It Could Happen HereJames talks to some of the blue ridge bail fund organizers about this they have built and sustained their bail fund .
Paypal.me/blueridgebail
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Hi everyone, it's me today. It's James and I'm joined by Jake Taylor and Azalea and they're all from the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund and we've asked them to come on today. We're recording this on what's it now, the sixth of November twenty twenty three. And the reason we wanted to talk about bail funds today was that we're almost exactly a year out from the election, and we're also in the middle of a massive protest movement against the Israeli bombing of Palestine. I attended a Free Palestine protest today. Lots of you will have attended them over the weekend. Normally, in this kind of current political climate, when people protest about things, or when there are elections, leads to an increased protest movement, which generally leads to more state clap down on the protest movement, which means people getting arrested, which means people get bailed out. And we have like a year until the election, so it's a good time to maybe talk about organizing. To hear from people who have been doing this for a while. Some of you will remember bailfronds through twenty twenty some of you went. Some of you will not be in countries where this is a relevant concept, but I feel think it's a very important one to talk about. So I'd like each of you guys to introduce yourselves, if you could, I.
Can get started. I'm Jake Wiener. This is my second time on. I was previously on talking about a CBP one app and immigrants surveillance of the border. In my day job, I'm a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC. I'm also a UVA logger AD. I've lived in Charlottesville on and off since twenty seventeen, and I've been on the board of the Bail Fund for about a year and a half now.
Yeah. My name is Taylor and I've lived in Charlesto pretty much my whole life for work. I'm a carpenter and I've been on the Bail Fund here since twenty twenty a couple of months. I wasn't here for the start, but joined quickly after it got founded.
And I think, Yeah, I'm Azalea.
I'm a twoall at Uba law I'm originally from Chicago, grew up in a very proud Mexican Mexican American community. I have lived in the Pacific, Northwest, North Carolina, most recently DC, so various cities and places throughout the country.
Nice, excellent, We've got so I think to start off with, just in case we've got folks who are not in the US, or maybe I'm not familiar, can one if you explain to us what bail is?
Yeah. So, in the American legal system, we have a pretty unique concept, which is, after you're arrested for a crime, or if you're detained as an immigrant, you are they going to go in front of a magistrate who will decide whether you get out of jail right now or whether you have to wait. And most countries in the world, that's surely a question of how likely you are to show up to court and how dangerous you might be to the community. Right Obviously, they're not going to let out someone who's just like killed eight people. That seems like it might be a little unsafe. In America, we do things a little differently. In almost every state and almost every municipality, we have cash bail, which means when you go in front of a magistrate, they will decide how much money you need to pay. To get out of jail. And theoretically this is to ensure that you show up to court. So when you go to court, your case gets finalized, then you're going to get that bail money back. For most defenses, bail is really low. We're talking about five hundred one thousand up to maybe five thousand dollars for misdemeanors of a nonviolent felonies. Now, obviously, if you are a person of means, that's really easy to come up with some money, have a family member come post it, or to go get a bail bondsman. If you go to a bail bondsman, they are going to charge you about ten percent of the cost of your bonds. So if you have a five thousand dollars bond, that's about five hundred bucks. You're not going to get that money back, but then you don't have anything out of pocket. But for a lot of people, the criminal legal system mostly arrests people for crimes of poverty and drug addiction. Is that's the majority of people who go through the system. They do not have the money to go get a bail bondsman, which is so we regularly get calls from people who don't have one hundred five hundred dollars to get out of jail. That's where the bail fund comes in. We pay people's bonds, no questions asked.
Nice I'd also like to add that, in addition to a lot of drug charges, a lot of ways that people end up in jail is through traffic stock ups and traffic violations. Something as minor as a back tail light not being fully lit and that then gives officers pays an excuse to proceed from there. So something as simple as you know, you didn't get to go to the mechanic to have your back tail light fixed, can lead to all sorts of issues down the road of ending up at shail, unfortunately in this wonderful country.
Yeah, it's yeah, it's certainly pretty mess to death line, it's good that we have you guys to help kind of while we're working on having a better system, I guess we can make this one a little bit less painful, especially for people who are not people of means. So with your bail fund, perhaps you could explain, like, obviously, some of those better amounts you've posted, even the once you said that were relatively low, there's still a lot of money. So you guys have had the bail fund for three and a bit years now, How did you go about starting a bail fund? And then I guess what are the different roles that ETV plays within it?
