In honor of Mother’s Day this Sunday, the Black Lives Matter movement is giving the gift of freedom to several black women in dozens of jails across the country. At least 30 women will be bailed out just in time to spend the holiday with their children, for what they’re calling National Mama’s Bail Out Day.

This year, give the gift of freedom for Mother’s Day #EndMoneyBail #FreeBlackMamas https://t.co/7YhBtmHkAi

— NationalBailOut (@NationalBailOut) April 27, 2017

According to The Nation, many of these women are in jail for low-level offenses such as loitering or small-scale drug possession. These women haven’t been convicted, but remain jailed because they can’t afford bail.

A coalition of 25 black-led organizations, including organizers with Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Movement for Black Lives, and ColorOfChange, raised more than $250,000 toward the release of women in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and several other cities.

Sixty-two percent of people in jail can’t afford to post bail. This coordinated bail-out is meant to underscore not only that issue, but other major problems with the criminal justice system–especially those affecting poor black women. Women in local jails make up the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. incarceration system, and black women make up 44 percent of women in jails.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, about 70 percent of female offenders are mothers. The majority of these women are single mothers with at least two young children; therefore, an extended jail stay is often significantly more devastating for their home life than, let’s say, the incarceration of a male without children.

Once arrested, defendants face a litany of fees, which could add up to thousands of dollars–whether they can afford them or not–aside from just bail. These include public defender application fees; reimbursement fees for representation; and supervision, programming, and electronic monitoring fees for those released on pretrial supervision.

“The National Black Mama’s Bail Out Day Action is part of the growing movement to end mass criminalization and modern bondage,” the SONG website states.

It is rooted in the history of Black liberation, inspired by the enslaved Africans and Black people who used their collective resources to purchase each other’s freedom. Through this action, we will support birth mothers, trans mothers, and other women who [are] mothers and are entangled in the criminal legal system.

Arissa Hall, a national Mama’s Bail Out Day organizer and project manager at the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund told The Nation that “it’s a myth that folks don’t come back to court” when released on their own recognizance.

According to her, upwards of 95 percent of people helped by bail funds return to court for their scheduled appearances. “People will come back to court regardless of whether or not bail is set.”

The bailouts are scheduled to happen on Thursday and Friday, with Mother’s Day celebrations scheduled for Sunday. The coalition is continuing to raise money for more bailouts, and is even considering a potential Father’s Day effort.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Department of Health and Human Services has declared widespread opioid abuse to be a serious public health issue. Officials across the country are searching for ways to combat the epidemic and are increasingly calling for “public health responses, not a war on drugs.” However, reports indicate the Ohio city of Washington Court House has begun charging people who survive opiate overdoses with “inducing panic.” Although city officials claim the new practice is not meant to worsen the conditions of those struggling with opioid addiction, the policy directly opposes the prevailing logic regarding addiction and rehabilitation.

In the past month, police used Naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of opioids, to revive seven people before charging them with a misdemeanor. In an interview with the city’s local ABC affiliate, Washington Court House officials argued charging overdose survivors “gives [the city] the ability to keep an eye on them, to offer them assistance and to know who has overdosed.” The court summons is meant to ensure the city is able to “follow up” with overdose survivors and show them the city cares and wants to help them, not jail them, the officials said.

Nonetheless, those charged with “inducing panic” could face up to 180 days in prison or a $1,000 fine. Regardless of whether or not Washington Court House attorneys plan on convicting the addicts who have been charged, the move is misguided. The criminal justice system is not equipped to assist drug addicts, and attempting to address addiction by using the system only perpetuates the criminalization of drug addiction and addicts.

The U.S. has a long history of criminalizing drug addicts rather than providing them the medical assistance they require. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, those found guilty of drug related offenses constitute 46.4 percent of the prison population. In a 2010 report, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse estimated 65 percent of the prison population “meet medical criteria for substance abuse or addiction” but only 11 percent receive any kind of treatment for their addiction. Furthermore, the availability of drugs within prison walls is well documented, and relapses are common.

There is an expert consensus that addiction is a medical condition and ought to be treated as such. While officials throughout the nation are recognizing the need for cogent and compassionate public health responses, Washington Court House continues the detrimental criminalization of drug addiction.

Callum Cleary

Callum is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is from Portland OR by way of the United Kingdom. He is a senior at American University double majoring in International Studies and Philosophy with a focus on social justice in Latin America. Contact Callum at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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With the United States locking up more people every year, prison reform is a topic of national concern. The impacts of mass incarceration on communities and families have become an epidemic, one with lasting consequences. Jails are overcrowded–filled to the brim with non-violent offenders–even as rates for more serious crimes have declined. The number of women in jail is growing at a faster rate than men, according to a new report published by the Vera Institute for Justice and the Safety and Justice Challenge. Entitled “Overlooked: Women and Jail in an Era of Reform,” the research is unique and necessary, as most of the existing information on the criminal justice system focuses specifically on men.

HISTORY OF WOMEN BEHIND BARS

Jails are confinement facilities, run by counties or municipalities that hold people accused of a crime while they await case resolution. Over the past forty years, the number of people behind bars in the U.S. has increased five-fold. On any given day in 1970, there were 157,000 people in jail; in 2014, that number rose to 745,000. Now there are more than 11 million admissions annually. Jails have been transformed from housing extremely dangerous individuals to keeping those too poor to post bail or too sick for assistance in the jail system. Life challenges such as unemployment, extreme poverty, physical and behavioral struggles, substance abuse, and mental health issues plague many women in jail.

Around 1970, there were only 8,000 women in the jail system. Now, with nearly 110,000 women behind bars, they are the fastest-growing incarcerated population in the U.S. Women are now held in jails in nearly every county in the country, in stark contrast to 1970 when roughly three-quarters of counties held not a single woman in jail. Women can find themselves involved with the criminal justice system because of poverty, mental and behavioral health issues, substance abuse, or a history of trauma.

The majority of women behind bars are there for non-violent crimes, which amounts to roughly 82 percent according to the last batch of national data from nearly a decade ago. A survey from Davidson County, Tennessee revealed that 77 percent of women in the jails were charged with a misdemeanor. Moreover, women are not necessarily committing new offenses. More recent research has found that women are more likely to be in jail for breaking a condition of supervision in the community, like failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a probation or parole officer.

GEOGRAPHIC INCREASES

Small counties, with less than 250,000 people, are seeing the largest increase in jailed women. In 1970, these same counties had just 1,700 incarcerated women compared to 51,600 by 2014. Sparsely populated counties see an incarceration rate of 140 per 100,000 women. Using 2014 data, the Vera Institute found that on a typical day large counties had an average of 271 inmates per 100,000 people versus 446 inmates in rural counties. 

