In 2016, Bridge Magazine reported that 41 percent of people sitting in Michigan jails are there because they cannot afford to pay bail. In Wayne County, that figure rises to 60 percent.

Amanda Alexander is the founder and executive director of the Detroit Justice Center, which seeks to reform mass incarceration on a local level. The state of Michigan’s bail system may be “shocking to some people,” she said, but “for the families that have been living it day-to-day, it’s nothing new to them.”

To further bail bond reform, the Detroit Justice Center has partnered with The Bail Project. The national nonprofit operates a bail fund that bonds low-income people out of jail for free.