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GROUPS LOOK TO BAIL OUT BLACK MOTHERS, CAREGIVERS IN PRETRIAL
DETENTION FOR MOTHER’S DAY  
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Ralph Chapoco
May 10, 2024
Alabama Reflector
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_ “We don’t look at the crime. We are looking at predetention
when you have not been convicted of a crime. We didn’t make the
system. The system says, ‘You are innocent until proven
guilty.’” _

Cara McClure of Faith & Works discusses business with her team during
a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama on May 6th, 2024. Faith & Works is
participating in a nationwide effort to bail out Black women for
Mother’s Day, (Photo by Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)

 

Yolanda Johnson’s nightmare began in the summer of 2021.

As she recalls, a former boyfriend pushed her around, hitting an area
on her body where there were previous burns. She threw hot water at
him and brandished a knife to get him to back away.

“He was much bigger than I was, and I was trying to defend
myself,” Johnson said in a recent interview. “I wasn’t really
trying to stab him, but I poked him enough to back off of me.”

No one called the police, and Johnson left. A few days later, she
returned.

“When I did come back, I guess the neighbor or somebody must have
called and said that I was there, and they came and wrote my name, and
took me in,” Johnson said.

She was charged with domestic violence, along with first- and
third-degree assault. Johnson was placed in jail.

“I was devastated,” she said. “I didn’t even think the law was
involved in it at all. It happened. I was very remorseful for what I
did. It is something that I had to face the consequences.”

Johnson spent three weeks in a holding cell before a hearing where a
judge set her bail at $20,000. There was no way she could pay that
amount. She worked off the books at a hair salon owned by a family
member. So Johnson had to return to jail.

“It was horrible,” she said. “Your freedom is gone. You can’t
eat what you want to eat, do what you want to do, you can’t sleep
when you want to sleep. You have to wake up in turn. By 4 a.m. you had
to be up. By 5 a.m. you eat breakfast. By 11 a.m. you are eating
lunch. When it is on lockdown, you are on lockdown.”

She would remain incarcerated, languishing in jail, had it been for
Cara McClure, founder of Faith & Works Collective, a social justice
organization that focuses on mass incarceration. The organization
learned about her situation, reviewed her case, and interviewed her
regarding her circumstances and how she ended up in jail.

The prosecutor eventually dropped all the charges and the case was
dismissed.

McClure then found a bed for Johnson at a rehabilitation facility
about a month later. They then paid Johnson’s bail and provided her
with wraparound services to provide assistance until her case ended.

Johnson was released from jail in October 2021, and met her family and
loved ones again.

“It was awesome,” Johnson said. “I was crying.”

The problems of pretrial detention

 A prison corridor in Holman Correctional Facility in 2019. (File)

McClure and Faith & Works Collective want to help others in a similar
situation. They are working with social justice groups across the
country to post bail for Black Americans who otherwise can’t afford
it just in time to spend their Mother’s Day with their families in
an initiative called #FreeBlackMamas.

Johnson’s story is not unique. Many people may wait months or years
in jail before a court appearance, much less resolution of their case.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative
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number of individuals placed in pretrial detention has increased over
the last 40 years. Almost 113,000 people were placed in pretrial
detention in 1983. By 2019 that number had increased to almost
461,000, a growth of more than 300%.

Alabama [[link removed]] tracks that
trend. In 1978, slightly more than 1,000 people were placed in
pretrial confinement. In 2019, more than 8,500 people were there.

“It has been a problem for a long time,” said Jeremy Cherson, a
spokesman for The Bail Project, an organization that assists people
with securing bail. “Cash bail is one of the biggest drivers of mass
incarceration, and of the size of existing jail populations.”

Cash bail, Cherson said, was originally meant to ensure people facing
charges appeared at court hearings.

“It has been distorted into a method by which judges misunderstand
how much money a person has, whether they can pay, so they set bail
for an amount they think is affordable and it turns out not to be,”
he  said. “Or they set amounts that are excessive because they
intend to detain that person pretrial. That is a problem because that
is not necessarily legal.”

Incarceration exposes those in pretrial detention to a wide range of
traumas. Suicide is the leading cause of death in jails and people who
are detained pretrial are six times more likely to die by suicide than
those who are convicted and sentenced.

About one in 30 people in jail report experiencing sexual assault
while incarcerated.

Being in jail also makes it impossible for people to work, which can
lead to evictions or, in some cases, the loss of child custody.

In United States v. Salerno [[link removed]],
a 1987 case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1984 Bail Reform
Act allowed federal courts to detain an arrestee prior to trial if the
government could prove that individuals were potentially dangerous to
the public. Prosecutors alleged that the defendant was a prominent
figure in the La Cosa Nostra crime family and that the act did not
violate the Fifth Amendment due process clause.

However, the act only applied to a specific list of serious offenses
and that it placed a heavy burden on the government to show that the
person in question posed a significant threat.

“That ruling means that you are not supposed to be detaining too
many people pretrial,” Cherson said. “It should be limited, in our
opinion, to cases that have an imminent or identifiable risk or harm
to another person or persons, or where there is a case where the
person actually intends to evade prosecution.

