It's quite common to look down upon people who are involved in small criminal activities but we often forget to peek "behind the curtain" why those people have become what they have become. They are not earning millions from causing pain to someone else. They are small time crooks.
Now, in North America, African-Americans & Natives are viewed as criminals by the general public, usually with the help of police & government's tough-on-crime stance.
Governments at all levels don't care in investing in the rehab of that person, & try to resolve the situation (reduce the crime rate) by trying to cure the symptom of the problem; imprison the perpetrator. Imprisoning these people usually hardens them into a bigger criminal than making them a better person. Governments don't invest in proper rehab of the person because it makes more money through imprisonment than spending money on rehab.
What's the proper rehab of the criminal or people who are involved in small-time criminal activities? Providing these people with education, housing, & employment opportunities. Creating laws where former convicts are properly re-integrated into the society.
Most people, who end up being labelled a "criminal", don't prefer criminal activities over non-criminal activities, at least, initially. But many people, and especially the ones who do fall into criminal activities, commit crimes because they need the money for their families. Basic needs of a human, like housing, education, & employment are all getting expensive or inaccessible.
Housing is getting expensive all over North America & Europe. Big cities like New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Karachi, Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Delhi, Mumbai & etc. are becoming expensive in housing. As we all know that incomes never go up as fast as expenses, so poor people are usually pushed out of the cities & into the suburbs or fringes of the city. If they lose their jobs because of the economy, for instance, then they end up being homeless (the numbers of homeless people have actually increased in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, & London in the past decade).
Education is becoming expensive everywhere. Tuition keeps rising. Poor people can't even afford to go to school, anymore. Only way to go to school is taking on debt but good-paying jobs after graduation are becoming scarce so many would-be students don't want to take on debt. If they do take on debt & fail to repay it because they lost their jobs or fall ill, then they can be imprisoned (at least in US), which will mark them as a criminal for life, & then they will have a hard time in securing a job or even a house after they are released. Plus, failing to repay the student loans also put the credit history of the students in jeopardy, which in turn, creates problems for them in securing housing.
Employment has become network-based. North American & European economies are in decline. Jobs are scarce. Whatever jobs are available, even junior-level jobs that they require such high qualifications in terms of education & work experience that most people are excluded from ever being hired for those jobs. If the job seeker doesn't have close friends & family members in influential positions in companies, then forget getting a job, at least one that will pay good enough to cover housing & living expenses.
So, a poor person has only one route to make enough money to take care of the expenses; earn the money in the wrong way (i.e. become a criminal). And if & when that person is caught, as a criminal, & after spending their required time in prison, they will have a much harder time in reintegrating back into society because society & laws will make it much harder for that person to integrate back into society with restrictive laws & wrong social perception of such poor people.
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On the day of Obama's speech, J Jondhi Harrell came down from his apartment & walked over to a nearby corner to haul 22-year-old Jeremiah Ross inside the offices of the Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC). Harrell, the executive director of the centre, has been trying to persuade Ross to stop dealing drugs, or "trapping" & instead find a full time job & stable housing.
Harrell tries to entice Ross - a thin, handsome young man with big eyes & a web of tattoos crawling up his neck - with $100 moving jobs, & lets him use the computers in the front office. If he can get Ross to leave the street corner behind, Harrell says, it could be a major coup - Ross is a leader, lots of the neighbourhood kids look up to him.
But Ross recently finished a stint in prison, he has no high school diploma, & right now TCRC can't afford to pay him a living wage. So the streets continue to beckon.
"After me and my family got evicted, I'm out here," says Ross. "It's hard to find a job, so this all I know. This is the first thing I go to."
...
Nicetown is about a 15 minute car ride away from Philadelphia's Center City where Obama outlined his plans to reform the criminal justice system at the National Association for Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) annual convention ... .
This speech came on the heels of his announcement that he is commuting the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders who've been incarcerated in federal prison for many years. While everyone agrees it is an important moment, the word some Philadelphian advocates for the formerly incarcerated use to describe the president is "disappointing."
Obama spoke of an America founded on second chances - but many return to find that Pennsylvania law prevents them from getting licences to do certain types of work, prevents them from getting housing & sometimes bars them from entering their former neighbourhoods altogether. These types of laws are known as "collateral consequences," & according to a national website that tracks them, Pennsylvania has nearly 1,000 of these restrictions.
"It's become almost like a sport for the legislators to create all these barriers," says Angus Love, a lawyer with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project.
Germantown Avenue once teemed with black-owned businesses patronised by neighbourhood residents collecting good wages from nearby factories. Today, nearly half the people living in the 19140 zip code do not have a high school diploma. Most households bring in less than $30,000 (£19,000) a year & the glittering shops have shut down.
A huge number of the estimated 35,000 former inmates who return to Philadelphia each year from federal, state & county lockups head back to North Philadelphia neighbourhoods every year.
