Not a Crime to Be Poor Quotes

“In the same decades that saw the rise of mass incarceration, the number of beds available in state mental hospitals across the country dropped from 339 beds per 100,000 people in 1955 to under 20 beds per 100,000 people by 2015. There are now ten times as many mentally ill people in our prisons and jails as there are in state mental institutions.”
― Peter Edelman, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

“Money bail is ruining the lives of literally millions of poor people and costing the country unnecessary billions of dollars in incarceration costs every year. Local jail populations grew by 19.8 percent just between 2000 and 2014, with pretrial detention accounting for 95 percent of that growth. Just as one example, but typical of big cities around the country, is Philadelphia, where the cost of running the jails is $110 to $120 per inmate per day. The single feature shared by almost every defendant in pretrial detention is that they are poor. Rich people make bail; poor people don't. Regardless of actual guilt or innocence, poor people are criminalized for their inability to buy their way out of jail.”
― Peter Edelman, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

“Beyond mass incarceration, beginning in the 1990s we adopted a new set of criminal justice strategies that further punish poor people for their poverty. Low-income people are arrested for minor violations that are only annoyances for people with means but are disastrous for the poor and near poor because of the high fines and fees we now almost routinely impose. Poor people are held in jail to await trial when they cannot afford bail, fined excessive amounts, and hit with continuously mounting costs and fees. Failure to pay begets more jail time, more debts from accumulated interest charges, additional fines and fees, and, in a common penalty with significant consequences for those living below or near the poverty line, repeated driver's license suspensions. Poor people lose their liberty and often lose their jobs, are frequently barred from a host of public benefits, may lose custody of their children, and may even lose their right to vote. And immigrants, even some with green cards, can be subject to deportation. Once incarcerated, impoverished inmates with no access to paid work are often charged for their room and board. Many debtors will carry debts to their deaths, often hounded by bill collectors and new prosecutions.”
― Peter Edelman, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

“Americans are generally aware that at any given moment, 2.2 million people are locked up in our prisons and jails, 700,00 of them in our county and city jails. What most don't know is that, over the course of a given year, a total of 11.7 million people spend some amount of time in America's county and city jails, double the number in 1983. Three-fifths of them have not been found guilty of anything, and three-fourths, both convicted and pretrial detainees, are there for nonviolent traffic and other low-level offenses. African Americans are detained at rates nearly five times greater than whites and three times higher than Latinos. The total cost is $9 billion a year.

Why? Two simple words: money bail.”
― Peter Edelman, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

“The major shortages of judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, coupled with the number of people being held in jail awaiting rail has led to a crisis in which it is not possible for every defendant who wants a day in court to get one. So the courts need a way to keep the trials from taking place. By imprisoning poor people who cannot put up money for bail, the system uses the threat or reality of extended imprisonment to extract guilty pleas, even from people who are innocent or have other valid defenses. Not able to get a timely trial, they have only one option - plead guilty. It is a Hobson's choice, more so even than many of the defendants realize, because the guilty please have serious collateral consequences they may not even be aware of and which stay with them for the rest of their lives. But pleading guilty is what they do by the thousands, every day, all over America.”
― Peter Edelman, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America