St. Louis Provides Another Example of Why Cash Bail Must be Abolished
PHOTO: St. Louis "Justice Center" Jail, also known as the Workhouse
In St. Louis, Missouri, pre-trial inmates at the ironically named “Justice Center” jail have been protesting inhumane conditions. Since the onset of the pandemic, inmates have been locked in their cells for 23 hours/day, Covid-19 protections have been woefully inadequate, and court dates have come to a grinding halt, leaving hundreds of inmates languishing for more than a year without having been found guilty of anything. Those suffering include individuals who can’t afford to pay money bail.
Across the country, about half a million people are detained pre-trial, with no determination of guilt, because they can’t afford to post bail. There is no “justice” when people’s freedom can be taken away simply because they don’t have money. The problem of cash bail is exacerbated in St. Louis because of a long-standing (though illegal) practice of delaying initial court hearings for months following arrest, all the while those too poor to afford bail remain incarcerated. News reports focusing on the damage inmates have caused to the jail are focusing on the symptom, not the root cause: inmates are protesting the damage that is being done to them. The fact that the protests are the only way they are getting any attention at all merely proves their point: inmates’ lives seemingly do not matter. In the words of public defender Erika Wurst: “The long pretrial incarceration periods while cases wait for a probable cause finding comes down to the exact same thing: (the associate circuit court judges) don’t value our clients’ lives enough to make sure the prosecutors actually have enough evidence to warrant keeping them confined, to warrant them losing their freedom, their jobs, their homes, their families.”
Equal Justice Under Law has been a pioneer in bringing constitutional challenges to money bail. To learn more about our work on ending cash bail, check out our cases here. Equal Justice Under Law stands in solidarity with the incarcerated in St. Louis and hopes that the protests of those incarcerated in St. Louis will contribute to the abolition of cash bail.