Heather Hodges’ Post

"A Deliberate Retreat" is now on display at The Historic New Orleans Collection as part of the new exhibition Captive State. The video (edited and co-produced by me) traces the moves of New Orleans' hub of incarceration over time. Louisiana’s present-day distinction as the world’s incarceration capital is rooted in three centuries of history. Throughout this history, people in power have used systems of enslavement and incarceration to hold others captive for punishment, control, and exploitation. Black Louisianians have suffered disproportionately under these systems. Through historical objects, textual interpretation, multimedia, and data visualization, Captive State investigates these throughlines and arrives at an irrefutable truth: that the institutions of slavery and mass incarceration are historically linked. Captive State tells this story in two parts. The first part outlines how Louisiana’s colonial and early American governments created race-based systems of oppression through legislation, policing, imprisonment, and violence that matured as New Orleans became the hub of the domestic slave trade. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime, permitted Louisiana to evolve its methods of racial control and embrace convict leasing and forced prison labor, particularly at a plantation known as Angola. The second part of the exhibition traces how the Louisiana Constitution of 1898, written to maintain white supremacy, enabled an era of mass incarceration in the 20th and 21st centuries. Through nonunanimous jury verdicts and “tough on crime” legislation, incarceration rates skyrocketed, with far-reaching impacts. Among them are the growing number of people serving life sentences without parole. This has resulted in an aging state prison population, making the work of incarcerated volunteers in the hospice program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary essential. Lori Waselchuk photographed this program in Grace Before Dying, displayed in the mezzanine of the Tricentennial Wing. The exhibition concludes with a reflection question, reading recommendations, and information on ways to get involved on issues related to mass incarceration. https://lnkd.in/dWz9WjUH

One common explanation for mass incarceration is that it is the latest in a series of institutions created to enforce the racial hierarchy in the United States. Despite this perspective’s prominence, it has been rarely tested empirically with extensive quantitative data. In this article, we begin to fill this gap by examining whether individuals charged with felonies experience worst-case outcomes when they are charged in counties that had high rates of slavery in 1860. Using multiple regression models that include state-year fixed effects and account for historical county-level factors and contemporary individual characteristics, we find that a criminal charge in a county with high levels of slavery in 1860 increases the likelihood of pretrial detention, the probability of a sentence of incarceration, and the length of incarceration sentences. These results hold for the full sample and for Black and White individuals separately. The United States incarcerates its people at the highest rate in the world (Walmsley 2018). Perhaps the most notable feature of the criminal justice system in the United States is the disproportionate impact that it has on Black individuals and families (Tonry 1995; Western and Wildeman 2009; National Research Council 2014). For instance, in 2017, the adult imprisonment rate was nearly six times higher for Blacks than it was for Whites (Bronson and Carson 2019). At any given time, nearly 2 percent of Black individuals are imprisoned in state or federal prison, and more than a quarter of Black men experience incarceration by the time they are in their mid-30s (Western and Pettit 2010; Bronson and Carson 2019). One explanation that has been given in both public discourse and the academy is that contemporary levels and disparities in incarceration can be attributed at least in part to the legacy of slavery in the United States (Alexander 2010; DuVernay 2016). In short, this perspective argues that incarceration is part of a lineage of punitive institutions used to enforce the racial hierarchy in the United States (Alexander 2010; DuVernay 2016). From this standpoint, slavery was the primary approach used to enforce the racial hierarchy prior to its abolition (Alexander 2010). Once slavery was abolished, Jim Crow was put in place to enforce the racial order (Alexander 2010). And finally, once Jim Crow was no longer legal, the seemingly color-blind approach of mass incarceration was employed to ensure that the racial hierarchy was maintained (Alexander 2010). https://lnkd.in/dk3xVAq6 https://lnkd.in/dBPXgvtj

At Comic Books for Justice (CB4J), we have an idea that can help stop the cycle of mass incarceration in the U.S. using the power of literacy, art, and comic books—one comic book, in particular. It’s called I, COMIC. But we need your help. I, COMIC—in collaboration with the Social Justice Network (SJN), New York Public Library Jail & Prison Services, and Hudson Link for Higher Education—aims to bring reading, art, building mastery, and self-soothing skills to incarcerated citizens, all in one book. The inability to read is directly connected to incarceration. Once incarcerated, the cycle continues: inability to read is directly connected to high rates of recidivism. 70% of all incarcerated adults read below a fourth grade level. Fostering literacy has been proven to have significant, positive effects on stopping the cycle of mass incarceration. Art programs also have remarkable, proven benefits, dramatically reducing the amount of disciplinary infractions and parole violations, and even easing racial tension in correctional facilities. Comics are where literacy and art intersect, and we can bring all of that to incarcerated citizens in New York State. We can effect real change. Will you help? Visit us at http://kck.st/3XfREH7 or email me at luisabcolon@sjnus.org to find out more.

