Some things that seem like a good idea at the time really aren’t.
Or, if you want to get biblical about it, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12)
As is the case with most individuals, I think the U.S. has taken a wrong turn or two over the course of its history. One example that comes to mind is Prohibition, the nationwide ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages that lasted from 1920 to 1933.
It didn’t stop the drinking (there were memories of “bathtub gin” in my family), but it was the best thing that ever happened to organized crime.
The “war on drugs” was another such misstep. While it may have given some politicians a racially tinged road to power, it devastated many communities, destroyed many lives and sucked up untold resources. Without getting rid of drugs.
Fortunately, it looks like more people across the political spectrum are beginning to question the policies of over-incarceration and of criminalizing public health problems.
There seems to be a growing awareness that punishment isn’t the best way to deal with addiction, and of the fact that the vast majority of people who get sucked into the prison-industrial complex are going to come out some day.
There is a growing interest in issues of recovery and re-entry, probably because the opioid crisis has touched so many families.
With both Democratic and Republican legislative majorities, West Virginia has taken some steps in a positive direction:
*In 2013, the Legislature passed the Justice Reinvestment Act, which aimed at reducing incarceration rates while protecting public safety.
*The same year, then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, which opened the gates of treatment and recovery for thousands of West Virginians dealing with addiction issues.
*In 2015, the Republican-led Legislature passed reforms in truancy and juvenile justice aimed at reducing the number of children kept in out-of-home confinement.
*In 2016, the Legislature passed a bill aimed at making it easier for people to regain driver’s licenses.
*In 2017, the Legislature passed the Second Chance for Employment Act, which allows people with nonviolent felony convictions to petition the courts to have the offense reduced to a misdemeanor.
Some of these steps could have been strengthened, but the trend shows movement in the right direction.
One big step West Virginia needs to take is to remove the lifetime ban on SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) for people with felony drug convictions.
That arbitrary ban — which doesn’t apply to any other category of offender — is an ill-thought-out legacy of 1990s federal welfare reform legislation.
According to Marc Mauer, of the D.C.-based Sentencing Project, that measure received about two minutes of debate at the time it was passed.
It shows.
Since then, all but three states, including some of the most conservative, have modified or removed the ban.
Guess who’s one of the three? The others are South Carolina and Mississippi.
As Elizabeth Lower-Basch, of the Center for Law and Social Policy, put it: “I think most states have, over time, recognized this isn’t helpful for the goal of reducing drug use.”
According to a report by Molly Born, of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, in 2016, more than 2,100 people with felony drug convictions were denied SNAP benefits after they had served their time. That number doesn’t include people who didn’t bother to apply at all or those who were denied in other years.
An analysis of overdose fatalities in 2016 found that 56 percent of those who died from overdoses had been incarcerated. Further, “Of male decedents that were incarcerated within 12 months of death, 28% died within a month after release, compared to 21% of females. Nearly half, (46%) of individuals with only some high school education died within 30 days of their release.”
To state the obvious, when people have served their time for drug convictions, they often have little or no assets. Jobs are hard to find. Family and community connections may have eroded over time. Relapse is a possibility, especially if there seems to be no hope.
And they still need to eat.
The road to recovery is hard, but we have a lot of people on it. They don’t need another roadblock.
It’s time to end the ban.
Showing posts with label re-entry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label re-entry. Show all posts
September 12, 2018
August 08, 2018
Rethinking a lost war
Since President Ronald Reagan’s declaration of the “war on drugs” in the 1980s, the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has increased 1,100 percent. Today, 5 million formerly incarcerated people are living in the United States and, every year, 600,000 people are released from prison and face the daunting task of building a stable life for themselves and their family.
For most of us, a job is the basic building block to a life where you can, at the very least, provide the basics of food for your family, a place to live, money to pay the bills and put gas in the car. Forget a family vacation.
But, according to a report just released by the Prison Policy Initiative, employment is really hard to come by if you are one of these 5 million people.
