A new, multi-year campaign announced Monday intends to prevent people accused of crimes, and without means to pay bail, from having to wait behind bars while others with more money walk freely pretrial.

The campaign, called “Bring Our Neighbors Home,” is led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, the Colorado Freedom Fund and the family of the late Michael Marshall, an inmate who was held in 2015 on a $100 bond for trespassing and was killed by Denver sheriff’s deputies while in their custody.

The effort is championed by state Reps. Leslie Herod, D-Denver, and Matt Soper, R-Delta, Mesa, along with Sen. Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs, all of whom spoke in support at a Jan. 6 press conference in the Colorado state Capitol.

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“People are sitting in jail before their trials, before they’re proven guilty, simply because they cannot afford to pay. That’s not OK,” Herod said. “Poverty is not a crime.”

More than half of people locked up across the state — many being people of color — have not been convicted of a crime. They’re there because they cannot afford to pay to get out, which, in turn, Herod said, is costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The average daily cost to keep one person in jail is just under $100. With more than 6,500 pretrial defendants incarcerated every day in Colorado, taxpayers pay more than $23 million for people who can’t pay bond. 

Colorado’s jail population has “ballooned,” Herod said, rising from 1,500 people in 1970 to more than 13,000 in 2017. If current trends continue, jails across the state could exceed 16,000 people by 2025 and more than 17,500 by 2030, according to the ACLU. 

“Building bigger jails is not the answer to our growing jail population,” Herod said. “Creating an equitable system for relief for innocent people is the answer.”

The Bring Our Neighbors Home campaign sets forth seven legislative initiatives that will be pursued over the next few years. Plans include requiring bond hearings within 48 hours of arrest, establishing a three-day grace period for missing court, ending defendant-paid pretrial services, prohibiting arrests for petty offenses such as sleeping on a park bench or having an open alcohol container, and decriminalizing violation of bail bond conditions.

The campaign also intends to limit the use of monitored sobriety and ankle monitors, as well as require any jurisdictions using risk assessment tools for pretrial release to provide “robust” data that will allow the state to study their assessments for bias in design and outcomes.   

“For me, it’s about the constitutional protections were enumerated by our forefathers: the concept that you’re innocent until proven guilty” said Soper, who emphasized the bipartisanship backing Colorado’s criminal justice legislation.

“We want the right people in jail — the people who would otherwise do harm to society,” he said. “The people we don’t want in jail are those may be there with the only reason being that they’re poor.”

Michael Fields, executive director of the conservative advocacy organization Colorado Rising Action, said he wouldn’t comment until he learns more about the legislation.

If walking away with just one key point from the campaign, said the ACLU of Colorado’s Denise Maes, it should be that it’s about people.

“This is about real individuals: your neighbors, my friends, our community,” she said.

“True and genuine bail reform — that is coming to Colorado,” Maes said, concluding the press conference. “The ending has not yet been written, but we will be its author.”