Community bail funds raised a record $75 million since the George Floyd protests began, but leaders say paying everyone's bail is 'not the goal'

• Community bail funds across the US received a total of approximately $75 million in donations in the wake of protests over George Floyd's death in Minneapolis.
• Bail funds, like the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which received about $35 million — the most donations of any US bail fund — work to free people from pretrial detention who can't afford bail and in total free about 10,000 people each year.
• While the Minnesota Freedom Fund sparked controversy for announcing it used a fraction of the $35 million to pay bails related to protests, the organization told Insider it's paid every protest bail it's received and will continue to do so.
• But "community bail funds have never asserted to be able to pay bail for everybody," Pilar Weiss, the director of the Community Justice Exchange, told Insider. "That's not the goal. They don't want to be a function of the system. They want the system to stop holding people pre-trial and stop using money bail as a way to have ransom on people."

As the nation took to the streets to protest the May 25 police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis, community bail funds saw donations soar to record levels as the network of organizations raised approximately $75 million over a two-week period.

About 70 community bail funds exist across the United States, said Pilar Weiss, the director of the Community Justice Exchange, the organization that oversees the National Bail Fund Network. Bail funds, like the Minneapolis Freedom Fund that received the bulk of donations during the record fundraising period, use the money to help pay cash bail for people who cannot afford it.

They advocate for the reform of the criminal justice system. Specifically, the nonprofits work toward the elimination of pretrial detention and cash bail, which they argue function as a punishment against people not yet proven guilty and as systems that inversely target low-income individuals and minorities.

"[The cash bail system] means very quickly you can lose your job, lose your home, lose your kids, have your life turned upside down — even if you're totally innocent merely because you want to assert your right to trial. There are reams of research that says it's harmful," Simon Cecil, the founder of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, told Insider.

According to a 2016 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, there were more than 646,000 people incarcerated in local jails throughout the US and about 70% were being held pretrial, meaning they were imprisoned but had not been convicted.

Today, the number is likely smaller due to changes made to policing and prosecuting in US cities and states and attempts to reduce incarcerated populations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Mercatus Center at George Mason University noted.

For example, there are approximately 400 people currently behind bars in the Hennepin County Jail, which is where arrested Floyd protesters were taken in Minneapolis. That's about half the average, Cecil said.

In cases where bail funds step in, charges are often dismissed

Somewhere between a third and a half of cases where community bail funds allocate money to free people who can't afford their bail end up being dismissed because pretrial detention is often used as a tool to coerce pleas, Weiss told Insider. In Minnesota, the number is closer to 50%, Cecil said.

"At every level, whether it's the fact that you have to pay cash or the challenge of finding a loved one, the bail system is set up in a way that makes it difficult for people to navigate," he said. "It makes it all the more punitive to those who, again, haven't been convicted in the eyes of anything and are innocent in the eyes of the law."

Of the $75 million raised, roughly $35 million was raised by the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

Protests began in the Minnesota Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul on May 26, the day after Floyd was killed when a since-fired and charged police officer held his knee to his neck for eight minutes while Floyd said he couldn't breathe and lost consciousness. Protests in Minnesota sometimes turned destructive. There were reports of looting, damage to buildings, and clashes between protesters and police officers despite primarily peaceful demonstrations.

Similar protests were seen in all 50 states, prompting similar, but smaller, donations to similar organizations nationwide that announced they'd use their funds to free people arrested for their actions at demonstrations.

—Philadelphia Community Bail Fund (@Phillybailout) June 2, 2020

Bail funds in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Louisville, and New York City made up the majority of the remaining $75 million in donations, Weiss said, though she could not specify the amount each fund received.

Protests created two opportunities for these community nonprofit organizations, Weiss added. Community bail funds had the ability not only to increase their ability to free protesters and other individuals who couldn't pay cash bail through fundraising, but they were also able to generate broader awareness around these organizations and their calls for reform.

"There are now millions of people who have donated to a bail fund who had never before, and we hope they are now going to have more consciousness and be more engaged with us," Weiss said. "Community bail funds are going to continue doing what they were doing before, which is to push really hard to end pretrial detention completely as part of the larger project to abolish the prison industrial complex."

Prior to the protests, Cecil said the Minnesota Freedom Fund was able to pay individual bails of up to $1,000 and said the nonprofit is in discussion to increase its cap following the spike in donations. It may not publicize a new limit once determined, he said, out of concern that judges may respond by holding accused persons on a higher bail amount to compensate.

