ST. LOUIS — A national nonprofit that has bailed out thousands of low-income people in St. Louis announced Monday it is leaving the city after nearly four years.
In January 2018, the Bail Project launched its first site in St. Louis, and leaders said the group has given free bail assistance and pretrial support to more than 3,000 people here since then. There are now 30 Bail Project sites across the country.
But the declining use of cash bail in the city and Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ efforts to close the city’s Medium Security Institution, known as the workhouse, meant it was time to move on, nonprofit officials said.
The Bail Project will shift money and resources to a north St. Louis-based nonprofit, the Freedom Community Center, but will still be active in St. Louis County and St. Charles County.
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“We’ve seen growth, but there’s also so much more work to do,” said Mike Milton, the bail project’s advocacy and policy manager in Missouri, in an interview. Milton also founded The Freedom Community Center.
Supporters said the fund helped make the criminal justice system more equitable by allowing poor people to post cash to get out of jail, thus reducing jail populations and avoiding the negative impacts of incarceration, such as job loss.
But critics said letting people out of jail before trial made the community more dangerous, pointing to the April 2019 case of Samuel Scott, who was released on a misdemeanor assault charge an hour after the nonprofit paid $5,000. He later brutally beat his wife, Marcia Johnson, leading to her death five days later.
After the Scott case, a spokeswoman for St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner said, “If all of the charging documents were reviewed by the Bail Project, they would have seen the safety concerns of the victim, prosecutors and courts. This information would have given The Bail Project an appreciation for the level of risk associated in the case.”
But Milton on Monday argued the Scott case was a perfect example of how the current court and law enforcement system failed to keep people safe, noting Scott struggled with substance abuse and had been charged multiple times previously only to have the cases dropped.
“That’s the prime example of why the system does not work,” he said.
Milton said the Freedom Community Center hoped to fill that gap by using “restorative justice,” which allows victims of crime to meet with the perpetrators in a neutral space and helps them to reconcile while coming up with a plan to repair the problem.
The idea, he said, is to help people change their behavior for the long term.
“You’re doing the (personal) work so that you never commit the harm again,” he said. “That’s what we need right now in order to address violence as a city.”
The Freedom Community Center will also continue to provide bail assistance, along with helping people to get involved with political organizing.
Milton said many people who have been incarcerated or involved with the courts or police are later inspired to speak out and help others transform their lives, too.
He credits that political activism and the Missouri Supreme Court’s recent limits on the use of cash bail with much of the reduction.
In 2019, the bail fund posted bail for nearly 670 people, Milton said. By 2020, only 207 needed it. In the month of August, nobody in the city jail was being held on cash bail, he said.
“I think we are in a moment where we can continue to change,” Milton said. “Not only are we going to end cash bail, but we are going to invest in community solutions that actually keep us safe.”
The Bail Project National Revolving Bail Fund launched in 2017 using $16 million that is used to bail out people, and then is recycled when it is paid back.