Now? Sure I can talk about a little bit how it got started. It got started in twenty twenty. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it's about the spring or the summer, and it was pretty much right around the time, you know, George Floyd got murdered and all the protest was going on. It was started by a group of four or five law students at UVA, and since the founding they've all graduated and moved on to other things. But that was the time when it was it was relatively easy. There was a lot of people donating money, so we were able to raise quite a bit of money at that time. And the way the bonds work is that we paid the bond and then as the case as the person goes through the court system and the case gets finalized, money gets returned to us and we're able to use that money to post bonds again. And so with even a relatively small amount I believe we have now we have forty thousand dollars. We're able to post a lot of bonds, up to nearly two hundred thousand dollars so far in bonds posted, and so that's like it's a self sustaining process. Like it can sometimes take up to a year to get the money back. But instead of you know, paying the money and it being gone forever with the bail bondsmen like, we're able to continuously do this and get a lot done with a little bit of money relatively.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You can keep it moving through the system, I guess. So when you guys like that, you said you had that forty grand, right, where did that come from? How how did you guys obtain that forty grand?
Just donations from individuals pretty much? Yeah, I think, like I think there were some larger donations in the five thousand dollars range from organizations at the time, but and then since then it's kind of trickled in, you know, and I think I've donated my money sometimes it's yeah.
Yeah, it's very important thing. So perhaps you could can you give us a just we get it like get it in at the top the episode, is there a link where people can donate they'd like to.
Yeah, we absolutely need your donations. Bail funds around the country have had fundraising dry up, and right now we have a wait list, like people are in jail because we don't have enough money, So please donate to us. We're on PayPal at PayPal dot me e slash Blue Ridge Bail. We're also on gofund me at Blue Redge Community Bail Fund, and that information is on our Instagram, which is Ridge Bail Nice at Ridge Bail Perfect.
So I think you were talking about that, like a lot of bail funds have dried up since twenty twenty, and I know that, like I've seen that in a lot of places. So there was this real little like growth in organizing in twenty twenty, right, and then obviously there's been like it just people have burnt out, people have been incarcerated in a number of things. It's made that movement hard to sustain. That we don't necessarily need to go into. But what I do want to talk about is like how you guys have been able to sustain your bail fund and keep helping people out and doing this important work. So perhaps you could explain the different roles that people play in a bail fund that people are thinking like, oh, this needs to exist in my community, Like what roles do you have, what kinds of people do you need?
Sure, yeah, I think you know a lot of bill funds can be strectured differently. But the way ours works and we're relatively small, and one of our works is we have a group of six of us that's on the actual board and we handle like the logistics. So I'm the chair, Jake's the treasurer azially as a board member at large, but we all kind of share the same responsibilities, which is we answer the phone, which is one of the biggest parts when people call us either from the jail or from the street, like family members and someone in jail. And then when we get a call, you know, we'll we look up the case, call the jail to find out and then then with the next step is posting the bond. And so we have a list of volunteers that their job is just to go to physically go to the jail with the cash to post the bond and sometimes you know, one of the board members will do there. So so yeah, it can be yeah, and then as far as like keeping the organization running well, Like I said, all the original board members are gone and I've been the longest running member. But we do have a lot of law students, like half our board as law students, and that presents own challenges because they graduate and leave, but it also like brings fresh people into the organization. And then you know me, I live in charlesvillem here forever, which helps kind of continue with the institutional knowledge.
Sure. Yeah, having that longevity I think is important.
And Melissa, Jake and Taylor have done an incredible job sustaining the Bill Fund, and those of us who are law students just kind of come in and out and try to support the best we can and the limited time that we're here. Those of us who the week after the three years, Yeah.
I'm sure it's still very important to have all those people on your time energy commitment. So like, just by existing, right, the bail Fund kind of points out that this is a system that is broken or it certainly doesn't work to serve people. So perhaps we could explain a little bit of that, Like in the absence of a bail fund, how do things look for people who are incarcerated?
Right?
Like what you spoke a little bit about bail bondsman, but like perhaps you could talk about like the amount of bails and people would post for oh, it would be the amount of how it's calculated, like what it would be, and like what that would mean in terms of people being in prison, and like how long they might expect to stay in prison just because it couldn't afford that bail or in being incarcerated. I should not say prism.
I guess, yeah, folks are in jail.
Yeah.
