Starmanie Jackson, a single mother of two, was seized during a traffic stop. While in custody, police found a three-year-old warrant prompting a speedy arrest. Within minutes of her hearing, bail was placed at $700, despite being unable to afford it and having no legal representation. As a result, Ms. Jackson lost her employment since she was unable to inform her job of the situation. She was jailed for a week because she could not afford the bail. Ms. Jackson is just one example of an individual who lost their job, custody of their kids, and housing because she could not afford bail.
It is quite easy to be apprehended despite what most people may believe. This is because police do not have to be “convinced” that you are guilty. If there is sufficient evidence for the police, regardless of the situation, you can be arrested and convicted.
What is cash bail?
Cash bail is a price placed on civilians to ensure their release from jail. The accused will be detained until payment is made. This collateral is an agreement that the arrested person will return to court. A judge typically places the bail after the initial arrest. There are seven types of bonds that each have a monetary value. Surety, property, citation release, recognizance release, federal, immigration, and cash bonds are all forms of bail.
Cash bail should be abolished because it is unconstitutional. Bond and insurance companies are businesses and are not a part of the legal system. These companies violate equal protection rights under the 14th amendment and the act of prohibition under bond also violates the 8th amendment.
Bond companies operate to make a profit and not to help guarantee people’s freedom. While this system works for those with access to money, the multibillion-dollar bail industry does not provide adequate resources for defendants who cannot afford bail. There is a significant disparity in the price that bail can be set at, ranging from under $2,000 to around $500,000.
Additionally, there are incentives to set higher bails to ensure a profit. However, higher bail amounts do not increase public safety.
Many judges set bail without considering if the defendant can pay for it. As a result, one in six people in jail has yet to be proven guilty. Many people lose their jobs, custody of their kids, and housing because they wait for trials for nonviolent offenses and cannot afford to pay their way out. There are a lot of factors that can cause an arrest, and a warrant is the most common factor that causes a lot of people to be sentenced. Studies show that higher bail bonds are a primary driver for jail population growth. About 600,000 people step into a jail cell every year, and people are put in jail 10.6 million times a year. One in four people arrested will return to prison within the same year.
The bail system was created in 1789, the same year the Bill of Rights was implemented. Since then, this billion-dollar industry has charged more than 36% in additional fees to clients for minor offenses.
On top of all of this, not all people released on bond are analyzed to see if they are a danger to society under our current system. In many instances, people who have a violent past have continuously been allowed back into society. If the Founding Fathers put this system in place for the greater good of the community, why do the people who are not a threat suffer the most? And, why are most of these people Black and brown?
Unfortunately, bail amounts have also doubled over the past 20 years. This means that many people sit in jail while awaiting their trial. However, pretrial detention is also a significant factor in rearrest. Yet, being released on pre-trial did not increase the defendants’ likelihood of committing crimes. In Mississippi, bail agents can charge 10 percent on a bond valued at 100. They also can tax $50 on each bond. All of these extra fees are profits for the bail agents. Once a bond is paid, the amount is typically in the custody of the court or the sheriff. The money the courts make through bonds is then distributed through the city and county. This money is spent on general government expenditures. Instead of relying on the bonds system, a wealth tax can replace or even provide more money. Rather than forcing poor and working-class people to pay for government programs through bail, placing a higher tax on businesses and the wealthy could help provide funding.
Many people argue that bail is necessary for public safety. In New York, for example, after disbanding its bail system, many arrested people began to trend online. With their charges plastered on social media, it started a conversation regarding public safety and raised the question: Is cash bail good for public safety? Regardless of your financial status, the requirements regarding the bail amount are determined by numerous factors. There becomes an overlap of due process principles and equal protection. The process of waiting for a trial is very lengthy. Your court date can continuously be pushed back, and there is no way for you to organize your affairs. Regardless of the extent of the crime, as long as you can post bail, you are free to go. This structural linchpin divides people based on wealth and not safety.
There is no cash bail in the District, and a risk assessment algorithm determines a person’s threat to public safety. The algorithm gives judges a score that determines how likely the accused will be to return to court. Unless the defendant is dangerous or committed a severe felony, about 85% of defendants are released without bond. This assessment determined 99% of released defendants administered back into society have not been a danger. The success comes from local and state bail statutes outlining detention eligibility, restricting cash bail usage, and providing supervision options that match risk levels.
