Another Limited Rebellion

Today is Blog Action Day and this year's subject is poverty.

The July/August issue of Mother Jones featured an excellent series of articles on the state of the prison industry in the United States called "Slammed: The Coming Prison Meltdown".

The series starts off with the frightening statistic that 1 in 4 of worldwide prisoners is the US. And it's no wonder then that a large portion of those inmates come from the lower economic brackets.

The article Probation Profiteers, about the outsourcing of the justice system in Georgia and the disastrous effects it has on the poor (not unlike the payday loan industry), is particularly telling:

Lawrence Holt, a thin, 24-year-old African American man, is a supervisor at a mattress factory in Americus. He's held the job for three years, but lives in the projects and, like every member of his family before him, hits the bottle hard. He's been on probation since November, because of an arrest for driving under the influence a few days after his brother died of diabetes. By April, he had paid his original $600 fine, but had $645 to go to cover Middle Georgia's fees. He told me he wouldn't mind paying if his probation officer would only help him get treatment. "I throw up blood," he said. "I just can't stop drinking because I got so many problems in my head. I have asked, 'Can y'all find somebody to help me with my alcohol problem?' 'Sir, we can't do that. We don't do that.'".

A few statistics that accompany the article:

48 states prohibit prisoners from voting. 30 states also exclude felons on probation. In Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, and Virginia, certain ex-felons lose their voting privileges for life.

13% of black men currently have no voting privileges.

5.3 million Americans will not have the right to vote this November due to felony convictions.

So what's to be done about it? The article "The Shawnee Redemption" shows how one county in Kansas has found a way to offer ex-cons a way out of the system by focusing on the concept of "reentry"...

Companies were encouraged to look to prisoner education as a source of skilled labor: Kansas convinced a snowplow manufacturer to relocate to the state by training prisoners to be welders. And when the state's Department of Wildlife and Parks heard that reentry prisoners were doing carpentry for a housing nonprofit, it recruited them to build lakeside cabins. The felons were then hired to fix up abandoned houses in Topeka. By 2006, there were 401 fewer people in prison in Kansas for violating parole than expected, saving $13.8 million in operating costs. The state used $7 million of that for community programs such as job training and drug treatment.

Even more importantly...

When Brown [a convict offered work-release after participating in a reentry program] sat down with her "release team" consisting of substance abuse and corrections counselors, police and parole officers, the reentry program director, mental health, housing, and job specialists, a business developer, a volunteer mentor, and Obregon [parole officer], she brought a notebook filled with her goals: regaining custody of her children, keeping a job, getting her driver's license, no more abusive relationships. When she finally walked out of prison in June 2007, she was greeted at the gates by four reentry staffers, who took her to her new apartment. A couple of parole officers helped her unpack. Obregon took her to a food bank, arranged a doctor's appointment, and helped her get an ID.

Read these articles and the other ones from the section in their entirely HERE.

Labels: blogactionday, poverty