So the one of the cruelest parts of the American criminal justice system from an ill legal system, there's not much justice is that your freedom is contingent on having wealth. So bail is for most offenses, as I've said, is quite low, and it's very not only is it they're difficult to post if you don't have anyone, but it's also you know, people are locked up because they don't have five hundred dollars. We I've gotten calls from people who have literally said, I don't have one hundred dollars and I don't have anyone on the outside, and I've been sitting in jail for three months for sometimes for an offense that when they go to court was maybe only a month of jail time. People routinely will spend six months a year in jail for offenses that their total amount of jail time was a couple months, and you don't get compensated for that. Like if you spend a year in jail for which means that you did eleven months that you didn't have to do, the state doesn't like cut you a check. That's like, hey, we destroyed your life for eleven months for no reason. And one of the things that is just like the most heartbreaking about doing this work but is also sometimes like it makes you feel really good, is the way that caging people just like ruins their lives. It's incredibly hard to talk to people in jail from the outside. It's very expensive. So when you're in jail, you are not talking. You're like not talking to your loved ones. You're not able to sustain a job, you're probably losing housing. It's destroying, you know, the life that you have on the outside. But the flip side is like we've gotten calls from folks who have said, like, hey, you bonded me out and now I got a new job, I got a new place to live, like I'm doing great, which is incredibly meaningful, and Taylor can probably talk a little more about what being in jail is like.
Thank Street. So I think one of the things that like really drew me to this work was like I'm an abolitionist, and but when I was younger, I spent two years in jail. I was twenty three, twenty three to twenty five. I was in jail for selling drugs, and I think, like, yeah, really, that's like something that really motivates me now to do this stuff. It's it's crazy, like Jake said, yeah, we've had people that one guy called and thought that we were a bailbondsman and then found out like on the phone, he's like, oh, I didn't know you guys like would pay my bond for free. It was a five hundred dollars bond, so he would have to pay fifty dollars to a bail bondsman And he didn't call us for several days because he thought he has fifty dollars. So it's like, you know, I like, it's you know, we spent all this time like thinking about like leftist stuff and like, but it's it's eye opening to see people that are stuck in jail, like for a lack of one hundred dollars, you know, like and that's it. Think it out and so I think, yeah, like and then sometimes people call us and they're like, I have nobody. There's nobody out outside that can help them. So it's that kind of stuff. It is upsetting, Like, yeah, it's like crazy to see this like system set up like this, but it's like it's one of the things that like really motivates me to keep doing this work. Is like, man, it's so rewarding when you get those calls. And and also I think to expand as something that Jake said about the bail system, it's like it's the magistrates. When you go in front of the magistry to get the bond. There's no the magsties have no oversight, they're not elected. It's you know, we kind of just joke like it's a vibe based system, like they just can issue a bond for however much they feel like. And so this is where you're really going to see like the structural racism and like the classes and really come crashing down on people, you know, in front of this system.
So yeah, one thing that I'd like to add because I think people don't really realize is so a magistrate is working under a judge. They're basically a judge is like an appointed position or elected. You have to be a lawyer, you have to have a fair amount of legal education. Your magistrate is just some dude, like the most some dude person you've ever met. They have no training required, They have no like legal training requirements. Many of them are like fresh out of the army, may like maybe went to college, maybe didn't. So you're talking about someone who has no particular expertise in evaluating people, looking at someone for a few minutes and deciding how dangerous they are to the community and making up in their head how much that person can probably pay to get out. Yeah.
I spent the summer my first year, after summer after first year of law school at the Lynchburg Public Defender Office, So I got to review a lot of bodycam footage and the way it worked with the magistrate. A lot of the times was that a police officer would give a report, an incident report, read it aloud, swear them in. They'd say, this is true, this is what happened. They would give their full report, and basically that's how it was determined whether bail would be or how much bail would be set to. It was heartbreaking and it was very it happened very quickly, like it was all based on the police officer's report and what they just decided to spew in five minutes or less.
Yeah, that's yeah, it's it's a pretty messed up system. I think some states have like bail guidelines, right, if I'm not mistaken, like I think California has like you know, if you did this, if if you're accused of this offense, and then your bail goes in this bucket, and then you know if it adds up depending on offenses or conspiracy or whatever.
Yeah, that's a really good point. Like the thing about bail is this different like in every state on some states you know have maybe like more progressive quote unquote, yeah, I mean, but some have, some don't.
And yeah, yeah, I was going to say, like California has a reputation being progressive. San Diego has charged some of the most insanely high bail amounts I've ever seen.
Although we all aspire to do what Illinois just did at the beginning of this year, which was to eliminate bail all together. It would just or cash bail all together. It would just be based on whether you can be released or not.
Yeah, that would be nice. It is just to be clear that the bail isn't like it's not like the state keeps the money unless you don't show up. Like it is it a revenue generator for states. Who's just purely like a sort of punitive thing that they think has some kind of value. In that regard, it's purely punitive.
The idea truly is to make sure that you show up to your court case. And in the US it's often used as a prox for dangerousness. So when you're going from a magistrate, you got three options. Number one is you get out on personal recognizance. If you're a nice white boy like me, you're getting personal recognizance almost certainly.
Yeah.