Cash bail is a flawed system that does not protect the people. It is a system constructed around monetary gain.
Regardless of the severity of the crime, you can simply buy your way out. The conversation then changes from safety to wealth. The Bill of Rights targets incarceration as a means to protect criminal defendants. However, the cash bail system hinders the public by accumulating taxpayer money.
Furthermore, a person’s release based on income is an infringement upon the 14th amendment. Bail is not a significant factor in aiding crime. Environmental factors, poverty, revenue, and other disadvantages lead to criminalization. Rather than investing in pretrial detention, increased investment in violence prevention or community services can have a more positive effect. The focus should be made on prevention.
For more information or resources to end cash bail practices check out some of these organizations. DMV Bailout has a locally focused inicative called End Money Bail you can find more information here. Harriet’s Wildest Dreams has several programs and you can find more here. Maryland 4 Justice Reform, here, has the Court Objection Project which is designed to educate people on the pretrial system while also changing the reliance on bail. These organizations provide ideas for alternatives to bail along with means to better assist defendants.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that police must have objective evidence providing “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity before they can forcibly stop a citizen, and they must have an independent basis for fearing the person is armed before they frisk him. Reasonable suspicion is when a police officer believes that an individual has a weapon which poses a danger to the officer, the officer may stop that individual to search or frisk the individual for a weapon.
Reasonable suspicion requires objective evidence. A reasonable suspicion is not a Black person doing things that a bigot thinks they shouldn’t be doing. Reasonable suspicion is not an unwillingness to comply with an “unlawful” police order. The police can’t say, he didn’t want to be searched, and therefore I came to the reasonable conclusion that he probably has a weapon, which allows me to search him against his will. It’s this kind or circular logic that makes understanding what is and what isn’t a lawful police order difficult to determine.
Anyone, but especially Black people, risks their safety if they refuse to comply with a police order, lawful or not. So, chances are when a police officer or several police officers stop you in the street, you’ll likely comply. Understanding your rights, as they are laid out in the really excellent video below, can help keep you safe.
If the police behave professionally, they’ll let you know why they’re stopping you. They should say something like, we’re looking for someone who just robbed the convenience store wearing those same sneakers that you have on. Or something like that. In other words, what is the reasonable suspicion they have that you have or intend to commit a crime. If they don’t give you that information and then they demand that you comply with a physical search or “frisk,” what do you do?
To be sure, if the police do not have reason to believe that an individual is armed, above and beyond their suspicion that they have or might commit a crime, then an order from the police to comply with a frisk is illegal because it violates your constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure. They can ask you to give up your constitutional rights, but they can’t order you to do it. At least, they can’t legally order you to give up your constitutional rights.
But it’s just a frisk, right? The word itself sounds benign enough. But having a heavily armed stranger ask you to put your arms on a car or a wall and spread your legs while he or she checks your pockets and runs their hands over your body in search of a weapon, isn’t benign. I don’t want a stranger putting their hand in my pocket, sliding their hand between my buttocks or beneath my breasts, do you? I certainly wouldn’t want a police officer doing that to any child of mine, as they did to the children in the video below. The entire encounter is recorded in this Facebook post.
Stop Police Terror Project-DC, one of the many groups within the DC Movement for Black Lives Coalition, has been working to end abusive stop and frisk policies for years. They have pushed for the passage and funding of the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (NEAR) Act. The main goal of the NEAR Act is to reduce violence in the District of Columbia by using a community-based public health approach to violence prevention and intervention instead of perpetuating broken and ineffective “war on drugs”-style methods like stop and frisk.
One of the key provisions of the NEAR Act is data collection. It mandates that D.C. police officers maintain records on each stop and frisk by filling out 16 data points after each instance, including the race or ethnicity of the individual and reason for the stop. Despite the fact that the D.C. Council has provided the DC Metropolitan Police Department with $150,000 to ensure that this data collection happens, the police department has to date failed to comply.
81.6 percent of police stops in the District of Columbia between 2010 and 2016 involved Black people.
