Shaka Senghor: prediction

Transcript context

…If you’re thinking about the problem of recidivism — people who upon their release commit crimes again — what do you think we can do to improve our accuracy of who will commit crime again and who will not? Do you feel we’re optimizing now, or it’s all screwed up? I think a couple of things about recidivism that people don’t know is, one, most people who go back don’t necessarily go back because they committed a new crime. Oftentimes they go back because they’ve committed a technical parole or probation violation. There’s an organization that’s led by Van Jones called Reform Alliance, who’s doing some incredible work about reforming the probation system. That’s based on the rapper Meek Mill. He was incarcerated. He was sentenced to two to four years for the most ridiculous probation violation. He popped a wheelie in New York and broke up a fistfight with his friend and some guy who accosted his friend, and they violated his probation and then sentenced him to two to four years. A group of us — when I was working with #cut50 that was led by Jessica Jackson at the time — we created a campaign, the Free Meek Mill’s campaign along with Roc Nation. Now they’ve shifted that into a whole new movement to end probation, technical probation and parole violations. So one of the things is the restrictions that people have. Say, for example, I was out on parole, and I was jaywalking, and an officer approached me and said, “You know what, you’re jaywalking. I’m writing you a ticket.” I have to go report that to my parole officer, and my parole officer can decide whether to violate my parole because I’ve come in contact with law enforcement again. People go back for stuff as ridiculous as jaywalking. People go back because they can’t pay fees and fines, and if you can’t pay your fees and fines, you end up getting your parole violated. It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about it because it’s so hard to find employment. To disrupt that, one, we need to do away with these technical violations. Secondly, we have to create space for people to find employment and housing. When I got out of prison, I didn’t know that it was legal to discriminate against people with a felony in housing. I didn’t know that it was legal to discriminate against people with a felony when it comes to, in some states, voting. So you can pay taxes, but you can’t vote in some states. You can be barred from employment by having a felony on your record. A lot of people don’t even know that you can actually be charged more for life insurance if you have a felony. You can’t use TSA, which our taxes pay for, if you have a felony. There’s literally 40,000 collateral consequences of having a felony on your record, so it’s exceptionally hard for people to get out of prison and to not only survive but to thrive at any level. So people oftentimes end up resorting back to hustling just to take care of themselves and provide for their family. I think those things are easily fixable. In prison, did you have to pay those crazy fees and fines we read about, like 10 times the normal price for a phone call?…

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