A coalition of community groups are demanding changes at the Shelby County Jail following a yet-unexplained death there of a man advocates say was detained for too long on a bail that was too high.
Rockez McDaniel was booked into 201 Poplar on July 20. He was arrested for evading arrest and escape, according to criminal justice reform group Just City, and given “an outlandishly high” bond of $1,000, for which he could not pay. The group said McDaniel sat in jail for days without being taken to court or given an attorney.
McDaniel died in jail on Tuesday. The details of the situation have not been released by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. The case is under review by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
McDaniel was 33 at the time of his death and left behind a 3-year-old son, according to Just City.
For this and more, Just City, the Justice & Safety Alliance, the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, Stand for Children Tennessee, ACLU of Tennessee, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, and Decarcerate Memphis issued a list of demands to Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner (who is in charge of the jail) on Friday.
Here’s the list:
“We demand Sheriff Bonner take the following immediate, measurable steps to prevent future tragedies:
1. Release a plan to redirect employees; commit all necessary resources; and train and strengthen the departments responsible for jail intake and jail release.
Goal: reduce booking time by 50 percent to 36 hours by September 1 and another 25 percent to 25 hours by the end of the year.
2. Release a plan to redirect employees and commit all necessary resources monitoring the daily jail roster for people who are not being transported to court or haven’t been appointed counsel within 48 hours of booking.
Goal: 100 percent of people have been to court within 72 hours of booking.
3. Release a plan to identify and divert people with diagnosed mental health conditions to available community resources like Alliance Health Services within 24 hours of arrival at the jail.
Goal: avoid booking people experiencing active mental health episodes into the jail at all by January 1, 2026.”
Jail officials have not yet commented on the McDaniel situation or the list of demands. But it defended recent criticisms of poor conditions on the jail’s website, citing staffing shortages and a very old building as reasons for those conditions.
“The jail is not overcrowded,” reads the statement. “It is not unclean. It does not have a practice of holding detainees in their rooms 23 hours a day.
“The Sheriff’s Office is short-staffed, like every other law enforcement/correctional agency in the U.S. and the Sheriff’s Office is actively recruiting for more personnel.
“Likewise, the jail is a very old structure and Sheriff Bonner welcomes every effort by Shelby County Government and the County Commission to build a new facility.”
Just City also announced on Friday the creation of the Rockez McDaniel Bailout. The emergency fund will draw down as much as $50,000 from the Memphis Community Bail Fund to pay for the release of people “who are trapped in the same conditions as Mr. McDaniel,” Just City said in a statement. Those condition include “inexplicably high bond amounts for minor, non-violent charges and deprived of their ability to get legal counsel for days or weeks.”
“Mr. McDaniel’s death is not an isolated tragedy — it is a symptom of a collapsing jail system that continues to endanger hundreds of people,” says Laramie Wheeler, bail fund and advocacy coordinator for Just City. “Even when people in the jail are given court dates, weeks may pass before they’re allowed to see a judge — the only person who can assign them an attorney — or before they’re arraigned. The incompetence is staggering and increasingly deadly.”
