To fully understand the story of 18-year-old Djibril Niyomugabo, retrace the facts of his case. Djibril was arrested for allegedly breaking into a car and stealing a bottle of wine. His bail was set at $200, a price that Djibril and his family could not afford. After three nights in jail, he committed suicide—he was found hanged in his jail cell on January 11, 2016, and died two days later on January 13, 2016.
Djibril’s family and attorney say that what ultimately cost Djibril his life was their inability to afford bail.
Unfortunately, Djibril’s story is one that is common in our current cash bail system. Since the invention of cash bail, a person’s life and liberty in the pretrial system has been based on their wealth. This policy disproportionately affects poor Black people, and the inability to pay is often a death sentence. It is of the utmost importance that we institute national bail reform that eliminates the cash bail system.
Originally, cash bail was supposed to ensure that those who were charged with a crime could remain free until their trial, with bail used as an incentive to show up for trial. Underpinning this original idea is the notion that those who were out on bail were still presumed innocent.
The concept works well for those who are wealthy, because they pay their collateral and are set free. Poor people who are unable to pay bail face a different set of consequences, because cash bail is a major threat to the health of marginalized communities.
Pretrial incarceration can cause severe mental health distress, as in the case of Djibril, as well as job loss and immediate social isolation, because those who remain in jail during pretrial are criminalized and presumed guilty before having their day in court. From mental health stress to physical violence to economic burdens, the cash bail system harms the health of our communities.
The bail system reinforces cycles of violence against Black people, who are already disproportionately policed and incarcerated. On average, Black people are more likely to be assigned cash bail for the same crime than white counterparts, and bail amounts for Black people are 35% higher than for white people. Once incarcerated, they face a myriad of threats to health, because imprisonment dramatically heightens likelihood of sexual assault, chronic and infectious diseases, and suicide.
The cash bail system also poses a threat to Black families and their communities. Because it is often paid for with the assistance of friends and family, bail drains the resources from a community. It further disrupts a family’s economic stability by affecting a person’s ability to retain jobs and gain employment in the future.
Pretrial imprisonment can also cause irreparable damage to children who suffer from family separation.
All these factors accumulate to ensure that families are locked into a cycle of economic turmoil and emotional distress, all before going to trial.
Proponents of cash bail argue that bail reform is a threat to public safety by allowing dangerous criminals to roam the streets before trial. However, attempts to demonize bail reform are typically thinly veiled racist attempts to maintain white power structures. Conservative fear-mongering, as well as rising crime rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, have shifted public perceptions about bail reform, but there is no evidence to suggest that bail reform leads to an increase in crime.
New York, which eliminated cash bail in misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, found no association between bail reform and crime increases. In fact, bail may actually increase crime: One study found that cash bail was linked to a 6–9% increase in recidivism.
Among those in support of cash bail are prosecutors, who often exploit the system and coerce those who are incarcerated into taking plea deals. They frame bail reform as a threat to public safety while lining their pockets and padding their report cards, when the real threat to public safety is the harm that cash bail inflicts on the health of our most vulnerable.
Cash bail is a violent system that functions to reinforce cycles of poverty and incarceration for Black people. Efforts to shut down bail reform are rooted in the desire to maintain the status quo—not public safety.
An equitable approach to community health would ensure that communities of color do not continue to suffer at the hands of the legal system. To truly protect the health and well-being of our communities, we must demand national bail reform. Campaigning for and electing local leaders who support the abolition of cash bail is exceedingly important, because local politics can reflect the issues that are important to our communities. We must continue to remind our elected officials that the cash bail system is a public health issue that deteriorates the lives of the most vulnerable. Breaking the cycles of poverty and incarceration is the only path forward to thriving, healthy communities and justice.
Colette Kirkpatrick is a master’s in public health candidate at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research interests include refugee human rights, food justice, and the health of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.