More than six million Americans who've been convicted of a serious crime will be barred from voting in this election. That's the largest number in US history. Three quarters of them have served their sentences and are living freely in their communities. Some believe the law discriminates, because the disenfranchised former offenders are mostly black, and living in the south. Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds reports.
Elizabeth Swavola, a co-author of “Overlooked” and a senior program associate at the Vera Institute, toldRewire that smaller regions tend to lack resources to address underlying societal factors that often lead women into the jail system.
County officials often draft budgets mainly dedicated to running local jails and law enforcement and can’t or don’t allocate funds for behavioral, employment, and educational programs that could strengthen underserved women and their families.
“Smaller counties become dependent on the jail to deal with the issues,” Swavola said, adding that current trends among women deserves far more inquiry than it has received.
Fred Patrick, director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute, said in “Overlooked” that the study underscored the need for more data that could contribute to “evidence-based analysis and policymaking.”
“Overlooked” relies on several studies and reports, including a previous Vera Institute study on jail misuse, FBI statistics, and Rewire’s investigation on incarcerated women, which examined addiction, parental rights, and reproductive issues.
“Overlooked” authors highlight the “unique” challenges and disadvantages women face in jails.
Women-specific issues include strained access to menstrual hygiene products, abortion care, and contraceptive care, postpartum separation, and shackling, which can harm the pregnant person and fetus by applying “dangerous levels of pressure, and restriction of circulation and fetal movement.”
And while women are more likely to fare better in pre-trail proceedings and receive low bail amounts, the study authors said they are more likely to leave the jail system in worse condition because they are more economically disadvantaged.
In part two of VICE’s investigation into modern-day debtor’s prison practices, we explore the phenomenon of private probation companies. To avoid paying for probation services, thousands of courts currently outsource probation to for-profit companies which charge people exorbitant fees for their own probation. Failure to pay is treated as a violation of probation, punishable by jail time, which extorts cash from already-struggling people. VICE meets Thomas Barrett, a formerly homeless man who paid thousands in probation fees over the theft of a two-dollar can of beer.
VICE’s Justice series examines the winners and losers of the for-profit criminal justice system. Imprisoning people for being poor has technically been illegal in this country for two hundred years, but it is still a reality. Municipalities with small, low-income populations and correspondingly low tax bases regularly pay their salaries, and pad their budgets by issuing “quality of life” and traffic fines to people for minor offenses—and sending them to jail if they can’t pay. VICE examines the ways these local governments have turned broken-windows policing into profit, and meets the people who are fighting back.
John Legend is on a mission to transform America's criminal justice system. Through his Free America campaign, he's encouraging rehabilitation and healing in our prisons, jails and detention centers — and giving hope to those who want to create a better life after serving their time. With a spoken-word prelude from James Cavitt, an inmate at San Quentin State Prison, Legend treats us to his version of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." "Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom?"
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Amanda Woog, a postdoctoral legal fellow and Texas Justice Initiative project director, on the nearly 7,000 people have died over the past decade while in police custody in Texas.
View the data with the TJI’s interactive online tool.
Nearly 7,000 people have died over the past decade while in police custody in Texas, according to a report by the by Texas Justice Initiative (TJI). About 1,900 of those people had not been convicted of a crime.
Many had not even been charged with a crime.
The TJI report analyzed data collected and published as part of a project by the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin.
Unlike people who are executed by the state, which the report notes is “painstakingly documented,” the accounts of those who die while in custody are not widely known. “They occur at every point and phase of our criminal justice system, in a manner that remains largely untracked and unexamined,” the report’s authors wrote.
From 2005-2015, there were 6,913 people who died while in police custody in Texas. The number of deaths in police custody has increased over the years. There were 683 in 2015, the highest number of deaths in a single year during the ten-year span, during which there was an average of 623 deaths per year.
Amanda Woog, a postdoctoral legal fellow and TJI project director, told Rewire that the sheer number of people who have died in custody in Texas has been “really jarring for people,” and that the data shines a light on Texas’ incarceral state.
