Widespread incarceration of the poor in Mississippi continues, report says.

Several factors contribute to long pretrial incarceration.

The effort to end cash bail is being pursued in many states.

Mississippi Bail Fund Collective launched to help raise bail money.

A teenager with autism, arrested on suspicion of burglary in 2018, sat in a Jackson County jail for more than 270 days because he and his family couldn’t pay $1,000 to get him out on bond, according to a report released Thursday.

When Zach Hill’s case was presented to a grand jury, the jurors found there wasn’t enough evidence to indict the teen. He was then immediately released from jail.

The Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law released a new report Thursday detailing Hill's case and identifying more than 5,700 people incarcerated in local jails as of May. Roughly 2,750 of those detainees have been in jail longer than 90 days and more than 800 people have been stuck in county jails over a year, the report said.

The report came a day after a coalition of social workers, attorneys, and activists from across Mississippi launched the Mississippi Bail Fund Collective to address what it calls the injustices perpetrated by Mississippi’s cash bail system.

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The Mississippi Bail Fund Collective, an initiative of the People’s Advocacy Institute, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was announced Wednesday with the goal of bailing poor people out of jail. How to donate to the collective.

An effort to end cash bail is being pursued in many states.

Hill, now 19, had been held in the Jackson County jail on a $10,000 bond. In Mississippi, a person has to put up 10 percent of the bond to be released. Most often they have to go through a bail bond agent to put up the cash or property bond.

Attorney Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Mississippi office, said Thursday's report captures only a portion of the state’s jail population due to inconsistent reporting from counties, meaning that there are even more people jailed across Mississippi, often on minor charges.

Johnson said Hill’s case isn’t unusual in Mississippi. Despite recent criminal justice reform, new criminal court rules and successful litigation against numerous Mississippi cities and counties over the last five years claiming widespread illegal incarceration of poor defendants, thousands of people continue to languish in Mississippi’s county and regional jails awaiting indictment and trial, he said.

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The MacArthur Justice Center estimates that Mississippi counties spend at least $90 million each year on pretrial incarceration.

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“In Mississippi, nearly all of our judges impose money bail in every single felony case without undertaking any analysis of whether money bail is permitted by law,” Johnson said. “My sense is that this happens because unlawful ‘automatic money bail’ long ago became an accepted practice that routinely goes unchallenged and because judges are afraid that if a defendant released without paying money bail does something bad, the judge who released that person will be voted out of office — even if the judge’s decision not to require payment for release was entirely appropriate under the law.”

Johnson explained that a number of factors contribute to extraordinarily long pretrial incarceration in Mississippi for those who cannot afford bail:

Grand juries meet as seldom as two or three time a year in many of Mississippi’s rural counties.

Prosecutors often are slow to present cases to the grand jury, and there is no limit under Mississippi law on how long a defendant can be held prior to indictment.

Defense lawyers often ask for trials to be postponed.

The Mississippi Supreme Court rarely enforces Mississippi’s Speedy Trial Act.

Johnson estimates that pretrial incarceration costs Mississippi counties $45 per day for each person detained while awaiting indictment and trial. For each person held two years awaiting trial, a county pays $32,850, he said.

FWD.us, a bipartisan advocacy organization focused on criminal justice reform, recently provided a grant to support the center’s ongoing collection and reporting of Mississippi jail census data.

FWD.us Policy Manager Laura Bennett said thousands of legally innocent people are locked behind bars, often for minor charges, simply because they cannot afford to pay bail.

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Contact Jimmie E. Gates at 601-961-7212 or jgates@gannett.com. Follow @jgatesnews on Twitter.