Weekly Update: Massachusetts Bail Fund at St. Paul

First Sunday of Christmas

Happy New Year! Many of us are likely in the midst of making New Year's resolutions or at least thinking about them. I’ve not only been thinking about my goals as a student, but also about what I hope we can do and how we may grow as a community this year. In my few short months with you, we’ve done a lot together! From Animal Blessings and Spiders at Christmas Eve to Luther League and Confirmation to Adult Forums and Coffee hours- the end of the year was a busy one here at St. Paul. Yet, in the midst of all of this, the Adult Forum series on Race caught my attention. Throughout our conversations together, one question seemed to surface most often: what can we do about this?

In our last session, we read some suggestions from one of the book’s authors, Lenny Duncan, about how churches may address racism within their community. Many of these suggestions are ones that leadership will continue to look at throughout the year, but I believe that one of them requires our attention now. One of Duncan’s suggestions is to, “set[ting] up a cash bail fund for those who can’t afford it, who could never afford it, who are living lives designed to never be able to make bail.” It seemed as though Duncan was answering that question that kept coming up: this is something we can do.

Many of us will never need to interact with the criminal justice’s bail system and it’s likely many of us don’t know much about it (which is okay!). While we will be spending more time learning together, simply put, the bail system is designed to ensure that people, who are disproportionately poor and people of color, remain sitting in jail for crimes they have not been convicted of. They may not be able to afford to make their bail themselves or may not have the resources to have their bail paid for them. The longer these individuals spend in jail, the greater chance they have of taking a plea deal, perhaps for a crime they didn't commit, and the greater chance they have of losing their jobs, children, or houses upon release. It’s a complicated, messy, and unjust system.

The Massachusetts Bail Fund reports that there are some people awaiting trial and sitting in jail for months and even years at a time- some whose bail is as little as $50. They also report that nearly 40% of the women who reside at MCI-Framingham, the women’s prison that I volunteer at on Mondays, are pre-trial individuals who only remain there because they can’t afford their bail. But, the Mass Bail Fund is hoping to fix that. The Mass Bail Fund was created to address the inequity of the bail system and provides up to $500 of bail for low-income individuals in Massachusetts.

As part of my internship project I hope to continue to learn more about the bail crisis alongside you, but I also believe that we can help do something about it in the meantime. For the year of 2020, we are committing to taking up a “noisy offering” on the last Sunday of every month. On Sunday, January 26th, I invite you to bring any loose change you may have laying around and to bring it to church to donate to the Mass Bail Fund. I’ll be digging around my car for the coins I’ve tossed in the cup holder, gathering up the change laying in those random bowls around my house, and checking my pockets for any lonely pennies that got left behind. While it may simply be a few coins to me, when we combine our loose change as a community, it can mean freedom for someone who is sitting behind bars because they can’t afford to make bail. The average bail for a minor misdemeanor is just $500 and for every person that is bailed out, 96% return for court, meaning that bail money can recycled for another person.

As we embark on this commitment together, I also invite you to join me at Adult Forum during Education Hour this Sunday. We will be watching a short film together, The Bail Trap, and discussing the ways in which it relates to our calling as Christians. I hope to see you there!

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More about the Massachusetts Bail Fund and how it works can be found here.