Overcoming
Discrimination Against People with Criminal Records
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Harriette
Davis testifies about losing her grandchild to adoptive
parents due to a felony. Photo: Scott
Braley.
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California releases nearly
285,000 people from probation and state prison each year.
Once released, people with felony records find it next
to impossible to secure housing, find a job, get drug
treatment, or access public assistance. Discrimination
against people who have been in prison is a widespread,
day-to-day roadblock for people attempting to re-enter
their communities—and it’s legal.
All
of Us or None, an organization of people who
have been in prison and their families, is convening a
series of Peace & Justice Community Summits in the
Bay Area this Fall that bring together community members,
elected officials and community leaders to hear testimony
and commit to solutions that support people to re-enter
their communities. All Of Us Or None, DataCenter and East
Bay Community Law Center have produced a briefing packet
with supporting data.
Peace & Justice Community
Summits are being held in San Francisco on October 23
and in East Palo Alto on November 13. For further information
see All
of Us or None.
Read
Story | Briefing
Packet (PDF)
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Seeds
of Fire
For the second year in a row,
DataCenter was invited to give a training at the Highlander
Center's Seeds of Fire youth camp in June.
The camp is a week-long summer retreat for youth organizers
and adult allies from throughout the South. The focus
is on low-income people of color and queer youth.
Our Youth
Strategy Project and Criminal Justice Program gave
a joint training on how to do strategic campaign research.
Participants really enjoyed the popular education style
of the workshop and the emphasis that anyone can do research,
particularly our "Who Wants to be an Information
Activist?" research game that challenges participants
to quickly identify potential data sources to campaign-related
research questions.
For further information
see Highlander
Center.
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Louisiana
Youth Prison Shuts Down!
Swanson Correctional Center
for Youth, known simply as Tallulah, had a national reputation
for cruelty. "Guards beat on the children, sell them
drugs and have sex with them," says Brenda Brue,
whose son was in the prison. Rape, broken bones and black
eyes were daily occurences. During the five years that
Correctional Services Corporation ran the prison, Tallulah
was charged with violating human rights standards, the
U.S. Constitution and federal law. In 1998, due to lawsuits,
the state of Louisiana was forced to take over the prison.
But the problem wasn't over. Physical abuse, humiliation,
lack of medical treatment were endemic to Louisiana's
youth incarceration system.
Parents and lawyers who came
together to form the Juvenile
Justice Project of Louisiana recognized that
the system itself needed to be changed. Their goal: to
close Tallulah and use the money saved for community-based
alternatives. Using multiple strategies, including legal,
legislative and grassroots, JJPL achieved a victory people
thought was impossible — Louisiana's Juvenile Justice
Reform Act of 2003 mandated the closure of Tallulah and
opened the way for radical restructuring of the state's
juvenile justice system.
DataCenter supported JJPL's
struggle by gathering statistics on the economic impact
of the prison on the town of Tallulah and Madison Parish,
including economic indicators, education levels, child
poverty rates, unemployment rates, as well as information
on where prison guards live and their wages. We also provided
redevelopment and reinvestment models utilized by other
communities that have shut down prisons. JJPL used the
information in testimony to the state legislature to demonstrate
that the prison did not contribute to the local economy.
For further information,
see Juvenile
Justice Project of Louisiana. For a detailed accounting
of the Close Tallulah campaign, see "The
Death of Tallulah Prison," by Xochitl Bervera,
in Colorlines, Summer 2004.
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