It can also be costly to the community. According to the U.S. Federal
Courts website
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it costs about $92 per day to subject someone to pretrial confinement
versus $11 per day for pretrial supervision. The Prison Policy
Initiative estimates
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at roughly $13.6 billion annually to incarcerate the more than 400,000
people who are sentenced to pretrial confinement.

“Pretrial incarceration is going to be a really big drain on
resources for communities,” said Allie Preston, a senior policy
analyst for criminal justice reform at the Center for American
Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Preston and her colleagues have laid out the problems regarding cash
bail and have pushed for reforms to the system. They have cited some
statistics that suggest that cash bail harms public safety. According
to one study, there is a 6-9% increase in recidivism for even spending
one day in jail. Advocates also say the system endangers public safety
for those who are arrested, their families as well as their
communities.

It also creates a two-tiered system, with the burden falling
disproportionately on those with lower incomes, most of whom tend to
live in Black and Brown communities. According to a 2018 study
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people of color are more likely to be assigned cash bail than their
white counterparts.

The amounts set by the courts for bail are also higher for Black and
Latino men, 35% and 19% respectively, than they are for whites.

“The median income of people in jail is less than half the median
income of people in the general public, and most people who are unable
to afford cash bail are from the poorest one-third of society,” a
policy brief from the Center for American Progress states
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Mother’s Day initiative

Social justice organizations throughout the country are hoping to
address these systemic issues by helping to assist people secure bail
and provide them wraparound services.

National Bail Out, an organization that focuses on addressing pretrial
detention and mass incarceration, wants to help address this issue.

“We host a Mother’s Day bailout every single year,” said Yabsera
Faris, a spokesperson for National Bail Out. “We started in 2017, so
this would be our eighth Black Mama’s Bail Out.”

The group is coordinating efforts with other social justice groups
throughout the country on the project.  One of those groups is
McClure and Faith & Works Collective. It began in 2017 when she saw a
post on Facebook advertising the program.

“Immediately, this just overtook me,” McClure said. “What the
heck is that? How can I get involved and who is over this? I was just
clicking everywhere.”

She then saw Mary Hooks, one of the program’s leaders, who wanted to
help address mass incarceration by pulling their money together to
free people who are in pretrial incarceration. McClure then called
Hooks to ask how she could help.

McClure then joined a call to learn more about the bailout program.
She then organized a telethon to help raise the money to begin bailing
people out of jail who have not been convicted of a crime.

“What I want to do is have an entertainer come every hour,”
McClure said. “That entertainer will go live so we can meet their
friends for the reach.”

They had singers, comedians, poets come to the event and perform —
all while taking donations to build up the necessary funds to begin
helping people secure bail for their release.

“We didn’t even do the whole 12 hours and we had $12,000,” she
said. “The donations just kept coming because of some Twitter post.
That was our start.”

McClure managed to raise about $20,000 in 2017. They immediately began
soliciting jail administrators looking for people who would be good
candidates. She posted bail for about five  people that year.

McClure has been helping to pay the bail amounts for a handful of
people over the years as money became available, and not necessarily
on Mother’s Day alone.

She first obtains a list of people facing charges but not convicted of
a crime from  jail administrators and sheriffs. Some  may have
already been released. Others are excluded because they have holds in
the system for other reasons.

From there, McClure interviews potential candidates. She and her
colleagues  ask about the circumstances of their cases; their
emotional states and whether they feel remorse for what they have
done.

They also ask logistical questions regarding the potential release,
including whether they have a place to stay and a support system to
assist them. They also emphasize questions on whether  they will
conform to the rules set by the court and appear for their hearings or
trials.

That included Johnson in 2021.

For this Mother’s Day, the group plans to assist at least four
people with pretrial incarcerations. They have been conducting
interviews to incorporate into the assessment.

“It is heartbreaking talking to them,” said Rosa Williams, one of
the interviewers. “We were trying to figure out their state of mind.
One of them said, ‘I read my devotionals every day. I pray every day
and I cry every day.’”

The group received $125,000 from National Bail Out and are looking to
help at least four people for Mother’s Day.

“We don’t look at the crime,” Williams said. “We are looking
at predetention when you have not been convicted of a crime. We
didn’t make the system. The system says, ‘You are innocent until
proven guilty.’”

_Ralph Chapoco covers state politics as a senior reporter for States
Newsroom. His main responsibility is the criminal justice system in
Alabama._

_The Alabama Reflector is an independent nonprofit website covering
politics and policy in our state. We look at the problems affecting
Alabamians, and search for solutions. We connect readers with the
decisions made in the hallways of the State House and try to give a
voice to those outside it. We write stories about people in power and
men and women on the margins. We hope to reflect what our home is, and
what it could be._

_Alabama Reflector is an affiliate of States Newsroom
[[link removed]], the nation’s largest state-focused
nonprofit news organization, supported by grants and donations
[[link removed]]. The Reflector retains full
editorial independence._

* Women in prison
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* Mass Incarceration
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* bail
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* Black Mothers
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* mothers day
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