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Within a two-month period, Defendants Andrew Reidy and Albert Piña subjected Marcus Lee Luster to two clear violations of his constitutional rights while he was detained before trial at the Pima County Adult Detention Center.

Every day in Baton Rouge, presumptively innocent people are confined in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison (EBRPP) simply because they are too poor to pay for their freedom. Hundreds of people—the vast majority of whom are poor and Black—are condemned to remain restrained in EBRPP for weeks, months, or even years. They are locked...

The MacArthur Justice Center is pursuing a federal class action lawsuit against Orleans Magistrate Judge Harry E. Cantrell challenging his practice of setting high bail amounts without any consideration of the person’s ability to pay or alternative no-cost conditions of release. Judge Cantrell also insists on using commercial bond companies (rather than cash), which require a non-reimbursable fee, a portion of which goes to the court’s General Fund – revenue Cantrell and other judges’ control.

The MacArthur Justice Center partnered with Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. and Civil Rights Corps to file a federal class action targeting Cook County’s unconstitutional pay-for-release cash bail system, which results in the pre-trial detention of legally innocent men and women who cannot afford to pay the court-imposed bail amount in their cases. The case, recently dismissed on technical, procedural grounds, helped to catalyze important reforms in Cook County.

The MacArthur Justice Center, the ACLU and the ACLU of Mississippi filed a class action lawsuit against Scott County (Mississippi) sheriff, district attorney, and judges after learning that the Scott County Detention Center has held people for as long as a year without appointing counsel and without indicting them. A settlement was reached in June 2018 which ended this practice by appointing public defenders at arrest.

Lafayette Parish, Louisiana is operating a wealth-based detention scheme by relying on pre-determined cash bail amounts without giving any consideration to what any individual can afford to pay or to alternative, non-financial conditions of release. The MacArthur Justice Center, Civil Rights Corps, and William P. Quigley, a veteran litigator and professor at Loyola University New...

The landmark settlement of this federal class action against the City of Jackson, Mississippi, brought an end to that city’s self-described “pay or stay” system that sent hundreds of people to jail each year because they could not pay fines and fees in misdemeanor cases. The City has agreed to give indigent defendants the choice...

As a result of a civil rights lawsuit brought by the MacArthur Justice Center and Equal Justice Under Law, Moss Point, a small city in Jackson County, Mississippi, has agreed to stop the practice of jailing impoverished people for up to a week while they wait to appear in court on misdemeanor cases. Under the...