This is in stark contrast to another trend, which shows a declining rate of incarcerated women in the nation’s largest counties. The trend is illustrated in counties like Stokes County, North Carolina, where women made up 32 percent of the jailed population in 2013, far beyond the national average. Data is still unclear as to why jail populations have increased so significantly in rural areas. Research notes that it could be the demographics of rural and suburban areas, which tend to house poorer populations.

“Handcuffs” Courtesy of [davitydave via Flickr]

PREVALENCE OF HEALTH ISSUES IN INCARCERATED WOMEN

Research has also noted that a number of women behind bars suffer from health issues, particularly mental illness. Thirty-two percent of women in U.S. jails have a serious mental illness, including major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 75 percent of women in jails stated they had symptoms of a mental health disorder in the past year. This high percentage of serious mental illnesses among incarcerated women is intimately tied to the high rates of victimization reported: sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and childhood sexual abuse. The numbers are startling. Based on the research among women in jail, 86 percent report experiencing sexual violence, 77 percent report partner violence, and 60 percent report caregiver violence.

The complexity of mental illness means many incarcerated women are unable to receive effective assistance. One in five women in U.S. jails has experienced a serious mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse disorder. This staggering number is met only with limited mental health care professionals and resources in the jail system. With a distinct lack of proper tools and support systems, many incarcerated women never have their severe mental health issues addressed.

WOMEN OF COLOR IN JAIL

For both men and women, people of color are disproportionately incarcerated. According to the most recent national data, roughly two-thirds of women currently behind bars are women of color. Forty-four percent were black, 15 percent were Hispanic, and five percent were of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, with only 36 percent of incarcerated women identifying as white. At a county level, the racial and ethnic disparities are even larger. In Cook County, Illinois, approximately 81 percent of women admitted in the jails were women of color.

Women of color are far more likely to experience financial instability and crisis, even before they enter a jail. Nearly half of all single black and Hispanic women have zero or negative net wealth, with black women five times more likely to live in poverty and receive public assistance. Staying in jail for even a short period of time can severely impact their basic survival needs, like suspension or even termination of public assistance.

INCARCERATION IMPACTS ON WOMEN

Women are heavily affected by jail, as the environment is often not designed for their specific needs and experiences. Women are assessed with the same assessment tools for men to determine where and how they are housed within facilities. Using a gender-neutral or male-focused tool ignores the research that shows women tend to pose less risk than men. As a result, the tools can classify women at a higher risk than they actually are, with over-classification barring them from educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programs.

Reproductive health needs are also a crucial issue for incarcerated women. Many jails fail to even meet basic hygiene needs for women. Muskegon County Jail was sued in 2014 by the ACLU of Michigan for failing to provide women menstrual hygiene products, toilet paper, and clean underwear. Other women in jails have reported being unable to receive hygiene products on a certain day because they are unavailable or only provided selectively. The health risks and emotional humiliation these policies create have caused some positive policy changes, like efforts to make free supplies readily available to incarcerated women.

WHAT DRIVES THIS GROWTH?

Shifts in police policy and enforcement over the decades contributed to a rising number of arrests of women. One particular policy departments embraced was “broken windows” policing; this policing theory focuses on low-level offenses like petty theft, loitering, and intoxication as a way to prevent more serious crimes. Moreover, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, policing priorities were expanded with the national “War on Drugs,” which escalated the enforcement and criminalization of drug offenses. These policies worked in conjunction to widen police power and entrap more citizens in the jail system.

The increase in these practices, however, had significant impacts on women specifically. Women are more likely than men to be involved in minor offenses like drug possession. Between 1980 and 2009, the arrest rate for women tripled while the arrest rate for men only doubled. Currently, women are arrested more frequently for “other-except-traffic” offenses, which includes activity such as criminal mischief and local ordinance violations, substance use, minor property crimes, and simple assault.

Another example of certain policies increasing the number of women in jail are prostitution diversion programs, which are present in many of the largest U.S. districts. These services may end up bringing more women into contact with the criminal justice system, particularly women of color and transgender women. Many jurisdictions use practices similar to drug stings to curb prostitution. Officers do targeted sweeps of specific neighborhoods and communities that may have high rates of prostitution. Police then may make arrests based on subjective characteristics or observations, such as walking or standing in a particular area or carrying condoms. This practice may be treating prostitution defendants as both victims and offenders, and creating an arrest record for women that can make life outside of the justice system and sex trade difficult to achieve.

CONCLUSION

Incarceration has become common practice in the U.S. for even the smallest, most non-violent of offenses. Considering the profound consequences staying in jail for even a few days can have, time in jail may be more effective when used only for dangerous offenders. Women, particularly women of color, have been a rising target of the criminal justice system for decades now. With current practices and rehabilitative efforts, it is clear that substantive change is needed.

Many questions remain about women in jail. The lack of current, comprehensive research on female incarceration impacts demonstrates a gap in addressing the rising number of jailed women. Reforming the U.S. jail system is within our grasp, if we take the reins and embrace positive, meaningful policy changes.

RESOURCES

Primary

Safety Justice and Challenge: Overlooked: Women and Jail in the Era of Reform

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates

Additional

New York Times: Number of Women in Jail Has Grown Faster Than That of Men, Study Says

Washington Post: How Mass Incarceration is Spreading to Rural Counties and the Suburbs

NPR: Study: The Growing, Disproportionate Number Of Women Of Color in U.S. Jails

ACLU: Facts about the Over-Incarceration of Women in the United States

The Sentencing Project: Incarcerated Women and Girls

Center for Court Innovation: Prostitution Diversion Programs

Nicole Zub

Nicole is a third-year law student at the University of Kentucky College of Law. She graduated in 2011 from Northeastern University with Bachelor’s in Environmental Science. When she isn’t imbibing copious amounts of caffeine, you can find her with her nose in a book or experimenting in the kitchen. Contact Nicole at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Mass Incarceration: Why Are There So Many Women Behind Bars? appeared first on Law Street.

A major crackdown in Bangladesh has led to the arrest of over 8,000 people over the weekend, in an attempt to stop the wave of violence that has killed hundreds of liberals and members of minority groups over the past few years.

The mass arrests started on Friday and are scheduled to last for a week. Officials say that all the arrests are made on the basis of specific charges. Over 100 of those arrested are alleged militant Islamists.

