Join the Close the Jail ATL Campaign and our partners at Southerners on New Ground and the Southern Center for Human Rights in City Hall on Tuesday, September 25th at 3pm to defend our hard won reforms achieved six months ago through the community organizing efforts of the End Money Bail Coalition. Bail reform was one of the key policy victories that helped reduce the population inside the extra city jail and move us down the path to our ultimate goals: to close the jail and repurpose the facility into something our communities actually need, reallocating the money to community-based services like mental healthcare, jobs, housing, and other social services to keep our communities safe.
JOIN US TO DEFEND BAIL REFORM!
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25th 3:00pm Atlanta City Council Committee Room
On Tuesday, City Councilmembers will review the progressive reforms that ended the policies that created a debtor's prison out of the Atlanta City Detention Center. Join us as we speak out to defend these reforms and support our partners at Southerners on New Ground and the Southern Center for Human Rights who will be unveiling their findings about the progress to date, despite the fact that the city has refused to provide the data needed to evaluate the reform’s implementation and impact.
Criminalizing poor people has never made us safer. In fact, it has only served to drain taxpayer money, separate families, and drive people further into poverty. With Black communities making up the vast majority of those targeted for arrest on minor offenses through racial profiling, rates of unemployment already nearly twice that of white people in Atlanta, and 80% of Atlanta's Black children living in communities with high concentrations of poverty, the disproportionate impact of money bail on Black communities is appalling.
Ending cash bail is about ending the practice of locking people up simply because they are poor. But while the city holds people in cages for jaywalking or drinking in public because they cannot afford a $1,000 bail, they meanwhile waste $32.5 million taxpayer dollars each year just to hold them- that's $32.5 million dollars that could be spent to make our communities thriving and whole again.
Join us as we speak out to defend bail reform and demand that Atlanta continue on the path of progressive reforms, including following through on the plan to close the Atlanta City Detention Center, repurposing it into a facility that serves the people, and diverting the funds saved back into our communities.