By Sonali Kolhatkar for Yes!Magazine.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

The United States incarcerates more people than nearly any other country in the world. Among the millions in detention at any given time are hundreds of thousands being held in jails. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “More than 400,000 people in the U.S. are currently being detained pretrial – in other words, they are awaiting trial and still legally innocent.” A significant portion of these people are “jailed pretrial simply because they can’t afford money bail.” Increasingly, nonprofit bail funds, such as the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF), are stepping in to offer an alternative to the predatory bail bonds industry.

Elizer Darris, MFF’s co-executive director, explains, “Historically, people have been released on what’s called their own recognizance—meaning their word that they will come back.” But, he says, the reality is that “there has not been any type of causal connection between bail and someone’s reappearance.”

Yet there is one causal connection that deeply concerns Darris: the link between the skin color of people who are arrested, and an assumption of their guilt. High on the list of issues that MFF tackles is “the criminalization of Black and Brown people” and “the automatic determination that because of how I look I must be guilty.”

“Something that a lot of people don’t know, and it actually may shock people,” Darris says, is that “jails actually have worse living conditions than prisons.” He says the criminal justice system essentially holds poor people hostage to “terrible jail conditions.” 

“Our organization exists so that [prosecutors] aren’t able to use coercive practices like jailing in order to get people to plead guilty to offenses that they otherwise would not be guilty to,” Darris says. MFF makes bail payments on behalf of people who are jailed and who otherwise would be unable to afford the bail that buys them their freedom while they await trial or formal charges.

The organization, which was the focus of news coverage and donations during the racial justice uprisings of 2020, is now facing a Republican-led state bill that would make it illegal to operate a nonprofit bail fund in Minnesota.

Darris, who views the entirety of the criminal justice system as problematic, says, “What we have decided to do as an organization was to have a historical view to recognize that many of the policies and practices that we see today have their roots in slavery in the United States.” Given such a framing, he sees it as “an obligation to disrupt those practices, and that’s precisely what we are doing.”

“Our organization isn’t just focused on bail funds,” Darris says. “It’s called the ‘Freedom Fund,’” because that name reflects a “broader definition that takes on the criminal justice system.”

“We are trying to disrupt some of the predatory practices that are happening within bail,” Darris says. “But what we’ve seen is that’s just not enough.”

As a nonprofit, MFF is prohibited from participating in political activism—so it has recently expanded its work into a second organization, a 501(c)(4) organization called MFF Action, whose function will be to “actually take action to put boots on the ground to door-knock within our community to not just support legislation, but to craft legislation.”

“If you can’t change the policies, you change the policymakers, you change the people who will put community at the center of their decision-making,” Darris says.

High on MFF Action’s list of priorities is gaining access to better data. Currently, district courts have limited public access data about who is required to pay bail, which makes it harder for activists to make their case against predatory bail practices.

Additionally, Darris says MFF Action will work to “make sure that bails aren’t being issued on some of the exceedingly low-level offenses that, quite frankly, do not impact public safety in the least bit.”

He says, “Part of the U.S. Constitution is that you cannot be given the bail that is excessive. You have to take into account the person’s ability to pay. [Prosecutors are] not doing that here in Minnesota. And so, we are fighting to make sure that bails aren’t just frivolously being given out.”


Sonali Kolhatkar wrote this article for YES! Magazine.


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A package to improve public safety is moving ahead in the California state Legislature - with a floor vote in the State Assembly on the first bill expected this week.

Assembly Bill 2215 puts into statute that police officers have the discretion to send people arrested for low-level offenses directly to supportive services.

Anthony DiMartino - government affairs director with the nonprofit Californians for Safety and Justice - said sometimes public safety is best served when people avoid arrest and instead get therapy, addiction support or help getting a job.

"We're also hoping to raise awareness that this is something officers can do, and then also encourage partnerships more with officers to look at what's in their community," said DiMartino, "as alternatives to jail booking."

A second bill would increase transparency and accountability on money sent to the counties as part of the Public Safety Realignment.

A third bill would require police officers, prosecuting attorneys and investigators to identify themselves any time they're interviewing a family member of someone killed or severely injured by police.

DiMartino said they also support AB 2499, which would ensure that survivors of violent crime and their family members can take unpaid time off work to address safety concerns and heal.

"We're hoping to broaden the scope a bit," said DiMartino, "and make it more clear that family members of victims are able to also tap into unpaid leave to support their family member that has been a victim."

A fifth bill would make it easier for justice-involved people and crime victims to speak freely during restorative justice programs - by making the communications inadmissible in other legal proceedings.

Missouri went through with its first execution of the year, as Brian Dorsey was put to death last night, just after 6 p.m. CT.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to stop Dorsey's execution. He was convicted of murdering his cousin Sarah Bonnie and her husband Ben nearly 20 years ago.

The advocacy group Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty launched several recent campaigns on Dorsey's behalf to spare his life.

Jenni Gerhauser, a cousin to both Dorsey and Sarah Bonnie, expressed belief in his redemption.

"Brian is more than the worst moment of his life," Gerhauser stressed. "There is so much more to him."

Gerhauser fondly remembered him as fun and charming from their visits during holidays. Dorsey's current lawyers said he was in a drug-induced psychosis when he killed the Bonnies in 2006 and his attorneys at the time had been offered money, preventing them from fighting the death penalty with his guilty plea deal.

Gov. Mike Parson confirmed Monday the state would move forward with Dorsey's death sentence, rejecting a separate request for clemency. More than 70 current and former corrections officers had urged the governor to commute Dorsey's sentence, arguing he had been rehabilitated.

Claudia Boyce, also a cousin in the family, said it should not be a decision for the state to make.

"You know, that's supposed to be God's decision, not ours," Boyce contended.

Dorsey received a lethal injection Tuesday evening. Lethal injection became an option for people on Missouri's death row in 1987, alongside lethal gas.


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Amid overcrowding and unsafe conditions in West Virginia jails, state lawmakers introduced bills that would allow judges to take a 'second look' at an individual's original sentence.

If a court determines they no longer pose a threat to the community, the person could be released, placed on supervision, or receive a shortened sentence.

Sara Whitaker - criminal legal policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy - said West Virginia is one of the few states that has seen its prison population balloon over the past decade, despite declining crime.

She noted that as of last month, more than 500 people in the state were in jail awaiting transfer to a prison.

"As a result, eight out of 10 of the regional jails in the state were beyond capacity," said Whitaker, "with hundreds of people assigned to sleeping on the floor."

The bills failed to advance this session, but Whitaker said advocates are hopeful lawmakers will consider them next year.

The state's jails remain among the deadliest in the country, with at least 91 people losing their lives while incarcerated in the past few years.

According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, jail bills cost counties $45 million in 2022.

Nationwide, long sentences have led to growth in the number of older people behind bars.

Whitaker pointed out that 'Second Look' legislation could help the state avoid turning its prisons into nursing homes, and said the number of elderly people in prison has tripled in the past two decades.

"In 2019, West Virginia had to open a dementia unit in one of its prisons," said Whitaker. "There are hospice units across multiple prisons. And experts predict that this is just only going to get worse."

Whitaker added that 'Second Look' policies also offer a way to correct past racial injustice in the criminal legal system.

Black people incarcerated in West Virginia are four times more likely than white people to be serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole, and five times as likely to be serving a life-without-parole sentence.




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