Bangladesh is a largely Muslim nation and has suffered from some extraordinarily violent killings lately, many carried out with machetes in broad daylight. Since the beginning of last year over 30 people from minority groups have been killed, including Christians, Hindus, atheist bloggers, gay activists, liberal academics, and even foreign aid workers.

The latest of the horrific killings happened last week, leaving an elderly Hindu priest, a Hindu monastery worker and a Christian shopkeeper hacked to death. The Muslim wife of an anti-terrorism policeman was also stabbed and shot.

The Islamic state has claimed responsibility for 21 of the recent killings and al Qaeda for many others, but the Bangladeshi government says that neither of the groups is involved. According to junior foreign minister Shahriar Alam, ISIS and al-Qaeda want to claim responsibility for attacks they didn’t carry out, while native Bangladeshi radical groups are actually behind them.

The government’s inability to stop these radical murders has spurred international criticism and pressure on the state to do something. PEN America said in April:

The persistent failure of the Bangladeshi Government and the international community to better protect threatened thinkers has created a climate of fear and direct threat to free thought in the country.

The government’s recent crackdown is huge, and the number of total arrests was up to 8,192 on Monday morning. But the opposition has criticized the government, claiming the arrests are just for show or for suppressing political dissent, arguing that a large number of the arrested are ordinary criminals with existing warrants against them, for narcotics, firearms, or other offenses.

However, local police said that they have caught some members from banned radical group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which is a group accused in some of the most recent killings, and also a senior official from banned Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

We’ll see by the end of the week where the total number of arrests ends up, but hopefully many of the real perpetrators will be among those detained.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Since 1981, the number of children of incarcerated parents has increased by an extremely dramatic 80 percent. Along with the more than 50 percent increase in the number of incarcerated women–75 percent of whom are mothers–well over half of all adults incarcerated in state and federal prisons today have at least one child under the age of 18.

Though the numbers are grim, they are far from the whole story. How does mass incarceration affect children of incarcerated parents, and how have these children come together to advocate for their needs?

Consequences of Parental Incarceration for Children

Having a parent in prison can have an impact on a child’s mental health, social behavior, and educational prospects. The emotional trauma that may occur and the practical difficulties of a disrupted family life can be compounded by the social stigma that children may face as a result of having a parent in prison or jail. Children who have an incarcerated parent may experience financial hardship that results from the loss of that parent’s income. Further, some incarcerated parents face termination of parental rights because their children have been in the foster care system beyond the time allowed by law.

Unlike children of the deceased or divorced who tend to benefit from society’s familiarity with and acceptance of their loss, children of the incarcerated too often grow up and grieve under a cloud of low expectations and amidst a swirling set of assumptions that they will fail, that they will themselves resort to a life of crime or that they too will succumb to a life of drug addiction.

Children Fighting Back

1. I have the right to be kept safe and informed at the time of my parent’s arrest.
2. I have the right to be heard when decision are made about me.
3. I have the right to be considered when decisions are made about my parent.
4. I have the right to be well cared for in my parent’s absence.
5. I have the right to speak with, see, and touch my parent.
6. I have the right to support as I struggle with my parent’s incarceration.
7. I have the right not to be judged, blamed, or labeled because of my parent’s incarceration.
8. I have the right to a lifelong relationship with my parent.

1. I have the right to be kept safe and informed at the time of my parent’s arrest: (1) Develop arrest protocols that support and protect children; (2) Offer children and/or their caregivers basic information about the post-arrest process.
2. I have the right to be heard when decisions are made about me: (1) Train staff at institutions whose constituency includes children of incarcerated parents to recognize and address these children’s needs and concerns; (2) Tell the truth; (3) Listen.
3. I have the right to be considered when decisions are made about my parent: (1) Review current sentencing law in terms of its impact on children and families; (2) Turn arrest into an opportunity for family preservation; (3) Include a family impact statement in pre-sentence investigation reports.
4. I have the right to be well cared for in my parent’s absence: (1) Support children by supporting their caretakers; (2) Offer subsidized guardianship.
5. I have the right to speak with, see, and touch my parent: (1) Provide access to visiting rooms that are child-centered, non-intimidating, and conducive to bonding; (2) Consider proximity to family when siting prisons and assigning prisoners; (3) Encourage child welfare departments to facilitate contact.
6. I have the right to support as I face my parent’s incarceration: (1) Train adults who work with young people to recognize the needs and concerns of children whose parents are incarcerated; (2) Provide access to specially trained therapists, counselors, and/or mentors; (3) Save five percent for families.
7. I have the right not to be judged, blamed, or labeled because my parent is incarcerated: (1) Create opportunities for children of incarcerated parents to communicate with and support each other; (2) Create a truth fit to tell; (3) Consider differential response when a parent is arrested.
8. I have the right to a lifelong relationship with my parent: (1) Re-examine the Adoption and Safe Families Act; (2) Designate a family services coordinator at prisons and jails; (3) Support incarcerated parents upon reentry; (4) Focus on rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration.

Led by youth who have had a parent incarcerated, Project WHAT! raises awareness about children with incarcerated parents with the long-term goal of improving services and policies that affect these children.  WHAT! stands for We’re Here And Talking, which is exactly what the team is doing. Over seven million children have a parent on parole, probation, or incarcerated. The program employs young people who have experienced parental incarceration as the primary curriculum content developers and facilitators for trainings.

By directly employing youth in their advocacy efforts, Project WHAT! utilizes both long-term advocacy and direct-action strategies. By striving toward long-term goals–like the ones described above–while offering short-term assistance–immediately empowering youth and children through both their programming and their paid employment opportunities–Project WHAT! is a prime example of youth-led organizing across the country. Indeed, children of incarcerated parents in Michigan have also organized to open their own chapters of Project WHAT!.

So where are we now?

Children of incarcerated parents are uniquely impacted by the criminal justice system, even when they are not, themselves, incarcerated. From emotional and psychological trauma, to increased poverty, to being separated permanently from their parents without parent or child’s consent, mass incarceration devastates many of the children whose parents are incarcerated. However, coalitions of children like Project WHAT! are working to ensure that their needs are met, even if the criminal justice system is not interested in meeting them.

Resources

Osborne Association: Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Bill of Rights

Rhonda L. Rosenthal, PC: Severing the Parental Rights of Inmates

California Watch: Number of Children With Parent in Prison Growing

IndiGoGo: Project WHAT! Building a Youth-Led Movement for Prison Reform in Michigan

Community Works: Project WHAT!

