Your COVID Moment, A Hard Lesson on Bail Reform, and Contraceptive Justice in New Mexico

President Biden on Thursday signed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion stimulus package that could cut child poverty in half, extends unemployment benefits, and provides another round of stimulus checks to Americans. We looked at the bill's impacts in key areas where we work: 

• Criminal Justice: The package includes $1.8 billion to fund COVID-19 mitigation strategies for some of our most vulnerable populations in “congregate settings,” which includes those who live and work in jails and prisons and are among the hardest-hit by the coronavirus. It also allows states to utilize Medicaid dollars for community-based mobile crisis intervention units as an alternative to law enforcement.  
   
• Public Finance: State and local governments will see an infusion of aid to shore up budgets depleted by the pandemic, and the bill includes more support for the IRS after decades of budget cuts. Additionally, Congress lowered the threshold of the IRS Form 1099-K to $600 from $20,000, a change that could prevent long-term tax problems for contract workers. The bill's cash infusion for multi-employers pensions, however, only kicks the can down the road and doesn't address needed systemic changes.

• Higher Education: The package includes $40 billion in aid to colleges and universities, along with this “game-changer” for America’s veterans: closing the “90/10 loophole” that for years has allowed predatory for-profit schools to target GI Bill dollars and leave our nation’s veterans with worthless degrees.
   
• Health Care: The bill’s most significant health care reforms were aimed at expanding the safety net for vulnerable individuals, including financial incentives for states to expand Medicaid coverage and provide long-term care services in the community, as well as more generous subsidies to lower the cost of health insurance for plans on the exchange. Yet we still need to address underlying costs to make health care more affordable for everyone. The bill did lower drug costs by eliminating the Medicaid rebate cap, but federal action is still needed to lower the prices of prescription drugs and address rapidly rising hospital prices.

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Related: Some argue stimulus funds for states and local governments could go toward evidence-based strategies to combat the pandemic’s “companion” public health crisis: gun violence. 

By Evan Mintz, Communications Manager

 

Texas is learning the hard way that its cash bail system needs to change. Federal judges in three major cities — Houston, Dallas, and Galveston — have held wealth-based pretrial detention practices to be unconstitutional. Following these rulings, the Lone Star State’s top legal authority is reiterating his call for legislators in Austin to pass robust pretrial reforms. “The current system is illegal,” Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht says. “It’s against the law. It violates the law. [...] We need to quit breaking the law.”

 

What’s Happening: Hecht and Texas Judicial Council Executive Director David Slayton met with the National Partnership for Pretrial Justice to discuss their vision for what pretrial reform looks like in a Republican-run state. Their overarching goal is to ensure that people aren’t held in jail simply because they can’t afford bail. To that end, they want courts to rely on a validated assessment tool when setting bail, expand the use of supervised release, and collect data to ensure the system works as intended. The two judicial leaders are hardly alone in their mission. The Republican Party of Texas platform calls for replacing cash bail with a risk-based system, and 95 percent of voters in the state’s 2020 Republican primary endorsed a proposition in support of bail reform. 

 

What’s Next: The Texas Legislature is currently in session, and now is the opportunity to pass the changes endorsed by Hecht, Slayton and the Republican Party grassroots. However, the key bail bill — Senate Bill 21 — is currently written to further entrench wealth-based detention and contains numerous provisions that are likely unconstitutional. If the Texas Legislature doesn’t pass actual reforms this session, it is likely that federal lawsuits will continue to overturn the state’s bail system county by county.  “I think Texans, as proud as we are, we’d prefer to take care of the situation ourselves rather than having the federal courts do it for us,” Slayton says. “So let’s design a system that works and is legal instead of having federal courts do it and maybe not getting it done exactly the way we might like it done.”

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Related: New research from The New York City Criminal Justice Agency examines how court date notifications are one of the best options for promoting court appearance and describes best practices for building effective notification systems. 

By Adrienne Faraci, Communications Manager
 

When Denicia Cadena, policy director at Bold Futures, started looking into increasing access to contraceptives for women in her home state of New Mexico, she knew the problem was urgent: Some counties in the state didn’t have a single primary care provider, leaving many women without access to prescription birth control. 

What’s Happening: Nationally, about 19 million women live in “contraceptive deserts,” lacking “reasonable access” to a health center that offers a range of contraception, according to Power to Decide. One way policymakers have been trying to solve this problem is by advocating for laws that would allow pharmacists to prescribe contraceptives at pharmacies. In June of 2017, Bold Futures, along with the help of lawyers at the ACLU of New Mexico, community advocates, and the New Mexico Pharmacists Association, worked to pass a law allowing pharmacists to provide both contraceptive counseling and prescribe contraception at pharmacies.

