A bail fund is an organization that raises money for the purpose of posting bail for people in jail on pre-trial detention who otherwise could not afford it. Many bail funds recoup the bail money at the end of a person's case, thereby replenishing the fund for others in need. There are both national and regional bail funds. Please note that in the last week some bail funds have received so many donations that they are asking individuals to donate elsewhere.
Here are a few directories of bail funds by state:
Selected online resources on mass incarceration, bail reform, and prison labor from the SVA Library's online collections:
- Hood, Katherine, and Daniel Schneider. "Bail and Pretrial Detention: Contours and Causes of Temporal and County Variation." RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2019): 126-49. Accessed June 4, 2020. doi:10.7758/rsf.2019.5.1.06.
- Kilgore, James. 2015. Understanding Mass Incarceration : A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time. New York: The New Press. Accessed June 4, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
- Loury, Glenn C.. 2008. Race, Incarceration, and American Values. Cambridge: MIT Press. Accessed June 4, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
- Page, Joshua, Victoria Piehowski, and Joe Soss. "A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation." RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2019): 150-72. Accessed June 4, 2020. doi:10.7758/rsf.2019.5.1.07.
- Raphael, Steven, and Stoll, Michael A.. 2013. Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Accessed June 4, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.
- Selman, Donna, and Leighton, Paul. 2010. Punishment for Sale : Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Accessed June 4, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central.