We Are The Lucky Ones

The human stories in a new report by Dr. Sandra Smith expose a patchwork of post-arrest experiences but one clear fact: Pretrial detention damages lives, and exponentially so as the time in jail increases.

What's Happening: In the United States, nearly 500,000 people per year are held in jail awaiting trial, often because they can’t afford cash bail to buy their freedom. The longer they’re incarcerated, the greater the chances are that they will be fired from their jobs, fall behind on housing payments, lose their vehicles, and accept plea deals that often carry a criminal conviction that can follow them for decades.

Bottom Line: The individual stories in the report highlight the difference between how a “brush with the law” and escalating time in pretrial detention can impact a person’s life and future outcomes.

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Related: In a momentous victory in the fight for bail reform, the California Supreme Court has ruled the state's money bail system violates civil rights.

Related: New polling that shows strong public support for reforming cash bail in Ohio.

The federal government’s latest COVID relief package, the American Rescue Plan, is a potentially game-changing step toward fighting poverty in America and lifting up lower-income families. 

What’s Happening: In a new Brookings Institution brief, researchers identify a set of executive actions and Congressional proposals that could support low- and moderate-income families and reduce poverty, including removing barriers to family assistance programs and increasing food assistance, tax credits, and student loan forgiveness. While some measures the team analyzed have already been passed via the American Recuse Plan, some, like student debt cancellation, are still being debated. 

Deeper Dive: We look at several key anti-poverty measures the Biden administration could take and their assessed impact on people’s financial well-being.

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This March, we're recognizing the women who are making history today by working to impact policy change for the future. 

Kelli Rhee: A Search for Purpose and Constant Challenge

Rhee's arrival at the top job at Arnold Ventures was far from a straight line. Early in her career, she was enjoying working in consulting but found something lacking. "It didn't feel as purposeful as I wanted." So she returned to school for double master's degrees and moved to Houston. A chance meeting with AV co-chair Laura Arnold changed everything. She talks to us about the opportunities she tries to create for other women in the workplace, how she’s preparing her own daughter for the work world, and the changes she sees coming in philanthropy.

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Related: Rhee joined the Center on Philanthropy & Public Policy for a conversation on creating policy change for lasting impact. Watch it here.

Debbie Cochrane: Closing Economic, Racial Gaps in College Opportunity

The higher education landscape has changed dramatically during COVID-19. But Cochrane, executive vice president of the Institute for College Access and Success, is calling attention to how policymakers can protect the promise of higher education and ensure students’ college dreams are not curtailed. She has testified before state and federal policymakers on topics ranging from access to need-based grants to debt relief for defrauded students and built statewide coalitions to support strong financial aid programs and better student outcomes. Cochrane talks to us about how being a woman in education has impacted her work and what advice she has for those who want to impact change.

I applied to one — and only one — school for college. The University of Texas at Austin offered guaranteed admission to those in the top 10 percent of their class, and I couldn’t afford multiple application fees. So I found myself fascinated by the privileged world of Operation Varsity Blues, the new Netflix documentary on the college admissions scandal that uncovered people of great means breaking the law and using their wealth to gain access to elite institutions of higher education. You likely read the headlines in real time, but this film does a good job of laying out a timeline and bringing you inside the con. The structure here is part talking head interviews and part re-enactment (featuring actor Matthew Modine as mastermind Rick Singer), but knowing that the dramatic scenes are based on endless hours of taped phone conversations makes those segments compelling enough. It’s frustrating, with the stark divides in our educational system, to see families that have built-in advantages (private schools, access to costly test prep) game the system. It’s even more aggravating to see this play out at a time when access to affordable higher education is tenuous for so many students and families. 

(I just made my final student loan payment, 20 years later. Of course, tuition was a bit more reasonable back then, before deregulation; it has increased at least 148% since I graduated.)

Raw, vivid phone calls from people inside California prisons speaking directly about the impact of the coronavirus on their lives: mental deterioration, a lack of precautions and health care access, unsanitary conditions and food rationing, the isolation of not seeing family. Prison Pandemic, a project from faculty and students at the University of California, Irvine, is a digital archive of this moment in time meant to raise awareness about COVID-19’s unequal toll. All of the stories told so far are from people incarcerated, but loved ones and those working in prisons can contribute a story, too.

The latest episode of Her Story featuring Arielle Mir, AV’s Vice President of Complex Care and yogi extraordinaire. In this exploration of female leaders in health care, Mir gives an honest perspective on the opportunities and challenges that have defined her career, and her relentless resolve to solve one of the toughest challenges in health policy.

This Fresh Air interview with University of Chicago professor Reuben Jonathan Miller, who writes about the aftereffects of mass incarceration in his new book, “Halfway Home.” The book is based on 15 years of research and the experiences of hundreds of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women — including his own family members. He discusses the housing, financial, and employment challenges faced by those re-emerging after incarceration, as well as the toll on families: “I decided to write about it because it touches so many families and because judges and prosecutors don't think about the fact that when they incarcerate a man or woman, that they're locking a family up with them.”