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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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Welcome progress came this week in an effort to reform philanthropic giving and get promised funds to our nation’s charities faster. As it works now, Americans can get a tax deduction on charitable donations put into donor-advised funds and private foundations — but much of that money doesn't make it to the charities it was intended to help. More than $120 billion is currently sitting in donor-advised funds, or DAFs, with no requirement on when the funds must be distributed. Another $1 trillion is held in private foundations, which are required to pay out just 5% of those assets every year. But bipartisan legislation introduced this week by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, aims to speed up the giving. The ACE Act would give donors an upfront tax deduction for DAF funds they distribute within 15 years, or allow them to delay the deduction and have up to 50 years to distribute the funds. The legislation would also close loopholes benefiting private foundations, prohibiting them from counting administrative expenses for family members and certain DAF distributions toward their 5% payout obligation. The reforms build on policy proposals outlined by the Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving, a group of philanthropists (including AV Co-Founder John Arnold), foundation leaders, and nonprofits who have worked for more than a year to bring attention to the need for more accountability in giving, especially at a time when the pandemic and economic recovery are leaving so many Americans dependent on the assistance of charitable organizations. “Philanthropy is where wealth inequality is playing out in the public realm,” Ray Madoff, a law professor at Boston College and a member of the Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving, told the New York Times this week in a story about the Senate bill. “When the super wealthy claim charitable tax benefits, they are supposed to be putting their money to use for the benefit of society at large. The rules we set down about that are incredibly important at a time when there are more and more super wealthy and greater and greater needs of society.”
Read the legislation.
Read John Arnold’s statement on the ACE Act.
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A Blueprint for Eliminating
Money Bail
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Micah Derry, former Ohio state director of Americans for Prosperity, is working with Arnold Ventures in its mission to end unjust pretrial detention state by state and create a justice system where jail is only used when absolutely necessary — and not based on a person’s wealth. He’s driven in this work by personal experience with addiction, which he says could easily have landed him in serious legal trouble. Derry believes it's his duty to advocate for those caught up in the criminal justice system.
Why It Matters: On any given day in the United States, nearly half a million people sit in jail on charges for which they have not been convicted because they can’t afford cash bail. “Money bail by its very nature unduly targets those with the least stability in their lives. Everything they have that allows them to be strong contributors to society and pursue their personal American Dream — for example their children, house, job, and transportation — can all be lost in as little as 72 hours of incarceration, and for offenses as minor as drug possession or driving with a suspended license,” Derry says.
Dive Deeper: In a Q&A, Derry talks about the injustices of money bail and the political realities of forming a bipartisan coalition to eliminate or decrease its use. “When we brought together people of different political ideologies, that was the first time we started getting traction,” Derry says of his work in Ohio.
Read the Q&A > |
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Imagine being trapped within the walls of a county jail — not convicted of a crime, separated from your family, and unable to come up with the cash to buy your freedom — as a pandemic rages around you. This was the case for tens of thousands of Texans amid the pandemic, and their stories are gutting.
What’s Happening: The Texas Jail Project sought to document the conditions of people housed in Texas jails during the pandemic with an interactive website called Shedding Light. Through collect phone calls and letters, they heard about the horrid conditions from those inside: the lack of personal protective equipment, overcrowding, and jail staff who ignored their pleas for help. A pregnant woman in the Brazoria County Jail wrote in a letter: “A lot of inmates have gotten COVID-19 and we are unable to social distance, putting us at risk. Yesterday, for example … we were forced to sleep with sewage water in our dorm all night, with no way to clean it up. Only blankets to soak up the dirty water… Also, back in November 2020, I was put in isolation, with false accusations, and I was 4 months pregnant. The jail would not feed me anything extra and I was literally starving. My baby passed away due to jail negligence.”
Bottom Line: The Shedding Light team hopes the stories they’ve collected will lead to policies that reduce county jail populations and divert resources into community-based public health. “The people that we as a society are arresting and jailing are human beings. They have children who they love and want to be with. They have jobs they want to go to. They have bills they’re trying to pay. Houses they want to live in,” says Elizabeth Rossi, a senior attorney for Civil Rights Corps. “They’re human beings who have lives who are now being trapped in cages in the middle of a deadly pandemic, who are scared and traumatized and subject to incredible forms of mental and physical violence.”
Read the story >
Related: How Colorado prisons used solitary confinement amid the pandemic, testing the limits on the state’s rules of use for the punishment.
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The Problem With Bench Warrants
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By Steven Scarborough, Communications Manager
A new report from the Research Network on Misdemeanor Justice outlines stark racial disparities in arrest warrants stemming from low-level offenses like traffic violations. The study found that a significant percentage of arrests made by police in St. Louis (14%) and Louisville (19%) were solely because the person arrested had an outstanding bench warrant.
Why It Matters: The majority of bench warrants are for low-level, nonviolent offenses, meaning that these arrests consume significant law enforcement resources with questionable benefit to public safety. Moreover, bench warrant arrests disproportionately impact Black communities and those living below the poverty line, resulting in large numbers of people getting unnecessarily entangled in the legal system.
What's Next: This study is one of the first to provide solid data on how bench warrants drive arrests. It helps to begin the conversation on how to change policies at the state and local level, deliver fairer outcomes, and restore community trust in our justice system.
Read the story > |
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Michael Kinch, co-author of a new book on the pharmaceutical industry that explores how today's life-saving treatments are out of reach for many people due to exorbitant drug prices. Americans paid roughly the same amount for prescription medications as those in other developed countries just two decades ago, but we now pay more for drugs than anywhere else in the world. How is that? Kinch explains America’s unique drug pricing system (“It’s just simply the cost per dose that Americans are being charged more for”) and proposes ways to fix it.
