About

What is Jail Support? What do we do?

Jail Support (or “jail sitting”) means providing support in the form of food, water, rides or bus fare, basic first aid, and resource guides to people being released from Central Booking. Operating within a framework of mutual aid, collective action, and sustainable community building, we station outside the release center with resources for folks getting out. We try to be there during peak times—currently 8pm–11pm on Wednesdays and 7pm–11pm on Fridays.

It does not matter why someone was locked up. We want to acknowledge that arrest and incarceration is a deeply dehumanizing experience, and we aim to meet people with care and dignity as they step back into the world.

We believe that every prisoner is a political prisoner, and that prisons operate with political purpose to oppress, punish, and extract labor from those the state deems “criminal”—primarily those who are Black, poor, or mentally ill. As abolitionists, we believe direct service work and revolutionary struggle are connected.

Through this work, our goals are to bear witness and provide comfort, to de-naturalize petty abuse at the hands of police and corrections facilities, to resist, and to build relationships within the struggle for a prison-free world. We are not a legal aid organization and have no formal legal training.

Central Booking is the primary location where people arrested in Baltimore City are processed, though there are five jails within city limits. Most people held there are in pre-trial detention, meaning they have not been convicted of a crime (with a few exceptions). It is a mixed-gender facility, so we support adults of all genders and many ages who are being released.

What do we offer?

We provide (free) things like:

-Rides

-Phone calls

-Warm clothes

-Resources & info for after release support

-Snacks

-Water and warm drinks

-Harm Reduction and hygiene supplies

-General and direct person-to-person support