San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents: From Rights to Realities

Reporting on Health: Children Who Witness Parent’s Immigration Arrest May Suffer Lifetime Health Consequences

Annie E. Casey Foundation: Children of Incarcerated Parents Fact Sheet

Youth.gov: Children of Incarcerated Parents

Justice Strategies: Children on the Outside: Voicing the Pain and Human Costs of Parental Incarceration

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: The Effects of Parental Incarceration on Children

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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As mass incarceration and state violence vis a vis police brutality are coming increasingly under fire, even in mainstream media, many communities are turning toward alternative methods of addressing violence. Transformative justice–as opposed to criminal justice–seeks to create alternatives to incarceration in a similar manner to its less-radical cousin, restorative justice. But transformative justice does something else, as well: transformative practices encourage communities to avoid involving police in crimes, even in instances of violence.

How can community practices of transformative justice transform the larger criminal justice system? Can community-based methods of addressing violence be the key to transforming this society?

What is Transformative Justice?

According to Generation Five, an organization dedicated to transformative justice in cases of gender-based violence, especially child abuse, transformative justice is described as the following:

Transformative justice [is] a liberatory approach to violence…[which] seeks safety and accountability without relying on alienation, punishment, or State or systemic violence, including incarceration or policing.

Three core beliefs:

Individual justice and collective liberation are equally important, mutually supportive, and fundamentally intertwined—the achievement of one is impossible without the achievement of the other.

The conditions that allow violence to occur must be transformed in order to achieve justice in individual instances of violence. Therefore, Transformative Justice is both a liberating politic and an approach for securing justice.

State and systemic responses to violence, including the criminal legal system and child welfare agencies, not only fail to advance individual and collective justice but also condone and perpetuate cycles of violence.”

Because of these core beliefs, rather than seeking to integrate transformative practices into the current criminal justice system, transformative justice practitioners actively advocate for remaining outside of state intervention.

Transformative Justice is a response to the State’s inability to provide justice on either individual or collective levels. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a model that responds to experiences of violence without relying on current State systems. We believe this to be a liberating politic that creates opportunities for healing and transformation rather than retribution and punishment. Transformative Justice moves us toward equity and liberation rather than maintaining the inequality that the current State and systems maintain.

Transformative justice practitioners argue that there is a choice, however: by equipping communities to engage in transformative practices instead of resorting to the only option often presented to people–involving the police in cases of violence–harm can actually be repaired and further harm can actually be prevented.

Can Transformative Practices Achieve Justice?

While many people across the country increasingly accept alternatives to incarceration for youth who are convicted of minor, nonviolent offenses–indeed, restorative practices dealing with those kinds of cases are becoming more common–many are skeptical about transformative justice advocates’ claims that alternatives to incarceration should also be used in cases as grave as rape and child abuse.

But does anyone actually practice transformative justice?

In one example of transformative justice principles being used in an effort to keep targeted communities safe without resorting to state intervention, the Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn queer of color youth collective Safe OUTside the System launched a campaign in 2007 in line with transformative justice principles and practices:

In 2007, the collective launched the Safe Neighborhood Campaign. Similar to the Dorchester Green Light Program of the 1970s, the campaign provides safe havens from sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and racist language, behaviour, and violence of all sorts. The campaign has three phases. In the first, neighbourhood public spaces such as restaurants, schools, churches, and businesses agree to visibly identify themselves as safe havens for those threatened with or fleeing from violence. In the second phase, the campaign incorporates an educational component to address some of the causes of anti-gay and anti-trans violence. Members of the campaign train the owners and employees… [on] ways to prevent violent without relying on law enforcement. In the third phase, Safe Space advocates recruit other community members and public figures into the campaign.

In ways that are formal–like these Safe OUTside the System’s effort–and informal, strategies of transformative justice are providing alternatives to the criminal justice system across the country.

Transforming criminal justice?

While transformative justice can be criticized for not offering a structured, consistent approach to providing alternatives to policing, transformative justice advocates continue to emphasize the importance of promoting truly individual and community-based alternatives–which vary with each circumstance–rather than attempting to dictate what is best for different communities. This is because ultimately, the priority of transformative justice advocates is not to transform the criminal justice system, but rather to work outside of it until it can be dismantled and rebuilt in a transformative way that does not continue to target already marginalized peoples.

Resources

Generation Five: Transformative Justice

Generation Five: Toward Transformative Justice

Huffington Post: Seeking Transformative Justice in Ferguson, Dearborn, and Beyond

Huffington Post: Criminalizing Victims: How the Punishment Economy Failed Marissa Alexander

Philly Stands Up!: Transformative Justice Anti-Sexual Assault Action Camp!

US Prison Culture: Thoughts About Community Support Around Intimate Violence

Safe OUTSide the System: The SOS Collective

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Transformative Justice Transforming Mass Incarceration? appeared first on Law Street.

With mass incarceration under scrutiny, questions arise about alternatives to the punitive practice. One such set of alternatives–a process called restorative justice–is on the rise across the country in youth courts and schools.

Restorative justice has been practiced around the world for quite some time, but how do these dialogue-based alternatives to incarceration operate within the United States’ criminal justice system? Is restorative justice a radical means to advance social justice in an age of mass incarceration, or is it merely another way to reinforce the power structures of the current system? Read on to learn more.

Retributive Versus Restorative Justice

In order to appreciate the differences in approach that restorative justice poses, it is important to first understand that the United States’ criminal justice system operates under a retributive justice approach. Retributive justice is based on the idea of punishment, and the theory behind it is that the state is the ultimate victim of crimes and thus has the power to punish people it deems criminals. This domination-based form of justice is one basis for punishing “victimless crimes” such as drug offenses so harshly. Under retributive justice theories, the state is positioned as the victim.

In other words, the current criminal justice system’s emphasis on retributive justice relies on the logic that:

Retributivism answers the question ‘why punish’ by saying that the offender deserves punishment, and as simple as this statement sounds, its underlying meaning contains a couple of important points about morality and law.  Retributivism as a theory of punishment requires retribution as a rationale for law.  A retributionist assumes that the law exists for a reason — a moral reason.  All crime, even victimless crime, involves a social harm — a moral harm.  In other words, violating the law not only offends against the law of the land, but the moral code of the land.