“I think this story is really a story that we’ve known for a long time which is that too many people are incarcerated,” Woog said. “The other story that is emerging is that a lot of folks have known for some time too, which is that too many people are incarcerated pre-conviction.”
Photo: Barry B. Telford Unit in Bowie County, Texas (Source: Houston Chronicle)
TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway visits Greensboro, North Carolina to speak with organizers and attendees of Michelle Alexander event on race and policing.
• Johnny Melton was successfully sued for nearly $20,000 after a 15-month stint in prison — and forced into a homeless shelter.
• One inmate was sued for nearly $175,000 after he won a $50,000 lawsuit against the state’s corrections department for not appropriately treating his cancer.
• Another inmate was sued for more than $450,000 for his time in prison after serving nearly 20 years.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, newly named MacArthur fellow who has been shortlisted for the National Book Award, speaks to Gwen Ifill about his writings on the “gray waste” of mass incarceration and racial inequality, and why he makes the case for reparations for Black Americans.
The inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department’s Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. Most of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release.
The early release follows action by the U.S. Sentencing Commission — an independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal crimes — which reduced the potential punishment for future drug offenders last year and then made that change retroactive.
People Killed by Police in 2015: 704
In this moment, as we reflect on where we are, how we got here and where we are going, I am reminded of the difference between accountability and justice – and of our commitment to both. Accountability is the consent decree between the US justice department and the Ferguson and Cleveland police departments, and the reparations for the victims of the torture of the Chicago police department. Accountability is important, but accountability is not our ultimate goal. Accountability is not justice.
Man shot by police in Ferguson after he fired at officers (St. Louis Dispatch)
A peaceful day of protest and remembrance dissolved into chaos late Sunday when a man fired multiple shots at four St. Louis County plainclothes detectives in an SUV. The detectives fired back and the shooter was struck, said county Police Chief Jon Belmar. He was in critical condition. Tyrone Harris identified the victim as his son, Tyrone Harris Jr., 18, of St. Louis. Harris said shortly after 3 a.m. that his son had just gotten out of surgery. He said his son graduated from Normandy High School and that he and Michael Brown Jr. "were real close." "We think there's a lot more to this than what's being said," Harris Sr. said.
One Year Later in Ferguson, Still Seeing Wrongs (New York Times)
The city of Ferguson, which is about two-thirds black, has taken some steps to address concerns about policies that the Justice Department described as discriminatory. It has hired a black interim city manager and a black interim police chief. It has released city officials who were discovered to have sent racist emails. It has hired a new municipal judge. On the state level, the Legislature passed a law capping the amount of revenue that cities can collect from traffic tickets, responding to accusations that municipalities were targeting mostly black motorists with unfair fines and fees. Still, the people gathered here on Sunday said they wanted to see more done.
Michael Brown is honored peacefully in several cities (Washington Post)
On Sunday, hundreds of people in Ferguson marked the anniversary of the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer with 4 1/2 minutes of silence. According to news reports, the crowd gathered at 12:02 p.m., the time 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed, and the period of silence symbolized the 4 1/2 hours that Brown’s body lay in the street before police removed it. Two doves were released at the end. As the protesters headed to a church at the edge of the city, about six shots were heard; it was unclear who fired them or whether anyone was injured. A police spokesman said that the shots did not appear to be aimed at the marchers.
Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter and the racial divide in Seattle (Seattle Globalist)
On Saturday, Bernie Sanders came to Seattle for a fundraiser and rally. At the rally at Westlake Park to celebrate the 80th birthday of Social Security, two Black Lives Matter protesters took the stage, and the microphone, and demanded to be heard. Their disruption led to boos from the crowd and some calls for their arrest, as well as the end of the rally. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, social media was in an uproar over the actions of these two women. Many stated that the women were just hurting the #BLM cause, others wondered why Sanders was targeted and not other candidates. Some claimed that the women were plants paid by the Clinton campaign to stir up trouble. The reaction to these protesters shed light on the hidden Seattle that most black people know well — the Seattle that prefers politeness to true progress, the Seattle that is more offended by raised voices than by systemic oppression, the Seattle that prioritizes the comfort of middle-class white liberals over justice for people of color.
