The Decarceration Project fights to make pretrial detention obsolete. As a client and community centered project, we reject the premise that cages keep communities safe. Our integrated model ensures all pathways to individual freedom are exhausted, while working in tandem with our clients, their families, and external partners towards a collective future without jails. 

Housed within the Project is the Women’s Pretrial Release Initiative, which secures the release of cis and trans women who are detained pretrial and connects them to gender-specific alternatives to detention. Through direct and strategic litigation, targeted advocacy, and attorney education, we set the standard for pretrial release advocacy, striving to return as many people to their communities as possible. 

Our Model

The Decarceration Project works to eradicate pretrial incarceration of New York’s most vulnerable citizens through early intervention, litigation, and policy advocacy. Our strategy integrates legal and social work to challenge the use of money bail through a dynamic approach:

• We identify clients who remain detained after their arraignment and work with trial attorneys to fight unfair bail conditions and secure release as soon as possible.
• We link our clients with social workers who assess our clients’ needs and help our clients get back to their community with the support they need.
• We litigate at the trial level, including the filing of writs of habeas corpus to challenge illegal detention orders.
• We litigate in the appellate courts when our clients remain incarcerated.
• We organize alongside other stakeholders to support law reform efforts aimed at decarceration.

Our work positively and directly impacts marginalized people and communities of color by working to ensure that our clients are able to keep housing, employment, and sustenance for their families while they wait for trial. Our work is also practical. It minimizes unnecessary and costly pre-trial incarceration, restores the presumption of innocence, and helps disrupt an unjust criminal justice system, creating the space for systemic change.

Additional Resources

• What You Need to Know About Bail
• Bail’s Set What’s Next (Partially Secured Bond v. Unsecured Bond) English
• Bail’s Set What’s Next (Partially Secured Bond v. Unsecured Bond) Spanish
• Dollar Bail Brigade’s step-by-step guide for paying bail at all of NYC’s jail facilities
• The New York City’s Department of Corrections’ guide to paying bail

Contact

To reach the Decarceration Project email decarceratenyc@legal-aid.org.