Restorative justice, however, is grounded in an entirely different logic, philosophy, and practice. Restorative justice is defined by restorative agencies such as the Insight Prison Project as:

A philosophy and a social movement which provides an entirely different way of thinking about crime and victimization.  Our current retributive justice system focuses on punishment, regarding the state as the primary victim of criminal acts and casting victims and prisoners in passive roles. Restorative Justice, by contrast, focuses on healing and rehabilitation… It assumes that the persons most affected by crime should have the opportunity to become involved in resolving the conflict.  The goals of restoring losses, allowing prisoners to take responsibility for their actions, and helping victims move beyond their sense of vulnerability stand in sharp contrast to the conventional focus on past criminal behavior and increasing levels of punishment.

By taking the ideals of community and individual accountability and upholding the goal of mutual understanding and healing, restorative justice processes ensure that police, prosecutors, and judges are not the only ones with power over deciding someone’s fate after a crime has been committed. When prosecutorial and/or judicial discretion is utilized to make restorative processes available to people, the power of deciding how to move forward shifts to the person accused of committing a crime and the people most closely impacted by that crime.

This power shift can involve processes such as victim-offender mediation, conferencing, service provision, and “victim” assistance, as applicable. In the most well-known and widely used forms of restorative justice–mediated community conferences and circles–the offender(s), victims(s), and other closely impacted community members will come together in a mediated dialogue to address the context and harm done by the crime. During this process, the offender is expected to accept responsibility and agree to the group consensus of how to move forward, whether through community service, rehab, or other options. In these types of processes, the offender must agree to following through on the agreement; failing to do so will trigger a return to a traditional, retributive justice approach that will likely result in jail time.

Restorative Justice in Action

Currently in the U.S., restorative justice is most often used in the context of youth offenders and the juvenile justice system. Especially due to the extremely high rates of recidivism in the juvenile justice system, restorative justice, which often produces extremely low recidivism rates, is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to incarceration in many juvenile courts across the country.

Many schools are using restorative processes as a way to keep their youth out of the school-to-prison pipeline. By engaging in restorative processes of mediation, schools are doing the following:

Forging closer, franker relationships among students, teachers and administrators. It encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another through “talking circles” led by facilitators.

These talking circles, a trademark of restorative processes, often serve as alternatives to the suspensions and expulsions that fuel the school-to-prison pipeline. By resisting racialized zero-tolerance policies that do not give students a chance to repair any harm they might have done–and that might have been done to them–restorative practices in schools give students, teachers, and administrators the opportunity to identify deeper causes of problems in schools that allow more holistic approaches to students acting out.

Schools from California to Colorado to New York are implementing and expanding their restorative justice programs in order to avoid shipping their students directly into the juvenile justice system. In New York City, restorative programming in schools is being used with increasing frequency and impact:

Over the past few years, the Department of Education has been building its capacity to implement restorative justice programs. The department has provided training to teachers from 55 middle and high schools through the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, which will be training 45 more schools this July and plans to add another 45 in the fall.

At Flushing International High School, where students hail from over 40 countries, social worker Tania Romero said that restorative practices have decreased incidences of violence between students of different nationalities and allowed for deeper conversations on issues like racism. “All schools should be entitled to this,” she said.

While experts acknowledge that restorative justice does not offer a quick fix either to juvenile justice or to schooling issues, many schools are becoming committed to advocating for the kinds of structural and cultural changes that can make restorative justice processes even more effective.

In other cases, however, restorative processes resemble traditional court processes more than they do school-based conferencing or mediation. In Brownsville, New York, for example, where youth of color are particularly targeted by the criminal justice system and jailed at extremely high rates, the city has established a youth court system in which youth offenders try and sentence each other to various sanctions, including community service, essay-writing, and tutoring. In this program, youth are trained for 30 hours and take a 16-page bar exam to prepare for the responsibility of trying and sentencing their peers. Though some might be skeptical of the ability of youth to effectively diminish the crime rates of their peers, the youth going through these restorative processes have a 93 percent compliance rate, which indicates an extremely low recidivism rate–much lower than that produced by the traditional juvenile justice system.

What Are We Trying to Restore?

Despite its success at lowering recidivism rates, restorative justice is often the recipient of criticism. Because restorative justice is a process that relies on the actions of those in the criminal justice system–judges and prosecutors must refer defendants or people convicted of crimes to restorative processes, and reserve the right to re-enact retributive processes if restorative methods are deemed ineffective–many people and organizations criticize restorative justice for being powerless to truly change the criminal justice system from within.

The co-opting of restorative processes by the state actually risks reinforcing the power structures that shape the harm done by crimes to begin with. For example, state-mandated restorative processes may force mediation event participants like police and youth of color together, ignoring the extreme power differences between these individuals and therefore ignoring structural power dynamics and risking perpetuating harm upon people who may have committed a particular crime, but who are also targeted by state violence.

As such, it is crucial to note that restorative practices may be practiced in disproportionate ways that ignore societal power structures. One study shows that schools with more Black students are less likely to use restorative processes because of racialized assumptions about the student population. Further, some question whether restorative practices are accessible to people living with certain dis/abilities.

What then does restorative justice seek to restore? If structural inequality was the baseline condition under which a crime was committed, is restorative justice satisfied with restoring that unjust baseline? Critics of restorative justice and advocates of the more structurally minded transformative justice argue that restorative justice, by nature of working within the criminal justice system, can never truly address these issues of systemic oppression.

So What’s the Verdict?

Restorative justice–especially in the context of the juvenile justice system–has tremendous potential to offer alternatives to incarceration for people who would otherwise be targeted for mass incarceration. Recidivism rates decline and community involvement increases, and these are all impacts that critics of mass incarceration certainly applaud. However, while restorative justice is certainly an important move toward reforming the criminal justice system as is, its lack of emphasis on structural and systemic oppression that is the basis for mass incarceration to begin with makes it an inadequate means of truly transforming the criminal justice system.

Resources

Primary

Oakland Unified School District: Welcome to Restorative Justice

Additional

Conflict Solutions Center: Retributive vs. Restorative Justice

Conflict Solutions Center: What is Mediation?

Partnership for Safety and Justice: Restorative and Transformative Justice: A Comparison

Insight Prison Project: A Restorative Justice Agency

Restorative Justice Online: What is Restorative Justice?

The New York Times: Opening Up, Students Transform a Vicious Cycle

Chalkbeat New York: City Preparing to Expand Restorative Justice Programs

National Public Radio: An Alternative to Suspension and Explusion: ‘Circle Up!’

New York Daily News: Teens are Judge and Jury in Brownsville Youth Court, Delivering “Restorative Justice”

PBS Newshour: To Curb Conflict, A Colorado High School Replaces Punishment with Conversation

Eastern Mennonite University Center for Justice and Peacebuilding: How Effective is Restorative Justice?

