By Sonali Kolhatkar for Yes!Magazine.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

The United States incarcerates more people than nearly any other country in the world. Among the millions in detention at any given time are hundreds of thousands being held in jails. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “More than 400,000 people in the U.S. are currently being detained pretrial – in other words, they are awaiting trial and still legally innocent.” A significant portion of these people are “jailed pretrial simply because they can’t afford money bail.” Increasingly, nonprofit bail funds, such as the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF), are stepping in to offer an alternative to the predatory bail bonds industry.

Elizer Darris, MFF’s co-executive director, explains, “Historically, people have been released on what’s called their own recognizance—meaning their word that they will come back.” But, he says, the reality is that “there has not been any type of causal connection between bail and someone’s reappearance.”

Yet there is one causal connection that deeply concerns Darris: the link between the skin color of people who are arrested, and an assumption of their guilt. High on the list of issues that MFF tackles is “the criminalization of Black and Brown people” and “the automatic determination that because of how I look I must be guilty.”

“Something that a lot of people don’t know, and it actually may shock people,” Darris says, is that “jails actually have worse living conditions than prisons.” He says the criminal justice system essentially holds poor people hostage to “terrible jail conditions.” 

“Our organization exists so that [prosecutors] aren’t able to use coercive practices like jailing in order to get people to plead guilty to offenses that they otherwise would not be guilty to,” Darris says. MFF makes bail payments on behalf of people who are jailed and who otherwise would be unable to afford the bail that buys them their freedom while they await trial or formal charges.

The organization, which was the focus of news coverage and donations during the racial justice uprisings of 2020, is now facing a Republican-led state bill that would make it illegal to operate a nonprofit bail fund in Minnesota.

Darris, who views the entirety of the criminal justice system as problematic, says, “What we have decided to do as an organization was to have a historical view to recognize that many of the policies and practices that we see today have their roots in slavery in the United States.” Given such a framing, he sees it as “an obligation to disrupt those practices, and that’s precisely what we are doing.”

“Our organization isn’t just focused on bail funds,” Darris says. “It’s called the ‘Freedom Fund,’” because that name reflects a “broader definition that takes on the criminal justice system.”

“We are trying to disrupt some of the predatory practices that are happening within bail,” Darris says. “But what we’ve seen is that’s just not enough.”

As a nonprofit, MFF is prohibited from participating in political activism—so it has recently expanded its work into a second organization, a 501(c)(4) organization called MFF Action, whose function will be to “actually take action to put boots on the ground to door-knock within our community to not just support legislation, but to craft legislation.”

“If you can’t change the policies, you change the policymakers, you change the people who will put community at the center of their decision-making,” Darris says.

High on MFF Action’s list of priorities is gaining access to better data. Currently, district courts have limited public access data about who is required to pay bail, which makes it harder for activists to make their case against predatory bail practices.

Additionally, Darris says MFF Action will work to “make sure that bails aren’t being issued on some of the exceedingly low-level offenses that, quite frankly, do not impact public safety in the least bit.”

He says, “Part of the U.S. Constitution is that you cannot be given the bail that is excessive. You have to take into account the person’s ability to pay. [Prosecutors are] not doing that here in Minnesota. And so, we are fighting to make sure that bails aren’t just frivolously being given out.”


Sonali Kolhatkar wrote this article for YES! Magazine.


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A Mississippi-based organization is providing free books to incarcerated individuals to promote literacy and pave the way for prison reform.

Prison book programs have been distributing free books to inmates in the United States since the early 1970s.

Miranda Vaughn, program assistant for the nonprofit Big House Books, said they have been sending books to incarcerated individuals throughout the state since 2014. She explained they collect book donations from the community and supply them to incarcerated individuals upon request. Inmates can request specific titles, authors or literary genres through letters.

"Every person who writes to us gets three books, regardless of whether they ask for 20 or they asked for one," Vaughn noted. "We just send them all three books. They have to be paperback only, and we always ask that they're in good condition. Any time we can send them new books, obviously, we try to do that as well."

Vaughn emphasized they operate mainly on the generosity of individual donors and volunteers. While the organization sometimes receives small grants, its primary source of funding is individual contributions, typically ranging from $5 to $20 per month.