What we do know from the limited stop-and-frisk data that the police have provided is that from 2010 to 2016, 81.6 percent of police stops involved Black people. In addition, a report from the Office of Police Complaints, an independent body that reviews and investigates resident complaints, found that 89 percent of use-of-force incidents by police involved a Black individual from Oct. 1, 2016 through Sept. 30, 2017. Office of Police Complaints numbers are useful, but they can only record those incidents that lead to a civilian complaint. One has to wonder what the numbers would look like if the DC Metropolitan Police Department were actively compiling them as each incident occurred.
89 percent of use-of-force incidents by police involved a Black individuals from Oct. 1, 2016 through Sept. 30, 2017.
And then there’s the question of the policy’s effectiveness. According to research done by Stop Police Terror Project-DC, Stop-and-Frisk does not keep people safe and is rapidly becoming the most discredited policing practice in the United States. Studies of the tactic in a wide variety of cities have revealed clear racial bias and extremely low “effectiveness” as the overwhelming majority of people stopped hadn’t committed any crimes. Almost 90% of the 5 million people stopped in New York City since 2002 have been completely innocent. Each of those years, at least 80% of those stops were of Black or Brown people. In Baltimore, police conducted several hundred thousand stops a year from 2010-2015, almost exclusively in lower-income Black neighborhoods. But only 3.7% of these stops resulted in any sort of criminal citation or arrest.
As a result of the DC Metropolitan Police Department’s failure to comply with the data collection provision of the NEAR Act and because of the ineffectiveness of the policy itself, Stop Police Terror Project-DC, in conjunction with the ACLU-DC, BLM-DC and other Movement for Black Lives organizations, have launched the No More Stop and Frisk Campaign.
No More Stop-and-Frisk: Panel & Workshop Campaign Launch Saturday, January 5, 2019 6:30 – 9:30 PM Anacostia Arts Center 1231 Good Hope Road SE
Originally, Stop and Frisk was meant to interrupt crime. But because it is so often used illegally, instead of stopping crime it is far more often the only crime being committed during an encounter with the police. For more information about the No More Stop and Frisk Campaign, contact sptdc@gmail.com
The United States has an undeniable amount of work to do in order to tackle the racial injustices and inequalities the country still faces. The Million Man March played its part in that by encouraging people from all across the country to gather on the National Mall on October 10th 2015. Though the Nation of Islam and its current leader, Minister Farrakhan are considered controversial to some, the message of the March was clear; “Justice or Else!” The March marked the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March which highlighted how little had changed for racial equality and how much more needs to be done. The event had a handful of passionate speakers representing the Native American Indian, Latino, Arab, Mexican and African American communities.
The turnout of the march however, accurately reflected the issue at large. The majority of those who attended the March came from communities directly affected by the injustices and racial disparities, but where was everyone else? Just a few blocks down from the movement was the annual Taste of DC where it saw a turnout of around 50,000 people. One gathering consisted of those interested in meandering around food stalls and drink stands, tasting the best of what DC has to offer, while the other gathered demanding justice and equal protection under the law. The point here is not to guilt-trip those who were unable to attend the March but more to highlight priorities. Change will not happen if people do not look beyond their own circumstances, Black Lives Matter encourages just that. The reality lays in the idea that if the United States government and protective services of any kind truly valued all lives to the same degree, there would not be so many African American and other minority groups beaten by police, incarcerated for trivial matters and discriminated against on a daily basis. Change will come from people tacking racial injustices as human rights issues that affect everyone. August 2014, PEW Research Center released data that showed almost 60% of the White population believed that the Nation had done enough for racial equality, which dropped to 40% in 2015.
Percentage of American’s who say the Nation has done enough for racial equality.
Fig. 1 PEW Research Center 2015
2014
2015
% Change
White
57%
40%
17
Black
17%
8%
9
Hispanic
43%
21%
22
This chart conveys that as of 2015, 92% of the African American population believe that the country has a lot more to work on in order to achieve racial equality. It is clear that the change in opinion seen in the chart occurred as a result of not only more injustices arising but also more coverage. Black Lives Matter started in July 2013 but gained even more momentum and public awareness in 2014 after the murder of two unarmed black men, Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City. As quoted by the Million Man March 2015, Dr Martin Luther King said
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable … Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals”.
