From The BailProject.org: On any given night in America, there are nearly half a million people sitting in jail before trial simply because they can’t afford bail. People in pretrial detention now make up more than two-thirds of America’s jail population. They are presumed innocent under the law, yet they will suffer the harms of incarceration unless they have enough money to pay bail and buy their freedom.
People who are jailed pretrial often wait months, and sometimes years, for their cases to resolve. In the meantime, they can lose their jobs, homes, children, and critical community ties. Inside jail, people risk sexual violence, the deterioration of their mental and physical health, and the infliction of lasting trauma.
This two-tier system criminalizes poverty and is a structural linchpin of mass incarceration and racial inequality. Moreover, the financial costs that this system generates are staggering. American taxpayers pay $14 billion each year to incarcerate people pretrial. To learn more, download a PDF of their proposed Framework for Reimagining Pretrial Justice. Listen to a Ted Talk on Bail Reform by Robin Steinberg, CEO. Donate to the BailProject.
ActBlue.com – a portal for non-profit organizations to conduct fundraising activities – offers several other opportunities to donate to several bond funds at once. The aggregated options include:
- 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organizers. Click here.
- 13 Bail Funds for Protestors – Helping low-income people, protestors and bystanders. Here.
- NPTM Community Bail Fund (12 organizations) Your donation is matched by Honeybadger.io
If you want to support a bail fund in your particular locale, check out the The Community Justice Exchange National Bail Fund Network Directory of Community Bail Funds.
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