According to Human Rights Watch the United States annually cycles about 12 million people through county jails.

There are no statistics on exactly how many people are in jail directly because of a lack of bail money but we do know that nearly 450,000 people are in pretrial detention at any given time in the United States, whether because they have been denied bail or are unable to pay the bail that has been set by the court.

How does someone get out of jail after bail is set? Just look at businesses around the court house. The majority of them will be bail bond agencies.

There are two options: Cash bail or securing a bail bond through a bonding agency.

With cash bail, a defendant or a friend or family member simply pays the full amount of the bail set by the court and is then released from jail. If the defendant shows up to every court appearance the money is returned at the end of the trial, regardless of whether the case ends in a conviction or an acquittal.

If the defendant cannot afford the cost or cash bail, a bail bonding agency may be used. A bondsman will pay the bail for the defendant’s release from jail and will usually charge a fee of 10 percent of the bail amount, as well as having the full amount returned to them by the court at the conclusion of the case. They will also require a security of assets from the defendant or whoever is signing the bond contract for the arrested person, such as the deed on a house or pink slip to a car, depending on the cost of the bail, to be held by the bail bondsman until the defendant’s trial date. If the defendant does not arrive in court on their trial day the security of assets is forfeited to the bonding agency and the bondsman has the right to hire a bounty hunter to retrieve the defendant and deliver them back to jail, and can then sue the defendant for any remaining costs incurred.

Bail bonds are a quick way to get out of jail when a defendant is unable to pay the full cost of bail themselves but are only available if the defendant has assets to offer as security. If the defendant has no assets, friends, or family willing to risk their assets, the defendant will remain in jail until their trial date. The date of trial can take anywhere from a few days to a few years depending on how bogged down the courts are.

Between 1990 and 2014, incarceration rates increased by 61 percent and in that time the use of fines and fees has grown for all sentencing groups but are even more common in cases of misdemeanors, infractions, and other less serious crimes because fines can be used as a substitute to imprisonment. The use of fees and fines as punishment has become more and more common over the years. Florida has added 20 new categories of fees since 1996, some are: Representation by a public defender, court appearances, room and board for jail/prison stays, parole/probation services, court-required drug testing, counseling or community service, and electronic monitoring.

Failure to pay these fees can result in even more fees being added or imprisonment. These fines and fees burden poor defendants far more than wealthy ones.

If you are wealthy these fines, fees, and bail costs mean little; if you are poor they are the difference between freedom and a jail sentence. These costs do not only impact a person if they are poor or homeless, it impacts working class people as well. If you cannot pay your bail or court fees you are put back in jail. The length of time you sit in jail awaiting your trial could cost you your job as most people living paycheck-to-paycheck do not have jobs that are willing to let you miss two days let alone two months without being replaced. While you’re sitting in jail, unable to work, no one is paying your rent and utility bills, and if you’re a parent there is the added question of what will happen to your children. They may end up being looked after by a family member, but if you have no family they may be placed into the foster care system; and even when you get out of jail, even if you have proved your innocence, you now have no job and no place to live, and possibly no belongings, and your children will not be returned to you until you have those things. Even if you have been proven innocent you can lose everything! It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s undue punishment for being working class.

Knowing that simply sitting in jail awaiting trial can utterly destroy your life prompts working class and the poor to plead guilty simply to get out of jail and back to work. But now these people have a guilty charge on their record which makes it even harder to move up in the world. If it is a felony charge it can restrict the job options you have in the future.

In 2015, Scott Hechinger, a Senior Trial Attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services said in an interview with the New York Times that many defendants would fight their cases and maintain their innocence if they had the money.

When defendants are asked by the Judge: ‘‘Are you pleading guilty freely and voluntarily, because you are in fact guilty?’’

Hechinger said, ‘‘A lot of times, at that last question, you feel the client beside you bristle. Everyone in the room knows it’s not ‘freely and voluntarily.’ They’re making a decision coerced by money. In many cases, if they had money, they wouldn’t be pleading. But they put their heads down, and they say, ‘Yes.’ It’s a horrible, deflating feeling.’’

The likelihood of conviction and incarceration goes up as well when a person is held in pretrial detention; as defendants who are free while awaiting trial are more likely to be placed on probation for a crime since they have been able to show that they are making rehabilitative efforts.

Because bail reform is slow going and rallied against by bail bond industry, privatized probation, and the courts, which use bail as a money making mechanism, nonprofits like the Bronx Freedom Fund are emerging to help those who would otherwise be left to sit in jail while awaiting trial.

From their website: “We exist to level the playing field by providing bail assistance to people charged with low-level offenses who can't afford to pay for their freedom.”

Since the inception of this charitable bail organization in 2013, they have been able to post bail for over 230 people, 9 percent of which returned for every court date. In a statement before the New York City Council on Bail Reform in June of 2015, Project Director Alyssa Work said something that resonated deeply. She said, “Inability to pay bail warps the framework of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.”

And it’s true. Even if you are found innocent of the crime of which you are accused sitting in jail waiting to prove your case can negatively and detrimentally effect your life for the foreseeable future.

If a citizen of the United States of America is truly innocent until proven guilty in a court of law why do we have to pay for our freedom?