14 Search results for "bail reform"

by Jamila Dawn Mitchell  Every year, 90% of the 250,000 people held in Illinois jails are incarcerated pretrial, prior to actual convictions, putting the rate of pretrial incarceration far above the national average of 67%. The percentage of pretrial detentions range county to county – with 51% of the jail population in Tazewell County and […]

By Ragini Srikrishna and Monica Mohapatra Before the controversy around Amazon coming to New York dominated the headlines, the mayor and city officials were quietly working on opening four new skyscraper jails within the city. Although the city’s plan to close the Rikers jails complex solicited initial excitement within criminal justice communities, it has since […]

The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFK) Foundation, led by Kerry Kennedy, started a month-long mission to bail out hundreds of women and juveniles at Rikers Island. It’s become the largest mass bailout in history.

Signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday, a new Californian reform bill, called the California Money Bail Reform Act, will abolish the cash bail system for all defendants awaiting a trial. Instead of cash bail, courts in different jurisdictions will create algorithms to decide who stays in custody and who leaves while they await trial.

Following a ruling by Houston judge Lee H. Rosenthal of Federal District Court last year, Judge Eldon E. Fallon of the Louisiana Eastern District Court has also ruled against the implementation of money bail, calling it a violation of equal protection and due process. In the New Orleans case, the judge struck down the city’s kickback […]

By Stanley Fritz Last year during Mother’s day weekend, the National Bail out Collective, a coalition of black organizers working, including participants from The Movement for Black Lives and multiple affiliated groups joined forces on an initiative whose main goal was to liberate hundreds of mothers and caregivers who had fallen victim to the criminal justice […]

The criminal justice system has several holes in its processes that have existed for generations. That’s no surprise. But, thanks to President Obama’s latest efforts to reform some of the most flawed and common legal practices, a new trend is developing. The Justice Department recently filed a brief claiming that it’s unconstitutional to jail people simply […]

By Alyxandra Goodwin Rapper and criminal justice reform advocate Jay-Z recently announced that he is investing in a “decarceration start-up” called Promise. The app sets up a “care plan” for individuals that would have alternatively been monitored while housed in a jail facility, instead monitoring them out in the world and providing reminders for court […]

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Black Liberation & Organizing, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. How do we hold politicians accountable to Black communities? Is that even possible? What should be our role in the electoral politics? What does abolition look like in practice? What […]

According to the Houston Chronicle, a common practice following drunk driving arrests and convictions in Texas is the implementation of various surcharges and fees due to the Texas Driver Responsibility program. This program can charge Texas drivers up to thousands of dollars for certain driving-related violations, and on Wednesday, attorneys from the Austin Community Law […]

One of the reasons that the United States has such a disproportionately high prison population is that a lot of people just can’t afford to avoid jail once they are accused of a crime. Although it’s law in most states that judges should set bond that defendants can actually afford, this isn’t often the case. Cook […]

By Kristian Davis Bailey In December 2016, I visited the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) in Rio de Janeiro. Students had been occupying UFF for 45 days, with some sleeping inside barricaded academic buildings 24/7 to shut the university down. The UFF Occupation was one of 1,000 national occupations protesting Michel Temer’s right-wing presidential coup and […]