Jay Z is bailing out dads for Father’s Day

Writing for Time, the rapper has blasted the bail industry

Jay Z has announced he will be donating to charities to bail out fathers for Father’s Day today (June 17), while simultaneously blasting the US bail bond industry that profits from the way the American criminal justice system works.

“Millions of people are separated from their families for months at a time,” the rapper wrote in a piece for Time on Friday (June 16), “not because they are convicted of committing a crime, but because they are accused of committing a crime.”

He explained that taking part in the documentary series Time: The Kalief Browder Story has made him “obsessed with the injustice of the profitable bail bond industry” and announced that this Father’s Day he’d be donating to organisations to “bail out fathers who can’t afford the due process our democracy promises.”

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“On any given day,” he writes, “over 400,000 people, convicted of no crime, are held in jail because they cannot afford to buy their freedom. When black and brown people are over-policed and arrested and accused of crimes at higher rates than others, and then forced to pay for their freedom before they ever see trial, big bail companies prosper.

“We can’t fix our broken criminal justice system until we take on the exploitative bail industry.”

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