Introduction

The Uprisings for Black Liberation, the hundreds of nationwide protests ignited by the police murder of George Floyd beginning in May 2020, heightened the visibility of community organizations already on the ground working to address the brutalities of policing and incarceration. Some of that attention was directed toward bail funds, leading to a waterfall of donations mostly from individuals. Among those most notable was the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which fundraised $30 million in less than a month (Bromwich, 2020; Condon, 2020). While bail funds captured the attention of a new audience, the subject has yet to hold the interest of researchers as there is little academic scholarship on the politics or praxis of bail fund organizers.

The primary work of bail funds is collecting donations and posting cash bail for individuals held in pre-trial detention. The cash bail system requires an individual charged with a crime to pay a sort of security deposit, which is then refundable upon their completion of court proceedings or the dismissal of the charge. In each case, the judge determines if bail is applicable and if so, the amount, which is then determined by a host of factors, including severity of the alleged crime; the individual's criminal record, employment history, and community ties; amount of evidence; and likelihood of conviction. Based on these factors and the discretion of the judge, a bail amount can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. To secure their freedom from having to await trial in jail, an individual can pay the bail amount in full or pay a fee to a commercial bond company to post bail on their behalf (most often 10 percent of the bail amount).

There has long been concern about how the cash bail system works to penalize and criminalize poor people. While held in jail, individuals are at risk of losing their jobs, housing, and custody of their children. Further, there is concern that pre-trial detention pressures detainees to plead guilty to lower charges rather than spend more time locked up (Eisen & Chettiar, 2018). In addition to this, detention itself proves to be a dangerous, even lethal experience, as evidenced in the murder of Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco. Cubilette-Polanco, an Afro-Latinx trans woman, died following an epileptic seizure.