Our Mission
About the Maine Bail Fund
The Maine Bail Fund provides cash bail to community members held in county jails across the state. We are part of a national network working to end pretrial detention and restore the presumption of innocence.
Our organization is dedicated to the dignity and liberation of all people, the principle that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and the belief that no one’s freedom should depend on their level of wealth.
Whether you get out of jail should not be determined by your socioeconomic status; in Maine, it often is. Maine continues to hold people experiencing poverty in custody when a richer person accused of the same crime could pay for their freedom out of pocket.
While we recognize that a bail fund cannot fix the systemic issues in our criminal justice system, the Maine Bail Fund aims to help our incarcerated neighbors return to their communities while awaiting trial.
We strive to educate the public about bail, advocate for policy reform, and provide resources to bridge the gap between the criminal justice system and the people it is meant to serve.
Why Is Bail a Problem in Maine?
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial [...] and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.” –The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution
“People are getting tired and fed up and take deals instead of fighting their case.”
People across Maine are denied their constitutionally protected right to a speedy trial, to be informed of the evidence against them, and to representation.
In 2025, the Maine Superior Court held that indigent defendants “have been deprived of continuous representation after the right to counsel attaches as required in Maine by the Sixth Amendment.” Hundreds of people in Maine are currently being denied their right to counsel, waiting weeks or months to be appointed an attorney. Once they get an attorney, a case could take years to conclude.
This waiting game costs the Maine taxpayer. Holding people in jail is costly, not only because detention is expensive, but also because if people lose their jobs and/or housing because they are in jail, unemployment, housing subsidies, and other social services kick in to carry the load.
It was not until 2023 that Maine established a state-run public defense system. Still in its infancy, Public Defense Services (PDS) cannot meet growing rates of detention. This is not, however, because of increases in crime, but rather because of increased policing and excessive charging from prosecutors.
Prosecutors “choose to file excessive charges against people for drug possession when those same people really need access to community-based treatment – not criminal punishment.” In 2022, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated 41% of people arrested at least once in the past 12 months suffered from a substance use disorder compared to an 8% national average. Substance use and mental health are best treated in specialized settings, not carceral settings. Accessible and safe release is the first step towards adequate and consensual treatment for a defendant’s underlying struggles.
When someone is detained, their children can lose connection to and support from their parent, caregiver, or breadwinner. “Research has established that a parent’s incarceration poses several threats to a child’s emotional, physical, educational, and financial well-being.” Studies show that this translates to “decreased educational attainment, involvement with the criminal justice system, and other negative outcomes,” especially for Black children.
Perpetuating Cycles of Harm
The Maine Bail Fund recognizes the cycles of harm, crime, and poverty that money bail perpetuates.
The more time someone is held on cash bail, the more time they are away from their families, medical care, housing, jobs, etc. Even once they are appointed an attorney, a defendant who cannot afford bail until their case concludes still sits in jail, sometimes for years. In turn, defendants are faced with an unfair, impossible decision:
Take a plea
Remain in jail indefinitely and contest their charges for potentially years
Many defendants decide to plead guilty to charges, including for crimes they never committed, without seeing any evidence from the state and without a fair trial in order to secure a guaranteed path to quick release. These convictions stay on their records for the rest of their lives and make it harder for people to find and keep jobs and housing.
Those held on the smallest amounts of cash are often the ones who will be most negatively affected by incarceration. For example, a person who does not have $60 cash bail may also be struggling to afford housing or make it to medical appointments. Sporadic and unexpected incarceration can cause people to lose access to ongoing services such as treatment for mental health or substance use disorders and enrollment in job training or school, rendering them even more vulnerable to long-term health consequences, mental health challenges, and/or housing insecurity.
Bail funds seek to enable defendants and their communities to seek justice. Under Maine’s system, $60 could be the only barrier keeping someone from avoiding an unnecessary criminal conviction.
Once someone is on the police’s radar, they are more likely to be surveilled and scrutinized. The revolving door of the carceral system — the fact that people keep getting re-arrested — proves that jails and prisons do not rehabilitate our neighbors. Instead of helping people get job training, housing, or education, jails and prisons sequester people from their communities and resources for weeks or months and throw them back into the same circumstances.
A Path Forward
The Maine Bail Fund advocates for the end to cash bail, the redistribution of taxpayer dollars away from incarceration and towards trauma-informed mental health and substance abuse support, and harm repair for those affected by the system. We hope to hold systems of power accountable and address and solve inequities in Maine’s legal system by focusing on the following immediate actions:
Decreasing pretrial detention in county jails across Maine
Advocating for bail reform with the Maine State Legislature
Creating meaningful and accessible avenues for the community to advocate for affected populations
Illuminating Maine’s unconstitutional treatment of people in custody and holding the State accountable
Destigmatizing pretrial detention
Facilitating community conversations and education about the impact of incarceration on defendants, their families, and their neighbors
Providing self-represented defendants with resources about how to effectively advocate for just pretrial conditions
Creating meaningful and accessible avenues for affected community members to engage in advocacy
Decreasing class disparities within pretrial populations
Decreasing state and county expenses related to pretrial detention