A sweeping new report from the Vera Institute for Justice was just released and shows outrageous trends and abuses in America's local jail system. Included in the report is the reality that:
- An outrageous 11 million people are processed through American jails annually
- 75 percent of people in jail are being held for nonviolent offenses
- 62 percent of people in jail could be released at any given point in time if they could afford to pay bail
- African Americans are jailed at four times the rate of white Americans
In a review of the report, Mother Jones made this observation:
The report comes to a depressing, if not surprising, conclusion: "Money, or the lack thereof, is now the most important factor in determining whether someone is held in jail pretrail. Almost everyone is offered monetary bail, but the majority of defendants cannot raise the money quickly or, in some cases, at all." This leads to situations where people are stuck in jail for minor offenses. A 2010 Human Rights Watch report found that in about 19,000 criminal cases in New York City, many people couldn't afford bail set at $1,000 or less. In some cases, the accused pled guilty early to get out of jail, even if they were innocent.
Furthermore, the report reveals that even when people are found not guilty, they are held responsible for laundry fees, room and board fees, booking fees, processing fees, and more. Not only that, but incarceration, as it should be easy to imagine, not only causes a drastic reduction in income, which is never reimbursed, but causes thousands of people to lose their jobs, even if they are eventually found not guilty.
See the full report below.
Incarcerations Front Door Report