During that time some of us did push-ups, others laid on their cots and read, some used the time to write letters or look at their legal work; a few napped, and most of us did a mixture of them all until the jail unilaterally decided that it was safe for us to come back out.

Social isolation is the current fate of most people in this country, and we are all tussling with the dual stressors of our newfound isolation and fear of the virus. But the millions of people in jails throughout the U.S. who can’t afford bail are facing a form of isolation that’s much more severe. If you think it’s hard to share your apartment with your spouse, trying stepping into your bathroom for the next two weeks, along with hundreds of other people, all while a pandemic is preventing your family from being with you during this time of crisis. And that’s just to get your day in court.

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Even before the current crisis, states like Alaska, California, and New Jersey had taken the humane position of ending cash bail, so that those awaiting trial no longer have to pay up in order to leave jail while they wait to see if they are proven guilty or innocent. New York followed suit in January, but rolled back key bail reforms last week via a budget package.

Now that the country is battling coronavirus, it’s even more important to end cash bail. Jails are full of public health hazards: A large number of people share a small space, often with limited access to soap, so infectious diseases can spread rapidly. In addition, the prison population is aging quickly — the number of incarcerated people over 55 has ballooned by 400 percent since 1993 — increasing the risk of serious illness. Holding people before trial increases the likelihood that they’re exposed to the novel coronavirus, making them more likely to spread COVID-19 in the prison and after their release.

We’re already seeing this spread take place. As of April 6, more than 600 prisoners and staff members at Rikers Island have tested positive for COVID-19. Four staff members and one incarcerated person have died. Nearly 300 prisoners and staff have tested positive in Cook County, Illinois, and at least two two inmates have died of the virus in Louisiana. And while some cities, like Los Angeles, are responding by releasing, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has opted to place all 167,000 federal prisoners under lockdown. While the world is in search of a vaccine, the commonsense reaction would be to reduce places of contagion.

Still, some are opposed to bail reform, citing a jump in crime numbers from the first two months after New York ended the practice as evidence of the need to repeal bail legislation. Lawmakers in Alaska attempted to roll back their bail reform legislation after just a couple of months. Law enforcement and the bail bonds industry have mounted claims of an uptick in crime in the brief implementation of the new laws. Their underlying argument is that the world of criminals has been studying new bail laws and conspired to take advantage by committing more crimes while awaiting their day in court. Lies and fear cajole the public into believing that bail reform is criminal justice reform going too far. Even progressive Democrats backpeddled.

Less than six months is not enough to prove ending money bail causes any increase in crime.

New Jersey ended cash bail in 2017 and has seen major crime and pretrial populations fall by double-digit percentages. Offenses like robbery and homicide are down by 30 percent, and there were “6,000 fewer people incarcerated under criminal justice reform on October 3, 2018 compared to the same day in 2012.”

But now those statistics are backed with something: The tiniest shred of experience. The country has gone through self-imposed quarantines, governmental prohibitions on gatherings of groups larger than 10, and containment zones that could make it easier to understand the experience of incarceration even without studying those numbers.

Should innocent until proven guilty people, like you, be isolated in a cage?

Have we forgotten the motivation behind bail reform in America? A 16-year old child, Kalief Browder, committed suicide because of the trauma associated with his indigence. He spent two years in jail because he could not afford bail. Prison beat his soul physically and emotionally. The country was horrified. Jay-Z made a documentary about him. There was a collective awakening that the concept of money bail was an arcane law that penalized poor people who came into contact with the criminal legal system. Elected officials were championing the cause for bail reform. And yet for some reason, we stopped.

The inhumanity of the notion that bail reform will be rescinded, especially in the era of COVID-9, should compel us to question our civil society. We should want fewer people contained in the petri dish of incarceration in order to prevent the spread of the disease, and in order to prevent people who literally cannot escape their surroundings from being infected. There’s simply no reason to be holding people in cells where they could contract the disease simply because they are too poor to get out.

Humans are not viruses. And no segment of humanity should be considered dispensable, convicted or not. Ending money bail is efficient and humane and should be allowed more than a just a few months to prove its overall success.

As President Obama prepares to leave office, the United States still holds the dubious honor of having the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 2.2 million people behind bars. In order to assess his impact on the criminal justice system, it’s necessary to examine the policy shifts that got us here in the first place.

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In 1980 there were 24,000 people in the federal prison system, about 25% of whom were serving time for a drug offense. By the time Obama was elected in 2008, that number had ballooned to 201,000 people, nearly half of whom were locked up for a drug offense.

