New Loan Closing: Envision Freedom Fund
Working to end unjust cash bail and pretrial detention
$250,000 working capital loan through the Trinity Church Grantee Loan Fund
Envision Freedom Fund (formerly known as Brooklyn Community Bail Fund) is dedicated to challenging the racism and injustices of a criminal legal system and immigration deportation regime that disproportionately target low-income communities of color, drive mass incarceration and perpetuate inequality. Cash bail and pretrial detention criminalize poverty; while wealthy people who can afford bail can return home before their trials, those who can't afford to pay must face pre-trial detention or plead guilty to avoid it. Since 2015, Envision Freedom Fund's Bail Operations program has paid bail – usually about $2,000 per person, but sometimes $10,000 or more – to secure the pretrial freedom of over 5,000 presumptively innocent individuals charged with misdemeanors, sparing them a collective 700 years of time in detention.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought both new urgency and new challenges to its efforts to raise the funds required to free community members from the dangerous and unsafe conditions of ICE detention facilities. Thousands of New Yorkers are detained each year; at the same time, the average cost of paying their bail has risen by nearly 50%, from $7,500 to $11,800. Financed by the Trinity Church Grantee Loan Fund, this loan will allow Envision Freedom Fund to expand its pipeline of institutional and major donor support to meet this growing need, ensuring that thousands of community members can plead their cases from positions of freedom.
Learn more about NFF's loan products on the financing page of our website.