Option two is you're gonna have to pay cash bail, and that amount is decided by the magistrate, as you said, possibly on a schedule, possibly just whatever the magistrate feels like. And then option three is you might get no bond, which is to say that it doesn't matter how much money you have, you're not getting out of jail. And in like a functioning criminal legal system that just on its own terms like worked. This is not an abolitionist perspective. Cash bail is unnecessary. The magistrate should be deciding and the judge should be deciding whether you are a threat to the community or whether you're not, and that should be like the only option. The other thing I'll throw in here is that paying money is not the best way to make sure that people should up the core. There's extensive data from the immigration system and from the legal system that the number one best way to make sure people show up to their courte is to give them an attorney.
Yeah, yeah, which is a whole other thing we can get into with the immigration So I think that's a really good kind of example of some a good deep dive into what bail is. So essentially, like a bail fund can make it so that there is not this financial burden or this financial barrier to freedom. Right, Well, you haven't meaned yet to be convicted of any crime. It's not necessarily like an abolitionist thing to exist, but like it helps at least move us towards a less cruel, a less unjust system, I suppose. So I want to talk about like a little bit of the like nuts and bolts of what it takes to run a bail fund. But before we do that, we are twenty two minutes in so talking thouts and bolts. We need to pay our bills. So this is an advert. It's probably not so that you need here, it is anyway, right, we're back. I hope you've bought whatever it was, MRIs or gone a very good dog, coins or I don't know, Hoover. So let's talk about the that Like, like, if you're listening to this and you're in your car on your way home or whatever time you're listening on a long road trip, you're thinking, I would like to be the person. Maybe you're a law student yourself, or you're formerly incarcerated person, or you've had family members go through the system and you're like, hell, yeah, this shit sucks, and I would like to help make it a little bit less sucky. When you're like, I'm thinking here, when you established a bail fund, like, is it a five oh one C three, do you need like certain like do you I know for five O one C three you need certain people, certain number of people doing certain jobs on your board. That kind of stuff, like what are the like concrete steps that one has to take to go from this sucks to the chair of the bail fund and I can help you.
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. So we are five on one three C five one C three, but we were posting bonds before we had like the official status. So I think truly like all you need is some motivation and some money and there you know, there are bail funds that post ten to fifteen bonds a week, and there's bill funds that post one bond a month because that's all they can do. And I think like as our organization has grown and matured, we've gotten way more organized. And we started out it was it was pretty chaotic and people it was poorly organized, but we were still posting the bonds and I think from day one we've been good about that and so like you can definitely start and you'll learn as we've learned as we go, and you know, we've refined everything. But like I said, it just it takes some motivation and a little bit of money and then maybe JA can talk to them too about the finder details.
Yeah, so I think Taylor's absolutely right. I'm going to give some recommendations that I would say are how to set up your structure in a durable way. But I would also point people the National Bail Fund Network, which can provide resources and advice for this type of thing. Yeah, so basically what you need to run your bail fund is you need a group of people. The load, honestly is just like too much for one person, both emotionally and literally. You need people to share this work with for it to be sustainable. I recommend that you set up a five oh one C three nonprofit. This will help shield your volunteers from legal liability and it means you could take tax deductible donations. The way that you set that up is going to depend on your state. In Virginia, you register it with the State Corporation Commission, which means you need a like president, which is Taylor, and you need a treasurer and then a couple of their potentially a couple of their board members. These are the people who own technically the five oh one C three and you just need those people on your documents. You can use their address, but we recommend that you set up a PO box for getting mail. It just makes things a little easier means you don't have to like hand your personal address over to a magistrate.
Yeah, makes you as doxible as well.
Yes, And I recommend setting up a dedicated bank account and go to a bank that makes it has good hours so that you can readily withdrail with draw cash because you can only postpond in cash, which is its own insanity. So one thing we deal with is like the bank being closed and then having to wait a couple of days, you know, day and a half to be able to post.
Yeah.
We also recommend a Google Voice phone number so that multiple people can receive phone calls at the same time. Right, we can have four people on a Google Voice and that means the if I'm working tailor can answer the phone. We split it up by weeks, so we have a point person each week who is responsible for answering the phone mainly, but that doesn't mean you're the only person who answers that week. It's just sort of you want to be more heads up. You also are going to want a decision making structure. We use a consensus based model, do most of our discussions in a signal thread, but then we also meet about once a month and if we have some issue that comes up, we can meet more often, and you need ideally a way to connect to volunteers. So we've had good luck with the law school, but we're expanding beyond that, you know, trying to be a bit of different institutions in the community and recruit folks to volunteer for us. You want to do some amount of vetting of your volunteers. You know, they should be in an affinity network or have a way that you can ensure that they're not going to walk away with a five grand in cash.
That you hand them.
Doesn't have to be extensive, but it's good to be smart about.
