By Stacy M. Brown
“It was just a thoughtless night,” Dasia says. “I was under the influence and
heavily triggered.”
The former correctional officer had just finished work when police pulled over
the car she was riding in. Officers ran her name. A warrant surfaced for driving
under suspension and a missed court date she says she never knew about because
the notice went to the wrong address.
“Sometimes the first impression is all you get with somebody, and they get stuck
with that.”
The bail was $250.
She spent 12 days in jail.
“I kind of felt violated,” she recalls, describing how two male correctional officers
searched her and unzipped her hoodie despite her objections. Angry and
intoxicated, she flooded a toilet in her pod after being denied a phone call. “It was
like an out of body situation,” she says. “I was so mad they wouldn’t let me make
a phone call. I could’ve bonded out that night.”
She could not.
The jail was the same one where she had once worn a uniform.
“When you’re a CO, you’re honored,” she says. “You’re important. But being an
inmate – you go from feeling righteous to feeling like a peasant.”
Inside, she says she tried to steady herself by steadying others.
“I spoke life into the other inmates,” she says. “We’d talk, and I’d try to broaden
people’s perspective about what we were going through. It wasn’t just for them –
it was for me, too.”
She has lived with mental health challenges for years.
“What people don’t know,” she says, “is that without being under a substance,
sometimes it feels like you are anyway.”
She accepts responsibility.
“Even with mental health, you’ve got to present yourself in a way people can
honor.”
“Broken crayons still color.”
She also says she challenged a correctional officer who was cursing at detainees.
“I got into it with one of the COs,” she recalls. “She was calling inmates out their
name, cussing at them. I had to remind her; that’s not part of your job
description. You don’t get paid for that.”
When the officer later told her she had “won,” Dasia responded, “She told me,
‘You won.’ I said, no, I’m behind this cage. I didn’t win anything. I just need you
to stop treating people like that.”
Her release came after a counselor connected her with The Bail Project.
“When I got to talk to them, it was a breath of fresh air,” she says. “She told me
she was working to get me out. And sure enough, I got released that day.”
Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of legally innocent people sit in
jail awaiting trial. In Oklahoma alone, more than 9,000 people sit in local jails on
any given day, nearly 70 percent legally innocent and awaiting court.
In Fulton County, Georgia, 32 people have died in jail since 2021. Nearly 90
percent of those incarcerated are Black in a county where Black residents make
up 43 percent of the population. More than one-third of detainees faced bonds
under $5,000, amounts that still kept them jailed because they could not afford
upfront payments.
In Texas, nearly 70 percent of people in jail on any given day are awaiting trial at
a cost of more than $1.1 billion annually. The Bail Project’s report “Behind the
Bill” details how lawmakers pushed constitutional changes that would have
expanded pretrial detention before advocates secured protections requiring clear
and convincing evidence before someone could be jailed pretrial.
In Florida, the Senate Rules Committee amended SB 600 to preserve nonprofit
bail funds after language that would have blocked nonprofits from reusing
refunded bail money threatened to shut them down. “Charitable bail funds and
faith-based groups reuse refunded bail money to help people a judge has already
cleared for release,” said Josh Mitman, Senior Policy Counsel at The Bail Project.
“Shutting them down doesn’t make communities safer – it just keeps more
people in jail unnecessarily and sticks taxpayers with the bill.”
In Washington, Congress passed H.R. 5214, legislation mandating expanded cash
bail in the District. The Bail Project warned it would dismantle a system where 88
percent of people released pretrial remained arrest-free and 98 percent remained
free from violent arrest.
“H.R. 5214 is a dangerous federal intrusion that overrides Washington, D.C.’s
proven pretrial system and the democratic will of District residents,” said Erin
George, National Director of Policy at The Bail Project. “Despite its claims, H.R.
5214 is not about public safety – it’s about control – and will have devastating
ripple effects on families, communities, and safety.”
The organization’s national report “Detention by Design” documents that more
than a quarter of states with constitutional rights to bail have proposed or
enacted amendments expanding detention eligibility between 2021 and 2025. “A
quiet constitutional crisis is unfolding in America. State by state, the right to bail
is being rewritten – expanding preventative detention, deepening reliance on
money bail, and eroding the presumption of innocence,” stated David Gaspar,
chief executive officer of The Bail Project.
The organization’s “Inside Bail Reform” outlines six core components of effective
policy, including eliminating cash bail, strengthening due process, ensuring
counsel at first appearance, timely hearings, voluntary supportive services, and
court reminders.
Since its founding, The Bail Project reports that it has supported more than
40,000 people, including roughly 35,000 whose release it secured through bail
assistance. With support such as reminders and transportation, 92 percent
returned to court.
Dasia says freedom after jail was not simple.
The case kept her from working for nearly a year. The stigma followed her.
“I’m a hard worker,” she says. “All I’ve ever known is to work. But God’s been
telling me this is a season to be still, to listen, to recenter.”
She says The Bail Project continues to check on her.
“They’ve helped me with resources and given me advice when I’m in error. They
challenge me to grow. That’s how you become the best version of yourself – by
having people who really care.”
She hopes one day to do similar work.
“If I could, I’d do what they do,” she says. “It takes patience and purpose. They’re
selfless. They help people restart.”
“It helps me remember who I am – and that it’s never too late to start over.”