Here’s a win in the youth incarceration space in the Northern Territory - 89% of the youth who engaged with our service intensively, have had significant declines in spending time within incarceration, including reduced offending.   After a few years of data collection, we’ve synthesised over 1800 hours of data between January 2022 – June 2024 across 1291 direct and individual youth engagements through our service. As a all First Nations, Not-for-profit service with a team of up to 3 staff, we worked with the equivalent of 8% of all youth of whom went into youth detention/ prison in 2023. This may seem like a small percentage, but if you look into the savings and impact our small privately funded team provides to our community in reductions of incarceration, police resources, property damage, court resources, health resources and housing supports, then the reality is multi-million dollar savings to tax payers. Some key themes of what drive success for our intensive servicing are: -         Impact through connectivity to cultural, social and emotional wellbeing determinants. NOT criminogenic risk -         Family unit referrals, not just individual based. -         Peer group engagement. Strengthening positive social groups -         Family and youth decide what type of service they receive. -         Afterhours engagements, recognizing at risk times for youth -         On site Education support -         Onsite Employment supports and work readiness -         cPTSD engagement principles whilst working with clients. Establishing safety and stability -         A consistent, healthy and knowledgeable workforce of local First Nation’s men -         Advocacy in courts, schools and community It’s clear we need to do better by our children, our women and each other. Government/s must listen to the localised evidence of what is working.  Knock on your local politician’s office or Government bureaucrats office, and tell them 89% is the success rate of a little First Nation’s philanthropically funded org… and then give them this figure, 94%, that’s the recidivism rate for youth who go into Youth Detention in the NT.  It's a broken system. They won’t listen to us, so will they listen to the data? Better yet, what happens when the broader community (voters) take on the data? Look out for a deeper dive into our model and the evaluation, in our upcoming impact report and our annual report in 2025.

I am one of so many Individuals affected by incarceration and eager to contribute to positive changes in my community. We are discovering how to strengthen our political influence by uniting to support progressive policy initiatives aimed at ending mass incarceration in California. We invite you to join us at our Ballot Party, where we will utilize tools provided by Initiate Justice Action, including the Legislative Scorecard and voter guide. The Legislative Scorecard evaluates and highlights the votes made by California state senators and assembly members on crucial justice reform bills. Alongside IJ Action’s Voter Guide, which includes candidate endorsements and policy advocacy, the Scorecard is essential for holding our elected officials accountable to the voices of those directly impacted by incarceration. Over the past decade, the California Legislature has enacted transformative reforms within the criminal justice system, including diversion programs, resentencing measures, and the elimination of racially biased sentence enhancements. These reforms have led to prison closures and reduced spending on incarceration for the first time in years. Despite these advancements, the 2023-2024 Legislative Cycle was marked by a troubling regression on public safety issues. Numerous bills sought to reinstate archaic sentencing enhancements, undermine resentencing opportunities, diminish educational credits for incarcerated individuals, and revive the War on Drugs. Lawmakers focused on sensational narratives that are triggered by media fear-mongering and corporate propaganda. They assailed the rise of “smash and grab” robberies and are neglecting pressing issues like wage theft that cost Californians significantly. As a tax-paying citizen, I believe our tax dollars should be directed toward addressing poverty, trauma, mental health, and substance use disorders, rather than criminalizing people who have these challenges. Be informed good people! Do your research! Register to vote and vote wisely!

Over the last decade, pursuing alternative to incarceration has signaled a needed shift in the way we think about sentencing in the United States. Once such alternative is community custody, which provides for supervision, while at the same time allowing individuals to seek employment, educational pursuits, healthcare visits, religious observances, and to benefit from services that are not offered in a prison setting. This means one is not actually free, but rather not confined to prison. Depending on the individual risk factor of re-offending, the release program may involve daily check- ins or ankle monitors. This not only save the States millions of dollars, it also alleviates the fodder for mass incarceration. The release program is especially ideal for aging prisoners, who no longer pose a threat to society, as it eliminates healthcare expenses entirely. Think about it, to incarcerate someone for decades, having to pay for their housing needs, food expenses, medical care, and clothing is fiscally unfeasible. The draconian model of prolonged imprisonment is no longer humane or logical…we must reimagine the function of prison if we are to resemble a civilized nation of people, who does not further harm the population that we have in our custody. #phillipajonesconsulting