Yeah.
And one thing that we found really helpful is having business cards because that means you can hand it to the magistrate and they can get your address right, they can put you the name of the bail fund down. A problem that we've had is not all magistrates recognizing the bail fund, which but you really want to have a peel box and that business card so that when you get checks back from the court system, they come to a centralized place.
Oh yeah, yeah, and then anyone could drop in and to pust it into the bank account.
And then the last thing that you want is website and a fundraising infrastructure. So as we said at the top, right now we're using GoFundMe and PayPal, but any way that you make this work is great, and we can definitely do better and we'll be expanding. That's basically it. Though it's really not that much, Yeah, but that's great.
I think it's like so often like a thing that I've seen just being sort of on the left in various movements since I was younger. It's like we reinvent the wheel every four or five years, you know. So just having those things that you guys have learned, you know, like using Google Voice and having a bank with good hours, I think that saves someone from having to fall down those same holes again. So that's really valuable. I wonder that, like you talked a little bit about legal liability, which we don't necessarily need to go into, but like there must is there. Like I mean, there have been some obviously heavily politicalized arrests in the last few months in the United States. Do you guys face like personal blowback or blowback against a group when if you're able to bail someone out where their arrest has been heavily reported on or politicized, because that's something people need to be aware of.
I think that's a great question. Where we are, there's really we have a to the bomb for anything that's like political protests related. But there is a bail fund that's about an hour away, much bigger than ours, that in twenty twenty eight was doing like every night bail support jail support. So yeah, that's like an example of you know, just way different bailpunes operate. And then so basically we have not ever faced any kind of political blowback or any issues, but it's definitely something that we're prepared. We think about because it can't happen. There's badline in story, and there's definitely cases around the country where like prosecutors have taken aim at bail funds. You know, Atlanta of course was a really really yeah big one, but they think so yeah, everything to.
Add maybe, yeah, I will say that it's certainly a possibility that your bail fund becomes the target of both like institutional and like a kind of right wing moral panic. These things happen, It's I think relatively unlikely, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared for it, and I think that when you kind of address that, and if you end up in the media or getting heat for it, the most important thing that you can do is reflect the fact that the bail fund is not responsible for what happens when people get out, because we don't decide if you're getting out of jail. We will work on a first come, first serve basis. When someone calls us, we post their bail, no questions asked. And that's because there's already been a decision of whether this person is safe to be released, and that decision is made by the magistrate.
Yeah, so any.
Responsibility falls on the criminal legal system, it does not fall on us. I think it's important to say that you never hear this blowback coming towards bail bondsman, even though they get out way more people and more dangerous people than we do.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's definitely the case. So I wonder, like, what other issues you have faced hardships and you spoke about a couple of them, are there other things like that you've I know, for instance, like i've obviously as part of my reporting, or maybe not obviously, but some people apparently don't bother to do it. But I communicate with incarcerated people when they'm writing about them because it seems like a reasonable thing to do, and I am very aware of how annoying, expensive, time consuming, and just generally totally inadequate the system is of communication with people, even people who are not convicted of any crime. So I don't know if that's something you've encountered, if there are other sort of hardships that you guys have had to deal with, perhaps if there are ways you've worked out to get around them or to at least make them less difficult, then that would be great people to hear too.
The communication thing is a huge problem, yeah, exactly. You know, most of the calls we get are from people that are acturr in the jail and they can only call us and we cannot call them. So you know, they call us and we have to just say okay, like you need to call back in a couple of hours, and then you know, they have lockdowns, they can't get to the phone, all sorts of things. So the worst I mean, yeah, they probably one of the worst things that ever happened was someone called and I called the jail, and the jail was like, oh, they can be released today. And so the guy calls back and I'm like, hey, man, you're going to get released today. We're going to have a volunteer go out and post this bond, Like you don't need to call me back, Like if you want to, you can, but it's it's all rolling right, yeah, And then I call the jail to triple check everything, and they say, oh, you know, we have to hear back from the court. The court has to approve this, and they're like closing in thirty minutes, so it's not going to happen today. And so now like I have no way to call this guy and tell him that he's actually not going to get out today because of a bureaucratic issue, and I just have to wait until he just like can't take anymore. And then calls And that was really unpleasant situas it's really unfortunate, and you know, he was not happy. He was not happy, and I mean, you know, he took a little bit out on me, but it wasn't a case of him actually be mad at me.
You know.
