Mass Incarceration

San Francisco Erases $32 Million In Criminal Fees For 21,000 People

August 29, 2018 By Joe McCarthy, Globalcitizen.org Create! Criminal Justice System, Mass Incarceration, New Economy, San Francisco

Everything from finding a job to renting an apartment can be challenging when a criminal record is disclosed. As a result, formerly incarcerated people often struggle to get back on their feet when they leave prison and many end up committing crimes that land them back in a cell. To make matters worse, they’re often hit with thousands of dollars in administrative and other fees for their time spent in court and prison. San Francisco is trying to reduce this financial burden by waiving criminal justice fees for 21,000 people, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The city had previously stopped issuing fees to formerly incarcerated people and this new announcement is an attempt to retroactively address the matter of financial hardship.

Cancellation Of Sacramento ICE Contract Part Of National Campaign

July 8, 2018 By Anta Chabria, Sacramento Bee Resist! Abolish ICE, Immigration, Mass Incarceration

A vote by Sacramento County supervisors this week to end a contract allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to rent local jail beds is being celebrated by immigration activists as a major win and a model for national action. "This represents a pinnacle of triumph, and a beacon of hope for the rest of the tactics we are planning to implement," said Pablo Reyes-Morales, a member of Norcal Resist, a network of trained legal observers focused on immigration issues. "We’re definitely going to try to mimic it."

Half Of Wisconsin’s Black Neighborhoods Are Jails

May 28, 2018 By Brentin Mock, City Lab Educate! Mass Incarceration, Prisons, Racism

17-year-old Lew Blank was fiddling around with the Weldon Cooper Center’s Racial Dot Map when he discovered something disturbing about Wisconsin, where he lives: More than half of the African-American neighborhoods in the state are actually jails. Not only that, but the rest of the black neighborhoods across the state are either apartment complexes, Section 8 housing, or homeless shelters—the lone exception being a working-middle class section of Milwaukee. Sharing this info on the Young, Gifted, and Black Coalition’s blog, Blank explains that he used the Racial Dot Map to identify where predominantly black neighborhoods—defined as “a certain area where the majority of residents are African Americans”—are located throughout the state. There are 56 of them, 31 of which are either jails or prisons. There are 15 cities where the only black neighborhood is a jail.

Jailbreak Of The Imagination: Seeing Prisons For What They Are And Demanding Transformation

May 7, 2018 By Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes, Truthout.org Create! Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex, Prisons

Our current historical moment demands a radical re-imagining of how we address various harms. The levers of power are currently in the hands of an administration that is openly hostile to the most marginalized in our society (Black people, Native people, the poor, LGBTQ people, immigrant communities and more). While we protect ourselves from their consistent and regular blows, we must also fight for a vision of the world we want to inhabit. For us, that's a world where people like Tiffany Rusher, who began a five-year sentence at Logan Correctional Center in Broadwell Township, Illinois, in 2013, are not tortured to death in the name of "safety." Our vision insists on the abolition of the prison industrial complex as a critical pillar of the creation of a new society.

We Don’t Need Mass Incarceration To Keep People Safe

January 19, 2018 By German Lopez, Vox.com Educate! Crime, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex

If mass incarceration were an effective way to fight crime, then one would expect to see a strong correlation between higher rates of incarceration and reduced crime. States have been running a live experiment of sorts on this over the past several years, reforming their criminal justice systems to, in short, punish people less punitively and incarcerate them for shorter periods of time for low-level offenses. Supporters of mass incarceration, such as the Trump administration and particularly Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have warned that these changes would lead to more crime. But over the past few years, we’ve actually seen the opposite. Take this chart from Adam Gelb at Pew Charitable Trusts, which advocates for criminal justice reform, that shows crime has continued to fall even as states have reduced their prison populations...

