Tiera Rainey, her mom and sister are waiting for Pima County jail officials to release a woman they’d never met before, but for whom they had just posted a $5,000 bail bond. The woman’s family can’t afford that much money to free her to await trial at home with her child.
Knowing it will be a few hours before the jail processes paperwork, they call her family and walk to the parking lot. The woman’s son, then about 5 years old, and her sister and mom wait nearby in their car. They watch the jail release door for any movement, any sign that their loved one is safe and coming home.
It’s late in the afternoon on a sweltering June day when the mother finally walks free into the Tucson sunlight.
Her smile spreads across her tired face when she sees her family. Her mom and sister hug her on either side. Her baby boy walks to his mother. Tiptoeing and gripping a Doritos bag in one hand, he reaches up to hug her tight. She bends down to hold her son.
The Raineys watch and record the reunion. They never post the video on social media. It’s a private moment for the family to keep.
The mother’s overgrown braids are tied back, and when the Raineys ask her how she feels she seems a bit disoriented. She sheds tears, releasing both joy and stress in that moment of freedom. With her child and family.
“It was just a very beautiful experience. I think that was when we really understood the power of what we were trying to do,” Tiera says, her memories spilling so fast that when she stresses the words “beautiful” and “power” it’s as if she is speaking with an accent.
That was eight years ago. The Tucson woman was one of many released in 2017 from dangerous and deadly jails across the United States as part of a national justice campaign to free incarcerated Black mothers.
Tiera didn’t know then that she would make more than 100 visits to the Pima County jail to free incarcerated community members. Nor that the effort would eventually help release more than 200 people from Southern Arizona jails. Mothers. Fathers. Sons. Daughters. Sisters. Brothers.
She also didn’t know that a long fight for bail reform in one of Arizona’s most progressive counties would falter under a Democrat-majority board of supervisors, Democrat-led attorney’s office and Democratic sheriff.
While there have been some attempts for bail reform in Pima County, cash bail remains state law and county and city officials have to follow and work within the limitations of state law. Still, some criminal justice experts say local courts and prosecutors could do more.
“Pima County courts could adopt bail reform policies and practices for their judges, such as imposing conditions of release other than money bail as an alternative way to protect public safety and ensure appearance for future court hearings, and prosecutors could encourage them to do so,” said Amelia Cramer, former chief deputy Pima County attorney who volunteers with the NAACP Tucson branch, in an email.
That fight for bail reform happened amid a nationwide call for a racial reckoning as Black Lives Matter protests filled U.S. streets in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020. Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck and back for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for his role in Floyd’s death.
Along with calls for racial justice, came calls for restructuring the bail system.
In 2021, Illinois became the first state to end cash bail. The legislative reform aimed to ensure people who “should be detained for the safety of the community cannot pay for their release and those who can be safely released are not detained because they lack financial means,” according to the Center for Effective Public Policy.
A year after the change was implemented in 2023, “the overall number of people held in jail pretrial declined … Specifically, the monthly average jail populations fell 14% in Cook and other urban counties, and 25% in rural counties, with the sharpest drops occurring in the first few months of implementation,” according to a 2024 study published by Loyola Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice.
In Arizona, where there is no such reform, the mother in Tucson was arrested and incarcerated. She would have spent months in jail if not for the Tucson Bail Fund — led by two Black women tired of waiting for the justice system to change.
They watched as some criminal justice advocates pushed for new statewide legislation that would end bail for people charged with low level crimes that would have resulted in a less than a year in prison.
“It won’t be perfect,” Cramer told Arizona Luminaria in April about the proposed Arizona law. “I mean, we can pass as many laws as we want, and there still will be explicit and implicit bias among people in the population. But what the bill is attempting to do is to address that concern as best as possible.”
Meanwhile, the Raineys kept gathering donations and freeing Black, Brown and Indigenous people from Pima County’s jail — a detention system that has historically struggled with deficient medical care and a disparate number of deaths.
People of color disproportionately represented
Many people across the U.S. are behind bars as pretrial detainees — meaning they haven’t been convicted of any crimes — because they can’t afford to pay bail to await hearings outside of jail.
