Nearly half of the U.S. population has a close relative who has been incarcerated in a jail or prison. That’s the conclusion of a 2019 report from Cornell University, which, among other things, found that 63% of Black Americans, 48% of Hispanic Americans and 42% of white Americans have a parent, co-parent, spouse, sibling or child behind bars.
Overall, close to 45% of Americans—or more than 140 million people—know what it’s like to lose a loved one to the criminal justice system. Add in an uncounted number of close friends, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, and the real number of people who have shared the experience of seeing a loved one traumatized by our country’s carceral state may well be 60% or higher.
Those 140+ million people have the potential to wield an impressive amount of political power, and they—and their incarcerated loved ones—are starting to realize it.
During the 2020 election season, for example, Michigan Liberation called and texted more than 4 million people, hired paid canvassers for door-knocking, and through their efforts, helped elect candidates at every level, from President Joe Biden to a reform-minded prosecutor in Oakland County. Founded in 2018, Michigan Liberation was created by and for criminal-justice-impacted people to support each other and advocate for reforms.
Michigan Liberation is far from alone.
“I think certainly that there is an emerging movement amongst formerly incarcerated, directly impacted people and communities to start pushing back more on mass incarceration than has ever been the case previously,” said Amy Fettig, executive director of the Sentencing Project. “And that’s an important and welcome development.” Fettig said that approximately 40% of her organization’s employees are directly impacted by the criminal justice system.
Organizing ‘just to survive’
DeAnna Hoskins, president of JustLeadership USA, told Blue Tent that there are “ad hoc, small groups” across the country, which generally are founded when someone realizes they aren’t alone in having an incarcerated loved one.
One mother in Ohio, Hoskins added, started a support group after her son was arrested. “She didn’t know what was going to happen in prison. She’s terrified because, of course, people know prison from TV, right?” In response, the Ohio mom started hosting biweekly meetings, and eventually, she was bringing in professionals to educate her group about the prison system and community re-entry after prison.
The majority of these organizations, Hoskins said, weren’t organizing for “attention-getting,” but rather, “they were just organizing to survive,” and “are just now even learning the power of their voice around legislation.” Founded in 2014, JustLeadershipUSA works with local organizations across the country, providing empowerment training to help them find that voice.
Organizing behind bars
The families outside aren’t the only ones working for change. Despite the fear of retaliation by authorities, incarcerated people themselves are working to change the system from the inside. In Michigan, incarcerated people worked with a local activist in support of a ballot proposal to reverse the state’s “Truth in Sentencing” law. The effort was halted by the COVID pandemic, but it was unique in that people inside prisons were working with their networks outside, encouraging them to collect signatures.
In 2018, incarcerated people across the country took part in a strike to protest slave labor conditions and the epidemic of deaths behind bars.
“There are a lot of initiatives going on around the country,” either being led or supported by incarcerated people, said Ronald Simpson-Bey, director of outreach and alumni engagement at JustLeadership USA. Simpson was incarcerated in Michigan for 27 years.
Overcoming obstacles from punishment to poverty
Groups of justice-system-impacted people are making big strides, but they are also facing huge challenges.
Many of the 2018 prison strikers faced retribution, including physical assault by guards and the destruction of their property. Even when there are no direct physical threats to their wellbeing, incarcerated people are further hampered because their access to the outside is strictly controlled, whether through the high charges for phone calls and emails, a lack of uncensored reading materials, or even the ability to watch objective news.
“Because institutions pay for the cable, but they don’t allow [incarcerated people] to watch CNN,” Simpson-Bey said. “They allow Fox News in, but they don’t allow CNN, they don’t allow MSNBC.”
“There really needs to be greater oversight of prisons and jails and their treatment of people behind bars, because a lot of efforts are made that the public never sees to ensure that people [inside] can’t speak out,” said the Sentencing Project’s Fettig.
People on the outside, whether formerly incarcerated or family members of incarcerated people, also face obstacles. Family members fear retribution against their loved ones. Formerly incarcerated people are frequently severely restricted in everything from their daily schedules to their eligibility to vote.
During Michigan Liberation’s canvassing drive, spokesperson Earl Burton told Blue Tent that one formerly incarcerated volunteer had a 4 p.m. daily curfew.
Funding can be another obstacle, particularly since people living in poverty are already three times more likely to be arrested and incarcerated in the first place. The lack of resources in criminal-justice-impacted communities makes outside funding even more vital to the success of these groups’ efforts.
Hoskins told Blue Tent that JustLeadershipUSA, which received more than $676,000 in grants in 2019 for some of its training work, has to find alternative sources of funding for much of what it does.
“The rest of what we do, we’re basically supplementing on our own because there is no funding source for me to walk in and say, ‘I want to elevate and empower directly impacted people to be able to advocate,’” she said.
Fettig of the Sentencing Project said that she sees “a growing recognition,” including among funders, “that in order to win this fight, we have to not only raise up the voices, but the leadership of people who are directly impacted.” But Hoskins had harsh words for the funding community.
“Philanthropy has to stop being racially oppressive in their giving. They actually perpetuate the same behavior they’re saying they’re funding to alleviate,” she said, including by deciding what people’s needs are rather than asking them.
“Stop controlling the money and saying, ‘This is what we want you to do. We hear your voice, but this is what we want you to do.’ So you really don’t hear my voice,” she said.