According to 2008 figures, it cost taxpayers $40 million to incarcerate men & women from Nicetown - the fifth highest rate in the city.
"In our community, mass incarceration I would say affects over 60% of the community," says Harrell. "You'd be hard pressed to walk down any street in any black neighbourhood in Philadelphia, and knock on 10 doors and find no one who is affected."
It's a neighbourhood that feels the full absence of "missing men," a term used by the New York Times to describe the large number of black men ages 25 to 54 who have disappeared from cities around the country due to either early death or incarceration.
Philadelphia is said to be missing 30,000 of these men. Nicetown is exactly the kind of community they're vanishing from.
Once released, these inmates could be said to be joining the ranks of the re-appeared men, & Harrell is one of them.
He spent 20 years in federal prison, & returned to Philadelphia 5 years ago. But don't call him an "ex-con" - he & other activists worked hard to get Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter to issue a proclamation declaring that the city officially refer to former inmates as "returning citizens," & Harrell is deadly serious about changing stigma with language.
He'll never use the word "re-entry" either, a term he associates with the sometimes-exploitative network of halfway houses that are often a required stop after prison.
"Frankly I was treated with more disrespect in those six months than in 19 years of incarceration," he says.
Harrell's three-year-old organisation emphasises a holistic approach for former inmates coming home. Harrell & his staff of four help connect clients to housing & employment, but also encourage the men & women they serve to get involved in community service, to join a faith community if they're religious.
He wants to plant community gardens & start buying up the properties on Germantown Avenue to start business that will employ & train returning inmates ... .
...
In fact, job placement & spiritual guidance can only take you so far on the streets of Nicetown. When Harrell thinks about the notion of the "missing men" of North Philadelphia, his thoughts go immediately to Cynthia Muse, who lives just around the corner from his office.
On 31 May, Muse's son Abdul Salaam walked out the door of their row house & headed to a celebration for his 36th birthday. Within hours, he was dead - stabbed in the heart in front of his toddler son & girlfriend in the courtyard of a public housing project less than 2 miles from his mother's home.
This is not the first time Muse, a mother of 5 sons, has been through this.
"It was my third time," she says ... . "My emotions and my logical mind is not giving me no answers. Why have you taken a third son from me?"
Muse never seems to get any resolution. Nobody knows how her son Jalaal ended up in the trunk of his own car, or who shot her 26-year-old son Abdul Aliym to death. Her youngest is in prison.
Only one of her sons, Jamal, now has a steady job & a family of his own to look after, despite spending almost 10 years in prison. He's not entirely sure himself how he made it out, but says the deaths of his brothers helped motivate him.
Now, in North America, African-Americans & Natives are viewed as criminals by the general public, usually with the help of police & government's tough-on-crime stance.
Governments at all levels don't care in investing in the rehab of that person, & try to resolve the situation (reduce the crime rate) by trying to cure the symptom of the problem; imprison the perpetrator. Imprisoning these people usually hardens them into a bigger criminal than making them a better person. Governments don't invest in proper rehab of the person because it makes more money through imprisonment than spending money on rehab.
What's the proper rehab of the criminal or people who are involved in small-time criminal activities? Providing these people with education, housing, & employment opportunities. Creating laws where former convicts are properly re-integrated into the society.
Most people, who end up being labelled a "criminal", don't prefer criminal activities over non-criminal activities, at least, initially. But many people, and especially the ones who do fall into criminal activities, commit crimes because they need the money for their families. Basic needs of a human, like housing, education, & employment are all getting expensive or inaccessible.
Housing is getting expensive all over North America & Europe. Big cities like New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Karachi, Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Delhi, Mumbai & etc. are becoming expensive in housing. As we all know that incomes never go up as fast as expenses, so poor people are usually pushed out of the cities & into the suburbs or fringes of the city. If they lose their jobs because of the economy, for instance, then they end up being homeless (the numbers of homeless people have actually increased in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, & London in the past decade).
Education is becoming expensive everywhere. Tuition keeps rising. Poor people can't even afford to go to school, anymore. Only way to go to school is taking on debt but good-paying jobs after graduation are becoming scarce so many would-be students don't want to take on debt. If they do take on debt & fail to repay it because they lost their jobs or fall ill, then they can be imprisoned (at least in US), which will mark them as a criminal for life, & then they will have a hard time in securing a job or even a house after they are released. Plus, failing to repay the student loans also put the credit history of the students in jeopardy, which in turn, creates problems for them in securing housing.
Employment has become network-based. North American & European economies are in decline. Jobs are scarce. Whatever jobs are available, even junior-level jobs that they require such high qualifications in terms of education & work experience that most people are excluded from ever being hired for those jobs. If the job seeker doesn't have close friends & family members in influential positions in companies, then forget getting a job, at least one that will pay good enough to cover housing & living expenses.