Everyone has a role to play in the movement of racial equality and justice for all. The March may be over but this is “not a moment, but a movement” (#blacklivesmatter). There are many ways to get involved with campaigns for justice mentioned at the Million Man March.
The following are some of the demands set out by the Million Man March with information on how you can get involved.
We want an immediate end to police brutality and mob attacks.
I wrote this essay in response to liberal notions of nonviolence, which tend to be irritatingly sentimental and shallow. In the wake of this nation’s imprisonment system’s failure to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Panteleo, the two police officers responsible for the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively, much debate has been sparked about the nature of the rebellions, both peaceful and retaliatory, which have taken place across the country. Although not written in response to this particular series of tragedies, I believe the insights I offer in this piece shed light upon the necessity of transforming systemic manifestations of violence rather than condemning those groups and individuals who choose retaliatory tactics in response to the brutality they, and their community members, are subjected to.
Protest in Ferguson…
There is a force in our society, one that has come to manifest itself in countless forms, that many people are hesitant to name as a detriment to their lives. Most who dare to speak against this force, to utter the word that names it, are waved away as sentimental dunces, are charged with promoting lofty idealisms and are thereafter banished to society’s dim margins. Very few wish to acknowledge the hideous commonness of this force in its many manifestations.
That force’s name, that persistent presence, that scourge of pain, and fear, and shame, is ‘violence’. When most people hear the word ‘violence’, memories of physical brutality may replay in their minds. A vicious swat by an older sibling, a sailing fist cracked across a jaw, a bloodcurdling assault by an anonymous assailant. Although many are quick to decry the most intimate aspects of physical violence where it rears its head, the majority of those are also unwilling, or incapable, to enact healing work against those lingering traumas associated with having one’s body ravaged at another’s hands. Of course, they themselves are not to blame.
Ours is a society that seeks to, at every turn, devalue the significance of its citizens interior lives. We are encouraged to neglect our inner lives; religious practices are derided as narrow-minded and uncouth within increasingly secularizing cultural spheres, those who seek out therapists are snickered at in secret, and all who deeply ponder about human nature are handled with suspicion and apprehension. For most people, extended silences and solitude allow sinister things to bubble up to their conscious, and no one has taught them to be at peace with these haunts. Too many flee their demons by embracing addictions. Too many lack skills that would disallow past traumas to rend their spirits. Too many have been coaxed into allowing their interior lives to decay.
Yet, the state of people’s interior lives can never be divorced from the surrounding sociopolitical and sociocultural environments in which they’ve developed. Is it not violence when ours is a society that devalues the humanity of female-bodied people to no more than their sexual organs, their bodies violated time and time again, their appeals for justice ignored just as often? When young children, of all colors, point to dolls of darker skin and Afro-features as inherently nefarious? When indigenous voices of various tones seeking sovereignty over ancestral lands are constantly ignored and, instead, have the miniscule wedges of Earth they’ve been murdered onto bombarded with toxic wastes? When people of all races lacking in economic resources must either subsist on foodstuffs that poison their bodies, or nothing? What world do we inhabit where these realities often go acknowledged and, yet, unmanaged; where the suffering of another is commonly associated with a character flaw on the individual’s part and not symptomatic of systems of domination our society was built, and tragically thrives, upon?
Any path toward nonviolence that fails to acknowledge and work against physical, non-physical, and structural manifestations of violence is inherently lacking in depth. Any paths toward nonviolence lacking in strategies for justice and healing are underdeveloped. We are past the era where the division between mind, body, and spirit can be justifiably imposed upon the masses. We are past the point of presenting the populace with sparkling words in hopes that they will suffice for the arduous labor of transforming our world into one where harmony reigns.
Comprehensive nonviolent ideologies must offer tactics and solutions to address the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of evil, blatant and insidious. Nonviolence is only authentic when the livelihoods of all persons are accounted for, when voices resounding at the margins become centered and their requests heeded. Ultimately, the nonviolent path is one that aims for peace. However, peace will never exist without justice. Justice for everyone.
