Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna have activated their social justice lens.
Over the weekend, the two chart-toppers supported low-level offenders by posting their bail so that they might be able to return home and spend time with their families.
According to Atlanta news station WSB-TV they posted the bonds for 30 inmates to spring them from the Fulton County Jail, believing that poverty should not be the reason why they are denied the luxury of waiting in their own homes until their trial — like those with resources often do.
Thug said, “This is where we are from.”
“We just woke up and went to the jail with the lawyer and you know DA’s and the prosecutors, you know, the bonding companies and just got as many people as we can out,” he continued.
The “Drip Too Hard” rapper added, “You never know what somebody been through. There was people sitting out three or four years and couldn’t get out on a bond.”
“If they did the crime, then they can do the time, then it’s all right,” Gunna further stated. “But it’s like you’re giving them a bond higher than what they stole.”
This is a larger conversation that speaks to the justice inequity for poor people and the industrialization of America’s prison system.
According to a Prison Policy report, there needs to be a “more informed discussion about whether requiring thousands of dollars in bail bonds makes sense given the widespread poverty of the people held in the criminal justice system and the high fiscal and social costs of incarceration.”
The report further reveals that “most people who are unable to meet bail fall within the poorest third of society. Using Bureau of Justice Statistics data, we find that, in 2015 dollars, people in jail had a median annual income of $15,109 prior to their incarceration, which is less than half (48%) of the median for non-incarcerated people of similar ages. People in jail are even poorer than people in prison and are drastically poorer than their non-incarcerated counterparts.”
The news report documented that this particular facility, Fulton County Jail, actually needed for some of the inmates to be released.
In February, the jail had 2,900 inmates, which is 400 overcapacity.
Thug and Gunna not only helped the people but helped the city out. With COVID-19 running rampant, Atlanta doesn’t need an outbreak in their county jails.
This is only a start for the YSL Records labelmates.
They plan to do more work like this in the future and hope that they will inspire other influencers to tap in and to join their efforts. But for now, they are happy to relieve some of the stress that these Black and brown families are facing.
“It feels so food to the point where you start feeling that’s why God put me here. He put me here to do this,” Thug said.