A national effort helping to bail poor and low-income people out of jail formally announced on Tuesday its expansion into the Deep South. “ Bail Out the South ” is the next phase of the Bail Project’s plans to secure freedom for thousands of people over the next few years, organizers told The Associated Press.
Although larger criminal legal systems throughout the country have begun doing away with cash bail for certain low-level, nonviolent offenses, the South continues to have the highest jail incarceration rates and the starkest racial disparities among those imprisoned pretrial. “When I think about our work around social justice and racial justice, you simply can’t talk about those issues without dealing with what’s happening in the