By Souzveen Mekael ’26
A cash bail is a fee that an arrested person has to pay to allow them to leave jail and make sure that they will arrive at court for their trial. Rafiq Shaw, a black man from East Baltimore, got arrested because he accidentally walked by a house where the police were getting ready to raid. His bail was $100,000 which was then negotiated to $10,000 but he still could not afford it, so he paid $2,000 upfront and paid $100 each week to try and make it up (Kim). Cash bails criminalize poverty, separate families, and make freedom depend on an individual’s wealth, so cash bails should therefore be illegal.
Criminalizing poverty is when a poor person has to face harsher consequences compared to wealthy people for the same actions. When it comes to cash bail, “You’ll have cases where a wealthy person can go free, but an innocent, poor person could not, and that’s not justice,” said Illinois state Sen. Elgie Sims Jr. (Wydra). Letting wealthy people pay the bail and leave while keeping disadvantaged people incarcerated violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that no person or group can be denied the same rights as another person or group.
Cash bails not only are unconstitutional, but they also have the effect of separating families. The burden of having to pay the bail stresses families out and creates problems which makes it even harder to create a solution (Preston). Rafiq Shaw only makes $10.15 an hour installing trailer hitches for U-Haul, so he was forced to rely on his fiance and mother to help pay the bail. In the article “Time to Abolish Cash Bails” Anne Kim writes, “But it bothered him that his mother is paying the bondsman, and it was a clear source of tension between his mother and [his fiance] Destiny. In a speakerphone call while I was there, Shaw’s mother and his fiancée started disputing who paid what and how much. ‘You see what bail does to a family?’ Shaw said” (Kim). Trying to pay the bail creates problems between family members and makes it even harder for people to pay the bail and extinguish the problem. People who are in pre-trial detention also have a higher chance of losing their house and their job, and if they have a family that depends on them. Where would they go, how would they survive?
A person’s freedom should not depend on their wealth. In the United States of America, we use the phrase “innocent until proven guilty,” so why are “innocent” people kept in jail because of their lack of wealth? The majority of people kept in pre-trial detention are held because they can not pay the cash bail. “SMART JUSTICE – ENDING CASH BAIL,” wrote about this issue and informed us that, “62 percent of people held in jail have not been sentenced, the majority of these people, who should be presumed innocent, are held because they cannot pay cash bail.” More than half of the people incarcerated are stuck just because they do not have the financial means to leave.
Rafiq Shaw is a perfect example of the country criminalizing poverty, separating families, and making one’s freedom depend on their wealth. Shaw had to pay a $10,000 bail when he could barely afford life necessities showing the idea of criminalizing poverty. Shaw’s fiance and mother’s relationship also started to get tense resulting in the separation of families, and Shaw’s freedom depending on his ability to pay the bail shows the idea of freedom depending on one’s wealth.
Works Cited
ACLU Pennsylvania. “SMART JUSTICE – ENDING CASH BAIL.” 2024, https://www.aclupa.org/en/smart-justice-ending-cash-bail#:~:text=Cash%20bail%20leads%20to%20wealth,of%20fairness%20and%20constitutional%20principles. Accessed 30 April 2024.
Kim, Anne. “Time to Abolish Cash Bail.” Jan/Feb 2017, https://research.ebsco.com/c/kxu3cf/viewer/html/tuadcw6ibr?auth-callid=c1cf2e95-7b06-9237-b991-774816d1c215. Accessed 02 May 2024.
Kolhatkar, Sonali. “CASH BAIL IS UNFAIR AND VIOLATES DUE PROCESS.” otherwords, 13 March 2024, https://otherwords.org/cash-bail-is-unfair-and-violates-due-process/. Accessed 02 May 2024.
Preston, Allie. “The Case for Cash Bail Reform.” CAP 20, 9 August 2023, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-case-for-cash-bail-reform/#:~:text=Cash%20bail%20is%20a%20source,the%20resources%20to%20afford%20necessities. Accessed 2 May 2024.
Preston, Allie. “5 Ways Cash Bail Systems Undermine Community Safety.” CAP20, 3 November 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-ways-cash-bail-systems-undermine-community-safety/#:~:text=The%20burden%20of%20paying%20cash,partners%2C%20and%20larger%20community%20networks.&text=Paying%20cash%20bail%20disrupts%20the,risk%20of%20crime%20and%20. Accessed 2 May 2024.
Wydra, Elizabeth B. “The pros and cons of ending cash bail.” The US Constitution, 30 March 2023, https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/the-pros-and-cons-of-ending-cash-bail/. Accessed 02 May 2024.
The Raider Press 