4 Reasons For Surprising Change In Racial Incarceration Trendlines

December 28, 2017 By Phillip Smith, AlterNet.org Educate! Mass Incarceration, Prisons, Racism

It's long been a given that racial disparities plague the nation's criminal justice system. That's still true—black people are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than that of white people—but the disparities are decreasing, and there are a number of interesting reasons behind the trend. That's according to a report released this month by the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. Researchers reviewed annual reports from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting system and found that between 2000 and 2015, the incarceration rate for black men dropped by nearly a quarter (24 percent). During the same period, the white male incarceration rate bumped up slightly, the BJS numbers indicate.

A New School To Prison Pipeline That Might Surprise You

December 6, 2017 Staff, educationalchemy.com Educate! Labor, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex, Prison Labor

By Staff of Educational Alchemy - Maryland Correctional Enterprises (MCE) is the state’s own prison labor company. A semi-autonomous subdivision of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS), MCE commands a workforce of thousands of prisoners, paid just a few dollars per day. MCE workers make far less than minimum wage, earning between $1.50 and $5.10 for an entire day’s work. Most of us are familiar by now with the concept of a school-to-prison pipeline, but here it is, a prison-for-school pipeline, or better yet, prison-for-profit (all hail 21st century slavery alive and well) in the name of “education reform.” It might be a “great day” for Ed St John and U of M, but I doubt its a great day for the forced laborers who did the work. The new center will “transform teaching and learning” but it will not transform systemic oppression or racism. In fact, it benefits from the fruits of oppressive labor. This is not the only time that U of M, or other institutions of higher learning have used prison labor. That is a deep seated problem in itself that warrants our attention. As one news article states, “”Maryland is just a symptom … of how the prison industrial complex affects African-Americans and poor people of color nationwide.”

Newsletter: Success Against Racists, Build On It

August 20, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Confederate memorial, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Prison Labor, Racial Discrimination, Racism, Ukraine, White Supremacy

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Last week, we wrote about the events in Charlottesville, Virginia in terms of their historical and political context. Since then, the national and international response to right wing mobilization has been rapid and powerful. The response has been global, e.g. women in Poland held photos of slain Heather Heyer while they blocked a far right wing march. The national conversation is changing to include criticism of white supremacy and confederate statues are being taken down. This week, we present a greater focus on the tasks of the movement for social justice and racial equality. It is possible to halt the rise of right wing extremism. To do that we must understand what institutions maintain white supremacy and turn our energy towards ending racist institutions in the United States and globally.

The People’s Congress Of Resistance

August 9, 2017 People's Congress of Resistance, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Equity, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Sovereignty

By the Convenors of the People's Congress of Resistance. We are excited to release the Manifesto of the People's Congress of Resistance! Titled "Society for the Many: A vision for revolution," the manifesto sets out a bold and clear program for people's power, emancipation, equality and a society to meet human needs. In the introductory paragraphs, the People's Congress of Resistance Manifesto explains: "Without a revolutionary vision, change will not take a revolutionary direction. Resistance will remain rudderless, an exercise in activism for its own sake, or it will be co-opted into a vessel for the political elites. A vision for social, economic and political revolution is necessary. We need to know where we want to go. Our vision ties our actions to our goal by showing us what we are mobilizing for. It guides us in coordinating our strategies and tactics. It helps us build collective strength. Our vision tells us how we can win and that we will win."

Private Prison In New Mexico Demands More Prisoners

August 8, 2017 Steven Rosenfeld, www.alternet.org Educate! Mass Incarceration, New Mexico, Prison Industrial Complex, Private Prisons

By Steven Rosenfeld for AlterNet - The nation’s second-largest private prison corporation is holding New Mexico politicians hostage by threatening to close unless the state or federal authorities find 300 more prisoners to be warehoused there, according to local news reports. “The company that has operated a private prison in Estancia for nearly three decades has announced it will close the Torrance County Detention Facility and lay off more than 200 employees unless it can find 300 state or federal inmates to fill empty beds within the next 60 days,” the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper reported last week. The paper said that county officials issued a statement citing the threatened closure and emphasized that every virtually every politician in the region, from county officials to state officials to congressmen, were scurrying to save jobs—as opposed to shutting a privatized prison by an operator that has been sued many times for sexual harassment, sexual assault, deaths, use of force, physical assaults, medical care, injuries and civil rights violations. “This is a big issue for us,” Torrance County manager Belinda Garland told the Santa Fe newspaper.

