The Dangerous Practice of Late-Night Jail Releases
Researchers from the Harvard Kennedy School have released data on jails which have the practice of releasing prisoners, usually approved for bond, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., revealing that this practice significantly increases the chances that a person will be harmed or placed in circumstances which will return them to jail.
The researchers started with some statistics about why this is important, and why it affects so many people. Some “514,000 people, greater than the population of major cities like Atlanta and Miami—are being held in our nation’s local jails,” and “[o]ver 10 million people are admitted to local jails every year.” And “[a]lthough the average stay in detention is about 26 days, or roughly 3 ½ weeks, most people are released on the day of arraignment or within one week.”
The study found that, “[f]or a significant minority, release occurs in the middle of the night.” This is because, of the 141 jails in the 200 largest cities in the U.S. by population, “131 release during the late night and only 10 do not.” Worryingly, almost no jails track and report what happens to people after they are released back into the community.
“Pima County, Arizona is currently the only county in the country that includes in their official counts jail-related deaths that occur within one month of release,” noted the researchers. “After officials there adopted this new definition, the county’s number of jail-related deaths more than doubled—from 14 in 2022/2023 to 32.”
What happens to these people during the hour of the wolf? Here are some examples listed in the study: Two women lost their lives along the side of a dark freeway in rural Texas after being hit by a car; one year after going missing, Mitrice Richardson’s mummified remains were found in a Malibu Canyon creek bed; Jessica St. Louis’s lifeless body was discovered in front of the East Dublin BART station just before train service began; Gregory Grigorieff’s dead body was found after being exposed to temperatures that had fallen as low as 20 degrees and to snow almost one foot deep.
“Women leaving jail at night regularly were targeted for sex in exchange for rides,” according to Amika Mota, Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition and Sister Warriors Action Fund. “Assaults were a regular occurrence. And people were out there in the dark pushing drugs because they knew you were in a vulnerable state, making it all the more likely you’d end up right back in jail before too long.”
To complicate matters, “jails often release people without the resources needed for safe passage, including some of the resources that people were required to submit at admission—warm clothes, money, ID, phones, etc.”
On intake, a prisoner is required to surrender these items, and they are not always returned upon release. Or they were arrested without them. Or, if a phone is returned, it is likely dead.
Not all jails are blind to this issue, and some provide resources upon release. Some jails provide one or more of the following: a bus pass, taxi service, medication, voluntarily delayed release (to an appropriate time of day), donated clothing, a phone call, phone charging, housing/shelter, hygiene kit, and referrals to community agencies.
However, while almost 20% of jails allow a phone call, and almost 10% provide a bus pass, the other considerations are rare.
Finally, “for people who have class-based disadvantages and/or who are beset with often-untreated mental illnesses, substance use issues, and/or housing instability—who are disproportionately represented among those detained pretrial—late-night discharges significantly increase the risk of being harmed or of causing harm.”
As for solutions, the study makes no prescriptions, though the researchers do point to where these could be found: “[G]iven that ten jails have eliminated this practice, it is clear that a different policy framework is possible.”
Source: Harvard Kennedy School