There are two key reasons for the population explosion—both rooted in the war on drugs. First, President Reagan encouraged federal law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to emphasize drug arrests. Second, Congress adopted mandatory sentencing policies—frequently applied to drug offenses—that established a “one size fits all” approach to sentencing. Federal judges were obligated to impose prison terms of 5, 10, 20 years—or even life—largely based on the quantity of drugs involved. They were not permitted to take any individual factors, such as histories of abuse or parenting responsibilities, into account to mitigate those sentences.

The most egregious of these policies were tied to crack cocaine offenses. Someone possessing as little as five grams of the drug (about the weight of a sugar packet) would face a minimum of five years in prison. That threshold was significantly harsher than the mandatory penalty for powder cocaine, which required a sale of 500 grams of the drug (a little over a pound) to receive the same penalty. Since 80% of crack cocaine prosecutions were brought against African Americans, the racial disparities from these sentencing policies were particularly extreme.

Momentum for reforming the crack cocaine mandatory minimum laws predated the Obama administration, and had growing bipartisan support when the President took office. The President signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law in 2010, reducing sentencing severity in a substantial number of crack cases. Then in 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors calling on them to avoid seeking mandatory prison terms in low-level drug cases, which has cut the number of cases with such charges by 25%.

While the changes in sentencing laws have helped to reduce the federal prison population, the highest profile of Obama’s reforms is his use of executive clemency to reduce excessively harsh drug sentences. That is a story of both politics and policy. During Obama’s first term he used his clemency power far less than his predecessors—a pattern that was sharply criticized by many reform groups and editorial boards. But after launching a “clemency initiative” in 2014, the President has commuted the drug sentences of more than 1,100 individuals (with promises of substantially more by the time he leaves office). Notably, in about a third of these cases, the individuals had been sentenced to life without parole due to mandatory sentencing policies.

The President’s efforts to make sure people can return to their lives after they have been incarcerated are noteworthy as well. A pilot program at the Department of Education is addressing the consequences of the ban on the use of Pell Grants for higher education in prison (a provision of President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill). The new initiative restores access to this funding on a limited basis, and will reach about 12,000 incarcerated students. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also made it easier for people with criminal records to find work, by cutting down on the rampant misuse of an individual’s criminal justice history during job application processes. For example, employers may no longer inquire about arrests that didn’t lead to a conviction, and an offense may only be considered if it is relevant to the job at hand. Additionally, employers need to take into account when a conviction occurred, so that people are not continuously punished for an offense committed long ago.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of President Obama’s work in regard to criminal justice reform has been his role in changing the way we talk about the issue. After a disappointing first term in which these issues received only modest attention, Obama’s last years in office framed criminal justice reform as a top priority. Among a series of high-profile events during his second term was the President’s address on mass incarceration at the NAACP national convention, at which he concluded that “mass incarceration makes our country worse off.”

Mass incarceration did not come about because there is a shortage of ideas for better approaches to public safety—it was the result of a toxic political environment where legislators favored political soundbites over evidence. By using the bully pulpit to frame justice reform as a major issue, Obama provided some coverage for mainstream legislators to support sound policy options.

It is difficult to be optimistic that the incoming administration will look favorably on criminal justice reform. Leading Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, may be persuasive in making the conservative argument for reform. But President-elect Trump’s “tough on crime” rhetoric, which paints many incarcerated people as “bad dudes,” suggests progress at the federal level will be a challenge.

Realistically, opportunities for justice reform are more likely at the state level. Many local officials are already convinced of the need for sentencing reform and reentry initiatives, and they may be less influenced by the political climate in Washington. If so, such changes at the local level may ultimately gain traction in a Trump White House as well.

Editor’s note: TalkPoverty presents this series in collaboration with the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.

But this is just one aspect of a broadly shared recognition that America’s four-decade-long experiment with mass incarceration has been a failure. We lock up a greater share of our citizens than any other developed nation, at an annual cost of more than $80 billion. We do little to prepare individuals behind bars for their eventual release, yet are surprised when two-thirds return to jail or prison.

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Certain populations—including communities of color, residents of high-poverty neighborhoods, and LGBT individuals—have been particularly hard-hit. But all too rarely discussed is the impact the criminal justice system has on Americans with disabilities.