Vaughn added they have not run into any issues so far with the book bans in Mississippi prisons, but some city and county jails throughout the state are a little stricter about what they will accept.

"We are written into the Department of Corrections policy as a book vendor. They have to accept our books," Vaughn stressed. "But some of the local jails and stuff that aren't really under that jurisdiction can pretty much have whatever restrictions they want, and we really can't do anything about it."

Vaughn said this GivingTuesday, they are asking the public to donate more books to help them send 1,000 packages to incarcerated Mississippians. They have a financial goal of $5,000 and she added each package contains three books to educate and transform an incarcerated person in Mississippi.


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Florida lawmakers are being asked to use the winter months to swiftly install air conditioning in prison housing units before the return of scorching summer temperatures.

Ricky Dixon, secretary of the Department of Corrections, told a Senate committee 75% of Florida prison housing currently lacks air conditioning.

Denise Rock, executive director of the advocacy group Florida Cares Charity Corp., a nonprofit working with people who are incarcerated and their families, said she is convinced the sweltering conditions in state facilities ultimately are unsafe. Rock pointed out their concern is lawmakers simply do not see the urgency, or have the will to act, to fix the problem.

"I read someone had mentioned, 'No one has died because of air conditioning.' We've had lots of people pass out, by the way; we have records of lots of people passing out," Rock countered. "You know, cooler temperatures cool people's personality temperatures. That in itself is a reason to provide that air conditioning in those housing units."

Previous legislative attempts to air-condition the prisons have been unsuccessful. Recently, Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, announced House Bill 181, mandating each state correctional institution provide a portable air conditioner or air-cooling system in every prison housing unit. A parallel measure, Senate Bill 296, has been filed by Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville.

With climate change and record summer heat, Rock argued the time is now for lawmakers to find a permanent solution by retrofitting all existing housing facilities with portable air conditioning. She credited the Corrections Department for doing the best it can over the summer.

"Providing cold water and ice in the quads; allowing them to wear shorts in their housing units, which normally they're not all allowed to; providing electrolyte packets," Rock outlined. "But that still was not enough, especially with our aging population."

Rock noted almost one-third of Florida's prison population is age 50 and older, emphasizing the medical need for many to stay cool.

Dixon seemed to endorse the urgency for air conditioning. A consultant's report to senators on Nov. 15 estimated the cost at about $582 million. However, Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Lee County, questioned whether the investment is worth it.


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The lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for Black men has changed significantly from one generation to the next, according to The Sentencing Project's latest report.

In 1981, one in three Black men was likely to be imprisoned at some point in his life. By 2001, the number decreased to one in five.

Nazgol Ghandnoosh, co-director of research for The Sentencing Project and co-author of the report, said the report documents some of the progress in reducing overall levels of incarceration and racial disparities. But at the same time, it underscores there is still a long way to go.

"When we look at the total U.S. prison population, it's declined by 25% since 2009," Ghandnoosh reported. "Mississippi has been reducing its incarceration level as well, by 22%, since it reached its peak in 2008. However, Mississippi has a much higher rate of imprisonment than the rest of the country."

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Mississippi has an incarceration rate of 1,031 per 100,000 people. Ghandnoosh noted Mississippi, along with Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, has an incarceration rate about 50% above the national average.

Ghandnoosh emphasized other states have used strategies including reducing the influx of new inmates and curtailing the length of sentences for those already incarcerated. She urged Mississippi to adopt the strategies to further expedite its progress in reducing its prison population.

"If we want to eliminate racial disparities and incarceration completely, and if we actually want to get U.S. incarceration levels to be more comparable to that of our peer countries, we also need to do something to tackle rates of serious violent crime," Ghandnoosh emphasized. "And that's certainly something that Mississippi needs to do as well."

Ghandnoosh pointed out the importance of directing resources toward short and medium-term initiatives aimed at tackling violence, steering away from overreliance on incarceration and excessive policing. She contended to genuinely mitigate substance-abuse issues and the related criminal activities, it is crucial to advocate for universal access to effective drug treatment.


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