I think that's something that's really cool, is like no one we deliver bad news all the time, you know, we say you can't get out because of X Y Z. And no one's ever like actually mad at us. You know, they might be like annoyed for a second because you know, I'm on the phone delivering the bad news, but every time at the end they're like, thanks so much, like I appreciate you. So we haven't had any like I mean, yeah, I think nothing really super negative has happened. It's just like you said, the communication huge problem. When it's family members going from not in jail, it's a little more easy to deal with. You can call them back.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll jump in on communication just for a minute. Yeah, because this is an issue that I work on at my day job.
Yeah.
The paid prison phone system is one of the worst parts of American life. It is incredibly expensive to call people, and the phone systems work really poorly, and they're actually getting worse. So for us, like the main jail that we work with, Middle River Regional Jail, used to use a phone provider called GTL who is one of the biggest in the country, and that was pricey, but like we could reliably get calls. They just switched over to a different provider who makes money in a different way. They provide tablets to the prison, and as a result of that, all our phone calls are now made coming from the prison like social room on a tablet, which means sometimes it's too loud to hear the person calling, and about fifteen percent of the time the call just drops when you pick it up. So the system makes it really difficult to correspond with people. Result, a couple of things that we do are sharing the phone responsibility. Not promising people things when we can't deliver them is super important, and like that's mostly a problem because the phone system works so badly and we can't communicate with people. And then the biggest thing is like giving yourself grace when you miss the phone when something goes wrong, because it's emotionally very taxing to know that someone desperately wants to speak with you because they're potentially at the worst point in their entire life and need to get out, and you've missed a phone call. So it's, yeah, it's really important to be kind to yourself in those situations.
Yeah, yeah, you went to stick around.
And one more thing that I was surprised to find out about the phone system is how much recording and reviewing of recording goes on through those phone calls. I witnessed so many prosecute commonwealth attorneys bring up something from phone calls when folks were actually in trial or for sentencing hearings or this is later down the road. But the fact that they could pull up those recordings from a year before, two years before they were calling a loved one, a family member, just incredible. How much access there is to that and lack of privacy.
Yeah, yeah, it's very dehumous.
I gotta jump in on that. Yeah, you end up in jail, do not say anything about your case on the phone. Oh and don't talk to the guards about why you're innocent, because I've seen that people do that. It's not good advice. Don't do it. Don't talk about the case ever.
Yeah. One way that we address that is by telling people upfront that we postpond no questions asked, and like telling people like, it doesn't matter what your situation is, where if we have the money and you can get out, we're gonna post Yeah.
Yeah, Yeah, it's not your job to adjudicate, Like you said, if someone's safe or unsafe, or innocent or guilty. That that's what the state purported to be doing, Like your job is just to make sure that someone's not too poor to be free. So on the subject of like the sheer finances are they, I know, like certainly here I've seen and I have no idea what the sort of I know San Diego does have. California has these bail guidelines so that they can't just set whatever bail they want. But like in twenty twenty, we saw some sky high bails and I don't know if it was just because it was like fucky mail fund of it, it was just because that was what the guidelines allowed, or some combination thereof. But do you guys have a Like we can't because if you said you're dealing with forty thousand, right, like, if you drop ten thousand on one individual, that obviously means that there are a lot of people with five hundred dollars who can't have to stay in jail. So do you have like a cap on your individual bail amounts for that reason? Yeah?
Tailold you want to take.
This, Yeah, yeah, so yeah, we have a cap. We pay up to five thousand dollars, So five thousand dollars or less and that Yeah, it's exactly what you said. Like otherwise, you know, we would be totally broke an out of money, and even you know, two five thousand dollars bonds in a row, and then you know, yeah, we're pretty screwed. So and then I think that's a you know, it brings up something else, that jig and we're talking about like it's we have it's important to stick to that limit if we one time we posted a bond up to twelve thousand dollars for somebody, and you know, I think it was a combination of many factors that led us to do that. But at the end of the day, it can be very hard just to tell someone no. Because it was like he had a five thousand dollars bond and then separate court, I got another one and so it was you know, we already told him to pay the one bond. Anyway, long story is short, We had twelve thousand dollars tied up on this guy and then he didn't show up to court. And if that's that's when you can lose the money, then people don't show up to court, so as well, Yeah, fortunately for us, Unfortunately for him, he did get re arrested on another charge and when that happens, there's like a ninety day period where if the person gets caught, then we get the money back. And that's where like we are prints. Our policy is like we're not going to do anything if the person runs, like we're not going to do anything to try to get it back. We're not going to revoke anybody's bond. But like a billboonbsman might try to like find you if you run. Yeah, but so are kind of our joke was kind of like, well, we hope that we hope the guy just gets away completely, but if he's not going to get away, maybe get caught with any days.
Yeah, But the best thing is if people would contribute and donate, we could be able to allocate for so many more people and not have people spend time in jail where things like mental health conditions worsen because prison guards are and jail guards are not paying attention, where you don't have access to an attorney easily, where when you show up to your.
