Thread by @ArchCityDefense

#thread #STLJailsCrisis
Last night, the world once again beheld people whose basic rights have been violated, who have been caged by a system that criminalizes race & poverty, & who have been torn from their families because they could not afford a money bond/no bond was allowed.

Following protests in January and February, people last night held a banner from inside #STLCity’s “City Justice Center” that read, “HELP US,” and were heard saying they wanted court dates. While previous protests highlighted the jail’s lack of COVID safety protocols, lack of...

adequate food & access to water, abuse and retaliation by jail employees- people last night pointed to the injustice of money bail and pretrial detention.

People awaiting their day in court are caged for an average of 344 days in CJC. In 2018, a report published by the Close the Workhouse campaign indicated people were caged pretrial in the City an average of 291 days. static1.squarespace.com/static/5ada607…

In 2019, we filed a lawsuit challenging the unlawful $ bail system in #STL w/ co-counsel @CivRightsCorps, @GeorgetownICAP & @adv_project. In June2019, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction. Of the 171 people detained who got another bail hearing, 119 were released.

In March 2021, we filed a document with the court, essentially asking the judge to impose another injunction on the City because, after 1.5yrs of reading thousands of pages of transcripts, tracking every hearing, & observing these bail hearings, #STLCity jails are still full of

people who did not receive basic due process before being caged.

In our Motion for Summary Judgment, we documented a few disturbing trends that underscore some of the calls for help heard last night. Here’s six of them:

archcitydefenders.org/wp-content/upl…

1. Of the 312 transcripts we reviewed from individuals’ initial bail hearings (July 2019 to February 2021), we found: judges denied bond for 118 people. In 39% of these cases, the judge made no finding on the record as to why they said “no bond.”

2. Of the 312 bail hearings we looked at, 72% of the time the person was either detained without bond (137) or held on an unaffordable cash bond (90).

3. As of December 18, 2020, 471 individuals who had a cash bond imposed at the initial appearances spent at least 9,754 days–over 26 total years–detained in jail solely because they could not afford a cash bond.

4. 85 individuals who eventually won their case spent 1,562 days detained in jail solely because they could not afford a cash bond.
5. Judges have interrupted and threatened arrestees who attempt to advocate for themselves when their counsel did not adequately present their case.

6. Bail or no bonds have been imposed with the express purpose and hope that the individual would be detained as a form of impermissible pretrial punishment—to teach the person a lesson.

In addition to the problematic & unlawful patterns in the data, we also read several examples of judges (and at times contracted attorneys) discarding and devaluing people’s lives. Here are some examples:

Our holistic legal advocacy is active on all fronts to understand and respond to the ongoing crisis in St. Louis jails- from our Community Collaboration team, additional cases brought by our Impact Litigation department, our Direct Representation, & Media- Policy Advocacy work.

One example of this is the jail hotline [314-643-8773] we've operated for the past year to best understand the issues people inside the jails are facing. Through these calls we have also heard from jail employees and loved ones who know someone detained at CJC or the Workhouse.

Some people have given us permission to share some of their stories & those can be found via our @soundcloud channel. soundcloud.com/archcitydefend…

In the wise words of our Executive Director @BlakeStrode1, the #STLjailscrisis is about all of us, & “[w]e have, indeed, been here before. And we will be here again if we don’t start listening to a different set of voices and believing what they tell us.” stlamerican.com/news/local_new…

Correction: Of the 312 transcripts we reviewed from individuals’ initial bail hearings (July 2019 to February 2021), we found: judges denied bond for 137 people.