Restorative Justice Online: Restorative Justice in Schools: The Influence of Race on Restorative Discipline

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How Can Restorative Justice Change the Criminal System? appeared first on Law Street.

A prosecutor is “an administrator of justice” whose duties are “to seek justice, not merely to convict.” According to the American Bar Association,

It is an important function of the prosecutor to seek to reform and improve the administration of criminal justice. When inadequacies or injustices in the substantive or procedural law come to the prosecutor’s attention, he or she should stimulate efforts for remedial action.

Chances to combat these injustices often occur in the strong role of prosecutorial discretion in determining someone’s prison sentence. Many argue that prosecutorial discretion is such an enormous responsibility that prosecutors have the power to be strong social justice advocates. Many others, however, suggest that prosecutorial discretion leads to tremendous racial disparities in sentencing. So the question is: Is it possible for prosecutors to be social justice advocates? Or is the criminal justice system overall too big for prosecutors to make any social justice-oriented, system-wide changes from within?

In Defense of Prosecution?

In her Brennan Center post entitled “Prosecutors Can Play a Role in Ending Mass Incarceration”–which argues exactly that–Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program reminds us of the various roles of prosecutors:

The reality is that prosecutors play a unique and immensely powerful role in the criminal justice system. They decide who gets charged, and most importantly, with what crime, and what plea bargains to accept and reject. Sentencing recommendations from prosecutors carry immense weight with judges.

Largely due to this prosecutorial discretion, federal courts impose 20 percent longer sentences on Black men than they do on white men who are convicted of committing similar crimes. Courts similarly impose longer sentences on Latino men than they do for white men convicted for similar crimes.

Many interpret these roles as evidence of prosecutorial racism, because prosecutors determine the course of such huge pieces of defendant’s cases. The immense racial disparities in charging, plea bargaining, and sentencing are all directly traceable to prosecutors’ structurally informed choices. However, Eisen uses this information to argue that the point at which a prosecutor encounters a defendant’s case is already beyond the point at which interference is needed. Eisen asserts that prosecutors can and should play a role in preventing crimes and recidivism.

This is consistent with both the Brennan Center’s recommendations that it should be the priority of federal prosecutors to reduce incarceration, recidivism, and violence, and with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s shifting priorities for law enforcement. Calling for a “Smart on Crime” approach, Holder has stated:

Of course, as we refine our approach and reject the ineffective practice of calling for stringent sentences against those convicted of low-level, nonviolent crimes, we also need to refine the metrics we use to measure success; to evaluate the steps we’re taking; and to assess the effectiveness of new criminal justice priorities.  In the Smart on Crime era, it’s no longer adequate – or appropriate – to rely on outdated models that prize only enforcement, as quantified by numbers of prosecutions, convictions, and lengthy sentences, rather than taking a holistic view.

Prosecutors wishing to pursue such a holistic approach may learn about doing so by exploring resources such as those provided by the Vera Institute of Justice’s Prosecution and Racial Justice Program.

Prosecutors and Restorative Justice

When writing of the extremely large roles prosecutors play in determining the course of the lives of people accused of crimes, activist and scholar Angela Davis argues that:

Whether or not prosecutors intentionally or unconsciously discriminate against defendants of color in the charging and plea-bargaining processes, their decisions–even the race-neutral ones–may cause or exacerbate racial disparities. Their tremendous power and discretion is often exercised in ways that produce unintended and undesirable consequences. However, that same power and discretion can be used to remedy the problem.

Some of these remedies may include ensuring that alternatives to incarceration are widely available across the country. One way that prosecutors can provide alternatives to incarceration for people convicted of committing crimes is through restorative justice processes. Restorative justice is defined by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency as:

Restorative justice offers alternatives to our traditional juvenile and criminal justice systems and harsh school discipline processes. Rather than focusing on punishment, restorative justice seeks to repair the harm done. At its best, through face-to-face dialogue, restorative justice results in consensus-based plans that meet victim-identified needs in the wake of a crime. This can take many forms, most notably conferencing models, victim-offender dialogue, and circle processes. In applications with youth, it can prevent both contact with the juvenile justice system and school expulsions and suspensions. Restorative justice also holds the potential for victims and their families to have a direct voice in determining just outcomes, and reestablishes the role of the community in supporting all parties affected by crime. Several restorative models have been shown to reduce recidivism and, when embraced as a larger-scale solution to wrongdoing, can minimize the social and fiscal costs of crime.

By utilizing prosecutorial discretion to refer people convicted of crimes to restorative processes instead of being incarcerated, prosecutors can avoid contributing to mass incarceration and can avoid inflicting the devastating collateral consequences of incarceration. Restorative justice alternatives are currently being used successfully in piecemeal initiatives across the country in schools to avoid suspensions and expulsions that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. However, many criticize practitioners and advocates of  restorative justice for staying within the overall criminal justice system because restorative justice works within the system and assumes that there are equal conditions to “restore,” it arguably ignores the fundamental injustices that shape mass incarceration to begin with. Therefore, prosecutors who attempt to advance social justice ends with restorative justice alternatives to incarceration may make positive differences in individual people’s cases, but have an arguably limited impact on mass incarceration as a whole.

#PlotTwist: Changing Who Gets Prosecuted

Along these same lines, some prosecutors may also attempt to advance social justice goals through the prosecution of corporations that are exploiting human labor, perpetuating abuses, and damaging the environment. Critics of these approaches argue that this kind of prosecution is not holistic: it addresses individuals and individual corporations, not the systems that facilitate the abuses in the first place.

Similarly, it is possible for prosecutors to specialize in criminal and civil cases against cops who discriminate and violently abuse their power. Certainly, many social justice advocates actively demand more prosecution of cops. Much of the recent #BlackLivesMatter uprisings recently have been focusing on the fact that prosecutors don’t tend to charge cops who beat and/or murder people of color.

However, many criticize these attempts, too, because they exist only within an already racialized system, thereby reinforcing the power of the criminal justice system that created mass incarceration to begin with. When social justice advocates–or prosecutors–try to use the criminal justice system for social justice aims, they are implying that the criminal justice system does, in fact, deliver justice, when many believe that it does not.

