Lifting Up Community Voices to Tackle Injustice

Felons get out of jail owing hundreds or thousands of dollars in court and parole fees, acting as an often insurmountable barrier preventing them from reintegrating into society and staying out of jail. What's worse, these fees often end up costing the state more than they produce. Two columns on a program called the Clapham Set, which erases or reduces debts for felons who take classes and job training.

A Rotary club in Topeka, Kansas, has transformed reentry support for incarcerated women at the Shawnee County Jail through Intersection to Care, a program that pairs immediate-release support with mentorship, skills classes, and subsidized housing. The program, led by women with lived experience of incarceration, meets women at the jail exit to prevent trafficking, connects them to recovery housing through Oxford House of Kansas, and offers technology, health, art, and movement classes inside the facility. Since launching in 2022, the initiative has assisted more than 1,000 women.

Depression and anxiety impact people across socioeconomic levels and geographic boundaries, despite being thought of as mostly isolated to wealthier western regions. Because training mental health professionals can be costly, many countries outside of the west have turned to training lay people in counseling tactics and practices.

Cities around the world take an unconventional yet effective approach to combat poverty: measuring happiness. Cities like Vancouver, British Columbia have found success in building personal relationships among the economically disadvantaged members of the society, which leads to a more productive and satisfying work life.

“Two million people with mental illness are booked into jails every year.” Mental health courts, would take into accounts a person’s illness, rather than solely focusing on the crime.

Many offenders get out of jail owing hundreds or thousands of dollars in court and parole fees but face barriers to financing and job acquisition, sticking them in a punitive, vicious cycle of debt and arrest. A program called the Clapham Set, perhaps paired with conditional cash transfers - may be a solution, as it erases fees for felons who complete rehab and job training upon release.

At her non-profit business Laughing Bear Bakery, retired chaplain Kalen McAllister hires only those with a criminal record and offers them a chance at employment, gaining work experience, and rebuilding their lives.

51 for 51 is an advocacy group fighting for DC statehood by educating people about DC residents’ taxation without representation and training advocates in other states, mostly young people, to lobby their senators to support a statehood bill. Organizers also bird-dogged democratic presidential candidates for a public pledge of support for statehood, which 18 did. The group has also gained new support for ending the filibuster, which is needed to pass a statehood bill in the Senate. Support for statehood is at its highest, with a bill passing the House of Representatives for the first time in June 2020.

A key part of New York state's bail system reform legislation gave judges the ability to use alternative forms of bail designed to be more affordable to more people. But, by giving judges broad discretion, the law left large loopholes that judges have used to undercut the law's purpose. In addition to the two standard forms of bail – payment in cash or a nonrefundable fee to a bail bonds company – the law allowed for cost-free or refundable-deposit bonds that judges either have avoided using or have turned into a new costly obligation, leaving thousands to sit in jail pending trial.

Nonprofit bail funds, which use donated money to pay the bail of low-income people held in jail on pending charges, have won the release of about 55 people in Detroit during the COVID-19 crisis. Beyond the immediate need to free more people from an environment that makes social distancing difficult, the bail funds are part of a larger movement challenging a system that disproportionately affects people of color. The combination of bail payments, bond reductions, and administrative releases have reduced Wayne County's jail population by almost half.