In Mississippi’s capital, hundreds wait in jail for months before they are formally…

What happened

In Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, hundreds of people are in jail waiting to be indicted, some of them for a year or more, The Marshall Project reported on October 28. The headline on the nonprofit newsroom’s story quotes a single line about one man: “It’s as if He Doesn’t Exist.”

The Marshall Project describes the people in its report as jailed without formal charges. In Mississippi, as in many states, an indictment is the formal charge a grand jury hands up. Until it comes, a person has been arrested and held, but the case against them has not formally begun. There has been no trial and no conviction.

This brief draws only on The Marshall Project’s summary of what it found. The individual cases, the reasons for the delays and any response from officials are in the newsroom’s full article, and readers should go there for the whole account.

Our reflection

Stay with that headline for a minute. A man is in a cell in Jackson. The state has not formally charged him, and no jury has heard a word of his case. The days keep passing anyway, and according to the reporting, for some people they pass a full year. A year is long enough to lose a job and an apartment. It is long enough for a little boy to stop asking when his father is coming home. In law he is presumed innocent, and his life is being used up all the same.

“It’s as if he doesn’t exist” is about as old as prayer gets. In Psalm 88 a man in the pit says he has become “like those whom you remember no more.” Jeremiah lived it in the flesh. Officials lowered him by ropes into a cistern and left him sinking in the mud (Jeremiah 38). Nobody had to sentence him. They only had to stop thinking about him.

That is the sin under this story, and you will find it in more places than a courthouse. A system that can hold people for months without a charge runs on paperwork. It also runs on a quiet assumption in the rest of us: he must have done something. Most of us carry that reflex. We hear the word jail and we stop asking. Jesus said the things that defile a person come from inside, and indifference comes from inside too. Repentance starts with something small and honest. Some people became invisible to me long before they became invisible to the state.

Christ does not forget anyone. On the cross, a condemned man beside him asked for one thing: “Jesus, remember me.” He got far more than he asked for, the promise of paradise that same day (Luke 23:42 to 43). And Jesus told us where to look for him now: “I was in prison and you came to me.” He did not wait for a verdict first.

In Jeremiah’s story, the change came from an outsider. Ebed-melech, a Cushite servant in the palace, went to the king and said out loud that this was wrong. Then he went to the cistern with ropes and a bundle of old rags, so the ropes would not tear at Jeremiah’s arms as they pulled him out. He spoke up in public and he was tender in person.

That is still how things change. A state can set a firm deadline to indict, and release a person when the deadline passes. A speedy-trial clock can start on the day of arrest. Court watchers, ordinary people with a notebook in the back row, make a docket harder to ignore. Bail support gets people home to their families while their cases move. At We The Revolt we sit with young people inside detention and stay with them after release, and much of that work comes down to making sure somebody outside still knows their name.

This week, be an Ebed-melech. Pray for the men and women waiting in Jackson and for the families who wait with them. Then find out how long your own state lets someone sit in jail before they are charged, and ask the people who represent you about it. The steps below are a place to start.

I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

Matthew 25:36

Source: The Marshall Project, “‘It’s as if He Doesn’t Exist’: In Mississippi, People Jailed Months Without Formal Charges”