Always the next step: hearing from two people we’ve helped
It is far more difficult than most people realize to receive clear information on your case or take any action to help yourself while in jail. “I was sitting in jail and I didn’t really know what the future held for me,” one NCBF client, Michael¹, shares. “I wasn’t exactly sure what my case entailed and since I wasn’t able to look it up… I was just sitting there serving my time, whether I’m guilty or innocent, just serving it.”
Liam¹, another NCBF client, has had similar experiences: “It's got to the point where like in Snohomish County jail in particular, usually around 30 days will go by… before the jail even allows me to have access to legal materials to represent myself.” Pre-trial detention means lacking direct access to the resources to defend yourself, and sometimes not even fully understanding exactly what charges are being brought against you.
People in jail also face huge obstacles trying to get access to the information or materials they need to fight their case. Liam, who has been studying law since 2007, told us about his experiences representing himself in court: “These jails don't allow you access to computers no more. Like, the Snohomish County Jail doesn't have a computer. I can't type nothing. I can't print. I mean, if I get something printed, I have to fill out a card. It's a long process to get copies. And so I have to do all my motions and hand write everything and it can be quite messy, and actually I believe I started developing carpal tunnel on my right hand.”
Despite these obstacles, Liam chooses to represent himself because relying on an attorney can leave a person powerless and with no information: “Those people who don't represent themselves, they just sit in there, they leave it up to their attorneys, they're not knowledgeable about legal affairs, and they want to hurry up and sign the deal. So it's all designed just to get somebody to take the deal.”
When asked about the importance of making bail, Michael says, “It’s time you can use to benefit yourself and your life and your case and whatever it is you want to point your direction in life towards. It’s time to do things that’ll make you prosper. Your bail doesn’t mean you’re free, it just means that instead of sitting in jail you can work on yourself.”
Receiving bail from NCBF offered Michael the hope and encouragement he needed to do things differently in his life. He’s been to jail many times but, he says, this time, with NCBF, things were different. “It wasn’t just me counting on it for myself; it was others who didn’t even know me who took the time, effort, and money just to give me another chance.”
“I’m no longer a statistic. I have my own clothes on my back. I’m working. I’ve got money in the bank. I’ve been making a bunch of medical and dental appointments to try to catch up. And not only that, I can meet with my attorney and talk to him on a regular basis.” In addition to all this, Michael reports that he has entered an intensive outpatient treatment program.
For Liam, making bail allowed him to continue participating in another court case across the country. “Well, I can tell you right now my bail being paid affected my life drastically,” he told us, “because I have to get on the phone now, and I'm still appealing this case in Brooklyn.” Before making bail, Liam had tried to file motions and documents from his cell but found that his mail wasn’t being delivered: “Come to find out my appeal never left Snohomish County jail. I mean [the court] has never received it…. So now I have to do everything electronically, and I wouldn't have been able to do that had you guys not bailed [me] out.”
And making bail can mean more than simply being able to exercise your rights. It can also mean having dignity, hope, and the opportunity to work on your life. From Michael: “It all started with simply applying [to NCBF] – otherwise, I would still be sitting in that shithole right now, not being proactive, just depressed. Not getting anything done. And all the accomplishments I’ve made would not have been able to come to pass. I stand and look in the bathroom mirror now, and I’m not angry at the person I’m looking at. I’ve got a lot of work to do and a long way to go but someone once asked me, What step is the hardest step? And I said, Well, the first one. And they said, No, it’s always the next step.”
For Liam, having the freedom to prepare for a court case is a matter of fairness for people facing a system stacked against them: “If courts and prosecutors and police have some policy [oversight] and actually went by the letter of the law we wouldn't have so many cases in the court of appeals that keep getting turned over. It's not that we have holes in the system that allow guilty people to be free, as we have holes and we have a system designed to just make everybody guilty, and people have to prove their innocence.”
“This is just a machine to crank out convictions,” he told us. “It's designed for convictions, not for justice.”
At NCBF, we’re proud and honored to have helped Liam and Michael fight for the chance to improve their lives and work towards fair representation in court. We are full of hope to see what future they both create for themselves.
¹ Names and identifying details have been changed to protect our clients’ privacy.
Meet Tony, an NCBF volunteer making a difference one bail at a time
You might think that actually paying bail would be the easy part of running a bail fund. We live in 2024, after all, when you can schedule an appointment with any hairdresser in the city via an app on your phone. Surely the courts have a similarly streamlined system for allowing someone to regain their freedom, right?
Nope. Every time we pay a bail, someone has to physically travel to the appropriate correctional facility, present payment, and be ready with all the relevant details about the person we’re trying to help. The process can be slow and maddeningly bureaucratic.
That’s where our dedicated team of volunteer bail payers comes in. They work with NCBF staff to post bail so that staff don’t spend all day, every day, standing in line at the courthouse. It’s not glamorous, but this gift of time is incredibly important to our work. And for the person waiting to be released, their bail payer is a lifeline.
