[Free Black Mamas DMV in 2017 is a self-described Black women and
femme-run abolitionist campaign seeking to end the country’s current
carceral system. The effort is part of the National Bail Out, a
collective of local and national Black-led organizations that plan
Mama’s Day Bail Out events around the country. ]
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‘WE’RE A COMMUNITY’: THESE GROUPS ARE WORKING TO BAIL OUT
INCARCERATED WOMEN IN TIME FOR MOTHER’S DAY  
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Candice Norwood
May 12, 2023
The 19th
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_ Free Black Mamas DMV in 2017 is a self-described Black women and
femme-run abolitionist campaign seeking to end the country’s current
carceral system. The effort is part of the National Bail Out, a
collective of local and national Black-led organizations that plan
Mama’s Day Bail Out events around the country.  _

New mom Leara Davis (center) attends a community party hosted by the
Free Black Mamas DMV collective in Washington, D.C. Davis was released
from jail in April due to the group's advocacy, (Courtesy of Free
Black Mamas DMV via Focus on Josh)

 

At the Anacostia roller skate park in Washington, D.C., Lakeasha Coley
cradled her baby grandson against her chest while watching her
24-year-old daughter, Leara Davis, jump double dutch on a
chalk-covered sidewalk.

Coley cheered as Davis laughed while hopping over the ropes, her long
locs bouncing around her white T-shirt with bold black letters on the
front that read “Free Black Mamas.”

Despite the picturesque day, Davis had an unsettling feeling that the
moment was just a dream she could soon wake up from. Twenty days
earlier, Davis had been released from jail, where she’d spent about
four months — the first four months of her son’s life.

“I felt like I was gonna wake up and be back in my cell,” Davis
told The 19th. “I had dreams like that while I was locked away, and
I woke up and realized I was still in that same box of a room. So to
be actually awake, and holding my son and experiencing the good music,
and good vibes, and the people and the ice cream — it was
awesome.”

She was released on April 17 as a result of advocacy by the Free Black
Mamas DMV campaign, a multi-group effort to get Black mothers and
caregivers out of jails in the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia
area leading up to Mother’s Day. At the skate park, Davis and her
mother gathered for a community fundraiser and celebration of Black
joy alongside organizers, volunteers and other mothers supported by
the campaign.

Organizers JeNae Taylor, Nnennaya Amuchie and Samantha Master started
Free Black Mamas DMV in 2017 as a self-described Black women and
femme-run abolitionist campaign seeking to end the country’s current
carceral system. Since that time, the group has helped more than 65
people return home from jail. The effort is part of the National Bail
Out, a collective of local and national Black-led organizations that
plan Mama’s Day Bail Out events around the country. 

In the Washington, D.C., area, the groups leading the bail out
campaign include Life After Release, Out for Justice and Harriet’s
Wildest Dreams. While they address criminal legal issues more broadly,
their work also provides services specifically aimed at supporting
affected women and LGBTQ+ people. 

For the bail out campaign, they monitor court proceedings and work
with lawyers to identify people like Davis in need of release from
jail; they also plan community events to help raise money and public
awareness about racism and discrimination within the legal system.

“The work that we do is oppressive. The work that we do is
traumatizing, and so in everything that we do, we try to find joy, and
we try to bring joy to the community,” said Qiana Johnson, the
founder of Life After Release, one of the groups behind Free Black
Mamas DMV. “It’s a community that is hurting and a community that
needs as much love, joy and support as they can get.”

About 45 percent of incarcerated women are held in local jails around
the country, according to a recent report
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the nonprofit think tank Prison Policy Initiative. Sixty percent of
these women have not yet been convicted of a crime and about 80
percent of them are mothers. Data on the number of LGBTQ+ people in
jails is lacking, but a large proportion of queer-indentifying
incarcerated people are women, according to the Prison Policy
Initiative report. 

Though the incarceration rate of Black women has declined over the
last two decades, the imprisonment rate for Black women in 2021 was
1.6 times higher than the rate for White women, according to the
nonprofit
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and advocacy center The Sentencing Project. The most recent jail
population report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not
disaggregate women in jails by race, but highlights the general
overrepresentation of Black people in jails. 

Black women are also more likely than
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groups of women to be heads of their household, which means their
incarceration has lasting effects for their families.

When a person is arrested and charged, but not convicted, a judge
determines whether they are released pre-trial “on recognizance,”
meaning they are not required to pay anything with the promise that
they will return for all court appearances. A person can also be
released with non-monetary conditions like electronic monitoring or
court check-ins. In other cases, judges can impose monetary payments
for pretrial release, which is typically 10 percent of the total bail.

