Digital Dope:Help Bond Me App (Celebrating Black Entrepreneurs in Tech)

When I initially came across the Help Bond Me app, I was really excited to see how founding entrepreneur Ben McFarlin solved a problem that has likely touched a large portion of families in the African American community. With recent media headlines about renown detainees such as Meek Mill, Kalief Browder, and the hundreds and thousands of other detainees who are held without access to bond, HelpBond seems to be right on target in creating a solution that helps detainees raise the funds required to be reunited with their families while awaiting trial.

In 2016, there were at least 646,000 people locked up in over 3,000 jails across the country with a disproportionate amount of those being African American. 70% of those who are locked up have been detained pre-trial. The very public imprisonment and subsequent trial of Meek Mill has come to shed light on the problematic cycle of jailing the poor and disenfranchised. Like Meek Mill, those with access to both capital and powerful social and legal networks may eventually see freedom. While others, like Kalief Browder may sit in jail for months, and even years without proclamation of guilt due to inability to raise the funds required to post bail.

HelpBond.Me is a Detention Center Kiosk which leverages blockchain technology to allow detainees to provide immediate notification of an arrest by providing access to smartphone contacts stored in the cloud. The solution also allows detainees to retrieve contacts from social media profiles. Help Bond Me takes its solution set a step further by offering a mobile app which allows detainees to privately raise funds through a crowdfunding platform which only assesses a 6% fee for its services.

More about Help Bond Me can be found here on it’s current website: https://helpbond.me/en/. Visit the link to read more about how Founder Ben McFarlin has fueled his passion for social justice into a very innovative product that is sure to help a considerable amount of families over time.  

Using technology is certainly a creative way to fight for social justice, and we’re all the way here for Ben McFarlin’s vision and leadership as it pertains to bail reform.We’d love to hear your thoughts about this technology. Leave a comment below.