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead (1862) Summary and Keywords: A nation’s rate of incarceration is the number of people incarcerated as a proportion of its total population. Internationally, there is broad variation in the degree to which nations incarcerate their citizens, with a nearly 40-fold difference between the highest and lowest rates. The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement. Factors that may influence these rates include rates of serious crime, law enforcement and prosecutorial decision making, scale of prison admissions, length of time served in prison, and other means of social control in a society. Emerging scholarship is exploring the broader societal factors contributing to a nation’s rate of incarceration. These studies explore policy initiatives to prioritize incarceration as a means of crime control, degree of inequality in a society, racial assumptions about crime, and the cultural values of a nation. With the rise of mass incarceration in the United States, a body of research has developed that is assessing the limited public safety benefits and collateral effects of these developments. These counterproductive effects include impacts on family formation and parenting in high-incarceration communities, rates of civic engagement, and the fraying of community bonds and informal social control. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

https://lnkd.in/gD8TGNdJ Over the last several years, there has been a lot of discussion in Canada, and especially British Columbia, about (1) what to do about perceived increases in serious and violent offending and (2) whether incarceration reduces or increases reoffending. These discussions occurred in policy briefs, news articles, and media interviews. Across all sources, regardless of the perspective or claim, reliance on empirical data was almost always absent. This motivated the writing of the current paper. Before discussing the paper, I want to be clear that it would be a mistake to interpret its findings as support for expanding the use of incarceration. Findings also do not imply that Canada’s correctional system should maintain the status quo. However, we found that within-individual increases in time spent incarcerated were prospectively associated with within-individual decreases in reconvictions. In the paper, we demonstrate an alternative way of studying the relationship between incarceration and reoffending that addresses selection bias by using a first-differenced fixed effect estimator to examine the relationship between period-to-period within-individual changes in incarceration and future period-to-period within-individual changes in reconvictions. We used a sample of 1,719 youth involved in serious and violent offenses whose patterns of incarceration and reoffending were measured at each year of age from age 12 up until age 35. A year-over-year increase in incarceration between time t-3 and time t-2 was associated with a year-over-year decrease in convictions between time t-1 and time t. In plain language, an increase of one month spent incarcerated from two years ago to one year ago was associated with a 0.19 decrease in number of convictions from one year ago to present. We were sure to analyze the data in a multitude of ways (e.g., controlling for exposure time during the follow-up period, different conviction types, different age-stages, birth cohorts). Each time we reached the same conclusion. It is unclear whether reductions in convictions resulted from incarceration having a deterrent effect or a rehabilitative effect. We are not suggesting that incarceration was a positive experience for study participants. The custody environment in British Columbia may simply be an improvement from severe forms of marginalization experienced in the community. This is only one study and reflects a unique sample of all incarcerated persons. Nevertheless, it hopefully provides a roadmap for further research on the relationship between incarceration and reoffending, including how to study the impact of incarceration while being attuned to threats to reliability that are created by selection bias. 

YSRP and Partners respond to Samantha Melamed's January 16th article: We are horrified, but unfortunately unsurprised, to learn that Philadelphia continues to incarcerate youth at rates far greater than other major cities, despite the pervasive abuse in juvenile facilities. As Samantha Melamed reported, decades of research show us that locking kids up is not the solution to reducing crime, and the deeper kids go into the system, the worse off they are long term, and the more likely they are to be arrested and incarcerated again. Addressing this issue requires a two-fold approach involving local and state leadership. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and City Council must fund local programming for a real continuum of care — one that includes diversion programs and evidence-based alternatives to incarceration, including access to a quality education — so that children have access to all the services they need, in an intentional and proactive way. We also need substantive changes to state laws that contribute to our overreliance on incarceration. We need to invest in diversion and community-based programs, stop charging children as adults, and require state agencies to properly monitor what happens in facilities before another crisis or child death occurs. The problems and solutions have already been identified; it is time we act on them. Our groups are ready and willing to work with anyone, in any venue, at any time, to finally make real change in this harmful system. Margot Isman, policy director, Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project and partners at Children First, Juvenile Law Center, Education Law Center-PA, and the Defender Association of Philadelphia.

Key Insight: Factors that contribute to a high incarceration rate are multifaceted and deeply rooted in our society. It's crucial to consider these factors when making decisions about sentencing and imprisonment. Let's dive into this complex issue together! ⚖️ When we examine the reasons behind a high incarceration rate, it becomes clear that trauma plays a significant role. Trauma can shape an individual's life, leading them down paths they otherwise might not have taken. ️ The environment where one comes from also influences their likelihood of ending up incarcerated. Growing up in unhealthy households or neighborhoods can increase the chances of involvement with crime. A lack of stability and positive support systems creates additional challenges for individuals seeking better opportunities in life. ️ ⚫ Financial struggles often exacerbate the risk of imprisonment as well. Poverty and not having access to sufficient funds limit educational prospects, healthcare options, and overall quality of life, pushing some towards illegal activities out of desperation for survival or quick gains. Moreover, an inadequate education system contributes significantly to higher rates of incarceration within certain communities. Without proper resources or guidance, young individuals may find themselves trapped in cycles perpetuated by limited knowledge and opportunity gaps - leaving them vulnerable to criminal influence instead. -> Considering all these factors combined paints a clearer picture as to why black males constitute both the highest percentage among incarcerated individuals and simultaneously face disproportionate representation within our prison population compared to their overall share in society. This reality calls for introspection when it comes time for sentencing decisions or contemplating locking someone away permanently—understanding that addressing root causes rather than focusing solely on punitive measures is key if we aim for lasting change within our justice system. #Incarceration #JusticeReform #SocialJustice #CriminalJusticeReform