The Montana Innocence Project highlights the important work of like-minded organizations. Today, we are sharing the work of the Bail Project. The Bail Project is a national nonprofit organization that aims to combat mass incarceration by disrupting the cash bail system. They provide free bail assistance to thousands of low-income Americans every year, while also advocating for holistic pretrial system reforms.
Check out our Q&A with the Bail Project’s Riley Pavelich, who serves as a Bail Disrupter for their local branch on the Flathead Reservation. Read below for more information about their important work.
Q: Can you begin by introducing yourself and your role at The Bail Project?
A: I’m Riley Pavelich, and I’ve been a Bail Disruptor for The Bail Project on the Flathead Reservation since October 2022. The Bail Project is a national nonprofit that provides free bail assistance and pretrial support to thousands of low-income people every year, while advancing policy change at the local, state, and national level. It is on a mission to combat mass incarceration by eliminating reliance on cash bail and demonstrating that a more humane, equitable, and effective pretrial system is possible. Since 2018, The Bail Project has supported 30,000 clients nationally who have returned to 91% of their court dates, laying waste to the idea that cash bail is a necessary incentive to ensure a person’s future court appearance.
As a Bail Disruptor, I have the privilege of helping people who are detained pretrial get back to their lives and fight their cases from a position of freedom. Of course, simply relieving the financial burden of bail on community members is not necessarily enough to ensure their future success within the criminal justice system. Subsequently, we work closely with our clients, their families, and community service partners to make sure that clients have awareness of their future court dates, transportation to court and access to resources that address the underlying issues that may have led to their justice-involvement in the first place. I was attracted to this line of work by a desire to contribute meaningfully to the community where I was born and raised.
Q: For those who know nothing about the bail system, what is it and how does it typically work?
A: Cash bail is a part of our pretrial system – the period after someone has been arrested for a crime, but has yet to have a trial. A judge or magistrate will typically assign a monetary amount for bail post-arrest as a condition for someone’s release. The person who has been arrested or their loved ones can pay bail to secure their release – and if they come back to court when they’re supposed to, they’ll get their money back. Many people go to for-profit bail bonds agents who charge expensive fees and often force people into predatory financial agreements. Even people who are found innocent at the end of their cases do not get their money back from these companies.
While cash bail was originally designed to encourage people to come back to court for their trial, it’s often used as a form of punishment against people who are still legally innocent. It creates a two-tiered system where people who are wealthy can pay and get released, while people who are poor are incarcerated, which upends the presumption of innocence.
Q: Can you tell me more about your work specifically as a bail disruptor?
A: In my role as a Bail Disruptor, I am combating, on a local level, the predatory for-profit bail bonds industry that preys on people who cannot afford to pay bail. I do this by screening people who are detained pretrial, interviewing them to find out their needs, and once we’ve provided bail assistance with them, I try to help them return to their court dates and access the services they need. I ensure that they receive things like court notifications and travel assistance to and from court. When people work with us, they don’t have to pay anything, and they return to the vast majority of their court dates. My job helps to protect families and individuals from the financial and emotional damage caused by these defacto fines levied against folks who are already struggling economically, and in no way reflect the presumption of innocence or the idea of justice for all.
Q: What are some of the flaws of the bail system generally?
A: The cash bail system creates a two-tiered system of justice: one for the rich, one for the poor. If you’re wealthy, you can be released into your community and are treated as innocent until proven guilty. But if you’re in poverty, you’re effectively guilty until innocent, and forced to languish in dangerous, inhospitable jail conditions, meanwhile facing a heightened risk of job loss, residential insecurity, and a worsening of behavioral health conditions.
Cash bail is the single biggest driver of incarceration in America, filling jails with people who are accused of crimes, but not yet convicted. We need to reimagine this system from the ground up, and ending cash bail is a first and necessary step in that direction. Bail reform and reducing the use of cash bail means that public safety, not wealth, determines who is released pending trial.
Q: Can you speak to how the bail system can be particularly harmful to someone who is innocent and wants to maintain their innocence?
A: Pretrial incarceration is really harmful – even 48 hours behind bars can have negative consequences on housing, employment, and future justice-system involvement. In order to avoid the dismal conditions of jail, many feel their only way to return to their communities is to take a plea deal, even when they believe they’re innocent. In fact, A 2018 study in Delaware found that pretrial detention increases a person’s likelihood of pleading guilty by 46%.
Everyone deserves the right to a trial where they can have the chance to prove their innocence. This is a right that is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In ending cash bail – and removing one of the motivations for taking a plea deal – we can ensure a fairer criminal justice system.
Q: Can you tell me about the work your project does at a local and national level?
A: We’ve worked in dozens of locations across the United States to provide free bail assistance to thousands of legally innocent people each year who don’t have enough money to secure their freedom. Through our model of Community Release with Support, we provide court notifications and free transportation to court. We also help our clients navigate voluntary supportive services like substance use recovery and housing based on their needs.The result is that our clients return to 91% of their court dates even though they have no money on the line. This is powerful evidence that bail is not what makes people come back to court. We also work with system stakeholders like judges and government officials to advance policy reforms at the local, state, and national level so that we can create lasting changes in the pretrial system.
Q: What are the advocacy efforts of your project?
A: At The Bail Project, we’re advocating for better policies that create a pretrial system that is more just, equitable, and humane. Many states and jurisdictions are reconsidering the role of cash bail in their pretrial systems and proposing smart legislation to minimize its role because it’s bad policy. We work with policymakers and coalitions of advocates and activists to ensure that the most effective legislation has a chance.