Caged: Life. Beyond. Bars.

June 2, 2017 Staff, www.kickstarter.com Create! Art, Mass Incarceration

By Staff of Caged - Chris Hedges has taught in America's most elite universities, including Princeton, Columbia, and New York University. It was a class at a Maximum Security Prison, however, where he found “more brilliance, literacy, passion, wisdom and integrity… than in any other classroom…” In Hedges’ class, 28 men collaboratively wrote a play in which the drama of their lives, so often portrayed by others, is finally told in their own words. Inspired by their exceptional talent, Hedges promised that he’d share their voices with the world and—somehow, someday—mount the play. Now, over three years later, Hedges, along with, Boris Franklin, the only writer who has been released from prison to date, are planning to premiere “CAGED” at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, NJ, during their Spring 2018 season.

Louisiana (Finally) Seeking To Reduce Prison Population

May 14, 2017 Matt Higgins, www.occupy.com Create! Louisiana, Mass Incarceration, Prison, Racism

By Matt Higgins for Occupy.com. In a recent op-ed on nola.com, Lafourche (pronounced La-Foosh) Parish Sheriff Craig Webre wrote, “We shouldn't incarcerate people just because they're poor. Or just because they're addicted. Or just because they don't have a home. But we've done that for way too long.” Lafourche Parish, about an hour’s drive southwest of New Orleans, is a reliably conservative parish where more than three-quarters of voters voted for Donald Trump. Webre has served as sheriff of the parish for almost 25 years and was president of the National Sheriffs Association. Most of Webre’s op-ed focused on the report from the Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Task Force, formed in 2015 by the state legislature to study ways to reduce incarceration. Louisiana incarcerates more people per capita than any other state in the union. According to the Task Force report, 8 percent of the state's population is incarcerated, yet this “tough on crime” approach has failed to reduce it. One-third of inmates released return to prison within three years.

Two States Consider Bills To Keep Parents Out Of Jail

April 11, 2017 Victoria Law, www.truth-out.org Create! Families, Mass Incarceration, Prisons

By Victoria Law for Truthout - Ayana Aubourg has one childhood memory of her father that does not involve a jail or prison visiting room. "The only thing I can remember is him making spaghetti," said Aubourg, whose father was sentenced to 10 years in prison when she was seven years old. She saw him once a year in a visiting room that she remembers as being "cold and controlled." Later, a playroom was added for the children visiting their fathers, but the presence of a few toys did little to make the atmosphere warmer or cheerier. "It's still a very traumatic experience," she told Truthout. Spaghetti remains her favorite dish. Aubourg is now 22; her father was released from prison five years ago. But the prison visiting room lingers in her mind, and she is now working to change the laws that rip so many families apart.

Fighting Mass Incarceration Under Trump

December 27, 2016 James Kilgore, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Allies, Donald Trump, Mass Incarceration

By James Kilgore for Truthout - Yusef Shakur is a Detroit community organizer who spent several years in Michigan State prisons. "The prison industrial complex has found the right person to feed it," he told Truthout in response to the election results. Trump is of the same "cloth as Reagan, Bush and Nixon," Shakur added. "I expect the worst in terms of patterns of repression." Among those working to end mass incarceration, Shakur's perspectives are not unique. With Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, the Obama administration often provided wiggle room for reformers to craft and occasionally pass legislation or win changes in policy.

Quarter Of Inmates Could Have Been Spared Prison Without Risk

December 13, 2016 Jamiles Lartey, www.theguardian.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Prisons

By Jamiles Lartey for The Guardian - Study of 1.5 million prisoners finds that drug treatment, community service, probation or fines would have served as more effective sentences for many. A quarter of the US prison population, about 364,000 inmates, could have been spared imprisonment without meaningfully threatening public safety or increasing crime, according to a new study. Analyzing offender data on roughly 1.5 million US prisoners, researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that for one in four, drug treatment, community service, probation or a fine would have been a more effective sentence than incarceration.

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