About the KC Community Bail Fund
The Kansas City Community Bail Fund was founded in May 2019 by Lauren Worley and Chloe Cooper, two social workers working for a housing program for formerly homeless youth and families in Kansas City. This fund came to fruition after trying to assist a mutual client and domestic violence survivor jailed for a charge related to self-defense. The length of time she was in jail put her at-risk of losing her housing - and she had already lost her job and spot in school. Both Worley and Cooper searched for resources to help her post her bail, find legal resources, and get her out of jail. After weeks of searching, they realized this resource was not readily available in Kansas City, so they started a GoFundMe page shared through social media to raise money for her $5,000 bond. They raised thousands of dollars in just a few short weeks - but not enough to cover bail. Luckily, through court advocacy and letter writing to her attorney and the judge she was released on a signature bond. She was then transferred to Wyandotte County where she had a hold for an outstanding warrant for an unpaid non-moving traffic violation. This bond was paid for by the KC Community Bail Fund and their client was able to be released until her trial where she seemingly received a much better outcome than she would have without being released before court. Worley and Cooper continued this fund because through their work and experiences they knew the harmful effects of pretrial detention can have on nearly every aspect on one's life. Since 2019, the KC Community Bail Fund has gained much needed attention and support to continue this work to end money bail and end pretrial detention by example.
What is a revolving bail fund?
The KC Community Bail Fund is a revolving bail fund that uses donations to pay bail for people in pretrial detention, provide them with community resources and service referrals to help them in court, the staff at the bail fund also keep in regular contact with those bailed out through the fund and provide post-release support and court advocacy. The bail fund pays for 100% of the bail in CASH through the donations the fund receives. The KC Community Bail Fund is NOT a bail bond agent - we do not require a co-signer and do not require any of it to be paid back. All we ask is that those we assist with bail keep in contact with staff and volunteers and make it to their scheduled court appearances. If someone cannot make it to court - we still do not require any of that bail to be paid back to the bail fund. This is the key difference between a bail fund and a bail bond agent. We want to use the donations to serve the community targeted by the criminal punishment system (particularly people of color, members of the LGBTQIA community, and those living in poverty) and help them get out of jail, home to their families, friends, job, school, etc. while giving them a fighting chance at a more positive outcome in their case. Once the case is closed the bail money is returned to the fund to help others be released from pretrial detention. We are here for KC and want to #FREEKC. See below for a graphic for a brief explanation of the KC Community Bail Fund's revolving bail fund (please note that in all cases 100% of the bail posted is not always returned as some courts remove court costs from the posted bond - this also does not need to be paid back to the fund by those we bail out).
If you have further questions on the revolving fund please reach out to us via email.
