A group of reformers is looking to make a change by paying the bail of Black mothers who are stuck in jail for low-level, nonviolent offenses with no means of paying their bail set at tens of thousands of dollars.
Cara McClure founded the social justice group Faith and Works in 2017 and, through its In Defense of Black Lives fund, has been helping to bail out Black moms unable to pay for their release.
Most recently, Faith and Works was able to bail out JaCari Letchaw, who was arrested for first-degree robbery when her dog wandered to a neighbor’s house and gave birth to puppies, NBC News reported. She attempted to retrieve the dog and puppies, but after an argument over whose dogs they were broke out, she was arrested and sent to Jefferson County’s jail in Alabama, being held on $60,000 bail.
Letchaw is a single mother of five whose most recent job had only paid her $14 an hour, meaning she would have to wait for her trial, which could have taken months, to be released, NBC News reported. But thanks to McClure’s organization, she was released on Christmas Day after being held for two weeks, NBC News reported.
Faith and Works was made aware of Letchaw’s situation by the Birmingham Sheriff’s Department, which has a relationship with the organization. When they approached Letchaw, she didn’t believe it.
“That kind of thing just doesn’t happen very often,” Letchaw told NBC News. “There was nothing else that I could do, there was absolutely nothing else. And when I hear Faith and Works, they want to come and bail me out, I’m crying. I think I almost went into a panic attack.”
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The issue that Letchaw faced was not a one-off either. Of the more than 115,000 women in jails in the U.S., over 60% have yet to be convicted of a crime and are only incarcerated awaiting their trials due to the inability to post bail, according to the Sentencing Project.
Of those in jail, 48% are Black, and 80% of women are single mothers or the primary caregivers for their children, the Vera Institute of Justice reported in 2016.
Three years after McClure started Faith Works, she launched its bail fund, which is specifically for Black mothers who can not afford their bail. She told NBC News that the cash bail system, which many have protested needs to be reformed or abolished, only criminalizes poverty and rewards wealth.
“Paying ransom for freedom is something that goes way back, historically,” McClure said. “Let’s just say, for instance, me and you committed the same crime. You have money, I don’t have money. You get to go home and I have to sit there. And I just don’t understand me sitting there.”
The report by Vera found that 60% of women currently in jail did not have full-time jobs before being arrested, with the majority of them being in jail for low-level drug or public order offenses.
With governments being slow to look at the cash bail system, Faith and Works and other organizations are making an effort to help bail out those being held for low-level, nonviolent offenses.
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