The Montgomery Bail Out’s work in 2022
The volunteer-organizers of our bail fund would like to thank you for your support since April 2020. Read on to learn about our work and how you can get involved in 2022.
Dear Montgomery Bail Out supporters,
In April 2020, a group of Montgomery, Ala. neighbors organized the Montgomery Bail Out Fund in response to the danger posed by COVID-19 to those detained. We quickly realized that incarceration poses a risk far beyond exposure to illness. Nearly two years later, our fund is now a 501(c)(3) organization and we are still working toward pretrial freedom for those incarcerated and ultimately, the total abolition of prisons and jails.
As we closed out 2021, we realized that in our time as a fund, we have not yet reached out to everyone who has individually supported us: those of you that have given your time in volunteer hours or intellectual labor, those who have shared our work in your networks and on social media, and over 2,100 of you who have individually given money to support the pretrial freedom of our Montgomery neighbors.
We want to tell you about our work over these past 21 months and where we see ourselves headed in the work toward pretrial freedom. We also want to invite you to participate in the Bail Out’s work in a new way – we hope you might consider becoming a member. Please read more about membership nominations below.
Since April 2020, our fund has paid full cash bail for over 40 people detained in the Montgomery County Detention Facility. The bail amounts have ranged from $1,000 to $138,000. We could not have done this without the fiscal sponsorship of First Christian Church, which has facilitated the transfer of money to free our neighbors since the inception of our fund.
Beyond the dollar amounts, it’s important that you know some of the people who the state detained for ransom:
A young mother, who as a result of her detention, lost her employment, her home, and custody of her children;
A daughter, who lived with and served as the sole caretaker for her 91 year old mother;
Multiple individuals with ongoing and significant mental health or substance use needs, who would have benefited from counseling or provision of medication, but were caged instead;
A child in foster care custody, whose caseworker reached out to us after the Department of Human Services refused to assist with the child’s release, leaving him vulnerable and without support in an adult jail;
Older adults with chronic illnesses and/or who are immunocompromised; and
Multiple individuals held for a year or longer without a conviction or hearings in their case.
Your support helped us get them out.
Every time we post bail for someone, we are protesting a system that actively harms those inside and the larger community. We learned quickly that even a day in jail could prove catastrophic to someone's life. To begin with, the state isolates those accused of crimes from their family and loved ones, making it challenging for those who cannot afford to pay bail for their freedom to participate fully in their own defense or manage their lives outside of detention. The infrastructure for post-release support for those incarcerated is nearly non-existent in Montgomery County. Though we cannot single-handedly create social services where they don’t exist, we have helped provide phones, groceries, PPE, necessary medications, transportation to job interviews and medical appointments, temporary housing, and countless other supports to our neighbors upon their release. This summer, our fund paid for an hour of phone time for every person incarcerated in the jail, in protest of a system that damages relationships by separating people from their communities.
Even when bail is posted, the state still finds ways to retaliate against those who have yet to be convicted of anything. In two cases, the courts moved to forfeit the bail we posted when they effectively failed to notify those individuals of their upcoming court dates. In both cases, we fought back against the motions for forfeiture and won. To this day, the court has only been notifying individuals of upcoming hearings in their cases via U.S. Mail, and too often, the addresses they send these notices to are not current or otherwise incorrect. In response, we have worked in coordination with other community agencies to formally propose a county policy change to notify those charged with hearings in their cases via phone and email in addition to US Mail. This simple change could prevent our neighbors from being detained because of the county’s neglect.
Our network has grown larger as we continue our work. We are a member of the National Bail Fund Network, which provides us invaluable guidance from NBFN staff and dozens of other bail funds in the collective. Along with other bail funds in the state, we have formed the Pan-Alabama Bail Fund Union, which meets regularly to support each other and the work of pretrial freedom across Alabama. Because of this community, in partnership with Huntsville Bail Fund and Gadsden Bail Project, we were awarded Vera Institute’s In Our Backyards grant to support our efforts to inform our community about the carceral landscape in Alabama.
Our small but fearless group of volunteers have worked hard, logging hundreds of hours to support pretrial freedom: whether waiting at the jail for our bail buddies to be released, putting together care packages, speaking with families and loved ones of our incarcerated neighbors, writing op-eds in the local paper, drafting motions to the court, organizing to support other statewide actions, meeting with other state bail funds, and educating our neighbors about the violence of cash bail. As 2021 came to a close, nearly all of our funds were (and still are) committed to posted bail. Court delays have caused cases to take longer to close, meaning the money we have posted for bail will take even longer to be returned to us. With limited funds for posting bail, we realized that we must expand our vision for our work.
In the year ahead, our vision for pretrial freedom guides us beyond direct bail support. The closure of the local jail will not be secured simply with the elimination of cash bail. The cruelty of the criminal punishment system is that it evolves before any reform can “fix” the problems inherent to its survival. This is why our bail fund holds abolition as our Northern Star; with abolition as our goal, our work does not pause when our funds are committed to active cases. We will continue to post bail for our neighbors, but we will also confront the harms the system inflicts through community education and direct actions.
We are excited about the work to come and want to invite you into our continued work in the coming months. Our team meets weekly on Mondays at 6 p.m. via Zoom and we are always happy to have new volunteers and community members join.
If you wish to take the next step along with us to get involved with the Bail Out, you may sign up to be nominated as a member. Membership is a new frontier for us. According to our bylaws, members may serve on our Board of Directors, serve on an executive committee to help direct the fund’s administration, sit on a committee that evaluates needs assessments prior to posting bail, and form an affinity group. In short, as a member, you may take part in the direction of the fund in community with other members. You may sign up to be nominated for membership at our fund’s annual meeting here.
There is no qualification for membership. We only ask that you share, or aspire to learn and share, our core commitments to abolition, anti-racism and anti-capitalism.
There aren’t words that can truly capture our gratitude to you for your continued support. You chose to be in community with us and that has helped our neighbors get free. To protest a violent criminal punishment system, you chose to show your neighbors love. That is how we will get free.
Until all are free,
Volunteer-Organizers of The Montgomery Bail Out Fund