How long can you legally be detained?

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asked Sep 14, 2019 in Law Enforcement/Police by Pandyssndy (410 points)
How long can you legally be detained?

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answered Sep 14, 2019 by Essmann (42,860 points)
If the police stop and detain you such as in a traffic stop then the police have to either arrest you or let you go after 20 minutes.

The police can only detain you at a traffic stop for 20 minutes or arrest you within that time if they are not gonna release you.

Then if you get arrested and taken to jail the police can then detain you for up to 24 hours in the jail before they have to charge you with a crime or let you go.

If the police cannot charge you with a crime within 24 hours then the jail has to release you without bail.

If you've been charged with a crime then the police can hold you until your court date or until you get the money to get bail.

There have been some people held in jail after being charged for up to 4 years before they went to trial because they could not pay the bail.

Then they went to prison anyway.

So if you know you're gonna be spending time in prison anyway then staying in jail would actually be a good thing because that time in jail counts towards the prison time sentence.

So if you get sentenced to say 25 years in prison and you stayed in jail for 4 years then you would only have to serve 21 years in prison as opposed to having to serve the 25 years.

Because 4 of those years you already spent locked up in jail.

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