Hearts for Justice
About Hearts for Justice
ASH Club
I aim to educate my community on the mass incarceration crisis in our country. Many impoverished and marginilized communities are criminalized by the justice system and society. I hope to create a more just society by promoting social and civic justice reforms. I also promote greater access to educational and health resources in detention to allow juveniles to grow and recover in detention.
Hearts for Justice provides information and resources to learn about varying justice topics. I encourage others to join this fight to reform the justice system. Look around the website and enjoy!
1. Economic Issues
Impact of Poverty on Incarceration
Half of the 2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S. are are imprisoned due to minor drug offenses, their inability to pay bail, and crimes related to an incapability to pay debt and fines. The arrest rate has significantly increased, especially for people involved in crimes of poverty. This has disproportionately affected low-income and minority populations, who form about â…” of the prison population as of 2020. Crimes of poverty are committed due to untreated mental illness and the need to survive. Mental illness can go untreated because individuals do not have access to providers, insurance, or the ability to pay for the medication or treatments they need. As a result, individuals with undiagnosed or untreated mental illnesses are more likely to commit crimes, including those of a violent nature. Additionally, when people, especially children, live in poverty without food, transportation, and sometimes even a place to live, they often get involved in these crimes of poverty to attain the necessary resources to live. Crimes of poverty include drug offenses, inability to pay fines, house notes, bail, and sometimes include burglary. This cycle of poverty, criminalization, and incarceration creates an unjust system and targets impoverished communities to be more likely to end up in prison.
2. Education Issues
The School to Prison Pipeline
The pipeline is the national social phenomenon in which children are funneled through their school system and into the juvenile justice system. This is caused by public schools' zero-tolerance policies and police presence on campus. Instead of being sent to school disciplinarians for misbehavior, students are send to police, leading to many arrests for minor offenses. Often, schools in under-resourced communities rely on police rather than on teachers to teach and enforce discipline to students because of expenses. This trend also is representative of how children and students coming out of underprivileged areas are likely to fall victim to the system. As police are now “enforcers of discipline” on campus. The phenomenon began with Nixon's "War on Drugs" which resulted in school-zone drug laws. Instead of protecting youth, this resulted in youth offenders facing harsher punishments for drug-related offenses.