So, a poor person has only one route to make enough money to take care of the expenses; earn the money in the wrong way (i.e. become a criminal). And if & when that person is caught, as a criminal, & after spending their required time in prison, they will have a much harder time in reintegrating back into society because society & laws will make it much harder for that person to integrate back into society with restrictive laws & wrong social perception of such poor people.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the day of Obama's speech, J Jondhi Harrell came down from his apartment & walked over to a nearby corner to haul 22-year-old Jeremiah Ross inside the offices of the Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC). Harrell, the executive director of the centre, has been trying to persuade Ross to stop dealing drugs, or "trapping" & instead find a full time job & stable housing.
Harrell tries to entice Ross - a thin, handsome young man with big eyes & a web of tattoos crawling up his neck - with $100 moving jobs, & lets him use the computers in the front office. If he can get Ross to leave the street corner behind, Harrell says, it could be a major coup - Ross is a leader, lots of the neighbourhood kids look up to him.
But Ross recently finished a stint in prison, he has no high school diploma, & right now TCRC can't afford to pay him a living wage. So the streets continue to beckon.
"After me and my family got evicted, I'm out here," says Ross. "It's hard to find a job, so this all I know. This is the first thing I go to."
...
Nicetown is about a 15 minute car ride away from Philadelphia's Center City where Obama outlined his plans to reform the criminal justice system at the National Association for Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) annual convention ... .
This speech came on the heels of his announcement that he is commuting the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders who've been incarcerated in federal prison for many years. While everyone agrees it is an important moment, the word some Philadelphian advocates for the formerly incarcerated use to describe the president is "disappointing."
Obama spoke of an America founded on second chances - but many return to find that Pennsylvania law prevents them from getting licences to do certain types of work, prevents them from getting housing & sometimes bars them from entering their former neighbourhoods altogether. These types of laws are known as "collateral consequences," & according to a national website that tracks them, Pennsylvania has nearly 1,000 of these restrictions.
"It's become almost like a sport for the legislators to create all these barriers," says Angus Love, a lawyer with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project.
Germantown Avenue once teemed with black-owned businesses patronised by neighbourhood residents collecting good wages from nearby factories. Today, nearly half the people living in the 19140 zip code do not have a high school diploma. Most households bring in less than $30,000 (£19,000) a year & the glittering shops have shut down.
A huge number of the estimated 35,000 former inmates who return to Philadelphia each year from federal, state & county lockups head back to North Philadelphia neighbourhoods every year.
According to 2008 figures, it cost taxpayers $40 million to incarcerate men & women from Nicetown - the fifth highest rate in the city.
"In our community, mass incarceration I would say affects over 60% of the community," says Harrell. "You'd be hard pressed to walk down any street in any black neighbourhood in Philadelphia, and knock on 10 doors and find no one who is affected."
It's a neighbourhood that feels the full absence of "missing men," a term used by the New York Times to describe the large number of black men ages 25 to 54 who have disappeared from cities around the country due to either early death or incarceration.
Philadelphia is said to be missing 30,000 of these men. Nicetown is exactly the kind of community they're vanishing from.
Once released, these inmates could be said to be joining the ranks of the re-appeared men, & Harrell is one of them.
He spent 20 years in federal prison, & returned to Philadelphia 5 years ago. But don't call him an "ex-con" - he & other activists worked hard to get Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter to issue a proclamation declaring that the city officially refer to former inmates as "returning citizens," & Harrell is deadly serious about changing stigma with language.
He'll never use the word "re-entry" either, a term he associates with the sometimes-exploitative network of halfway houses that are often a required stop after prison.
"Frankly I was treated with more disrespect in those six months than in 19 years of incarceration," he says.
Harrell's three-year-old organisation emphasises a holistic approach for former inmates coming home. Harrell & his staff of four help connect clients to housing & employment, but also encourage the men & women they serve to get involved in community service, to join a faith community if they're religious.
He wants to plant community gardens & start buying up the properties on Germantown Avenue to start business that will employ & train returning inmates ... .
...
In fact, job placement & spiritual guidance can only take you so far on the streets of Nicetown. When Harrell thinks about the notion of the "missing men" of North Philadelphia, his thoughts go immediately to Cynthia Muse, who lives just around the corner from his office.
On 31 May, Muse's son Abdul Salaam walked out the door of their row house & headed to a celebration for his 36th birthday. Within hours, he was dead - stabbed in the heart in front of his toddler son & girlfriend in the courtyard of a public housing project less than 2 miles from his mother's home.
This is not the first time Muse, a mother of 5 sons, has been through this.
"It was my third time," she says ... . "My emotions and my logical mind is not giving me no answers. Why have you taken a third son from me?"
Muse never seems to get any resolution. Nobody knows how her son Jalaal ended up in the trunk of his own car, or who shot her 26-year-old son Abdul Aliym to death. Her youngest is in prison.
Only one of her sons, Jamal, now has a steady job & a family of his own to look after, despite spending almost 10 years in prison. He's not entirely sure himself how he made it out, but says the deaths of his brothers helped motivate him.
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