The Ferguson Protests Worked (Huffington Post)
Police left Brown's body in the street for hours, and a community that had felt abused by the authorities for years erupted. Vandalism broke out, along with peaceful protests, and militarized police departments aggressively cracked down. The clashes attracted international news coverage. Riots and protests injured numerous people and caused extensive property damage. The controversy surrounding Brown's killing and the police response left the community reeling. But the protests, in many ways, worked. Those abusive municipal court practices, which many residents said had fueled widespread disrespect for authority, are being reined in. And the outcry spread far beyond the Midwest. In many ways, the Ferguson protests changed America.
Michael Brown, One Year Later (ColorLines)
Because so much has happened in just one year, it's tempting to wax poetic about what this grisly anniversary means. But if there is to be poetry, it must be located in the everyday work of people across the nation who are organizing, chanting, marching, disrupting, boycotting, teaching, posting, creating, praying, losing their jobs and going to jail to assert what shouldn't need to be stated—that black lives matter. Tef Poe and Tara Thompson, St. Louis-area organizers who represent Hands Up United, have done a lot of this everyday work that we're describing. In mid-July they were arrested after participating in a small protest against the St. Louis police shooting and paralyzing of Brandon Claxton, a black 16-year-old.
One Year Later: Reflections on the Ferguson Uprising (RH Reality Check)
It’s not as if direct action hasn’t made a difference. And Lord knows change was and is needed in Ferguson and the greater St. Louis region. The Ferguson Uprising didn’t cause a racial divide; it ripped the scab off and exposed our long-festering wound for all the world to see. For decades, Black residents in Ferguson and the many municipalities that make up St. Louis County have protested corrupt courts set up to fund local governments through outrageous fines and discriminatory police practices. Every year Missouri’s attorney general produces a report on racial profiling, and every year newspapers write the same story with a revised headline about the fact that Black people are far more likely to get stopped than other drivers. In 2014, that rate increased by 9 percent, meaning Black drivers were 75 percent more likely than whites behind the wheel to be stopped based on our proportionate share of the driving-age population. Black residents have long protested unfair police practices, so the Department of Justice report on Ferguson wasn’t shocking to those of us who know all too well that the system is rigged.
The cameras have stopped rolling and the national news crews have gone home, but in the year since the shooting death of Michael Brown, grassroots programs have been driving change in Ferguson. In the past year, said Joshua Saleem, who heads the peace education program run by the American Friends Service Committee, the group has offered three Freedom Schools in the St. Louis area - workshops where young people meet to talk openly about poverty, race and oppression, and strategies for involvement "to shift their understanding of racism from an individual kind of 'I hate you' kind of mindset to a perspective of racism that involves how systems and institutions operate and deal with and interact with people of color in this country."
In framing racial discrimination in human rights terms, the Black Lives Matter movement is today picking up the baton of civil rights activists before them. The parents of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis have raised the issue of discriminatory policing with members of the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in Geneva. The parents of Mike Brown along with representatives of organizations in Ferguson and Chicago traveled to Geneva to share information about their cases with the UN Committee Against Torture in November 2014. Brown’s parents submitted a statement to the Committee that read in part, “The killing of Mike Brown and the abandonment of his body in the middle of a neighborhood street is but an example of the utter lack of regard for, and indeed dehumanization of, black lives by law enforcement personnel.” Following its examination of the United States, the Committee Against Torture recommended that it undertake independent and prompt investigations into allegations of police brutality and expressed concerns about racial profiling and the “growing militarization of policing activities.”
The #JournoList
July 28, 2015 The #JournoList is a daily roundup of the events and issues that are making headlines. Compiled by Teddy Wilson, a reporter who covers reproductive rights for RH Reality Check. Follow him on Twitter: @txindyjourno