Day in.
Court, you don't have an orange jumpsuit on, and that's not factoring into the judge's mind. So please please donate for all those reasons to our built fund.
Yeah, if we have more money. That's something we talked about a lot of times. If we have more money, we would be able to raise the on the on out we could post, but it's just not feasible right now.
In terms of donation, it's a great thing. I was just thinking, like good because it keeps going around and around and around. Right, It's not like you know, you give a donation once and you get someone a thing and you change their life, like you could potentially change dozens of hundreds of people's hold true Digg tree.
Yeah, absolutely cool.
Yeah, and I will add on how we address our lack of funds. The other system that we have in place is a weight list. So people call us and we can tell them, hey, you're on the wait list. They'll call back all the time and be like, hey, if I moved up the wait list. Sometimes people call it multiple times a day and they're like, oh, any movement my number four? Now this is kind of wild. But having the wait list and we go like in strict weight list order, with the exception that if someone has an under five hundred dollars five hundred dollars or less, we'll just post that because if we're sitting around waiting for someone to get money back from the courts. For a five thousand dollars bond, that's next in line, we could have forty five hundred bucks. And so for the super low bonds where the issue is like purely purely poverty, we make an exception. But you run into that kind of ethical question all the time running the bill phone, like how do we make the best decisions? It's going to help you know people in the best way and then accords with our values the most that can get pretty heated and intense. And having a setup of folks where like you really respect each other and like each other, I think is really important to not let that spire out of control. It helps that, you know, Taylor and Melissa and I have been friends for many years and we can like hang out and talk about this and then like Taylor and I can go out and go for a bike ride.
Nice.
So having those relationships I think is really important.
Yeah.
Yeah, And don't get too competitive over board games like wings when somebody wins and still being able to talk at the end of that.
It seems like a direct experience. One then.
We are an abolitionist like principles, you know, and but I think almost like you know, I've talked one of their builtments that I know of. They have some sort of system I'm not super familiar with, like prioritizing someone that maybe they consider to be higher risk in the prison system to get out first, and I think that that's a really a really appealing thing. But it's it's just like kind of Jake touched on earlier, Like that's just adding like another layer of judgment, Like then we become these like arbiters of who is in jail and who's not in jail and as much and so like almost almost counterintuitively, like having this system first come, first serve, I think is like the most abolitionist thing we can do.
Yes, I can see that. Yeah, yeah, and it certainly reduces a load on you and making most difficult choices, which.
It helps with that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we were talking about the system, and like I want to bring that up because the system is like you know, I cover not a lot of criminal justice, but a decent bit, and it is incredibly confusing. It's convoluted. It's like they've got these old ass names that you don't understand, and then the Ghiara and Virginia, so you have a whole other layer of weird stuff going on, like with names and so. Like if someone's thinking of something this and they're like, I want this to happen, but I do not understand how to navigate this system? Does that mean that they need someone with a little more legal experience? Like can you explain how as like someone who isn't Obviously some of both, at least two of you have. I suppose all of you have some experience with the legal system in one way or another and understand it a little better because of that. But if someone has been fortunate enough not to have to interact with the criminal law system, are they like do they need a law student or a lawyer to start a bail fund or like how does one go about learning to navigate that system?
I suppose yeah, they definitely not. You do not need to have legal experience. I think it was kind of a just a random chance that it was a law of students that found in this one. Basically, like you said, it's extremely confusing system and the only way you're going to learn how it all works is just by going and posting the bonds, Like the system is possible, Like the bond system we're just like a family member going to post someone's bond, So like it's set up and then it is possible for like your loved one to post your bond. And we just started off the experience. You know, you just go, you call it. You would just call the jail and say where do I post this bond and they'll tell you. You know, you come to the magistrate. This is where the magistrates is located. And then you know, you go with the cash and post, and like there will be every like we work in. It's ten courts, five different jurisdictions, and then you each have two court systems, and I swear almost every single court does things somewhat differently. And the way we just get on the phone and call them, you know, be really polite, just figure it all out and write it down so that we know in the future.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I'll tell you.
Like you can learn these systems over time, and that's really worth doing because in a moment of crisis, like mass arrests during a protest movement, knowing how to navigate the system in a quick and reliable way is really valuable. It makes it way easier to get people out. And so I would like pitch even if you don't feel really strongly about getting people out of jail, but you want to be helpful in a time of crisis, Like learning the legal system as a non lawyer is doable. I will also say that, like, you don't learn how to do this stuff in law school. I didn't learn how to post a bond, how to like file a KPIST any of this crazy stuff that we have to do. Virginia is truly like one of the worst states in the country. I talked to a public defender who's worked in courts and Louisiana and was like, yeah, a Virginia court system is worse and more unfathomable, which is not if you know anything about New Orleans legal system is not great, but you can you know, you can learn an incredible amount and then that skill just becomes valuable in a number of different areas. One of the most powerful ways that you can help people is even when you're not able to postpond for them, knowing how to look up someone's case, tell them what their charges are, tell them what is happening to them is incredibly helpful. Because the majority of people we talk to have some idea of why they're in jail, but they don't know the details, and that means that they don't know like why they're not getting out, and just being able to give people a little bit of certainty is really important.
