March 2023

Decarceration as Liberation

By Cathy Corman

At seders around the Commonwealth next week, Jews will be considering oppression, exploitation, persecution, and captivity. We’ll also be thinking about liberty. In this context, NCJW MA encourages activists to explore the concept of criminal justice reform, which approaches a particular kind of subjugation from multiple perspectives. NCJW MA member Cathy Corman explains why criminal justice reform, also referred to as “decarceration,” is one of the most pressing social justice issues in America today. In this week’s Deep Dive, Cathy learns about a local initiative with the potential to liberate persons reentering communities after imprisonment.

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In 2010, when Michelle Alexander published The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, she reported that up to four in five Black men living in some urban areas in this country could expect at some point to spend time in prison. On May 25, 2020, policing and imprisonment took on new urgency after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd while they were in the process of arresting him. By 2021, when sociologist Reuben Jonathan Miller published Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, America’s carceral system had gotten no better. Miller described men of color as “overpoliced and underprotected.” He noted that Americans accused of – not even convicted of– crimes were subject to forty-five thousand federal and state laws.

It’s hard to know where to begin to bring about change in the face of such numbers. Though rates of imprisonment here in the Commonwealth are about two thirds lower than elsewhere in the country, the impact of incarceration, especially on people of color, is no less onerous.

Members of Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) have been well aware of both the problems and the obstacles to meaningful carceral reform. The volunteer organization worked with others to pass an omnibus criminal justice reform act in 2018. After George Floyd’s murder, the focus shifted to police accountability. GBIO’s criminal justice task force subsequently aligned around “reentry,” or citizens’ experiences after they’ve been able to return to their communities. Team members learned that regaining liberty was sometimes just as difficult as going into and surviving imprisonment.

I asked Alan Epstein, a member of GBIO’s strategy team and congregant at Dorshei Tzedek in Newton, to explain how the organization had come to realize that activism around reentry could lead to positive change. He said that members of the reentry steering team, who include those who have been imprisoned, met one-on-one with stakeholders to ask what they needed. The team repeatedly heard that one of the greatest obstacles to a successful reentry was as simple as the lack of a valid ID.

IDs were a “pain point” for previously incarcerated persons and their families, Epstein said. Without an ID, for instance, it’s impossible to apply for health insurance, pick up prescriptions from a pharmacy, check in for medical appointments, board a plane, pay bills, enter a sober house or shelter, wire or receive cash through Western Union, submit applications to rent an apartment, drive a car, or find jobs. The sum of the items on such a list adds up to failure and an increased likelihood of a return to prison.

GBIO activists turned what they heard into a campaign. “We identified leaders and looked for a capacity to move a problem to something that’s actionable,” Epstein said. “We hold people accountable.”

By engaging in this sort of process, Epstein says, activists tackling seemingly intractable problems move towards solution and resolution.

In a first set of actions, Epstein and members of GBIO’s criminal justice reform team demanded that the City of Boston triple its budget for the Office of Returning Citizens. The City had allocated $600,000 for the office. Working with others, GBIO insisted Mayor Wu’s administration increase this line item to $1.9 million. The division is now able to expand internal staff and also to make external grants for essential services such as workforce training and neighborhood support.

The lack of state-issued IDs was still a problem, though.

There were hearings. Team members testified. Lawyers pressured the City of Boston and state department heads to provide returning citizens with valid IDs.

This past Thursday, the RMV and Department of Corrections announced the divisions would be sending a “mobile work unit” to travel between correctional facilities to process IDs. Epstein said it’s a partial victory, since the IDs will only be available to those who entered prison with IDs. Additionally, the initiative only covers state-run prisons, not county jails.

Despite these exclusions, Epstein counts the ID initiative as a major win.

GBIO represents tens of thousands of people in the Greater Boston area belonging to 57 dues-paying organizations, Epstein said. Member organizations are Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim, he said. Member groups also include labor unions and community organizations.

To learn more about criminal justice reform and decarceration, NCJW MA members may find helpful a recent report from Northampton-based research organization, Prison Policy Initiative. “Winnable Criminal Justice Reforms in 2023” outlines steps legislators and activists can take to decrease incarceration and diminish its negative impacts. The report identifies steps such as protecting the incarcerated and their families from exploitation by private contractors and expanding alternatives to criminal justice system responses to “social problems,” including needs for mental health care and housing. For the first time, PPI has included a section titled “Set people up to succeed upon release.”