Bail can range from a couple hundred dollars to tens of thousands of
dollars, based on factors like the severity of the crime, past
criminal history and flight risk. However, research indicates
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bail judges of different races show bias against Black criminal
defendants, which results in fewer non-monetary alternatives for
pretrial release and higher bail payment amounts. 

“There is kind of this mythology about people leaving and running
off to some country or something when they’re facing charges,”
said Gina Clayton-Johnson, executive director and founder of the Essie
Justice Group, an organization that works with women who have
incarcerated loved ones. “That’s not actually what is happening.
But what is happening is that low-income folks, and particularly Black
people, Brown people, low-income folks, are being caged pretrial.”

Clayton-Johnson noted that a woman her organization bailed out days
ago had been arrested for sleeping in her car and was held in jail for
two months without a conviction because she could not pay her bail. 

“Right now that is our approach to homelessness, to mental health
disability, all kinds of issues that we know how to address. But right
now our approach is with a cell,” she continued.

In recent years, a number of states have moved to reform money bail
practices. This year Illinois was set to become
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first state to eliminate the use of cash bail, but the policy is on
hold as the state supreme court evaluates legal challenges to the law.
In Maryland where Free Black Mamas DMV operates, a recent attempt to
move away from money bail involves shifting to the use of artificial
intelligence to assess the potential risk of a pretrial defendant
committing new offenses.

But organizers with Free Black Mamas DMV said this risk assessment
tool continues to perpetuate racial biases and has led to more people
being held without bond, which makes their advocacy work more
complicated and time consuming.

Beyond concerns about bail, incarcerated women also face a range of
health issues while inside and disproportionate financial challenges
after release, such as securing employment whether they were convicted
or not.

Women in jails and prisons “have a higher rate of what we call
‘economic marginalization,’ so they’re more likely to not have a
high school education or GED, they’re more likely to either be
unemployed or come from part-time employment prior to incarceration.
They’re more likely to be primary caregivers of children under the
age of 18. These factors are still present when they are released,”
Alesa Liles, an associate professor of criminal justice at Georgia
College & State University, previously told The 19th
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When it comes to health, women are more likely than men to enter jail
with chronic diseases, substance use issues, mental illnesses and
experiences with physical or sexual abuse, experts previously told
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19th. For pregnant women like Davis, their health needs can be even
more dire
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When Davis entered jail in December, she was eight months into a
high-risk pregnancy. She delivered her son through an emergency
C-section while incarcerated at 1:08 p.m. on December 18. By 10 a.m.
the next day, child protective services had taken him to live with her
family.

“It made me feel broken,” Davis said. “I’ve never felt pain
like that before, and I think I’ve been through it a lot in my short
24 years.”

The day Davis was released from jail, she felt like a celebrity: She
was greeted with welcome signs, baby clothes and other essentials.

The organizations at the center of the Free Black Mamas DMV campaign
recognize that bail and pretrial detention is one aspect of the
criminal legal system that affects people’s day-to-day lives.
Providing support services that address a range of needs is key to
their work, Johnson of Life After Release said. 

For pretrial advocacy, Life After Release and Harriet’s Wildest
Dreams help with court watching, which allows community members to
observe and document proceedings for accountability. Participatory
defense is another practice they use based on a community model to
train the loved ones of those charged with crimes to be actively
involved in their criminal defense process.

Following incarceration, Life After Release has an eight-week Justice
and Liberation Institute that seeks to empower formerly incarcerated
people and their families to navigate the criminal legal system. In
addition to this, Johnson said they address individual needs as they
come.

“That could look like housing assistance, transportation assistance
— helping them get their car fixed, helping them move or get a bed
for their children, or helping them get groceries. We’re a
community,” Johnson said.

Now that Davis is out of jail and back with her family, she said she
has a lot of aspirations for the future and hopes to go into the
health care field. But for now, she is cherishing her time with her
son and enjoying being a new mom.

She does not have specific plans for Mother’s Day, she said.
“I’m just going to stare at my son,” Davis said with a laugh.
“I just look forward to hanging out with him. I’m going to show
him all the Disney movies that I grew up loving.”

_CANDICE NORWOOD is a breaking news reporter. Before The 19th, she
was a digital politics reporter for the PBS NewsHour, a staff writer
for Governing magazine covering state and local government, and a
freelancer for the Bloomberg News White House team._ 

_The 19th is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender,
politics and policy. Read our story
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* Black Women
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* Mass Incarceration
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