Monetary bail is systemically a blatant violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights.
In a city where 17.4% of citizens live in poverty, legislators like State Sen. Brent Taylor have opted to pass legislation that makes it nearly impossible for accused citizens to afford bail. This blatant disregard for a person's constitutional rights directly follows after organizations like JustCityhave worked tirelessly to form programs which prevent the unnecessary detention of citizens of Memphis that are charged with crimes.
This legislation, aptly titled the Anti-Bail Fund Act, erodes, at its core, the possibility of reducing the unethical overcrowding in the jail while simultaneously hindering advances in other prison reform programs aimed at helping
rehabilitate convicted citizens. It cost Shelby County and the City of Memphis nearly $30 million in taxes to house inmates in 2025. To put that into perspective, Shelby County citizens indirectly pay $100-$110 per day to house inmates, yet our city and state legislators seem determined to pass bills that unconstitutionally keep citizens detained in the jails by increasing citizens taxes.
Crime has been a long-standing issue in Memphis, but enacting legislation that disregards a person's Eight Amendment right and the inherent meaning of bail and the prison system is not the answer. The principal purpose of judicial system has always been rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution.
Anti-bail Legislation explained
The new anti-bail fund legislation mentioned actively continues to not only add the ever increasing over capacity of jails like 201, but also inherently disallows for there to be advances in other areas like drug treatment facilities, more beds for mental health facilities, and in all regular everyday nutritional needs for people in these institutions.
Recent legislation has disregarded this need, overstating the need for retribution to the point that lawmakers seem adamant with passing legislation that infringes on a citizen’s rights. Furthermore, if the inherent meaning of bail is to act as a safeguard against the unlawful detention of civilians who have yet to get their day in court, what sense does taking away the guaranteed right to afford bail make, if not to blatantly violate a person’s constitutional rights?
Advocating against the Anti-Bail Fund Legislation proposed and enacted by Sen. Taylor is not to stand for the release of convicted felons, but rather to stand and say that the Tennessee legislation, and essentially its way of thinking, is flawed at its core.
Shelby County has one of the deadliest jails in the country. So deadly in fact, that in one week in early 2025 four people tragically lost their lives, followed by three more citizens of the City of Memphis sadly losing their lives within days of each other in November of 2025. Based on these facts, and as a citizen of Memphis who has personally seen the constitutional violations that occur within our prison system, it provides zero logical, rational, or reasonable basis that enacting legislation increasing bail prices for one of the poorest cities in America makes comprehensible sense. In a world filled with turmoil and hatred, and the pitting of fellow Americans against each other on the basis of political parties, it’s time for citizens of all walks and backgrounds to be for the party of human beings.
As we remember that the Memphis jail is one of the deadliest in the United States, a country that just celebrated its 250th anniversary, I urge readers to remember the lives lost of those who had yet to have their constitutionally guaranteed day in court, and remember that legislators in Tennessee, like Brent Taylor, reason that violating an individual's constitutional rights is the solution, I can emphatically say it’s not.
Luke Tankersley is a juris doctor student at the Cecil Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Understanding solutions that violate innate human rights | Opinion
