Jasmine Still was held in jail for 27 days after not being able to afford the court’s $55 pretrial “processing fee.” Still is the mother of three, including a newborn. The judge presiding over her pretrial ordered Still released at the time. The Denver Post reports that none of these things happened, and now the ACLU is suing El Paso County, Colorado, on her behalf.
In its attempt to recoup the $55 cost of pretrial services, El Paso County spent about $2,400 holding Jasmine Still, according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Denver by American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado attorneys Rebecca Wallace and Mark Silverstein.
Still, arrested Jan. 11 on a felony narcotics possession charge when she was caught with 0.3 of a gram of methamphetamine, is now seeking compensatory and consequential damages, and attorneys’ fees.
A judge determined that she should be released on her own recognizance because she was not a flight risk and posed no threat of harm to others, the lawsuit says.
El Paso County has a $55 pretrial processing fee that is used to override a judge’s decision, allowing them to keep people in jail for up to 119 days. This practice is not simply inhumane and a clear attack on lower-income citizens, it’s also an economic scam perpetrated on taxpayers.
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"The county says that it costs $88 a day to house a prisoner, so that's $88 a day simply because the jail won't waive the $55 fee," said Colorado ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein. "We believe that there could be as many as 300 defendants who have had to spend the time in that jail only because they lack $55."
The ACLU says with those amounts, it costs taxpayers more than $266,000, versus a cost of $16,000 to let the defendants go free.
You don’t have to be even competent at math to understand that that dog don’t hunt. This isn’t the first time El Paso County has been sued by the ACLU for mistreating people in their prison system, and it clearly will not be the last time.