Another wave of “lock them up” policies in Seattle
Seattle’s plan to ship people to Des Moines to be jailed for low-level crimes highlights the importance of our mission here at the bail fund. Seattle City Council has approved a contract with SCORE, a regional jail south of SeaTac that has had a host of serious problems which jeopardize people’s health, privacy, and court attendance.
This idea has been opposed by the Seattle Municipal Court and Public Defenders Association because it would severely impact the ability of arrested people to meet with their lawyers and attend court hearings. The problems are so bad that the public defenders union told the mayor’s office last month that it was pulling out of any further stakeholder meetings about the plan. In the past, people in jail have had no private space available to meet with a lawyer, WiFi that would drop out randomly during virtual hearings, and poorly organized transportation that resulted in people missing court dates. King County abandoned a similar agreement with SCORE last year after only a few months, finding that it was impractical to move people back and forth from Des Moines to the downtown jail for hearings in Seattle.
On top of that, serious issues have come to light about conditions at the facility. In the last year and a half alone, six people have died while in custody there. SCORE outsources its healthcare to Wellpath, a large corporation that has been accused of cutting costs by providing substandard care. Last year, a group of senators led by Elizabeth Warren raised concerns about Wellpath, including a CNN investigation which revealed Wellpath staffers’ shredding and hiding of medical requests because they lacked the resources to address them.
All of this is happening because Seattle’s tough-on-crime city council wants to lock up more people for minor crimes such as breaking a window or drug possession. The downtown jail has been understaffed for years, and in response, King County has been taking the advice of public defenders, advocates, and experts by seeking alternatives to jail time for low-level offenses. But at recent meetings, councilmembers have been blaming these reasonable policies for crime, poverty, and homelessness downtown, competing with each other to see who can be the most outraged about jail booking restrictions and calls to “defund the police.”
The end result is that the actual needs and experiences of people who are arrested in Seattle are being largely ignored in favor of a culture battle pitting privileged Seattle residents against their neighbors coping with poverty and drug addiction. For us at the bail fund, this is just the most recent wave of “lock them up” backlash that we’ve seen on the rise in Washington. In spite of the rhetoric and backsliding, we’ll continue to work to preserve the dignity and wellbeing of people dealing with the criminal punishment system.
Bail fund news to know
📭 6 months of NCBF checks stuck in SMC pipeline: Seattle Municipal Court (SMC) updated its court portal system about six months ago, and today NCBF is still waiting on thousands of dollars to be paid back to us which we could be using to pay bail for more people. SMC’s new system had problems issuing the checks, which led to months of back and forth between the bail fund and an increasingly unresponsive and careless SMC staff. Necessary case numbers have been excluded from SMC checks, our voicemails have gone unanswered—we’ve even gotten the City of Seattle Department of the Treasury involved. According to one of our attorney contacts, as of April the higher-ups were well aware of the issue and working on it. Here we are in August, and still no word from SMC on when this will be resolved.
🏛️ NCBF to host jury service training events: In connection with our upcoming Jury Fund project in partnership with Seattle Solidarity Budget, the bail fund will be co-hosting training events October 22-23 facilitated by The Bronx Defenders staff attorney Porsha-Shaf’on Venable. Attendees will learn about the critical roles of jury service and juror rights, connect with the community over our shared responsibility in the courtroom, and gain invaluable knowledge and inspiration from Porsha-Shaf’on.
Headlines
🚷 Seattle’s new banishment zones: Seattle City Council is proposing two groups of “zones” in Seattle which some people will be banned from entering if they have been charged with certain crimes, or are perceived by the police to be engaged in certain activities. The first group, called Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zones, would target sex workers on Aurora Avenue. The second group, called Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) zones, would ban people accused of drug possession from large swaths of downtown and the International District, even if they have not actually been convicted of a crime. The council’s Public Safety Committee approved the proposal on August 13th, despite opposition from the Washington ACLU as well as LGBTQ+ groups and sex worker rights advocates. The full council is likely to vote on it in late August or early September. We at NCBF strongly oppose these measures, which would further criminalize marginalized groups and are a throwback to failed policies of the past.
📢 Charges against SeaTac protestors to be dropped: After continuous community organizing efforts, SeaTac prosecutors are preparing to drop charges against protestors who blocked traffic going into SeaTac Airport in April. We had posted bail for many of those protesters when they were originally arrested, and are happy to see SeaTac end its efforts to criminalize and incarcerate people standing up for an end to the genocide in Gaza.
⚠️ The struggle to close dangerous jails across Washington: Our own Chanel Rhymes, Director of Advocacy for the bail fund, was quoted in an article summarizing the ongoing effort to establish a jail oversight agency for the many underfunded and substandard facilities in Washington state. There is currently no state oversight of jails in Washington, and as Chanel observes, many are in such poor condition that they aren’t fit to house animals, let alone people.
💵 Georgia ban on bail funds temporarily blocked by judge: A judge in Georgia has temporarily blocked the state from implementing a law that seeks to ban bail funds. This opinion piece from Erin George, policy director at The Bail Project, is a good overview of the law and its troubling impacts.
📖 Further reading: We were blown away by this essay in The TRiiBE, a Black journalism platform in Chicago, on the phenomenal success of Illinois’ effort to end cash bail. This is yet another real-world example of how ending cash bail creates a fairer and safer society for everyone. And for those who want to go deep and level-up your knowledge of the criminal punishment system, we recommend this article from The Prison Policy Initiative on how “inmate welfare funds” are repurposed to enrich profiteers who operate our country’s prisons.
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