October 16 , 2019

Of Poverty, Prison, and the Legacy of Slavery

By Jennifer Jones Austin

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On a wall in my office at the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) hangs a photograph of protestors marching with placards bearing the now-famous declaration, “I Am a Man.” The iconic image comes from the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968, where the road to civil rights joined the path to economic equity. It was an intersection that our country had been careening towards for nearly 350 years. In many ways, neither of those destinations – equality or equity – has yet been reached. The harsh effects of the criminal justice system are a major reason why.  

It is common-enough knowledge that slavery did not end with emancipation. After the Civil War, history tells us, new ways of enslaving and ensnaring now-freed African-Americans, including Black Codes, vagrancy laws, convict leasing, and, ultimately, Jim Crow, were devised to block equity and justice from taking root. It was as though the very soil of America could not sustain the flowering of full African-American empowerment. To be sure, there were moments of breakthrough. Always, however, Whites would introduce a new form of systematic oppression that would again poison the ground.  

In our era, the mass incarceration of African-Americans is an institutional system of control that occupies this toxic role. The “evolution of oppression,” as it has come to be called, seems to know no bounds. Today there are over two million people behind bars in the United States. African-Americans made up 33 percent of the sentenced population in 2017, while representing just 12 percent of the U.S. population. A Black person is six times more likely than a White person to be incarcerated. Furthermore, the slavery-to-incarceration continuum isn’t defined solely by the loss of physical freedom. We know that incarceration negatively affects virtually every indicator of wellbeing, for both the individual and their families: economic security, physical and mental health, academic success, and child development -- and not only in the moment, but intergenerationally. 

This year at FPWA, we released the report “Ending the Poverty to Prison Pipeline.”  It focuses on incarceration and other contact with the justice system in New York City, and particularly the intersection of poverty, race, and justice involvement. We see significant racial disparities in terms of who is justice-involved, from arrest through sentencing and incarceration, with Black and Latinx New Yorkers more likely to be incarcerated than White and Asian New Yorkers. As poverty rates increase within Community Districts, jail incarceration rates also increase. And incarceration deepens poverty. 

 
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This intersectionality warrants a new look at how we grapple with the causes and the effects of mass incarceration. For if we sincerely want to disrupt the legacy of slavery embedded in our justice system, then we must contend with race and poverty as both intended drivers and consequences of justice involvement. In short, civil rights and economic rights cannot be divorced.  

Where do we begin? FPWA’s report has more than 30 recommendations for how policymakers, community-based organizations (CBOs), and communities themselves can work to disrupt the poverty to prison pipeline. For change to happen on a systemic level the commitment of government is essential, and we are working with the City to begin addressing the complex issues of poverty, race, and justice involvement. Other actors are critical, too. A significant focus of our report is how human service organizations and other CBOs, educational institutions, and faith communities must re-examine their assumptions and boldly redefine what effective engagement and support of justice-involved constituencies entails. 

For example, what does it mean to be a youth services program working with children whose parents may be incarcerated? One of the most important ways that community organizations can be effective in such work is through a commitment to an internal culture that responds at every level to the deep impact of trauma in the lives of those living in poverty, and especially the poor and justice-involved. The trauma experienced may be material – loss of income, a home, physical freedom – or it may be social – stigma, academic delay – or emotional.  

In the coming year, FPWA will be launching a community-based initiative exploring just this issue. The words “trauma-informed care” don’t do justice to the concept that we are advocating. It involves, first, challenging personal and internal organizational norms and biases to understand how our attitudes and experiences with trauma can affect organizational practices in subtle as well as overt ways. Next, it means ensuring that every point of our interaction with those we’re working with incorporates the impact of trauma in their lives, acknowledging that trauma isn’t simply a factor to be Balkanized to the mental health practitioner. Instead, we intend to put front and center the need to heal in every interaction the most fundamental wound inflicted by systematic oppression – the de-valuing of an individual’s inherent worth. 

And that brings me back to the photograph on my wall. One striking aspect of it is the bold underlining of the word “Am.” Without it, the word speaks to simple definition. With the underline, it’s a declaration of inherent dignity. That’s a crucial difference we would do well to embrace. For if there is one thread that runs through the now 400 years of oppression experienced by African-Americans, it is the attempted robbery of dignity. Embracing what it means to truly reverse this course of history is crucial. There is a way to create fertile ground for justice and equity to finally take root, and it starts there. 


Throughout October, Urban Matters will publish reflections on the meaning of the 400 Years of Inequality Project.


photo by: ErnEst Withers

Graphic: Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies

Jennifer Jones Austin is CEO and President of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.