Campaign Launched For Female Detainees

Keesa Figgs-Desilva found herself locked up in pre-trial detention because she couldn’t afford the $5,000 bail bond. Then a New Haven-based bail fund helped her pay off the bond, return home to her children, fight her court case from outside of prison, and ultimately get all of the charges against her dropped.

Now New Haveners are ponying up to help other women also behind bars for the crime of lacking money to post bail.

Figgs-Desilva shared her story on Saturday night during the kick-off event for the Connecticut Bail Fund’s Mother’s Day campaign: a month-long endeavor to raise money to help free incarcerated women and girls who are held in pre-trial detention and immigration detention, as well as to provide a platform for those women to share their stories about what life is like for mothers behind bars.

Around 150 people attended the event, which was held at Bregamos Community Theater in Fair Haven and featured music, food from CitySeed’s Sanctuary Kitchen, a station for writing letters to incarcerated women, and a panel discussion with seven formerly incarcerated women, most of whom had spent some time behind bars at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic.

Run by New Haveners Brett Davidson and Ana María Rivera-Forastieri, the Connecticut Bail Fund was founded in 2016 to ensure that people arrested for alleged low-level, non-violent offenses don’t have to sit behind bars simply because they cannot afford bail as they wait for their court dates to arrive.

The Mother’s Day campaign is a collaboration between the bail fund and a variety of local criminal justice reform and immigration rights activist groups, including the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance (CIRA), the Sex Workers & Allies Network (SWAN), Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), and the Central Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America.

Davidson and Rivera-Forastieri said their goal is to raise $30,000 and to free over 30 women from pre-trial detention and immigration detention by Mother’s Day, on May 13. Rivera-Forastieri said they had already raised $3,500 for the campaign in the three or four days leading up to the kick-off event, and that an anonymous local donor had promised to match their fundraising efforts with an additional $10,000 once they hit the $10,000 mark on their own. Rivera-Forastieri told the Independent after the event that they had raised $3,800, primarily in small donations, at the kick-off.

Figgs-Desilva told the audience during Saturday night’s panel discussion that she was arrested in Fair Haven’s Clinton Park last year after she and her husband were kicked out of their Fillmore Street apartment and had nowhere else to go.

She said the police found her with 39 different IDs in her bag, which she claimed had been put there by a roommate who had set her up. The police charged her with identity theft, violation of probation, and disturbing the peace. She was sent to York Correctional Institution and had a $5,000 bond put on her release.

“Being up there, I felt so hopeless,” she said.

She said she had spent the past few decades in and out of jail. The mother of 21 children (10 boys and 11 girls), Figgs-Desilva gave birth to twins while behind bars in 2002. She said her grandmother died while she was in prison in 2005, and her mother died while she was in prison in 2006. Figgs-Desilva despaired at the prospect of doing even more jail time for crimes she had not committed.

Then Davidson visited her up in Niantic. He told her not to settle for a plea deal, and promised to pay the bond.

“In the back of my mind, I was thinking, there’s no way he’s going to bond me,” she said with tears in her eyes. ​“It’s all a show.”

Sure enough, Davidson came through with the money. Figgs-Desilva was able to return to New Haven, and she and her lawyer succeeded in getting all of the charges against her dropped.

“This man took a chance on me,” Figgs-Desilva said, ​“so I said, I’m going to take a chance on him.”

For the past year, she has worked with the Bail Fund doing outreach and surveying the city’s homeless community, spreading the word about the fund’s existence and how it can help people unable to pay their way out of pre-trial detention.

As evidence of her evangelism, two of the women who sat alongside Figgs-Desilva during Saturday night’s panel were her close friend Kountrie and her niece Nicole Kennedy. In the audience, Figgs-Desilva’s husband Kevin cheered from the front row as he recorded the event on his phone.

Not all of the women on the panel had benefited directly from the Connecticut Bail Fund. But each had a story to tell about the challenges of being a woman and a mother behind bars, as well as about the critical importance of receiving financial and emotional support while locked up in jail.

A panelist named Tasha spoke of the sexual harassment and extortion she witnessed at York. She said that pregnant inmates often traded sexual favors for better treatment at the hands of some of the correctional officers.

Terry Allick said that she spent a decade in prison starting at 16, and experienced no end of abuse as a transgender woman in a men’s prison. She said that what kept her going were the rare letters or phone calls or visits from people on the outside who let her know that they had not forgotten about her, and still cared about her.

“It’s just like darkness in there,” she said, ​“but then, when you get that visit or you make that phone call or you get that contact, everything lights up again. The sun pierces through the buildings. All the walls fall down. Nothing matters but you and that letter.”

Kennedy, dressed in a white dress and white pumps, said that she was so happy that Figgs-Desilva had introduced her to the bail fund, because any resource devoted to getting women out of prison and reunited with their children was a resource she could stand behind.

“Life is good when you’re on the outside,” she said. ​“When you’re not standing there, having another individual tell you when to pee. We need more people like you to help support getting people out.”

Click here to learn more about the Bail Fund’s Mother’s Day campaign.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the panel discussion at the kick-off event.