TBP’s Senior Policy Counsel Nicole Zayas-Fortier and past intern Gabriel Henriquez write about the desperate need for bipartisan efforts to aid ongoing crisis in Michigan’s jails. If the proposed legislature were successful, jails would become less crowded and marginalized populations would be better protected.
The Bail Project’s Asia Johnson spoke with The 19th about what it’s like as a woman to be incarcerated during the pandemic.
In the weeks since George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, a broader swatch of Americans, including many white Americans, have begun to engage in conversations about how systemic racism shapes the criminal justice system in the U.S. The dialogue has often focused on shifting money away from law enforcement and into social services, housing initiatives and jobs programs.
But another key part of dismantling a system that disproportionately incarcerates Black and Latino men, activists say, rests in abolishing a cash-bail framework that can lock people into cycles of poverty and legal discrimination.
“Bail reform is ultimately about protecting the bedrock principle of the American legal system — the presumption of innocence — and ensuring that it applies to all of us equally.”
