|
MacArthur GrantThe MacArthur grant covers a multitude of plans and strategies in order to reform the criminal justice system. The section on bail talks about pretrial services and creating a supervision plan for each person who is accused. Depending on what they are accused of the monitoring will be different; some people might just have phone call reminders while others will have electronic monitoring. There will also be a Pretrial Advocate Program where counsel is allowed to advocate for their client’s unique circumstances when bail is set. The plan includes an Early Bail Review program for those who have a bail set at $50,000 or under. There is no intention of eliminating cash bail.
|
So since Philadelphia received the MacArthur grant, do you guys think that this will be a step in the right direction to reform bail? And do you think like what they’ve suggested, like some of the steps to take to kind of reform the bail system will work? And how are they going to implement it?
Youth Art
|
Sarah: I don’t think by itself the MacArthur funding will be the solution to these problems. I think that if the city gets that money and is pushed by people in the community, people around the city, and listens to that to the people and what needs to happen then I think that it could lead to significant changes, if they’re willing to call into question the whole bail system, and ending cash bail, and those kind of drastic changes. I think that the proposal that they’ve put forward so far are pretty limited in scope. And, you know, it’s pretty clear that they’re mainly talking about changing bail with people who have nonviolent cases or people will bail under a certain amount of money. One of the recommendations is that there should be automatic--because right now when someone’s bail is set, it’s set within 24 hours of them getting locked up and then it’s at least another several weeks before anyone can even get another judge to reconsider their bail. So one of the recommendations was that people should get an automatic bail review after five days, but only if they have nonviolent offenses and only if the bail is under $50,000. So, why not do that for everybody? And it’s still very much a system that is going to use cash bail and rely on cash bail and still hold people and one of the biggest things is that bail is never, it’s in the statute in Pennsylvania that bail is never supposed to be used punitively. It’s never supposed to be used to keep someone from getting out. That’s not the purpose of bail. It’s supposed to be set in a way that’s based on someone’s ability to pay. And that’s not at all what happens in Philadelphia. We see teenagers everyday who get $500,000 bails, $300,000 bails that there’s no way you can make an argument that that person has an ability to pay and there’s no reason to make an argument that that 16 year old is an extra flight risk--they’re just not. And so, those kinds of things have to be addressed. And the whole system has to be flipped and changed. And I don’t think like the MacArthur money, seems like it’s going to go mainly to the DA’s office, to the courts, to the same people who have gotten us in this mess. And so, I don’t think that’s likely without a lot of outside pressure to lead to much that’s very different. Josh: I also think that that money that they’re going to receive, if they don’t give it to community based organizations that are really trying to fight the root causes of why all of this is happening and all of this mass incarceration it won’t help at all. And most likely they’re not, because they’re going to give it to the same programs that they already have--the places that weren’t helping in the first place. They really got to look for the organizations who are fighting the root cause of why our city is suffering from what we’re suffering from, in order for us to make the change. Terrance: My experience with the people from the MacArthur Foundation, I don’t, I think they’re like they sort of want jails and stuff to be built like it would take someone with power to talk to them; like this is this and this money can be used for that. I’m not so much on the MacArthur side because I had a meeting with them and they wasn’t sounding like they were on the side of trying to help the situation at all, they was on the side of we need a prison to fill these beds up. So as far as them spending money to help a cause, I don’t think it’s there. Sarah: Yeah we were a part of a working group that existed briefly and then was disbanded, that City Council formed after they decided not to build the jail, they formed. The lead sponsor Bobby Henon, who sponsored the bill to build the jail, invited everyone in our coalition to be a part of a working group to figure out what could happen instead of building a jail. It became clear as we participated that what they were really trying to do was to convince us that they needed a jail and then get our buy in in some way, which was not going to happen. We had a meeting with Michael Resnick, who was the public safety director at the time and the prison commissioner. . They were sort of representing the group that had been meeting with the people with the proposal for MacArthur and it was very clear from their presentation that they were trying to convince us that the money from the MacArthur grant could decrease the city’s jail population by a third, 33%. And, but, we think ending cash bail would reduce the jail population by far more than that. And they were trying to make the point that that was exactly on the line that the city would still need to build a new jail. Like they had all these numbers to show us that even if we decrease it by a third, which we are going to do through all these ways, here are all the reasons why the city needs a new jail. And it was like the numbers were manufactured to make that point. So it definitely felt like a show that was just trying, it just felt like more of the same. |
So since Philly has gotten the MacArthur grant, do you think that’s a step in the right direction? How do you think that’s going to be implemented and used for the greater good?
The Choice is
|
Nigel: That is a great great great impact on TCY just for the simple fact that we are going to get a small piece of that 3.5 million dollars that was awarded to the city of Philadelphia. It is gonna allow us #1 to remain up and running through the year 2018. It’s going to allow us to move to another location and continuously get clients in through the district attorney’s office. It’s a very big impact for us, but more so for the city of Philadelphia, that right now out of our fifty states, and in Pennsylvania, Philly is one of the top five major cities as far as incarcerated people per capita right now. So with the money that was allotted to the city and the various program that have been chosen and that are going to be awarded those funds, it’s just another boost for us to be able to continue to provide them services and so that when we have return--recidivism--we have people who are not quite ready to go into that criminal justice system and people that are returning from it we’re able to hopefully impact them upfront before they get deep into the system, to keep them from going into the system, and the ones that are returning to provide the support and the necessary resources for them to successfully reintegrate back into society. So having that awarded to the city and specifically for JEVs and TCY to get a piece of it is huge. And for TCY, once again, it just provides us sustainability, of being here and being able to be a resource and an opportunity for lives to continue to go on and to have this opportunity for them.
|