As we move into the Decarceration Era, organizers in different states are pushing prison officials to dramatically reduce their incarcerated populations. Proposed criminal justice reform legislation is sweeping the nation from the West Coast to the East. On the West cost, in California Initiate Justice organizers are advocating for those incarcerated as youth to have the ability to earn time off of their earliest parole date with AB 965. In the Midwest, Michigan residents are pushing legislators to expand Good Time from benefiting not only youth offenders but to retroactively impact all of Michigan’s incarcerated residents with the #PassMIGoodTime campaign. On the West Coast organizers with at Aging People in Prison Campaign are advocating for the release of elderly and terminally ill Prisoners in Washington D.C. In New York, Just LeadershipUSA organizers are pushing legislators to dramatically reduce their jailed population with the #BUILDcommunities campaign.
All of these align with the national #Cut50 and campaign, an initiative to cut the prison population by at least half. There’s no benefit to having people in prison, especially people who are equipped to function as contributing members of society on the outside. In New York activist are drawing a firm line in the sand when it comes to reducing the number of holding facilities we have operating in New York City. New York has the highest cost for taxpayers per prisoner at $69,355 per year. The greater number of people there are incarcerated, the higher the cost is for taxpayers in maintaining the residency of imprisoned people who aren’t contributing to the social or economic fabric of society through their own social and economic growth.
The exploitive measures used on prisoners are not sufficient to true economic growth. They are actually destructive to prisoners’ social, intellectual and psychological well-being. We’ve seen many examples of the way that prison conditions have had a negative impact on individuals throughout history. A devastating example of this can be found in the story of Kalief Browder, who took his own life after being held at Rikers Island without trial for over three years after being accused of stealing a backpack. The effort to close Rikers is one that we should all be following closely. We all know the terribly unfortunate case of Browder who lost is life as a result of NYC indifference to conducting speedy trials. The violent and hopeless environment of the New York prisons is not exclusive to Rikers. This is why organizers have extended their call from #CLOSErikers to closing at least 8 facilities across New York City with the goal of dramatically decreasing the number of incarcerated people from 15,000 to 3,000 .
There are currently 7,800 people incarcerated in jail in New York City. This is the lowest the population has been in NYC jails since the 1980s and organizers look forward to continuing to shrink those numbers with the use of multiple decarceration strategies. These strategies include decriminalizing certain activities such as marijuana use and sex work in combination with replacing sentences of 1 year or less with other alternatives like treatment facilities, community service and home monitoring. Along with these methods, properly addressing mental health issues with adequate mental health care would be enforced as opposed to incarceration. Most significantly, #FREENewYork organizers aim to complete a pretrial overhaul from bail through discovery and speedy trial process which will decarcerate thousands of people across the state. Organizers will continue to push so that legislation will cover all people and all charges across the state.
Browder waited for his trial for three years before taking the situation into his own hands. His suicide showed everyone that life inside of a prison pushes people to their limits, especially for those that are innocent.
Closing the prison on Rikers Island will save New York City more than $1.6 million annually. Organizers propose shifting saved funds to investing in community resources. It’s not profitable, monetarily or socially to have tens of thousands of incarcerated citizens languishing in facilities. A focus on decarceration is a focus on building communities by restoring those communities that are torn apart by the loss of its members to the state. Our new collective vision for the U.S. in 2020 needs to be Decarceration. I want to urge grassroots organizers across the country to take a hold of whatever resources you have access to in order to focus on reducing the numbers of incarcerated citizens you have in your state. The time has passed for waiting for prison officials and politicians to make reform enough of a priority for them to figure out how prison numbers can be reduced. Like organizers in New York at Just Leadership USA, conduct your own study to figure out what changes need to be made in your state’s criminal justice system. It is our responsibility to do the research necessary and set a hard-and-fast line as to where incarceration numbers should be in order to #Cut50 nationwide in the upcoming years.
2020 is the beginning of the Decarceration era and within the next five years we need to demand to see lower rates of incarceration, lower incarcerated populations and more criminal justice reform legislation passed. Within our lifetimes we will witness the Decarceration Era. We need to stop asking politicians what they think. We the responsibility to tell them what we demand. In your state do the math: How many drug offenses are still in prison? How many sex workers are there? How many people were incarcerated as minors that should be earning time-off credits? Calculate the data and demand that those sentences be cut. It is time that we hold officials accountable to these numbers. Instead of hoping to see changes, we must pick out politicians who prioritize decarceration and the demands of prisoners so that we can see those actions take place.