Using national data that had never been compiled before, they found that formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27 percent — a rate higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.
Put another way, the unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is nearly five times higher than among the general population, creating “a counterproductive system of release and poverty, hurting everyone involved — employers, the taxpayers and, certainly, formerly incarcerated people looking to break the cycle.”
For formerly incarcerated people who are black or Hispanic — especially black or Hispanic women — unemployment rates are even worse, due in part to over-representation in arrests and incarceration in the first place, and then the conscious or unconscious racial bias of employers.
As Devah Pager found in her 2003 landmark study, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” Black job seekers without criminal records were less likely to receive callbacks from employers than white job seekers with criminal records.
Children are the unseen victims of this counterproductive, discriminatory cycle of poverty and incarceration. In a vexing story published in The Nation about the impact of the opioid crisis on Henry J. Kaiser Elementary School, in Ravenswood, eight teachers reported that they have at least two children in their classrooms with a parent who has been incarcerated on drug charges.
According to the widely cited Adverse Childhood Experience study, having a parent incarcerated is one of the traumatic experiences that significantly impacts a person’s mental and physical well-being later in life.
The story in The Nation also noted that, even though hiring has picked up again in Jackson County, people with felony convictions are not getting hired.
Given bleak employment numbers for the formerly incarcerated, we should be doing everything we can to remove barriers, not only to minimum-wage jobs but good-paying ones.
As one formerly incarcerated man interviewed for the West Virginia Criminal Justice Listening Project said, “I need a career, not a job.”
Unfortunately, there are roughly 114 laws in state code that severely restrict people’s access to professional licenses based on criminal convictions. These laws are written in broad and vague terms like “crimes of moral turpitude,” making it either impossible or risky for a person with a criminal record to pursue a professional license.
Fortunately, there are two policies that the West Virginia Legislature is considering that will help address the interlinked crises of drug addiction, over-criminalization and low employment among formerly incarcerated people.
One would reduce barriers to occupational licenses people with criminal records face, while balancing licensing boards’ need for discretion. Another would establish a sentencing commission to review the sentencing laws on the books.
A meaningful sentencing commission would make recommendations for sentencing laws that are based on evidence and outcomes and less on the paradigm of “lock ‘em up” that has resulted in a staggering incarceration rate and millions of felons, and children, with the deck stacked against them.
Policymakers, employers and all of us need to get serious about investing more in treatment, education and job training than in jails and prisons. Because nobody in America, except maybe pharmaceutical companies and the private prison industry, is winning in the war on drugs.
(This op-ed by AFSC's Lida Shepherd appeared in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)
For most of us, a job is the basic building block to a life where you can, at the very least, provide the basics of food for your family, a place to live, money to pay the bills and put gas in the car. Forget a family vacation.
But, according to a report just released by the Prison Policy Initiative, employment is really hard to come by if you are one of these 5 million people.
Using national data that had never been compiled before, they found that formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27 percent — a rate higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.
Put another way, the unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is nearly five times higher than among the general population, creating “a counterproductive system of release and poverty, hurting everyone involved — employers, the taxpayers and, certainly, formerly incarcerated people looking to break the cycle.”
For formerly incarcerated people who are black or Hispanic — especially black or Hispanic women — unemployment rates are even worse, due in part to over-representation in arrests and incarceration in the first place, and then the conscious or unconscious racial bias of employers.
As Devah Pager found in her 2003 landmark study, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” Black job seekers without criminal records were less likely to receive callbacks from employers than white job seekers with criminal records.
Children are the unseen victims of this counterproductive, discriminatory cycle of poverty and incarceration. In a vexing story published in The Nation about the impact of the opioid crisis on Henry J. Kaiser Elementary School, in Ravenswood, eight teachers reported that they have at least two children in their classrooms with a parent who has been incarcerated on drug charges.