Nationally, an estimated two-thirds of women who could not make bail were mothers of children under 18, and slightly more than half were fathers with minor children, according to a 2018 Prison Policy Initiative analysis of federal data on inmates in local jails. The data is from 2002, the last time the government collected and publicly reported these statistics.
An official with the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics told Arizona Luminaria in late November that they finished gathering new survey information in April and are currently analyzing the data.
“We do not have an estimate of when the data and report(s) may be released at this time, but it is likely to not be until next year,” they said in an email.
Prison Policy Initiative is a nonpartisan research center that focuses on analyzing mass incarceration data. Its local jails analysis showed that people of color are overrepresented at disparate rates in the percentage of unconvicted pretrial detainees. About 43% of unconvicted detainees were Black and nearly 20% were Latinos — an overrepresentation compared to their proportion of the U.S. population at the time.
Since 1983, pretrial detention has led to a 68% growth in jail population across the country, Prison Policy Initiative reports. Overall, about 70% of people in jail are held pretrial in the U.S.
In Pima County, 81% of people in the jail are held pretrial, meaning they have not yet been convicted of a crime, according to a Pima County Administrator memo from May 2024. That means Pima County’s pretrial detention is higher than the national average.
The number of unconvicted people behind bars because they can’t make bail is particularly alarming in communities like Pima County where the local jail has struggled with dangerous conditions and deaths.
In recent years, the Pima County jail has seen some of the highest death rates in the nation, with at least 10 people dying in the jail in 2022. The number of deaths has since decreased, but at least five people have died in custody so far in 2025 as of Nov. 5, according to the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiners Office data portal.
Of those being held pretrial in Pima County, Black, Latinx and Native Americans are disproportionately represented.
People were held in Pima County Jail an average of 25 days, according to data collected in 2024 by the NAACP Tucson Branch.
The data additionally showed it costs $495 for the first day and $125 per day to jail someone in Pima County. That’s almost $3,500 for each person spending 25 days in jail.
Historically, the U.S. bail system was created to incentivize people to show up to their court hearings. People often get their bail money refunded once they show up to all their court dates.
“Bail is not a fine. It is not supposed to be used as punishment,” according to the American Bar Association.
Yet cash bail often allows people who can afford it an opportunity to fight their case from home, while people who can’t afford to pay are stuck behind bars in deadly or dangerous jails waiting for their trial. This often leads to people losing their jobs, to their families and their children suffering, or to pretrial detainees experiencing an increased likelihood of being convicted, according to research from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights shows.
Antea Gatalica, a public defender in Pima County, has seen these effects firsthand. She’s had clients who lost social security benefits after sitting in jail too long. She said her jailed clients have been overcharged when they should have been reconnected with services and treatment. She’s referred clients to the Tucson Bail Fund over the years.
“It’s really difficult to piece your life back together when you’re just sitting in jail trying to resolve a case,” Gatalica said.
Tiera posts final bail in January
That first bail the Raineys posted in 2017 was through Black Lives Matter Tucson’s fundraiser supporting the national “Black Mama’s Bail Out” campaign. The Raineys raised more than they expected, more than they needed to reunite that first mother with her son.
They saw a need for a longer-standing community bail fund. So they started one.
Tiera credits her mother, a former prosecutor and defense attorney, for having the vision and understanding of how powerful the freedom campaign would be for Pima County families, especially for men and women of color.
A few months after the Black Mama’s Bail Out campaign, Tiera’s mom, Lola Rainey, founded the Tucson Second Chance Bail Fund. They later renamed it the Tucson Bail Fund, and Tiera became the executive director.
Nearly a decade later, on the last Friday of January 2025, Tiera sits on a metal bench in the same room at Pima County jail where they’d posted $5,000 for that first mother. She watches as other families post bail and put money on the books for their loved ones.
The cash bail office at the Pima County jail is crowded, as it is most Fridays. A dozen metal seats in tight rows. A payphone. And a kiosk, where people lining up to put funds into their loved one’s commissary account have to pay a percentage of the funds as a fee.
There are three service windows, but usually only one or two of them are open. Still, most families often prefer to wait in line and save money by using the service windows where there is no processing fee, Tiera says.
