The Perils of Late-Night Releases

June 2024
By Sandra Susan Smith, with Gabriella Vides-Gold, Madeline Phuong, and Mira Nalbandian
 

Two women lost their lives along the side of a dark freeway in rural Texas after being hit by a car.

One year after going missing, Mitrice Richardson’s mummified remains were found in a Malibu Canyon creek bed.

Jessica St. Louis’s lifeless body was discovered in front of the East Dublin BART station just before train service began.

Gregory Grigorieff’s dead body was found frozen after being exposed to temperatures that had fallen as low as 20 degrees and to snow almost one foot deep; hypothermia was the likely cause.

What did each of these cases have in common? All these people died soon after being released from pretrial detention in the middle of the night – between midnight and 3 AM.
 

On any given day in the United States, of the total number of incarcerated Americans, approximately 27 percent—or some 514,000 people, greater than the population of major cities like Atlanta and Miami—are being held in our nation’s local jails. Over 10 million people are admitted to local jails every year. Most – roughly 80 percent – are people being detained as they await trial or the final judgment of the court. Although the average stay in detention is about 26 days, or roughly 3 ½ weeks, most people are released on the day of arraignment or within one week. For a significant minority, release occurs in the middle of the night.

Within 185 of the 200 most populated cities in the United States, there are 141 jails. Of the 141 jails, 131 release during the late night and only 10 do not.

Not everyone who is released late-night makes it to their destination safely, however. Because almost no jail system counts the harm done to people who are no longer in their custody, we do not have good data about the number who have died or been harmed in other ways because of late-night releases. Still, what we do know warrants alarm. Pima County, Arizona is currently the only county in the country that includes in their official counts jail-related deaths that occur within one month of release. After officials there adopted this new definition, the county’s number of jail-related deaths more than doubled – from 14 in 2022/2023 to 32.

Late at night, there is limited to no access to essential services and basic amenities. In most places, if there is public transportation, it does not run. Access to social services is also nonexistent. Shelters, for instance, are closed to new admissions, and other social service agencies that might tend to the needs of people recently released from detention with mental health and substance use vulnerabilities are closed. Worsening the situation, jails often release people without the resources needed for safe passage, including some of the resources that people were required to submit at admission – warm clothes, money, ID, phones, etc.

Even for people of means, late-night discharges would represent something of a hardship. For example, a loved one likely has to get out of bed to pick them up or coordinate a ride home. But for people who have class-based disadvantages and/or who are beset with often-untreated mental illnesses, substance use issues, and/or housing instability — who are disproportionately represented among those detained pretrial — late-night discharges significantly increase the risk of being harmed or of causing harm.
 

According to Amika Mota, Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition and Sister Warriors Action Fund, for a variety of reasons, people who exit jail in the middle of the night are in great danger. Having spent years cycling through California’s criminal legal system, Mota knew first-hand the troubles that awaited people leaving detention. “Women leaving jail at night regularly were targeted for sex in exchange for rides. Assaults were a regular occurrence. And people were out there in the dark pushing drugs because they knew you were in a vulnerable state, making it all the more likely you’d end up right back in jail before too long.”

Despite the high risks associated with releasing people from jail late into the night, only 10 jails (of 141) across 185 of the largest cities in the United States have eliminated the practice.

Within the 131 jails that do release individuals late at night, relatively few provide any forms of support to those they are discharging late-night. In almost half of all jails that provide support, this simply translates to a phone call.

In this dispatch, we show that each day, thousands of individuals are facing conditions of release that set them up for failure and place them in immediate danger. At the same time, given that ten jails have eliminated this practice, it is clear that a different policy framework is possible.

Methodology

The top 200 cities in the United States were identified from the World Population Review’s data on the “200 Largest Cities in the US by Population 2024”.[1] For each city, the County jails serving the city were identified through internet searches. A County Jail is counted as a singular jail even if there are multiple facilities within its jurisdiction because the incarcerated and detained population is counted, and policies are equally applied, across facilities. Parishes and ‘unified’ correctional systems[2] were counted when the County was not the geographical unit of carceral organization. Local city jails were not counted, except in instances where cities functioned as counties as in the case of San Francisco.

This means some County jails are repeated if they serve more than one city. For example, Maricopa County serves Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Scottsdale, and Peoria. When summarizing information on the jails, we were cognizant of these repeats and only counted a jail once. However, when summarizing information on cities, a single jail was included in the count equivalent to the number of cities that jail served.

Average daily jail population data was found across sources, notably Sheriff’s County websites, jails’ annual reports or audits, Vera Institute Incarceration trends publications and dashboards, and local news outlets. For data on whether jails release individuals late at night (11 pm-5 am), information was largely found on county jail and sheriff office web pages, including jails’ rosters, inmate handbooks, and general release FAQs. Late-night release information was also generated by examining bail-bond companies as these companies often detailed what time, after people post bond, they can expect to be released. However, when information was not available online, we contacted jails and/or sheriff’s offices via telephone or email. Information on whether support services and resources were given to people released between 11 pm and 5 am was generated from similar sources to data on late-night releases. However, phone calls and email exchanges with jails and sheriff’s offices were more frequently used to understand the support provided to people newly released late at night, as this information was less detailed online.

There were 11 jails for which we could not find late-night release information online and were unable to contact the jail and/or sheriff’s office.[3]

Late-night release support was constituted in a relatively broad manner; for example, we considered the ability to make a phone call or wait in the lobby as part of late-night release resourcing. However, we did not count re-entry services prior to the time of release; for example, planning with a caseworker to sort longer-term transitional housing would not be included, but a voucher provided at the time of release for one night of housing would be.