Mother’s Day event highlights bail issue

Campaign raises money to help jailed mothers

A campaign to raise bail money for women held in Shelby County jail in time for Mother’s Day raises a question forcing change in some cities.

Should the ability to pay bail or post bond determine who stays in jail before trial or conviction?

The Washington-based Civil Rights Corps has brought about 20 class-action lawsuits around the country “trying to eradicate the notion that whether a person is in a jail cell or not should depend on how much money they have,” said Alec Karakatsanis, a lawyer and executive director of the nonprofit Civil Rights Corps.

“It’s an incredibly significant problem plaguing virtually every jurisdiction in the country,” Karakatsanis said. “There are about 450,000 to 500,000 human beings who, on any given night in this country, are in a jail cell solely because they can’t make a monetary payment prior to being convicted.”

In Memphis, the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter is joining a national campaign led by ColorofChange.org and Movement for Black Lives Policy Table to raise bond money to bring mothers home the week before Mother’s Day, which is May 14.

The national goal is to raise $400,000, led by Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, while the local chapter is aiming for $5,000, including a benefit hip-hop and R&B event April 26 at Coach’s Grillz & BBQ in Raleigh, said chapter spokesperson Erica Perry.

The chapter chose Shelby County Jail East, where women are held, for its Friday announcement. At the end of February, 274 women were Shelby County jail, including 67 for pretrial misdemeanors and 160 for pretrial felonies, according to Tennessee Department of Correction data.

A federal class-action lawsuit settlement last year ended the requirement for cash bonds for people arrested for misdemeanors in Jackson, Mississippi, and similar cases led to money bail being stopped for misdemeanors in the 50 larg-

est cities in Alabama, Karakatsanis said.

In Tennessee, a federal lawsuit filed in 2015 involving people on probation and a private company in Rutherford County, as well as one filed earlier this year against the state for suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid court debts, are examples of the push for reforms, he said.

A study last year, “The Downstream Consequences of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention,” also provided evidence that those unable to make bail, even if innocent, may plead guilty to get out. Those detained before trial also are more like to commit future crimes, it found.

“The normalizing of the wealthbased detention system has been, I think, one of the great scandals of the modern American criminal legal system,” Karakatsanis said.

Reach Kevin McKenzie at kevin.mckenzie@commercialappeal.com