Read the Q&A > |
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The Washington Post examines three historic firsts in policing reforms — the effort to stop racial profiling in New Jersey, the deployment of technology to identify troubled deputies in Los Angeles, and federal intervention in Pittsburgh — and what they show us about the difficulty of reforming law enforcement. “At each agency, the attempts have been stifled by entrenched cultures, systemic dysfunction, shifts in leadership and swings in public mood. Outrage at officers’ conduct eventually gives way to demands for aggressive enforcement when crime flares, and the cycle continues.”
Related: For a second year, most U.S. police departments decline to share information on their use of force.
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In a big win for criminal justice reform, the New York Legislature passed the Less is More Act, which will reduce technical violations of parole — a driver of mass incarceration and racial disparities in the system — while saving taxpayers money and supporting public safety.
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Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, calls for the passage of Senate Bill 1064 in Arizona, which expands the state’s earned release credits program to incentivize people in prison to complete programs like job training — benefitting taxpayers and public safety.
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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says it's time to pass the Equal Act and end the disparity between crack and cocaine offenses in this Fox News op-ed.
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It took years of brutal documented physical and sexual abuses of inmates by guards, but New Jersey will close its only prison for women, NPR reports.
ICYMI: Minnesota is the first state in the nation to stop the inhumane practice of separating mothers in prison from their newborns, the Star-Tribune reports.
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The Crime Report interviews Shani Buggs, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, about the recent spike in violent crime, the need for long-term investments to determine what works, and why she is hopeful about the future.
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A landmark “Ban the Box” bill approved by New Jersey lawmakers bars landlords from asking about criminal convictions on housing applications. “People should not be punished for the rest of their lives for something they did years ago.”
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A proposed hospital merger in Rhode Island shouldn’t happen, The Incidental Economist writes, arguing such consolidation will likely raise health care costs and won't result in higher quality care for patients.
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The Boston Globe asks what’s behind the sharp rise in opioid overdoses among Black men, after heart-breaking statistics show Black men in Massachusetts died of overdoses in 2020 at a rate 69% higher than the previous year. “This was a tragedy waiting to happen that was exacerbated by COVID-19.”
Related: Shatterproof is making its ATLAS resource available to four new states. The free tool connects people with high-quality addiction treatment.
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Prices for 260 prescription drugs widely used by older Americans increased at twice the inflation in 2020, AARP’s latest Rx Price Watch report finds. “We really are concerned that we're reaching a point where a lot of people aren't going to be able to afford the drugs that they need,” report co-author Leigh Purvis tells USA Today.
Related: Calls grow louder for Prescription Drug Affordability Boards in Colorado and Minnesota.
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The New York Times has some tips for voters as they use ranked-choice voting in upcoming elections.
Related: Alaska has come up with a clever way to educate voters about open top-four primaries and ranked-choice voting. (Note: Last we checked, king crab was no longer in the lead.)
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This interactive web experience is part of Frontline’s ambitious Un(re)solved project, which will investigate America’s legacy of racist killings — and tell the stories of those whose cases were re-examined under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act — through film, podcast, and installations.
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Maine continues to lead the way on political reform and innovation, first with ranked-choice voting and this week, as lawmakers passed bipartisan legislation allowing independents to vote in open primaries, the Press-Herald reports.
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Get a more intimate view of the violence gripping American cities in “Philly Under Fire,” a fascinating seven-episode podcast series from The Philadelphia Citizen that takes a year-long view of the gun violence there. Last year, Philadelphia had its highest rate of homicide since 1990. (More context on the rise in homicide across the U.S. here.) In Episode One, reporting and producing partners Jo Piazza and Nadira Goffe profile the Philadelphia Obituary Project, which documents victims of gun violence “as individuals rather than statistics.” There’s a lot of talk of solutions to the violence among local leaders — but little data about what works, Piazza and Goffe find. In further episodes, learn who violence interrupters are and how they work to prevent shootings from happening in the first place (surprisingly, two such Philadelphia programs shown to have worked were abandoned because of changes in local leadership and funding issues), why gun violence should be treated as a public health epidemic, and ways organizations in other jurisdictions have made meaningful progress to reduce shootings. Also hear from those most impacted by the violence, including “the women who go from ‘mourning mothers’ to ‘women on a mission,’ detectives intent on solving their children’s murders — because they don’t believe anyone else will.”
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Learn about the life and career of Sadie Alexander, the first Black American to receive a doctorate in economics, on this episode of 1A. After racial discrimination prevented her from finding work commensurate with her credentials, Alexander went on to law school and a career as a civil rights lawyer. Guest Nina Banks, president of the National Economics Association and associate professor of economics at Bucknell University, has been researching Alexander’s work for more than two decades and discusses her new book “Democracy, Race, & Justice,” a collection of Alexander’s speeches and writings, which are still relevant today.
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For some background on the FDA’s approval this week of a new Alzheimer’s drug, listen to this Tradeoffs podcast episode, where Caleb Alexander, of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology, explains why this decision is so controversial.
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I have great respect for the pointed self-awareness and delightful meta-ness of comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham’s new Netflix special, “Inside.” Written, filmed, and produced by Burnham himself amid pandemic isolation, “Inside” is a cathartic reflection on our year of heartbreak, anxiety, and collective awakening. (There’s also a specific bit that illustrates perfectly the distress I feel some weeks sending this newsletter out into the world.) It's dark, funny, and biting —and a brilliant testament to what one man alone (and his keyboard) can accomplish. Some are calling it a masterpiece.
Also: If you’re a fan of musicals, Lin-Manuel Miranda, feeling good, or bursting into tears, “In the Heights” is streaming on HBO Max.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
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Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
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