Why It Matters: Pharmacies have remained accessible to patients at a time when traditional health care systems are overwhelmed by COVID-19. The new law has also reduced privacy concerns: If someone doesn’t feel their local clinic is understanding of their situation, identity, or beliefs, Cadena says, they can now drive to a pharmacy that feels right to them. “As a queer woman, for me, it can often be challenging seeking reproductive health care, because I feel like I have to explain my identity, my relationship status,” says Cadena. “To know that I could access a pharmacy at whatever time of day or night that suited my needs; to know that I could go to a different community, to know that I could find a provider that was actively LGBTQ-friendly, meant everything to me.”

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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette, Communications Manager

With all eyes on the survival of America's struggling small businesses, a new survey reveals that small business owners want relief not satisfied by lifting capacity restrictions or eliminating mask mandates. They want government action on high health care costs.
 

What’s Happening: In a poll of more than 800 small business owners released this week, burdensome health expenses were identified as the No. 1 concern, surpassing even worries about the impacts of COVID-19. They were also united in their beliefs that the need for reform is urgent, with 96 percent saying it is important for the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress to pursue policies that would provide them with relief from high health-care costs. A majority of respondents were keen to support just about any policy solution that could meaningfully and effectively lower costs, from laws that would allow the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices (83 percent support) to limiting the prices hospitals can charge for care (85 percent support).
 

Bottom Line: The findings underscore just how painful health care prices have become — not just for individuals and families, but for employers, too.

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COVID Diaries NYC, a new HBO Max documentary that offers a stripped-down, honest look at the early days of COVID-19 in New York. It’s told through the eyes of five young filmmakers who turn their cameras inward: Marcial Pilataxi and his grandmother, who can only afford to live in Manhattan because they “pick up the garbage for the rich people”; Camille Dianand, grappling with the COVID-19 diagnosis of her essential worker father, an MTA subway mechanic; Shane Fleming, documenting his family’s real-time economic collapse, which prompts them to “escape from New York”; Aracelie Colón’s personal struggle with mental illness and isolation. (“It’s like I won the lottery of bad luck.”). And Arlet Guallpa, whose parents work on the front lines, documents a George Floyd protest and learns shortly after that her best friend’s brother died from the coronavirus. “He was a Black man that didn’t get the care he needed.” This might be the COVID you didn’t see. Time calls it an “authentic antidote to fluffy quarantine TV.”

ICYMI: Our President and CEO Kelli Rhee kicked off the University of Chicago Rustandy Center’s “Perspectives in Philanthropy” series, which posed the question, “Is Justice Even Possible?” Rhee and Julia Stasch, philanthropy executive in residence, explore America’s criminal justice system and AV’s approach to evidence-based reform in policing, pretrial, probation and parole, prisons, and reintegration. It’s a great overview of why we do the work we do. Watch it here.

This episode of NPR’s Consider This on the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin, who is facing charges in the killing of George Floyd last Memorial Day. After a year of protest, unrest, promises, and social media posts, will this case play out differently than all of the others? NPR looks at how jury selection is taking place, what to watch for during the trial, and what this moment means for all of those impacted by police violence. “Progress would be justice, and justice would be them still here with us living.”

• Related: George Floyd’s death demonstrates why we need to rethink our approach to misdemeanor offenses.

This excellent On Point episode from WBUR-FM on the damage inflicted by our nation's cash bail system. It starts with the story of a woman who — after a fight with her mother-in-law led to an arrest and a $250,000 bail — lost her business, housing, and, nearly, custody of her children. She spent more than a year and a half in Cook County, Ill., jail before her bond was reduced to an amount she could pay. “When you incarcerate a woman, you incarcerate the whole family.” There’s also the story of a veteran sitting in Harris County Jail, innocent until proven guilty, because he can’t afford an $11,000 bond. They are among hundreds of thousands Americans in pretrial detention because they can’t afford bail. Illinois became the first state in the country to eliminate cash bail, and this episode looks at what the state is doing, why it benefits public safety, and how it could guide the rest of the U.S. in eliminating inequality in the criminal justice system. They also discuss bail reform in New Jersey, which you can learn more about here.

And if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by email and Slack messages these days, this Ezra Klein podcast is for you. He talks to Cal Newport, a computer scientist at Georgetown and author of  “A World Without Email,” about how we can change a system that promised productivity but has left us more exhausted and stressed out than ever.

• It’s not only national youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s words that inspire — but also her hand gestures. (As someone who has felt self-conscious about talking with her hands, I find this reaffirming.)  
   
• The cicadas are coming, and D.C. will be the main stage for their wild show, only witnessed every 17 years. (Insert political joke here.)
   
• Let's help this family get the word "orbisculate" into the dictionary in memory of their father, who died of COVID-19. They have a 50-point plan.

Our Complex Care team is funding research into how to improve the systems that deliver care to a population of more than 12 million people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. They are seeking to fund researchers who are guided by the following principles: policy relevance, rigor and independence, and alignment with our strategy. Learn more here.

The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.

The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.

View all of our RFPs here.