This city just took a major step to reform its oppressive and inhumane bail system
SalonAtlanta's City Council just unanimously voted and adopted a move to reform Atlanta’s cash bail system, which frequently targets, jails and ultimately upends the lives of its poorest citizens for some of the most minor and non-violent misdemeanors. To paint a picture of just how morally dubious the city's bail process was, Southern Center for Human Rights lawyer Sarah Geraghty told Atlanta radio station WABE that the system criminalizes poverty. The city jails are filled nightly with people charged with misdemeanors and ordinance violations only because they cannot pay.” Ultimately, the cash bail system, according to Geraghty, “is a two-tiered system: one for people with money and one for people without money." Recently, in Los Angeles, UCLA’s Million Dollar Hoods project showed how the city was cashing in billions upon billions of dollars by jailing poor people of color and keeping them chained to the city's exorbitant bail system.
History of this topic
Editorial: California blew it on bail reform. Now Illinois is showing it works
LA Times
Editorial: L.A. County cities should stop fighting the end of cash bail. It’s working
LA Times
Editorial: L.A. court’s refreshing candor on money bail: It doesn’t make us safer
LA Times
Editorial: How the court’s bail reform plan could go wrong. How to keep it going right
LA Times
Editorial: Leaders aren’t leading on L.A. bail reform
LA Times
Editorial: Chief Moore and other bail reform critics are wrong. Cash bail should not be a form of punishment
LA Times
Editorial: L.A.’s bail reform is an improvement, but falls short of what Illinois has done
LA Times
Editorial: 50 Cent and prosecutors are wrong about cash bail. L.A. courts get it right
LA Times
Editorial: Court brings back sanity, and the Constitution, in Los Angeles bail ruling
LA Times
Editorial: Presumed guilty! The toxic cost of money bail
LA Times
Ending cash bail abolishes penalty on poverty, advocates say
Associated Press
Editorial: The welcome but glacial dismantling of California’s bail system
LA Times
Column: Facing eradication, the bail industry gears up to mislead the public about its value
LA Times
Editorial: Money bail punishes the poor and makes a mockery of California’s justice system
LA Times
California lawmakers want to reform a bail system they say ‘punishes the poor for being poor’
LA Times
Obama administration challenges the money bail system: Can people be kept in jail just because they are poor?
LA Times
Our Bail System Is Leaving Innocent People To Die In Jail Because They're Poor
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