In Montana, for example, we are working on educating the public about the negative effects of the cash bail system and presenting a different and successful model as an alternative. We are working with our clients to share their stories before the Montana legislature for the 2025 session. In Michigan, for instance, we’re advocating for a bipartisan package of bills, House Bills 4655-4662, that would bring comprehensive change to the pretrial system in the state – including a uniform pretrial decision-making framework; guarantee due process protections for people charged with a crime; and the right to speedy trials. And in Oklahoma, we’re advocating for a state-wide, uniform system of data collection and reporting so that policymakers can better understand the people incarcerated in the state and make informed, evidence-based decisions.
Q: What type of services do you provide?
A: The Bail Project has branches with community-based teams of client advocates. Families, community members, public defenders, and local partners refer people in need of bail assistance to The Bail Project. We interview those referred to our program, assess their needs, and contact their support network. On the Flathead Reservation, specifically, we work closely with the Tribal Defender’s Office, the Reentry Program, CSKT Tribal Health, and other community service providers to connect with wraparound legal and social services to our clients. If we decide to offer assistance, we do so at no cost to them or their families. Once our clients are free, we provide them with court notifications, transportation assistance, and help them navigate voluntary social services and community-based resources based on their identified needs.
Besides these direct services, we have staff members dedicated to advocacy and system change efforts, be that legislative advocacy, narrative change, media engagement, and other different engagement strategies.
Q: Can you tell me more about the way that racial and class disparities play a role in the bail system?
A: Your readers will be aware that our criminal justice system treats people of color more harshly than white people at every step of the way. This includes our pretrial system and cash bail in particular. People of color are more likely to receive higher bail amounts as well as have longer lengths of stay in jail. At The Bail Project, as of December 2023, 71% of our nearly 30,000 clients are Black, Indigenous, or a person of color.
Native Americans are overrepresented within Montana’s jails and prisons, and spend more time in prison on average than their white counterparts for the same conviction. It’s likely that many of these convictions stem from people accepting plea deals in order to expedite the criminal justice process and get back to their lives, or are the result of them succumbing to cash bail amounts that didn’t take into account a defendant’s ability to pay. The system just does not work the same for poor people as it does for rich people. When you have money to pay, you get to preserve your rights to pretrial liberty; when you don’t have that money – and many people don’t – then those rights don’t matter. It’s much easier to advocate on your own behalf, collect documentation and evidence to support your case, and contribute meaningfully to your own defense when you are operating from a place of freedom and not kept behind bars.
Q: What are some of the other ways that the cash bail system harms public safety?
A: Pretrial incarceration actually makes our communities less safe. When people are incarcerated, they are torn from their communities and their lives are destabilized almost immediately. Incarceration exacerbates the root causes of most crime, which are often poverty, drug addiction, and mental health crises. Being held in jail is corrosive to folks’ self esteem, sense of identity and undermines the overall progress that they’ve achieved in their lives.
I’ve seen people who are involved in a Medically Assisted Treatment Program (prescribed substances like suboxone or methadone that help wean people off of harmful substances) who do not have access to those services while in custody and therefore lose the progress they’ve made in their sobriety. Another situation that often arises is when people are arrested for failure to pay restitution or failure to obtain a license (both of which require money) and then lose their jobs as a direct result of the time they spent detained.
Q: What results have you seen in the course of your work?
A: Nationally, we’ve supported nearly 30,000 people who have returned to 91% of their court dates, which is powerful evidence of how unnecessary bail is. At least one-third of those clients have their cases dismissed, which means, absent our intervention, they would have been unnecessarily incarcerated. On the Flathead Reservation, we have been able to post bail 120 times for clients presumed innocent and return them to their lives, their families, and their communities and they’ve also returned to 91% of their court dates. We have also worked closely with the Flathead Reentry Program and other local services to get our clients the help that they want, such as in-patient substance treatment, employment, housing, transportation and counseling. I’ve seen our clients develop more confidence in dealing with the criminal justice system because they know that they have an advocate who believes and cares about them.
Q: Why should innocence advocates care about reforming the cash bail system?
A: The cash bail system increases the likelihood that people plead guilty just to go home, even when they’re innocent, largely because it inserts economic and psychological stress at the very onset of someone’s case. Cash bail, like wrongful convictions, exposes the fundamental flaws and injustices of our criminal justice system. The cash bail system is a misadministration of justice, as are wrongful convictions. In order to build a better system that serves just ends, we need to understand how each leg of the current system compromises fairness and equality.
Q: Speaking to an audience of people who care about wrongful and unjust convictions, what else would you like them to know about this topic?
A: I would like people who care about wrongful convictions to understand that a great way to combat the miscarriage of justice is to attack it at the source: that’s by beginning with the two tiered system of justice is the cash bail system. I also think innocence advocates understand the importance of data in showing the scale of the problem at hand and its consequences. One of the challenges in our work is the gaps in the data that we have when it comes to the pretrial system. There is little data and reporting on those who pay bail for their release and their subsequent court outcomes. Part of our larger work at The Bail Project is evidence gathering: we’re building a national evidence base that gets us closer to seeing the entire picture of cash bail, in the full light of day.
Q: What are some ways people can get involved in advocating for a better bail system in their communities?
A: You can take action by reading more about our work at www.bailproject.org, or donating to The Bail Project. We use a revolving fund to help people caught up in the cash bail system – and donations are used directly to secure the release of people who would otherwise be forced to languish in jail because of unaffordable cash bail, and then recycled after people return to court and their cases are disposed of. In advance of the coming legislative session, people can also call their local politicians and voice their support for bail reform.