According to the widely cited Adverse Childhood Experience study, having a parent incarcerated is one of the traumatic experiences that significantly impacts a person’s mental and physical well-being later in life.
The story in The Nation also noted that, even though hiring has picked up again in Jackson County, people with felony convictions are not getting hired.
Given bleak employment numbers for the formerly incarcerated, we should be doing everything we can to remove barriers, not only to minimum-wage jobs but good-paying ones.
As one formerly incarcerated man interviewed for the West Virginia Criminal Justice Listening Project said, “I need a career, not a job.”
Unfortunately, there are roughly 114 laws in state code that severely restrict people’s access to professional licenses based on criminal convictions. These laws are written in broad and vague terms like “crimes of moral turpitude,” making it either impossible or risky for a person with a criminal record to pursue a professional license.
Fortunately, there are two policies that the West Virginia Legislature is considering that will help address the interlinked crises of drug addiction, over-criminalization and low employment among formerly incarcerated people.
One would reduce barriers to occupational licenses people with criminal records face, while balancing licensing boards’ need for discretion. Another would establish a sentencing commission to review the sentencing laws on the books.
A meaningful sentencing commission would make recommendations for sentencing laws that are based on evidence and outcomes and less on the paradigm of “lock ‘em up” that has resulted in a staggering incarceration rate and millions of felons, and children, with the deck stacked against them.
Policymakers, employers and all of us need to get serious about investing more in treatment, education and job training than in jails and prisons. Because nobody in America, except maybe pharmaceutical companies and the private prison industry, is winning in the war on drugs.
(This op-ed by AFSC's Lida Shepherd appeared in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)
October 04, 2016
More not all bad
It these days when news stories of the tragic killing of African Americans in encounters with police and ensuing unrest are all too common, there is major good news on the police/community front right here in West Virginia.
No, really.
At a press conference today, the Charleston Police Department along with community allies (including AFSC and our partners such as Our Children Our Future, the WV Coalition Against Domestic Violence and others) announced the rollout of a very ambitious program aimed at easing racial tensions and promoting police community relations.
Among the proposed action steps are these:
*Implementing De-Escalation training to prevent violence whenever possible.
*Publishing monthly arrest statistics across race, age, gender and cause of arrest to promote transparency.
*Introducing body camera technology in November, which will protect both police and citizens.
*Launching a Youth Advisory Council this month to be made up of about 10 young people, ages 18-25 of different races, who will meet with officers to discuss recommendations to improve community-police relationships.
*Holding anti-racism training for all officers.
*Conducting roll call presentations so that officers can meet and hear from Charleston leaders.
*Presenting a new annual Community Service Award to recognize officers for meeting community policing standards.
*Advocating state policy changes to address re-entry and recidivism to give ex-offenders a chance to be a productive citizen.
This is pretty huge. Congratulations to all involved and here's hoping for a successful implementation. This could be a model for the nation.
No, really.
At a press conference today, the Charleston Police Department along with community allies (including AFSC and our partners such as Our Children Our Future, the WV Coalition Against Domestic Violence and others) announced the rollout of a very ambitious program aimed at easing racial tensions and promoting police community relations.
Among the proposed action steps are these:
*Implementing De-Escalation training to prevent violence whenever possible.
*Publishing monthly arrest statistics across race, age, gender and cause of arrest to promote transparency.
*Introducing body camera technology in November, which will protect both police and citizens.
*Launching a Youth Advisory Council this month to be made up of about 10 young people, ages 18-25 of different races, who will meet with officers to discuss recommendations to improve community-police relationships.
*Holding anti-racism training for all officers.
*Conducting roll call presentations so that officers can meet and hear from Charleston leaders.
*Presenting a new annual Community Service Award to recognize officers for meeting community policing standards.
*Advocating state policy changes to address re-entry and recidivism to give ex-offenders a chance to be a productive citizen.
This is pretty huge. Congratulations to all involved and here's hoping for a successful implementation. This could be a model for the nation.
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