admin

A national campaign to help release Black mothers from local jails arrives as Mother?s Day approaches.

Groups in 20 cities across the U.S. are participating in the second annual National Black Mamas Bail Out to raise funds to help bail out incarcerated women from local jails in time for the holiday ? while raising awareness of the costs of incarcerating women simply because they?re unable to afford bail, from the costs of separating mothers from children and families and jobs to their heightened risk of trauma and abuse behind bars.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, since 1970, the number of women in local jails in the the U.S. rocketed from fewer than 8,000 to nearly 110,000 in 2016 ? nearly 80 percent are mothers, and nearly 60 percent are women of color.*More than 18,500 people are in local jails around Louisiana; 7.6 percent are women, according to the Louisiana Department of Corrections.
?