Voices From The Bottom: Who Do We Talk To About Change in the Criminal Justice System

I was recently talking to one of my clients about his neighborhood up in the Bronx. He lives in a affordable building located in a high-crime neighborhood. He complained to me about the drug dealers who hang out outside his building and told me he wishes the police would lock them up. He frequently makes off-hand comments about the need to keep dealers locked up for as long as possible. Although he doesn't use the term, I think what he has in mind is longer mandatory minimums and generally stiffer enforcement measures.

It is hard to know how to think about this conversation. It is tempting to think about my client as part of a stable group. He is poor, African-American living in New York City. He is part of the Oppressed. Other poor minorities living in his neighborhood should be part of the same group. The problem is, my client doesn't feel all that much solidarity with the guys hanging out outside his building. In fact, he feels terrorized by them. I couldn't disagree more with his policy suggestions, but I can't just write them off either. His ideas, after all, are based on his lived experience.

This isn't a problem specific to this one individual. When I did some tenant organizing in Washington DC the number one complaint that low-income residents of the city made about their housing is that it wasn't safe. The majority of people I spoke with commented that the criminals in the project or the neighborhood made their lives hell. I heard some conservative policy solutions from these tenants that would make even the most staunch Texas Republican blush. Longer mandatory sentences were just the beginning.

If you are interested in progressive social change (and if you are reading a blog on Change.org, I am guessing you are), then you need to take seriously the voices and perspectives of oppressed people. The perspective of disempowered groups are rarely considered in making policy, or outright ignored. Although it recently came under fire from a group of proven losers, local and national social organizing is a great way to empower disempowered populations. The problem is, once empowered these communities do not necessarily speak with a unified voice.

Even when we don't get a unified voice, there is much that comes from community organizing and involvement. I think my client is wrong when he wants to give dealers longer sentences. I disagree with him that repeat offenders keep cycling through the criminal justice system solely because of personal failings on their part. It seems clear to me that economic and material conditions play some (large) part in causing certain behavior. At the same time, I have to take his perspective seriously. He tells me that his neighbors turn to crime because they are lazy and refuse to hold a job. I respond that it is nearly impossible to find jobs in the US that pay a living wage, but he is unconvinced. We cannot convince each other, but that doesn't mean the conversation was pointless. The very act of open dialogue is important and transformative. Even when ideological tensions cannot be resolved, having a conversation and working together has a healing and positive effect. Further, over time there are differences that can be resolved.

Sometimes the worst policies come from our social isolation from those individuals who are the target of the policy. US immigration policy is an example of this: when you actually work together with immigrant communities it becomes difficult to hate them in the same way. So it is always worthwhile to get out to your local day laborer center or criminal justice organization. They are small thing, but just meeting and talking are transformative activities.