenders or those in criminal organizations, and create a penalty for being a member of a criminal organization - Repeat offenders misbehave more frequently while being locked up, so their chances of leaving jail and being compensated are lowered. For members of criminal organizations, simply being a member of organized crime is illegal, thus even by being in jail, you're breaking the law.

I am not sure that other commenters have fully understood sand's idea. What we are talking about here is remand prisoners. These are not prisoners subject to a miscarriage of justice, they are prisoners who have not even been tried yet. They are waiting in prison because bail has been refused, or they could not raise the money to cover it. These prisoners have not been convicted of a crime, they are supposedly "innocent until proven guilty", yet nevertheless they are kept in a prison.

Because of the huge delays and backlog in our legal systems, it is not uncommon for a remand prisoner to remain in prison for multiple years. When this prisoner eventually comes to trial, he or she may well be found not guilty. Think about what that means: a fellow citizen, accused of a crime, and found not guilty at trial -- thus, not only "presumed innocent", but determined to be innocent in a court of law -- who nevertheless has years of his or her life taken away, spending more time in a prison than the average convicted burglar. In fact as the legal system ges more and more backed up and remand periods longer and longer, the most common sentence handed out on conviction is "time already served" -- which means you get exactly the same treatment whether convicted or acquitted! So what does the State do for ths person whose life it has been thus stolen away and destroyed? Nothing.

It is horrible. It is unjust, one of the most unfair and unreasonable aspects of our entire legal system.

So as you may guess, I agree with anything which improves the plight of remand prisoners, including sand's idea.

But it doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. Remand made some sense in ages gone by, when the State had little choice but incarceration to ensure that the accused arrived at court. But in the modern world, there are far more options available and remand should only ever be used in the most extreme cases, such as violent offenders who have little chance of acquittal. For most people, it should be sufficient to surrender the passport, report daily to a court apointed remand officer, put a special lien on credit cards (no cash advances, no use outside radius x without approval from remand officer), and as a last resort, home detention.

Why not tie a punishment to those responsible for sending innocent people to death?

Define "speedy trial!" This should be defined and codified, for one! Secondly, we need to get prosecutors PERSONALLY legally responsible for their actions. This would prevent the likes of the Duke Lacross players from having to go through all they went through just to clear their name. Nifong should've been personally held responsible for those REAL crimes: his abuse of power! He had absolutely NO FACTS - not to mention a REALLY shakey witness, yet went on with trying those athletes anyway. What an idiot. If the prosecutor would be personally held responsible in some way, this would help further insure that cases coming before any court would actually be legitimate.

It has been often stated - whether in jest or seriously - that the first thing we need to do is to kill the lawyers. What an absolutely moronic idea! Lawyers are (quite often) your only "real" friends that can help you in a time of legal crisis, why would you want to kill them?!? How 'bout this: let's kill all the asinine and ridiculous jurists/judges that allow moronic cases to actually be tried. Further, let's get rid of the absolutely moronic concept of allowing someone to sue their ways to financial independence. I'm not saying I want a cap - because I really don't. But the whole idea of what a "judge" is supposed to be has been completely lost on the ideal definition of what this job title is supposed to mean: INTERPRET (not re-create or create) the law! A judge is supposed to bring a legal, calm handed, reasoned, and well-balanced response to a legal issue.

For too long, jurists have been getting more and more out of control. Further, lawyers who have based their salaries upon 1/3 of the winnings should have their ethics severely and legitimately challenged. It wasn't to help the little guy as they've sold the public, it was to further their portfolios... which is fine, but then don't sell yourself as Mother Theresa for having stood up against the "Goliaths" of the world, where the only thing Goliath was the judgment amount! One's benevolence is ALWAYS in direct proportion to the amount they've received for their supposed benevolence. If you've received next to nothing and have given a LOT, THEN you're benevolent! (I.e., military personnel, police, and firemen who have put their lives on the line for my freedoms, health, safety, etc. THESE are the REAL heroes of my life... not some idiot who can throw a ball or go into outerspace!)

add to this that prosecutors suffer some monetary damages if they lock up the wrong person!