How it works
What actually happens, start to finish.
The hardest part of needing help is not knowing what comes next. Here is the whole shape of it, so you can call already knowing.
You call or text
Any hour. The line is open 24 hours.
You do not need the whole story worked out first. You do not need to know what to ask for. Most people start with "I don’t even know where to begin," and that is a perfectly good place to begin.
And it does not matter what time it is. The phone is answered 24 hours a day — two in the morning is a normal time to call, and you will not get a recording or a machine.
If someone is in custody right now, calling is faster than typing — but a text works too, and so does the form on the contact page. Whatever gets you in touch is the right way to do it.
We tell you what’s possible — and what it costs
In plain words, before you agree to anything.
Depending on what you need, that means the bond amount and what it comes to, what a Justice Reentry House looks like and who it is for, or what paperwork needs signing and by whom.
If what you need is something we do not do — a lawyer, a specific treatment program, a county we cannot work in — we say so, and point you toward who does. A wrong yes costs you time you do not have.
We get to work
One number, one person, all the way through.
The bond gets posted, the housing gets arranged, the document gets notarized. If it is a bond, that means the co-signer paperwork explained line by line before you sign it — not after.
If it is housing, it means the details settled before release day, so there is an address to go to instead of a bus station and a decision to make.
You keep the number
The help doesn’t stop at the crisis.
Court dates come around. Move-in day comes. The first hard week after release comes, and it is usually the hardest one. That is not the end of the help — it is the reason for it.
Peer support is the part most people did not know they were signing up for, and it is the part that matters most.
By the end of it, the paperwork is the small part. The door you walk through is the whole thing.
That is what the second half of this work is for — and it is the half most people never get offered.
Have these ready if you can
Four things that make a bond move faster.
None of them is required to call. Bring what you have and we start there.
Full name and date of birth
The person in custody — even a partial date helps.
The jail or facility
County jail, state prison or federal facility, and the city if you know it.
The charge, if you know it
If you don’t, that’s fine. It changes the process, not whether we can help.
A phone number that reaches you
So we’re not playing phone tag while a clock is running.
The line is answered 24 hours a day — there is no hour that is too late.
Still not sure whether to call?
Call anyway. Asking costs nothing, and Jessica Stephens would rather answer a question you think is too small than miss the one that mattered.