July 5, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
Prisons, Poverty and the Price of Freedom
Jay-Z gesture
bring focus to
justice reforms
m arC h. m orial
Hip-hop
legend
Jay-Z recently cele-
brated Father’s Day by
allowing incarcerated
fathers to spend the day
with their families.
Pick any day of the
week in America and
an estimated 700,000 people are
populating our nation’s local city
and county jails. Of those behind
bars, 60 percent, nearly half a mil-
lion people—many of them black
and Hispanic—will remain in jail,
not because they have been con-
victed of any crime, but because
they are guilty of the unpardon-
able crime of poverty and cannot
afford the court-stipulated price
tag placed on their freedom.
Pretrial incarceration can look
very different based on race and
socio-economic status. A Bureau
of Justice study found that African
by
Americans are 66 percent more
likely to remain incarcerated be-
fore trial and Hispanic defendants
were 91 percent more likely to re-
main trapped behind bars, in com-
parison to white defendants.
If a defendant cannot
afford bail (nationally, 61
percent of defendants are
required to post bail for pre-
trial release), he or she will
stay behind bars until trial.
It is in that purgatory of be-
ing presumed legally inno-
cent, but locked away from
your family, your job and support
networks that Black and Hispanic
communities are further trauma-
tized and shattered.
For decades, activists and so-
cial justice groups have fought
against this destructive facet of
mass criminalization and incar-
ceration. This year, the movement
to reform our criminal justice sys-
tem’s current application of pre-
trial incarceration added the plat-
form, power and philanthropy of
a high-profile ally to its unceasing
work: Jay-Z.
The rapper, entrepreneur—not
a businessman, but a business,
man—and now proud father of
three, donated to Southerners on
New Ground and Color of Change
to free and reunite incarcerated
fathers with their families on Fa-
ther’s Day—the continuation of
an earlier campaign to bail out
mothers of color for Mother’s
Day.
To put the impact of incarcer-
ation on communities of color in
context, it is important to note that
today one in nine Black children
living in America has an incarcer-
ated parent in jail. In an essay for
Time magazine explaining why he
was taking on the “exploitative”
bail industry, Jay-Z was personal
and poignant:
If you’re from neighborhoods
like the Brooklyn one I grew up
in, if you’re unable to afford a pri-
vate attorney, then you can be dis-
appeared into our jail system sim-
ply because you can’t afford bail.
Millions of people are separated
from their families for months at a
time — not because they are con-
victed of committing a crime, but
because they are accused of com-
mitting a crime. […] When black
and brown people are over-po-
liced and arrested and accused of
crimes at higher rates than others,
and then forced to pay for their
freedom before they ever see trial,
big bail companies prosper. This
pre-incarceration conundrum is
devastating to families.
The cost of being imprisoned
as if you are guilty while you are
legally innocent is high and the
damage extends well beyond jail-
house bars. From the separation
of family members to jeopardiz-
ing current—and future—hous-
ing, benefits and work, studies
have also consistently found that
in comparison to defendants who
were released before trial, defen-
dants who remained incarcerated
were three times more likely to
be sentenced to prison, tended
to receive longer sentences, and
are more likely to reoffend the
longer they are incarcerated. Be-
cause the inability to pay bail is
both an impediment to freedom
and a major cause of pretrial in-
carceration, people are essential-
ly being punished for being poor.
Like so many other misguided
criminal justice actions, pretrial
incarceration makes us less safe
and poorer. As a nation, we are
collectively footing a monstrous
$9 billion dollar annual bill to
incarcerate people who have not
been convicted of a crime, while
the ballooning bail bond industry
continues to profit off the pover-
ty and desperation of vulnerable
communities.
Many solutions to the problem
of pretrial incarceration have been
proposed, from limiting the use of
pretrial incarceration to individ-
uals who pose a threat to society
to implementing alternative forms
of bail besides cash bail—or forc-
ing defendants to use bail bond
companies that put profits before
people and engage in predatory
lending practices. We must reform
this two-tiered system of injustice
urgently—to save lives, families,
communities, and restore our faith
in our badly damaged criminal
justice system.
Marc H. Morial is president
and chief executive officer of the
National Urban League.
Training and Connecting People to Employment
Budgets reflect
priorities and
values
j ameS P aulSon
As the chair of
Worksystems, the
Portland
Metro
Workforce Devel-
opment Board, the
Trump Administra-
tion’s new focus on
workforce development sounds
promising and signals a recogni-
tion that improving the skills of
American workers is key to ad-
vancing and sustaining the great-
ness of the nation. However, the
President’s proposed budget plan
includes a 40 percent cut in the
primary resources used by the
public workforce development
system to train and connect people
to employment.
Funding for workforce devel-
opment has already been reduced
by $1 billion since 2010. Cutting
further is counterintuitive and
would be devastating to millions
of job seekers around the country.
Here at home, a cut of that mag-
nitude would mean nearly 24,000
fewer people will be trained and
placed in jobs. As is often the case,
many of those impacted would be
by
our most vulnerable, at-risk, and
underrepresented citizens.
The President is focusing his
jobs training message and dollars
on the apprenticeship model. We
support promoting appren-
ticeships as a workforce
strategy -it is a highly suc-
cessful model that needs
to be expanded. We have
worked hard to advance this
approach locally, among
other proven programs, for
many years.
We completely disagree with
the Administration’s claim that
the federally funded workforce
system is inefficient. What is
needed is better alignment of job
training resources with the public
workforce system and increased
coordination of programs target-
ing job seekers with barriers to
employment.
The framework for this in-
creased alignment and coordina-
tion is outlined in the Workforce
Innovation and Opportunity Act
(WIOA), passed with overwhelm-
ing, bi-partisan support in July
2014. Implementation is just get-
ting underway and needs to be al-
lowed to continue.
Locally, Worksystems is work-
ing with our network of partners
to coordinate and align resources
to support the training and em-
ployment needs of job seekers and
employers in the Portland region.
Each year, 60,000+ people visit
one of our five WorkSource cen-
ters to receive assistance - many
of whom are low-income with
barriers to entering the workforce.
Our resources provide a broad
range of services that enables
job seekers to develop new skills
and to advance in their career. We
close the skills gap and put people
to work every day while providing
local employers with the skilled
workers they need to compete and
grow.
Budgets reflect our nation’s
priorities and values. The smart
way to make America great again
is to support our entire workforce
so that everyone can maximize
their potential and contribute to
our economy. Investing in our
workforce is the best investment
that government can make. We
need more funding to do this im-
portant work, not the devastating
cuts proposed by the Trump Ad-
ministration.
Worksystems is a non-profit
agency that accelerates econom-
ic growth in the City of Portland,
Multnomah and Washington
counties by pursuing and invest-
ing resources to improve the qual-
ity of the workforce. We design
and coordinate workforce devel-
opment programs and services need to go to work or to advance
delivered through a network of lo- in their careers.
cal partners to help people get the
James Paulson is chair of
skills, training and education they Worksystems.
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