JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – On Monday, a 68-year-old transient man locked in the Duval County jail died nearly two weeks after being arrested on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. He couldn’t afford the $2,500 bond.
That same day, Illinois became the first state in the nation to eliminate cash bail.
The inmate who died was supposed to be arraigned Wednesday, but JSO said he was found unresponsive in his cell Monday around noon and pronounced dead. State records show most of the people incarcerated in the Duval County jail, like the inmate who died, haven’t been to trial.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, the Duval County jail’s average daily population in July was 3,695. Around 276 people there each day were charged with misdemeanors and had yet to go to trial, like Given.
According to a JSO report, the 68-year-old was arrested on Sept. 6 after he refused to leave UF Health. He said he had hip pain but refused to be treated, JSO said. And after doctors, nurses, and security told him to leave, he refused and was arrested, according to JSO.
JSO records show he was also arrested on a trespassing charge in 2021 and told an officer to take him to jail.
Dawn Gilman, who is the CEO of Changing Homelessness in Jacksonville, said high housing costs and too few resources have led some to resort to extreme measures.
“Our safety net has been very frayed to non-existent,” said Dawn Gilman with Changing Homelessness. “Their housing strategy is either jail and or emergency room hospital.”
Those taken to jail, like Given, who don’t have money for bond, can remain there for days on the taxpayer dime.
“Jails, can’t be our de facto solution for housing instability, they can’t be our de facto solution for inadequate mental health care and health care in society,” said Erin George, Policy Director at The Bail Project, a group that helps pay bail for those who can’t afford it.
“In Jacksonville, specifically, we’ve posted bail for nearly 125 clients in the past couple of years. We’ve never had a Jacksonville client who served another day in jail after we bailed them out,” George said.
She said areas experimenting with bail reform haven’t seen increased incidences of re-arrest or no-show court dates. However, the law enforcement community has pushed back strongly against bail reform. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law in May to reinforce those efforts.
“We’ve also continued to press forward on the momentum, we recently signed legislation that kneecaps the ability of judges to institute so-called “bail reform” where they let people out without posting bail. And what ends up happening is, a lot of these guys commit more crimes when they get let out, and then police have to go arrest them again, and risk their lives again when they never should have had to do that in the first place,” DeSantis said.
“I think my reaction is that, you know, bail reform has become a straw man for public safety, right? There is no one single-color policy which can create or destroy public safety,” George said.
There is no word yet on the cause of death for Given.
His is the first inmate death at the Duval jail since new healthcare contractor NaphCare took over at the jail on Sept. 1.