Incarceration & Crime
Poverty News Round-up
Published October 20, 2009 @ 01:25PM PT
Too many interesting tabs open in my browser to select just one story today. Here's the latest on poverty news and activism happening around the US:
- Thank you feds! For stepping in and telling Indiana that allowing private employers to use welfare data to screen potential employees is "inappropriate" and "not allowed." Ya think?
- If port cities Oakland and Long Beach, CA, have such similar demographic profiles, including lots of poverty, why is crime so much worse in Oakland? It's unclear, but fortunately there's a new police chief in town to try and reverse the city's terrifying trends.
- We've come a long way from the days of "No Irish Need Apply" - AG Andrew Cuomo in NY has charged EMC Construction with exploiting its workers, including using a three-tiered wage system for Irish ($25/hour), Black ($18/hour) and Latin@ ($15/hour) workers. Nothing encourages worker solidarity like abusive wage gaps!
- Mayor Bloomberg is creating jobs in NYC, but are they good jobs? The short answer: No.
- What the state gives, the market taketh away. Bloomberg builds or preserves 72k low-income housing units, 200k disappear due to vague and mysterious "market forces." Don't look under your beds at night, kiddies!
- And finally, let this be a lesson to other states: Indiana is pulling the plug on privatizing its welfare system, after thousands of eligible recipients lost benefits. One old measure they're bringing back in? Face-to-face interactions between recipients and case workers. Good to see we haven't quite eliminated jobs as we insist TANF recipients go find some.
(Photo of A.M. Walzer Co. US Inlay Puzzle Map by Marxchivist)
Willingham, Innocent & Poor
Published September 04, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
H/t to G.D. at Postbourgie for inspiring me to sit down with the chilling report on the wrongful execution in Texas of an almost certainly innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. The investigation and findings pointing to his innocence, and the likelihood that TX may become the first state in the nation to admit to killing an innocent human being, has been extensively covered in the media and on the blogs - including by Matt at our Criminal Justice blog. (Matt's also got an excellent follow-up post about the declining role of the media as a watchdog.)
I highly recommend reading the original New Yorker article if you have a moment this long weekend. Like so many wrongfully convicted, Willingham was poor. At the intersection of poverty and criminal injustice, we need to work to stop the death penalty and improve legal counsel for the indigent.
Prisoners Feed the Hungry
Published August 23, 2009 @ 05:57PM PT
As hunger spreads, many states are relying increasingly on inmates for farming, "gleaning," and food bank assistance. Prisoner assistance with stocking food bank warehouses, picking food from fields that might otherwise rot, or even planning and harvesting produce occurs through formal employment programs that states run mostly for non-violent, short-term offenders. Free prison labor is a godsend for stretched food banks and state budgets alike, and prisoners gain needed work skills that may prove useful when they are released.
The article is very positive in terms of this skills-for-food exchange. Assuming - and this could be a big if - that the prisoners are treated well in these manual labor programs, the examples of prisoner assistance and food bank gratitude from Ohio to Texas are a refreshing contrast to the reality of overcrowded, militarized, segregated prisons nationwide. Institutions that we've starved of resources so desperately that prisoner training programs have been slashed left and right, contributing to growth of repeat offenders who languish on the inside and can't cope on the outside. Please use the revolving door to your left, sir.
For the prisoners participating in these farming and food bank programs, I wonder how many of them have ever picked up a bag of food from a local bank, in addition to packing them up now. Here's wishing them some success in translating what they've learned as they've done their time to fruitful employment and steady wages when they're out. And many thanks to the incarcerated around the country who are helping us fight the scourge of hunger.
(Boxes of potatoes at the San Francisco Food Bank by a tree is nice)
Incarceration Hurts Kids Most
Published August 21, 2009 @ 05:12AM PT
NYT columnist Nicholas D. Kristof strikes a resounding note of common sense in his "Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons" column,
It’s time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice system...so that we’re no longer squandering money that would be far better spent on education or health.
Kristof makes a strong case for education over incarceration, something that resonates common sense, especially considering the devastating effects of poverty, homelessness, incarceration and the like on both parents and the kids of incarcerated parents.
Poverty @ Netroots Nation
Published August 14, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Many of my fellow bloggers have gone to Netroots Nation for the weekend; ironically, I suppose, I lack the funds for the trip.
It's too bad; Netroots Nation is one of the best known coalitions of progressively-minded activists in the country and certainly the best known for those of us who use the web and media for our work. The annual conference is taking place in Pittsburgh this year, a city I'd love to visit some day.
So let's pretend I'm at NN, and take a look at a few of the key convenings I'd be joining on behalf of Poverty in America:
Prison the New Public Housing
Published August 10, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Affordable housing advocates, esp. pro-public housing folks like myself, spend a lot of time comparing the various subsidized housing options out there: public housing, Section 8 vouchers for renting in the private market, tax-credit funded housing built by non-profit developers. Turns out, we've been miscalculating by half the 4-6M or so units these different options provide, because we've been leaving out a major new source of publicly subsidized housing for the poor: Prison!
Yep, according to Ehrenreich's latest missive in the NYT (see our previous coverage of her series here and here), "the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing."
Ehrenreich wonders if the collision of rising extreme poverty and excess criminalization and incarceration policies will lead us to descalate both - resorting instead to humane treatment of the poor and a move away from criminalizing low-income people as, she fears, disgustedly, a revenue source in this extreme recession. I'd add the masses find it morally uplifting to torment the poor during tough economic times, as it reassures us with a strong "us" vs. "them" dichotomy and gives us a sense of control of the more chaotic zones of life, given we can't seem to stop the corporate pillaging going on above us.
I too wonder if sheer economic necessity will work in our favor differently, by leading to de-crowding of prisons and cessation of expensive housing demolition and development programs. Of course, our desire to clamp down on "concentrated poverty" and its alleged ills bodes differently for prisons versus public housing. Dispersal strategies suddenly seem a lot more worrisome when we're casting offenders into the winds.
Most importantly, reversing these punitive, cruel, expensive cycles really requires to see the poor as human beings like us, our brethren, locked in a similar struggle for economic stability and justice. It requires a framework that focuses less on poverty alleviation and more on poverty eradication. It requires a common framework that embraces all of us. Gee, I wonder what that could be...
(Photo of Fremantle Prison, a decommissioned prison in Australia, by amandabhslater)
"You Do Not Have Health Insurance"
Published August 09, 2009 @ 09:06AM PT
There's a great post up at The Baseline Scenario concerning the diffuse worry that healthcare reform will negatively impact those with health insurance in the US. It basically eviscerates the lie that "employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment" is health insurance: "as long as your health insurance depends on your job, your health is only insured insofar as your job is insured – and your job isn’t insured."
Unlike NycWeboy, who believes no one is paying attention to the needs to reform Medicaid for better coverage and care of the poor, James at TBS thinks "people remain convinced that health care reform is for poor people. [But] It’s for everyone – everyone, that is, who isn’t independently wealthy or over the age of 65. Because all of us could lose our jobs."
FYI: Medicare = health insurance.
More great links to while away your Sunday afternoon after the jump.
