That was a much different experience than the two months she spent in jail. Henton helped her get a lawyer through his network as an organizer with Black Lives Matter Cleveland. He reached out to Alana Garrett-Ferguson, a community organizer with New Voices for Reproductive Justice at the time who now serves on a police oversight board, to help buy Chambers clothes. Credit: Stephanie Casanova / Signal ClevelandĪfter Chambers was released, Henton got her food and helped her get a new phone. “Belief goes a long way.” Sitting outside her apartment in South Collinwood, Aquia Chambers talks about the support she received from The Bail Project, her boyfriend and her counselor while fighting a 2019 court case. “What most people value most about our community-release-with-support model is that they have somebody who’s standing by their side that believes in them as much as they believe in themselves,” Gaspar said. The nonprofit doesn’t just pay for a person’s bail, but also continues to support the person with court reminders and resources to ensure they don’t end up back in custody. Local chapters of The Bail Project - there are 30 nationwide - are made up of bail disruptors who are from the community and were already active in social and criminal justice issues. The Bail Project would like to eliminate bail here and nationwide. “It doesn’t do anything to get at the heart of what the problem is here.” “The basic problem with Issue 1 is that it just further codifies the existence of cash bail,” Steinberg said. Issue 1 had bipartisan support, but some Democrats and The Bail Project opposed the measure. Last year Ohioans passed a ballot measure that amended the state constitution to require judges to consider public safety, a person’s criminal record and their likelihood of returning to court when setting bail amounts. “It is not supposed to be used as punishment,” according to the American Bar Association. The bail system was created to ensure people appear for trial and pretrial hearings. What most people value most about our community-release-with-support model is that they have somebody who’s standing by their side that believes in them as much as they believe in themselves. The same has been true nationally in the five years The Bail Project has collected data, Steinberg said. There she learned that people almost always show up to court after being released pretrial, even without the financial incentive of a bail refund. Steinberg founded The Bail Project in 2017, after starting a revolving bail fund in the South Bronx in 2005. “I’m being looked at as a person who has their life together.” “I’m not being looked at as an inmate,” she said. “The savings, the hardship, and the cost and the impact on human lives is staggering,” Gaspar said.Ĭhambers, 25, said just being able to appear in court from outside jail made her feel like she had a chance to be seen as “more than a criminal in an orange jumpsuit.” Gaspar said The Bail Project – Cleveland has saved taxpayers $7.5 million. Reducing the time people spend in jail awaiting trial cuts down the county’s costs of housing defendants. If you go to jail in Cuyahoga County, expect to sit there about four months before going to trial, Gaspar said. In Cuyahoga County, it takes The Bail Project, on average, eight days to bail someone out. Credit: Stephanie Casanova / Signal ClevelandĪt the forum, Gaspar and Robin Steinberg, founder of The Bail Project, shared what they learned after gathering and reviewing five years of data, and their hope that this information will lead to bail reform across the country. Case Western Reserve University law professor Ayesha Bell Hardaway (left), The Bail Project CEO David Gaspar and Robin Steinberg, founder of The Bail Project, talk about bail reform at The City Club of Cleveland on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. In Cleveland, 80% have not had to serve an additional day in jail, David Gaspar, CEO of The Bail Project, said in a forum at The City Club of Cleveland on Wednesday. Three months after getting out of jail, she was sentenced to two years of probation, which she completed in June 2021.Īnd like Chambers, most of those bailed out by The Bail Project don’t go back. Chambers is one of almost 1,000 people who have been bailed out since the local chapter started in 2019. The money is returned to the fund once a person attends all of their court dates. The project, with fundraising help from other local organizations, posted her $500 bail. Kareem Henton, a bail disruptor with The Bail Project – Cleveland, the local chapter of a national nonprofit that helps people charged with crimes avoid pretrial detention, helped Chambers after learning about her case.
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