As the prison abolitionist blog Prison Culture published in a post in the wake of George Zimmerman murdering Trayvon Martin in 2012, prosecuting cops or vigilantes who target people of color in the name of “justice” serves to reinforce people’s beliefs that they should turn to the criminal justice system for solutions:

I think that making the main focus of our activism with respect to Trayvon’s killing the prosecution of George Zimmerman is short-sighted. Additionally, it does nothing to address the root causes of racism and oppression which were surely the fuel for this murder. For black people, our history on issues of crime, law, order, and punishment is complex and usually conflicting. In this moment, I question why we as black people who know that there is no “justice” in the legal system are expending the majority of our energy demanding “justice” from said system. How are we going to find “justice” in the prosecution of Zimmerman? The answer is quite simply that we will not.

Attorney and author Paul Butler generalizes this frustration to the role of prosecutors in general. In a forum at NYU in 2009 (see video above), Butler disagreed with moderator Anthony Barkow about the potential role of prosecutors in serving social justice ends:

Butler contended that with racial profiling by police and mandatory sentences for many drug crimes, prosecutors have little power to fight these problems from the inside. To answer the question at the center of the debate, the efforts of good people would be wasted as prosecutors, in Butler’s view. Barkow, however, said that attorneys, even when they are not the lead prosecutor, can and do make discretionary decisions that allow them to work within the law to have influential voices in cases. ‘Supervisors will often defer, extensively in my experience, to the line prosecutors,’ Barkow said. ‘So the line prosecutors making all these discretionary decisions are really kind of driving the bus most of the time…Butler’s overarching position on how good people can and should behave in regards to our system of justice was quite clear, provocative, and sobering.’ He maintained that the way to fight social and racial injustice was not to be a part of the institutions that help to further it. ‘The determination of who goes to criminal court in chains…should not depend so much on race and class,’ Butler said in conclusion. ‘As long as it does, we need people who believe in social justice and racial justice to stand up, to be strong, and to refuse to be complicit.’

So, Can Prosecutors be Social Justice Advocates?

While injustices in the overall criminal justice system make it hard or even impossible for prosecutors to be social justice advocates from within the system, there may be piecemeal, individual roles for prosecutors to play toward incrementally achieving some social justice goals amid broader injustices in the criminal justice system.

Resources

American Bar Association: Prosecution Function

Open Society Foundation: Racial Disparity in Sentencing

Leadership Conference: Race and Prosecutorial Discretion

Brennan Center for Justice: Federal Prosecution for the 21st Century

American Civil Liberties Union: Words From Prison: The Collateral Consequences of Incarceration

Race, Racism, and the Law: Prosecutors as the Most Powerful Actor in the Criminal Justice System

Brennan Center for Justice: Prosecutors Can Play Role in Ending Mass Incarceration

School Book: Alternatives to Suspension: Inside a ‘Restorative Justice’ High School

Partnership for Safety and Justice: Restorative and Transformative Justice: A Comparison

Nation: Why It’s Impossible to Indict a Cop

Prison Culture: Trayvon Martin and Black People for the Carceral State

Crunk Feminist Collective: Trayvon Martin and Prison Abolition

New York University Law: Butler and Barkow Discuss the Role of Prosecutors in Social and Racial Justice

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Role of Prosecutors as Social Justice Advocates appeared first on Law Street.

Across the United States, it is estimated that more than 61,000 youth are incarcerated each night, and more than 65 percent of these young people are youth of color. The overwhelming majority, 75 percent, are incarcerated for non-violent offenses.

The U.S. incarcerates youth at vastly higher rates than any other country in a world. Given that these incarcerated youth die from suicide at a rate of two to three times higher than the non-incarcerated youth population, there is no shortage of controversies surrounding the jailing of youth.

Read on to learn about the different controversies surrounding the incarceration of juveniles in the American justice system.

Death in Prison Without a Jury: An Overview of Youth Incarceration

Though all 50 states and the District of Columbia have defined legal differences between adults and youth who are accused of committing crimes, different states have different standards and definitions for what age someone has to be in order to be prosecuted as a juvenile. Additionally, there are many provisions that allow for certain juveniles to be prosecuted as adults, even if they are technically considered to be juveniles.

For some youth, this can be seen as an initial advantage: juveniles accused of crimes are not entitled to a trial by jury in light of a 1971 Supreme Court decision. Instead, youth are sentenced at the discretion of judges. But this exposes youth to tremendous vulnerability at the hands of judges who are accused of making decisions on the basis of race, even if it’s unconsciously. As Judge LaDoris Cordell argues, regarding the grossly disproportionate number of youth of color in the juvenile justice system:

What is hard is that if you go up to your average juvenile court judge, and that judge is the one who sends these kids off–we’re the ones ultimately responsible for these statistics–that judge will look you dead in the eye and say, “I’m not unfair, I’m not racist, I’m not prejudiced. I do the best I can.” And that judge is telling you the truth. . . . But what is at play here in most cases? I’m not saying there aren’t those judges who are so prejudiced and so racist; there are those. But I think, in the main, most are not. But I think what happens is that stereotypes are so embedded in the psyche of human beings, that those stereotypes come to play. So that when a young black kid comes into court before a white male judge, who perhaps doesn’t have any experience dealing with young black males… a mindset comes up in that judge’s head… Assumptions get made. . . . I think, in the main, that’s what happens, and I think that’s what accounts for those statistics. . . .

However, the risks of being tried in adult courts are also astronomical: approximately 2,500 youth are currently enduring life in prison without parole for crimes committed when they were children. In addition, youth are likely to experience extreme abuse in adult prisons. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, “Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult prisons than in juvenile facilities and face increased risk of suicide.”

Additionally, according to Human Rights Watch, while one out of every eight black youths who are convicted of killing someone are sentenced to life in prison, only one out of every 13 white youths convicted of killing someone are sentenced to life in prison.

In New York and North Carolina, this fate is particularly dangerous for youth: these are the only two states that try 16 and 17-year-old young people as adults. In both of these states, the age of adult criminal responsibility is 16, so judges must automatically treat these youth as adults. The prosecution of 16 year olds as adults–and their subsequent processing through the adult, rather than juvenile, system of incarceration–occurs in New York automatically, regardless of the severity of the accused crime. This means that every year, over 200,000 youth under the age of 18 in the U.S. are tried, prosecuted, and incarcerated as adults.

Even young people who are incarcerated as juveniles, however, experience tremendous hardship within the system. In addition to some debilitating and abusive conditions, youth in the juvenile justice system, whether currently incarcerated or on probation, are required to pay money to the courts for their own incarceration and probation. Youth on probation are responsible for payments such as supervisory fees, as well as fees for staying in juvenile hall while awaiting placement in group homes.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

As schools are militarized across the country–with increased police presence and military training for the police placed in some of our schools–the number of students being funneled from schools into the juvenile justice system is correspondingly increasing. Overall, a 38 percent increase in law enforcement presence in schools between 1997 and 2007 is intimately related to 5 times more students being arrested in schools.

