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Today, @RepDavidTrone and @RepArmstrongND introduced The Community First Pretrial Reform and Jail Decarceration Act, a bill to reverse decades of federal policymaking that made rural America a driver of #massincarceration. https://www.vera.org/newsroom/bipartisan-legislation-introduced-to-support-local-efforts-to-reduce-and-address-racial-inequities-in-incarceration-rates-in-americas-smallest-communities
For decades, the federal government has fueled a quiet jail boom in rural counties & smaller cities—renting jail beds in local jails and incentivizing economically disadvantaged communities to rely on jails for revenue. https://www.vera.org/in-our-backyards-stories/if-you-build-it
As rural counties build bigger jails, they usually lock up more and more poor people from their communities. Most people in jail are awaiting trial and simply can't afford to pay bail; they are disproportionately Black, brown, and poor. https://www.vera.org/publications/for-the-record-justice-denied-pretrial-detention
Some of the biggest #COVID19 clusters in the US are in jails & prisons. As rural America quietly grapples w/ the nation’s highest incarceration rates, thousands of lives—esp. Black and brown lives—are at risk.
See how county jails are responding #COVID19: https://www.vera.org/projects/covid-19-criminal-justice-responses/covid-19-data
See how county jails are responding #COVID19: https://www.vera.org/projects/covid-19-criminal-justice-responses/covid-19-data
In any given week in the US, roughly 200K people are booked into crowded jails & roughly the same amount are released every week. These conditions put incarcerated people at risk of #COVID19 exposure & make jails major vectors of the virus. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/upshot/coronavirus-jails-prisons.html
We applaud this bill from @RepDavidTrone & @RepArmstrongND.
As #COVID19 continues to endanger lives in jails & prisons, time is of the essence. We need the federal government to help shrink the footprint of jails and reinvest in communities. https://www.vera.org/blog/target-2020/time-for-a-new-federal-commitment-on-rural-jail-incarceration
As #COVID19 continues to endanger lives in jails & prisons, time is of the essence. We need the federal government to help shrink the footprint of jails and reinvest in communities. https://www.vera.org/blog/target-2020/time-for-a-new-federal-commitment-on-rural-jail-incarceration
