This post was written and reported by freelance contributor Dawn R. Wolfe through our Daily Kos freelance program.
When he was arrested in Detroit on charges of property damage on Aug. 5, Winston Lee Quiney's working-class family was able to offer him a choice: they could either combine their resources to pay 10 percent of his $25,000 cash bond, or they could put the same money toward paying for an attorney.
Unlike many of the 451,000 people spending time behind bars because they can't afford bail, though, Quiney was saved from a lengthy pre-trial stay in the Wayne County jail by an “angel”: bail disruptor Rasha Almulaiki of the Bail Project, a national effort which started operating in Detroit this year.
In Wayne County, according to Almulaiki, more than 60 percent of the people in the county jail aren't there because they've been convicted of a crime, “but simply because they can't pay their bail—sometimes as little as $300.” Nationwide, that figure is closer to 70 percent. According to a 2017 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, pretrial detention costs local communities a collective total of more than $13 billion a year.
In the United States, “innocent until proven guilty” comes with a hefty price tag—one that every taxpayer, whether charged with a crime or not, is paying for. The Bail Project, which was started 10 years ago in the Bronx, is working to change that.
During the next five years, the project aims to expand to 40 sites and bail out more than 160,000 people by 2022. The Detroit office, which is hosted by the Detroit Justice Center, is one of eight initial new sites in areas including St. Louis, Louisville, San Diego, and Compton.
In addition to a $16 million revolving bail fund that the organization uses to get people out of pre-trial detention, the organization is so far well over halfway to raising its goal of $50 million to set up, staff, and provide training for its satellite locations. According to Bail Project director of communications Camilo Ramirez, the funds are coming from foundations and private individuals.
Unlike the 15,000 for-profit bail bonds companies around the U.S., many of which are backed by multi-billion-dollar insurance companies, the Bail Project helps its clients for free. Bailing people out is a major part of the organization’s work, but it’s also just the first step.
According to Ramirez, the Bail Project is working a “two-pronged” strategy. The first prong, he said, is to “address a humanitarian crisis that we're witnessing in real time.” The second is to eventually eliminate cash bail and replace it with a pretrial process that addresses the racial and class disparities driving America's criminal justice system.
At first glance, cash bail seems like a logical idea. Requiring someone who has been charged with a crime to pay a refundable deposit gives them an incentive to make their court dates. The reality, though, is that 96 percent of people who have been bonded out by the Bail Project during the past 10 years have made it to court without any financial incentive at all.
According to Ramirez, those 96 percent of people are coming back to court “because they want to fight their cases. They want to move on with their lives.” They're also aware that, if they don't appear, the judge will issue a bench warrant for their arrest.
Not only that, said Ramirez, but evidence shows that appearing in court as a free person has positive results. Sixty percent of the people the Bail Project has served have had their charges dismissed—and of the remaining 40 percent, “over half the charges got lowered to a violation, which carries no criminal record.” Only 2 percent of Bail Project clients in the Bronx have been involved in cases that ultimately led to a conviction involving jail time.
“When you are able to pay someone's bail and they can fight their case from a position of liberty ... the charges get dismissed,” Ramirez said. “The first thing that it shows you is that there's a lot of cases and situations that should not be in the system in the first place.”
But while those results seem to point to a system loaded with “cases that shouldn't even be in the criminal justice system in the first place,” Ramirez said it's a mistake to look at the Bail Project's work as being about keeping innocent people out of jail.
Instead, “it's ultimately about the presumption of innocence,” he explained. “When we meet clients, we're not making any judgment about whether this person is innocent. Because that's what the core process is supposed to be designed to do.”
Once the Project has bailed someone out, they then work with that person to identify any obstacles in the way of being able to get to court. According to Ramirez, lack of access to transportation and childcare and concerns about losing a job are among the challenges that can come between a low-income individual and their court dates.
“If you're in a family that has to choose between [bus fare] and groceries, those are real obstacles,” he said. Homeless individuals have the added challenge of not having an address, which can make it impossible for them to receive court notices.
In Wayne County, Quiney was in jail for “about two weeks” before Amulaiki was able to bail him out. “They came in like an angel, because I had no idea how long I was going to be in there. My last court date was Sept. 16, so I could have been in there that whole time,” he said.
Quiney added that he was one of the 96 percent of Bail Project clients who make it to their court dates. “I just knew I had to take that gift and make the best of it,” he said.
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you ‘d like to help support more stories like this through our freelance program, contribute here.