El Paso County agreed to a settlement on Tuesday that will award $60,000 to woman who was kept in jail for nearly a month because she couldn’t pay a $55 release fee.
It also agreed to pay up to $130,000 more to others who spent extra time in jail in similar situations.
County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved the payout to end a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado in November on behalf of Jasmine Still, a Colorado Springs woman in her 20s and mother of three children.
The ACLU determined that about 180 other people had been held in jail under the same circumstances: A judge had approved their release on a personal recognizance bond, or written promise to appear in court, but they could not afford the release fee.
Under the terms of the agreement, those individuals are now eligible to receive $125 for each additional day that they were kept behind bars.
Read more at Colorado Politics: https://bit.ly/2MgGPTr
