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October 30, 2007
Bail turns jails into debtors' prisons
News and information for Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA)
The high cost of bail turns jails into debtors' prisons
To the editor: "Price Tags on Freedom," an article that appeared in Gazette Weekend (Oct. 27-28) overlooked a very significant aspect of bail, one that has a major impact on poor people and people of color in the Valley. When people are too poor to make bail, they are locked up. This fuels the need for new and bigger jails.
Today, approximately half the women held at the new Hampden County jail in Chicopee are incarcerated because they are too poor to make bail of $200 to $500. Inability to make bail transforms jail into a contemporary debtors' prison. Poor women who are arrested can and are held pre-trial for months. Most of the time, they will be homeless and without income upon release, further destabilizing their lives and placing the well-being of their children in serious jeopardy.
Almost 85 percent of all women at the Hampden County Correctional Center, pre-trial and sentenced, are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. It costs $3,600 to incarcerate a woman for one month, and the average stay is longer.
There are successful pre-trial and bail reforms happening throughout the country, but not in Hampden County. Otherwise, the new $26 million jail for women would have been unnecessary. If the commonwealth wants to save money, Sheriff Michael Ashe will not get his wish to build 56 additional cells before the paint is dry at the new women's jail.
Holding women and men who are too poor to make bail results in devastating consequences: more jail building, greater impoverishment of the poor, and continued criminalization of addiction and mental illness.
Lois Ahrens
Posted by lois at October 30, 2007 08:27 PM