Most of these youths–even those who are not incarcerated extensively after their arrest–lose out on further educational opportunities due to schools’ zero tolerance policies. Zero tolerance policies in schools, which mandate harsh punishments for first-time (and often minor) offenses, emerged from zero tolerance approaches to President George H.W. Bush’s “war on drugs.” According to Professor Nancy A. Heitzeg, sociology instructor and the Program Director of the Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity program at St. Catherine University, zero tolerance policies in schools are directly related to the funneling of students from schools into prisons:

While the school to prison pipeline is facilitated by a number of trends in education, it is most directly attributable to the expansion of zero tolerance policies. These policies have no measurable impact on school safety, but are associated with a number of negative effects‖ racially disproportionality, increased suspensions and expulsions, elevated drop-out rates, and multiple legal issues related to due process.

By criminalizing “bad behavior” among children in schools instead of supporting students who are in need, zero tolerance policies have, according to Washington Times reporter Nikki Krug, “produced unnecessary student suspensions for even the slightest violations of conduct, leading to higher risk of failing, dropping out and criminal prosecution for minors.” These higher drop-out rates make recidivism and further involvement in both the juvenile and adult justice systems much more likely, with 70 precent of students who become involved with the juvenile justice system dropping out of school entirely.

Young People in Solitary Confinement

Once involved in the juvenile justice system, many youths find themselves devastated by the impacts of solitary confinement. While New York has recently stated that it will end the solitary confinement of youth and those who are pregnant, the punishment is still a reality for many incarcerated youth elsewhere.

Locked in total isolation in small cells for 23 hours a day, children under the age of 18 are locked in solitary for days, weeks, and months on end across the United States every day. The mental health consequences of youth being locked in solitary are even more extreme than they are for adults. The Attorney General’s office has reported, for example, that half of youths who kill themselves while incarcerated do so while they are in solitary. Of those who are not in solitary at the time of their death, 62 percent had endured solitary confinement before.

The youths who do survive solitary are often plagued by the trauma they endure for years to come. In fact, Juan E. Méndez, a United Nations expert on torture, has argued that solitary confinement, especially when practiced on children under 18, amounts to torture.

Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice

According to the National Juvenile Justice Network, youth of color are disproportionately targeted by the juvenile justice system: “In every juvenile offense category—person, property, drug, and public order—youth of color receive harsher sentences and fewer services than white youth who have committed the same category of offenses.” This means that even though white youth commit the same crimes as youth of color, youth of color are criminalized and receive harsher sentences while white youth are more likely to get community service rather than incarceration.

Among these youth of color who are targeted by the juvenile justice system, a great number identify as LGBT. According to the Center for American Progress, around 300,000 LGBT youth are arrested and detained each year in the U.S., and approximately 60 percent of these youth are black and Latina. These youth are much more likely than non-LGBT peers to be targeted for abuse once incarcerated.

Juvenile Injustice?

Though issues abound in the juvenile justice system, many individuals and organizations are committed to making changes to the system. While efforts to reform and overhaul the juvenile justice system are underway, it is clear that youth who have gone through the juvenile justice system are taking the lead in efforts to ensure that justice, rather than injustice, is served. Until these problems are solved, the youth justice system may continue to be unjust.

Resources

Annie E. Casey Foundation: A Collection of Juvenile Justice Resources

Human Rights Watch: The Rest of Their Lives

Human Rights Watch: Growing Up Locked Down

American Civil Liberties Union: Stop Solitary

Center for American Progress: The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth

PBS: Is the System Racially Biased?

Equal Justice Initiative: Children in Prison

Colorlines: Paying to Get Locked Up

Colorlines: More Police in Schools Means More Students Arrested

Advancement Project: Momentum Grows Against Zero Tolerance Discipline and High-Stakes Testing

NOLO: Do Juveniles Have a Right to Trial by Jury?

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Juvenile Justice System: Inequality and Unjust Treatment appeared first on Law Street.

This won’t be news to anyone who experiences it, but this “just in”–being targeted and locked up by racism and the criminal justice system dramatically increases people’s experiences of depression, suicide ideation, and many other types of “mental illness.”

Except here’s the thing: like Bruce E. Levine over at AlterNet has shown, the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has shoved under the table a survey that demonstrates the explicit connections between high rates of mental illness and mass incarceration, racism, unemployment, heterosexsim, and classism.

One of the most damning aspects of the survey is that the rate and severity of experiencing mental illness is double for adults who have contact with the criminal justice system compared with adults who don’t. (Seriously. Check it out.) There seems to be the perception that this country locks up people because they experience mental illness: this is often true, and is repulsive. But if we want to look at the proverbial big picture, we also have to consider the ways that mass incarceration–and the solitary confinement often involved with imprisonment–and the virulent racism that shapes the prison-industrial complex actually cause mental health issues.

Levine writes, “[f]or decades doctors — and Big Pharma — have pointed to neuroscience [as explanations for “mental illness”]. Cultural variables are often more telling.” Indeed. But by SAMHSA’s logic, why damn the system that produces these mental illness-causing oppressions when you can convince people to buy overpriced, toxic pharmaceuticals drugs and therapy from it?

Of course, people who experience these oppressions don’t need government-sponsored studies and surveys to elucidate the ways that racism, mass incarceration, classism, and heterosexism make many of us live with severely impaired mental health.

Personal Example Time: I am certain that my being a white queer woman in this society fundamentally shaped my diagnoses as depressed and bipolar. Expected to be easily “corrupted” and traumatized because of my whiteness and white privilege; expected to be dedicated to others and feel guilty for putting myself first because of my womanness and heterosexism; expected to daily endure the structural and interpersonal impacts of sexism and queerphobia and always be “polite” about it…my diagnoses (and the feelings that precipitated seeking them) are not surprising.

White men–much like those who shoot people in schools and much like Germanwings co-pilot Andrea Lupitz–are routinely portrayed empathetically by mainstream media sources (instead of being called terrorists) because of their emotional angst and “understandable” mental illness when they kill over 100 people. However, people (especially working-class women) of color who defend themselves against attack are imprisoned, villified, and pathologized. In light of this, the consequences of not addressing racism, heterosexism, and classism in mental health are… well… life-threatening.

And far, far beyond depressing: the causes and consequences are outraging.

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Mass Incarceration Leads to Depression, So Why Don’t We Stop? appeared first on Law Street.