Yeah, I think that's a very valuable thing you can do. And yeah, I think this whole thing has been a very valuable insight into how to build a mail fund, I guess, And is there anything else do you guys think that we didn't cover in the grand scheme of being bail friend entrepreneurs. I don't know what the right phrase is that bail fund found.
Is just the importance of making sure to be rooted in the community. I think that's going to be the best way, not only to fundraise in the long term, because you can have even five dollars if it's reoccurring from some community members. You get to know what's happening, what's something that's a reoccurring problem throughout the community, and just making sure to listen to that and to be able to navigate going forward.
I think one thing that I think is I found so interesting about doing this bill fund is that it spans it really crosses completely or even like I would say it transcends politics. Like I think that all of the board members are in here politically motivated, you know, we're abolitionists or you know, against the current court system. But the people's lives, like across every political spectrum have been ruined by prison in jail. And I think one time, like I think the most interesting example that Billy drove his home was I was at work. I was at the lumber yard, you know, and I think, you know the people, the salesman at the lumber yard, I think they would follow them more if I was going to stereotype them, I would say, to you on the conservative side. And the one guy, the salesman was he had heard about that I did this. I think he saw Facebook that posted about it and he was like that is He's like, this is just the coolest thing ever, man, Like I think it's so awesome, you know, Like he's like people are just locked up for like bullshit and yeah, and I think, you know, we've had volunteers that I think people were like knew him or like why. I think he's like almost like a Republican and just going out and posting these bonds and I think that it's uh, like I said, Yeah, it's just fascinating that it does transcend. It transcends the politics a little bit.
Yeah, I think anyone who's had to interact with the criminal justice system, I like, I haven't a chucte with the American one, but like, if they've had in their family, if they've had it in there, you know, and their friend group or whatever, realizes how dehumanizing and unjust it it is. And especially like if they're working people, right, they are not people of massive means, They'll have seen how how hard it can weigh. And you're trying to come up with money to bond someone out who you care about, even if they'd end up not being found guilty, and so like, it can be a very broad based thing, and I think it's certainly something that like I saw a lot of people giving money to bailfund's in twenty twenty, who look, I may not have you know, they weren't necessarily people who are also out in the streets. Like it's a way for people to be part of a movement. It's a way for people to who feel that like this is unjust, even if yeah, they might not share abolitionist politics or whatever. I think it's something that a lot of people would want to get behind.
Yeah, I'll say that. For me, the most meaningful part of this work is having the opportunity to treat people with dignity when they are in a system that absolutely gives them no dignity. The police do not treat people with dignity, the judges in the courts do not treat people with dignity, and your jailers are not going to treat you with dignity. So having the opportunity to answer a phone and be kind to someone, to listen to them, and to do small things for them. Call their family, let their family know that they're locked up, let their family know that someone is working on getting them out. Oftentimes I will get a call from someone and we aren't able to post, but I can call their mom and talk their mom through getting a bail Bondsman. I've had people like cry on the phone with me because they've said I felt so helpless not being able to get my son out of jail, and getting a call from you made a huge difference. So I think, I just like, if you can do this, you can get together with your friends and form a bail fund and in a really concrete way improve their lives and treat them with dignity, and that's such a radical thing.
Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, right, so I think the wrap up, we should bet, we should again remind people where they can give you their money. So how would people go about doing that?
Yeah, please do, please don't it to the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund. We are on PayPal at PayPal, dot me slash blue Ridge Bail. Ridge is ri dge. We're on GoFundMe. You can find us on of the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund. We are on Instagram at Ridge Bail and we also have a website, Blue Ridge Bailfund dot org.
I think so you can google Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund will show up. And yeah, if anybody is interested in starting a bail fund and wants to ask us any questions like please do, we would love to talk about it.
We've learned a lot through just reaching out to other bail funds, even if they're not in the state of Virginia, of how they reformed, what worked for them, what didn't. Just having a thirty minute conversation gives sometimes wonderful ideas on how to go forward.
That's great, Thank you so much. Guys, I think that's pretty good. Anything else you want to share before we go? I think we're good at Thanks so much, Thank you for having us.
Thanks.
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