‘Treated worse than animals’: Black women in pretrial detention
Al Jazeera
Thousands of women, many unable to afford bail, languish in US jails for months without a conviction, resulting in a prolonged domino effect that reverberates far outside the jail walls.
Atlanta, Georgia – Angela Holt was about three months pregnant when police arrested her in January 2020 after she got into a physical altercation with a man she says called her a “black monkey” at a shop. She was charged with aggravated assault and held on a $15,000 bond – $1,600 of which she was expected to pay. Unable to afford bail, she spent about five months in the Union City Jail, the Fulton County Jail’s female-only facility located just outside Atlanta in the US state of Georgia. There, she says she was surrounded by conditions no person should have to endure, let alone a pregnant woman. “We had a heroin addict vomiting everywhere and a mentally ill lady sleeping in her own faeces. We would have to clean up ourselves and the guards wouldn’t even give us gloves,” Holt says.More Related News