Tiera posts bail for three people, waits for the paperwork to be processed, then leaves the jail to call their lawyers or family members. Tiera’s message, as always, is simple: In a few hours they’ll be free. And ready to see their loved ones.
The feeling is familiar, after so many years, she says. She’s become a regular at the jail in a way she never imagined. She tells the workers at the bond window it will be her last time here. They are shocked, she says, laughing.
“On the one hand I was like, man, I can’t wait to never be in this jail again,” Tiera says.
She laughs again, but as she speaks her voice becomes serious, then somber.
“It’s a place of misery,” she says. “You know? It’s a place of separation. It’s a place of extraction.”
“And I think ultimately, it was a bit of sadness,” Tiera says, remembering her final visit to the jail. “Because I understood how many people are still left in there, how many people need that help.”
The Tucson Bail Fund shut down at the end of April after helping free 219 people from Southern Arizona jails.
Since posting those last bails for people behind bars in January, Tiera and the Tucson Bail Fund organization have continued to get emails from family members asking for help. That’s despite the organization taking down its bail application form.
The decision to shut down was both a personal one — Tiera’s father died of cancer last year and she’s grieving — and due to a growing lack of support for bail reform.
“A life-changing thing”
It’s 2018, and Eddie Hawkins is sitting on a park table, the hot July sun shining down on him as he talks about how the Tucson Second Chance Bail Fund helped him fight his case. In a video, on Tucson Bail Fund’s Facebook page, Eddie says he was unhoused when he relapsed and was arrested on drug possession charges. He says he had gone more than 13 years without a felony charge.
“Because we bonded him out, he was able to fight his charges. He ended up getting probation,” Tiera says. “So that was actually a life-changing thing we did.”
Eddie’s story exemplifies the goal of the bail fund, Tiera says.
“It was wanting to interrupt the cycle of criminalization that often leads to huge financial destabilization for families,” she says. “We made this intervention with the hope that it would disrupt, and that people would get better deals because they weren’t in such a stressful position as being incarcerated for months on end.”
By posting bail for people in need, the Tucson Bail Fund helped fathers be there for the birth of their child. Mothers reunite with their children. One person maintained their cancer treatment, Tiera says.
In its early days, the Tucson Second Chance Bail Fund was managed by Lola Rainey with the help of Tiera Rainey and community donations. In 2020, the organization got a Borealis Philanthropy grant helping it secure three staff members, including Tiera as director after her mother retired.
As the organization grew, it became a member of the National Bail Fund Network. The network provided the Tucson Bail Fund mentorship and guidance, Tiera said.
The bail fund was limited to posting bail of up to $10,000, which often didn’t meet the needs of those held on bond, Tiera says.
Because Black, Indigenous and people of color are disproportionately affected by the carceral system, the fund prioritized BIPOC applicants. They also assessed whether the incarcerated person was a parent, made their family’s main source of income and whether they had urgent health needs, Tiera says.
The Tucson Bail Fund also aimed to educate the community on criminal justice reform and abolition.
“Posting bail isn’t enough,” Tiera says. “People need resources. People need housing. People need jobs. We recognize that there were a myriad of barriers that people were facing that we could not resolve.”
The organization was part of the No New Jail campaign, “because we understand that $800 million for a new jail was taking away from $800 million that could be going towards affordable housing,” she says.
In 2023, the organization made an exception to its $10,000 bail maximum to work with a bail bondsman to free Tyesha Wayne, a Black mother who was charged with second-degree murder after fatally shooting a man she said was her abuser. Wayne maintained the act was in self-defense.
She lost custody of her two daughters when she was arrested. Wayne’s bail was initially set at $1 million, then reduced to $150,000 after a bail reduction hearing.
After domestic abuse advocates reached out to the Tucson Bail Fund, the organization worked with other community organizers, including Tucson Abortion Support Collective, to raise $15,000 — the 10% needed for a bail bondsman to post bail. Wayne was released on bond and her charges were later dismissed. She also regained custody of her daughters, Tiera says.
“I’m very proud of that case, because posting bond completely changed the calculus. And she was able to fight her charges, and her charges were ultimately dismissed,” she says.”