"This is exactly the opposite of what we want," he said. "Our goal is to end bail, not facilitate the imposition of higher bails."

He added: "Historically we've seen relatives of people killed by police, as well as activists and organizers in Minneapolis, targeted with charges in an attempt to intimidate and criminalize our communities. The impact of those charges are experienced unevenly along racial, ethnic, and economic lines."

The Minnesota Freedom Fund has "never made decisions" about what bails it pays "based simply on a pretrial charge," and it won't start, Cecil told Insider. The organization focuses its efforts towards paying the bail of Black people and other people of color, those experiencing homelessness, and people who were arrested while "fighting for justice."

Weiss said the future for community bail funds will look different throughout the country due to the variations across the US criminal justice system. Calls to defund or completely rethink US police forces, which have become synonymous with the ongoing demonstrations against police brutality, also help to push forward the goals of community bail funds, she added.

"These groups all operated before and were very dedicated to ending the entire system of pretrial detention, and with the protests, they're expanding or including the supporting protesters but also connecting peoples' consciousness around police violence as well as mass incarceration," Weiss told Insider.

After record donations, attention turned sour, but advocates say the controversy was overblown

On June 15, the Minnesota Freedom Fund announced via Twitter it had used about $200,000 of the $35 million it had raised to free protesters. Some Twitter users responded with claims that the makeup of the organization was not diverse or that the organization wasn't doing enough with the funds it had raised over the past two weeks.

—Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 16, 2020

—Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) June 16, 2020

—Kianavonna (@kianavonna) June 16, 2020

Others jumped to defend the organization and argued that the influx of funds and attention was overwhelming for a nonprofit organization of the Minnesota Freedom Fund's size and rules that govern such organizations.

"There is a scary thing happening around the Minnesota Freedom Fund," one person tweeted. "It's a ton of disinformation being spread at a wild pace by Right Wing outlets/pundits, and people who don't understand how 501c3's are allowed to spend money."

Weiss called the backlash a "fake Twitter controversy" and said it existed because of a "misconception that the amount of money raised was how much should've been paid for protests."

Many people who were arrested at protests were charged and released without needing to pay bail, Weiss said. A spokesperson for the Minneapolis Police Department told Insider it couldn't yet release the number of people who were arrested for their actions related to protests.

The Floyd and Black Lives Matter demonstrations have also sent the Minnesota Freedom Fund into a state of flux, Cecil told Insider, one where the organization has to adjust to its rapid growth.

Before the protests, the group had one full-time paid employee. Since the donations rolled in, it's brought on new staffers, contractors to help with cybersecurity, human resources, and other communications needs, and is writing job descriptions for other paid positions the organization plans to hire in the future.

Paying bail is just one part of the equation for social justice reform

For community bail funds like the Minnesota Freedom Fund, the act of paying bail is just part of the equation, Weiss said. The larger mission is to abolish the system — not adhere to it.

"Community bail funds have never asserted to be able to pay bail for everybody," she told Insider. "That's not the goal. They don't want to be a function of the system. They want the system to stop holding people pre-trial and stop using money bail as a way to have ransom on people."

She added: "It's part of an organizing tool. In campaigns to end pretrial detention and mass incarceration, bail funds are doing this immediate community intervention of getting people free, but they're also elevating the stories of people who are free and their experiences."

Even with the record boosts the bail fund organizations received amid nationwide unrest, it would be impossible for these groups to pay the cash bail of anyone unable to afford it. Community bail funds typically free approximately 10,000 people in a given year, she said.

"That's a small number of the people who are in pre-trial detention and they can't possibly pay it all," she added.

In the Hennepin County jail, the amount of unpaid cash bail totals more than $50 million, both Cecil and Weiss told Insider. Since the May 26 protests began, the Minnesota Freedom Fund has spent $290,000 paying some 51 bails. It's also paid four immigration bonds totaling $20,000, Cecil said.

These payments are already a significant increase over what it paid in 2019 — around four times the amount, Cecil noted. Last year, the organization paid 260 bails, totaling $66,000 and 22 immigration bonds totaling $65,000.

"We do take very seriously the call for transparency and accountability, and part of that requires being thoughtful in how that money is deployed," Cecil said, adding that the Minnesota Freedom Fund has paid every protest bail it has received and will continue to.

He added: "We are working to create a situation where we can support those who have been arrested and have faced charges as a result of the uprising, and then once all that is done, we will continue to use the money to support the mission that has always been, which is the end of cash bail and pretrial detentions in Minnesota."

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