We recently sat down with Tony to chat about his experience volunteering as an NCBF bail payer. “I don’t know that there’s anything enjoyable about paying bail,” he quipped with a dry smile. “I like feeling like I’m accomplishing something. And for me, being kind of an introvert, it’s a good job because there are no meetings.”
“I post mostly in downtown at the King County Superior Court or the Seattle Municipal Court, but I’ve posted all over the county too. I usually take the bus into Seattle so I can get some reading done on the way there and back.”
If you were sitting in a cell at the whim of a giant, indifferent bureaucracy, and pictured the perfect friend on the outside to get you out, you might imagine Tony. On top of his good humor and humility, Tony has just the kind of steady reliability that’s needed to get the cogs of the machine moving.
“You definitely get the sense from some of the people I’m interacting with that they're not happy about what we’re doing,” Tony shared. “As soon as I go up and I see who’s working the counters that day, I know what kind of day it’s going to be.”
Part of what allows Tony to bring so much patience to his work is that the bail fund’s mission has deep roots in his own story. “Another thing that kind of drew me to this work was an experience that my brother had many years ago. He was in his early 40s, no criminal history at all, and he was accused of a pretty awful crime,” he recounted. “He wound up being scared into taking a plea deal. He had two daughters and he was really terrified of being wrongfully convicted and being unable to see his daughters for who knows how long.”
For Tony’s family, that injustice meant losing time that they could never get back. “He spent 18 months in prison for something I think he didn’t do. He got out and died of cancer not many years later. So it was really precious time lost.”
Like so many of our volunteers, Tony is channeling his traumatic personal experience into healing his community. And the bail fund has allowed him to have an impact not just on the people we serve, but also among his friends and family. “I think I understand the bail system better in a way that lets me explain it to people,” he says.
“Some people, you have to do a little education to make them understand why this system is unfair. People have this sense that, they’re in jail, they’re guilty of something, of course they should pay. So it’s about getting a better sense for why it’s unfair and being able to use that to help educate other people.” Tony is able to pass on some of his firsthand experiences, such as clerks refusing to accept a payment, jails demanding a different bail amount than what was written in the court order, or cases where the bail amount is simply not published at all for unclear reasons.
Ultimately, Tony hopes for a future where the work he’s doing now isn’t needed anymore: “I’d like to see us all out of a job.”
Interested in volunteering? Sign up here.
Headlines
📈 King County agrees to increase jail population in understaffed Seattle downtown jail: In September, King County announced that it had agreed to increase the number of jail beds available for use by the City of Seattle. Seattle’s downtown jail has been understaffed for years with the problem reaching crisis levels since 2020. During the COVID epidemic the county put in place booking restrictions to limit the size of the jail population by not jailing people for most misdemeanor crimes. Even with those rules in place, the staff shortages have led to safety issues, long waits for people in the jail to meet with their defense attorneys, and even a lack of access to clean water.
Despite the ongoing health and safety concerns, Seattle City Council and the mayor have recently made the jail’s booking rules a political issue, blaming the county for somehow cheating the city and claiming, without evidence, that crime and visible poverty would decrease in Seattle if more people could be booked into jail.
🔎 City Council allows the police to pilot 24/7 surveillance of Seattle neighborhoods: Seattle City Council has approved a pilot program which will allow police to install CCTV surveillance cameras in several neighborhoods across the city. The legislation also funds a new “Real Time Crime Center” aimed at allowing police to tap into other surveillance sources such as Ring doorbell cameras.
Video surveillance has not been shown to reduce crime or violence, but it does have major privacy and civil liberty repercussions. In particular, Seattle’s approach is likely to result in even greater over-policing of already targeted groups.
More to know
👔 Why so many jails and prisons are understaffed: King County’s struggle to fill staff roles at its downtown jail are nothing new. Many other jails across the United States, including Seattle’s youth jail, are extremely understaffed. But why is this such an ongoing problem?
The main reason is that our country’s focus on incarceration as the ultimate solution for crime and poverty results in masses of people being locked up. But there’s another, more subtle answer that shows how the harm of incarceration cuts both ways: being a guard is a traumatizing and dehumanizing way to make a living. It’s an often mind-numbingly boring role with low pay, high exposure to violence, and lasting mental health effects.
This report from Prison Policy Initiative dives deep on how prisons and jails harm not only the people they lock up, but also the people they employ and the surrounding communities as well.
✋ How to push back against calls for more jail: With elections coming up, we’re all being inundated with claims made by political candidates about rising violence, drug use, and homelessness. Frequently, jails and prisons are portrayed as the simple solution to all these problems, a kind of universal answer to every social problem.
These claims can be hard to push back on if you don’t have the facts at the ready. Helpfully, Prison Policy Initiative has compiled this simple guide to the facts you need to push back against calls for more incarceration. Be ready with the answers when the opportunity arrives in your life to speak up on these issues.
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