A third attempt at statewide bail reform
State Rep. Alma Hernandez, D-Tucson, introduced a bail reform bill this year that would eliminate money bail for misdemeanor crimes and low-level crimes that are punishable by less than a year in prison. The bill, backed by the NAACP Tucson chapter, has been introduced three times.
It would also allow pretrial detention where there’s “clear and convincing evidence that the person who’s been arrested has committed a serious violent crime, like homicide, rape, other sexual assault, armed robbery,” said Cramer, the former chief deputy Pima County attorney who volunteers with the NAACP Tucson branch.
The bill is also aspirational in asking judges to consider the history of disproportionate impact the criminal justice system has had on people of color as they make bail decisions, she said. But Cramer didn’t think the bill would pass this year. It needed bipartisan support from statewide prosecutors to pass, she said.
The bill failed in the 2025 legislative session.
Regardless, the Tucson Bail Fund did not agree with the bail reform bill, Tiera says.
“They want bail reform only for low level offenders, but they want to hold people that are deemed dangerous,” she says. “And who’s going to be deemed dangerous? We know it’s going to be predominantly BIPOC people, likely Black men.”
Cramer agreed that there’s evidence that people of color are disproportionately detained pretrial on bail. She said the bill acknowledges that and would help eliminate some of the existing racial and ethnic bias and the over-incarceration of people of color.
Some states have joined the bail reform movement. New Mexico, New York and New Jersey have all implemented statewide bail reform within the last 10 years focusing more on the crime a person is being accused of rather than their ability to pay for their freedom.
While Arizona bail reform legislation hasn’t passed, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover has said prosecutors in her office will argue for high bond or for conditions of release on a case-by-case basis. In a 2021 news release on the Pima County Attorney’s website, Conover said that cash bail is “antiquated and nonsensical.” While she acknowledged that deciding how much danger a person poses to the community is not easy, she said her office was moving away from cash bail.
“When an arrestee poses a risk to community safety, PCAO will argue for a high bond to hold a person until such time as that threat of danger can be addressed,” Conover said in the news release. “When no such threat is present, PCAO will argue for conditions of release that will best serve and protect Pima County.”
Tiera has seen the momentum and popularity of bail reform die down, especially in Arizona where there is a Republican-majority legislature. She knows bail reform in Pima County and Arizona isn’t happening right now.
She says supporting people who are incarcerated can’t wait and may look different now.
“It’s not charity, and I think that’s why it’s revolutionary,” Tiera says of mutual aid options. “It’s about us uplifting each other and filling in the gaps for the ways that the state fails us. And that’s what the bail fund was at its core.”
‘“The work does not end or begin with Tucson Bail Fund”
As the Tucson Bail Fund shuts down, Tiera says she looks forward to seeing other grassroots organizations push for criminal justice reform. Sunsetting organizations is healthy, she says.
Those who want to continue to advocate for criminal justice reform should support groups like Community Care Tucson, Community on Wheels and the Tucson Abortion Support Collective, she suggests.
“These groups that are providing material support to those that are impoverished, I think very much, are in line with the perspective of Tucson Bail Fund,” she says. “And so even if the work looks different and it’s not bail, it’s still work that is uplifting those in poverty and those who are being criminalized.”
The bail fund’s final event on April 16 was a screening of “One Million Experiments,” which highlights the abolitionist movement through mutual-aid organizing and community projects.
The abolitionist movement seeks to find ways to invest in communities’ needs, for example through education, employment, housing, food, in order to reduce crime. It reimagines how people think of community safety.
During the event, Tiera talks about the decision to sunset the Tucson Bail Fund.
“Our goal was to end the criminalization of poverty. That takes bold visioning. That takes another world. That is the vision that we held firm on,” she says, as people snap their fingers in agreement and support.
“I have given all that I can to this organization,” she says, her voice breaking. “And I’m really proud of that.”
The room erupts in applause, as Tiera cries silently. She regains her composure and speaks again.
“The work does not end or begin with Tucson Bail Fund,” she says, trying to hold back more tears. “We were just an experiment, and the spirit continues on.”
Sitting with 85 Tucson community supporters, she wipes away more tears. People whistle and cheer for her. As the event ends, people gather in small circles.
Tiera is surrounded by family and friends.
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