Over the past six decades, there has been a widespread closure of state mental hospitals and other facilities that serve people with disabilities—a shift often referred to as deinstitutionalization. Between 1955 and 1994 the number of Americans residing in such institutions dropped sharply, from nearly 560,000 to about 70,000. Deinstitutionalization is widely regarded as a positive and necessary development, but it wasn’t accompanied by the public investment needed to ensure the availability of community-based alternatives. As a result, the United States has traded one form of mass institutionalization for another, with jails and prisons now serving as social service providers of last resort.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, state and federal prison inmates are nearly three times as likely—and jail inmates are more than four times as likely—to report having a disability as the nonincarcerated population. One in five prison inmates have a serious mental illness. In fact, there are now three times as many people with mental health conditions in federal and state prisons and jails as there are in state mental hospitals.

Mass incarceration of people with disabilities is not only unjust, unethical, and cruel—it’s also expensive. Community-based treatment and prevention services cost far less than housing an individual behind bars. In Los Angeles County, the average cost of jailing an individual with serious mental illness exceeds $48,500 per year. By comparison, the yearly price tag for providing assertive community treatment and supportive housing—one of the most intensive, comprehensive, and successful intervention models in use today—amounts to less than $20,500, just two-fifths the cost of jail.

In addition to facing disproportionate rates of incarceration, people with disabilities are also especially likely to be the victims of police violence. Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Kristiana Coignard, and Robert Ethan Saylor—all individuals with disabilities whose tragic stories of being killed at the hands of police officers garnered significant recent national media attention—are but four high-profile examples of a sadly commonplace occurrence. While data on police-involved killings are limited, one study estimates that people with disabilities comprise between one-third and one-half of all individuals killed by law enforcement. And according to an investigation by The Washington Post, one-quarter of the individuals shot to death by police officers in 2015 were people with mental health conditions.

What’s more, once people with disabilities are incarcerated, they are often illegally deprived of necessary medical care, supports, services, and accommodations. A recent report by the Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities (AVID) Prison Project highlights numerous examples of inmates denied access to needed medications, prosthetic limbs, and hearing aids; individuals with cognitive impairments unable to access medical treatment because they were unable to fill out request forms; inmates who are deaf missing medication delivery because of lack of accommodations; inmates who have sustained injuries due to lack of accessible toilets and showers; and more.

Prison and jail inmates with disabilities are also at particular risk of mistreatment at the hands of guards and other correctional employees. A 2015 report by Human Rights Watch documents an epidemic of “unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious use of force” in U.S. prisons and jails that targets inmates with mental health conditions, through harsh tactics such as chemical sprays and electric stun devices; strapping of inmates to beds and chairs for days at a time; and physical violence resulting in broken jaws, noses, and ribs, as well as “lacerations, second degree burns, deep bruises, and damaged internal organs,” and even death.

Moreover, many inmates with disabilities are held in solitary confinement as a substitute for appropriate accommodations. This practice continues despite a large and growing body of research documenting that even short stays in solitary can have severe and long-lasting consequences for people with disabilities, and particularly those with mental health conditions. Even individuals who had not previously lived with mental health conditions experience significant psychological distress following solitary confinement, as the tragic but all-too-common case of Kalief Browder brought to light last year. Browder died by suicide after being held for nearly two years in solitary confinement in Rikers Island on charges, later dismissed, that he had stolen a backpack.

Seventeen years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. L.C.—which held that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities in institutional settings is unlawful discrimination in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act—it is long past time that we brought the mass incarceration of people with disabilities to an end.

First and foremost, reversing this shameful trend will require meaningful investment in our nation’s social service and mental health treatment infrastructure to ensure availability of community-based alternatives. That way, jails and prisons will no longer be forced to serve as social service providers of last resort. But it will also require including disability as a key part of the criminal justice reform conversation taking place in Congress, and in states and cities across the United States.

Editor’s Note: A new report by the Center for American Progress, Disabled Behind Bars: The Mass Incarceration of People With Disabilities in America’s Jails and Prisons, will be released at a White House Forum on Monday, July 18. A livestream of the event is available here.

Much of the bipartisan focus in Washington has centered on the need for sentencing reform, through proposals like tackling overly harsh mandatory minimums. Sentencing reform is urgently needed, and bipartisan efforts such as Senator Lee’s (R-UT) and Senator Durbin’s (D-IL) Smarter Sentencing Act provide cause for optimism.

But the problems with our broken criminal justice system don’t end when an individual is released from jail or prison. Every year, more than 600,000 Americans are released into their communities after serving their time. Moreover, millions more end up with criminal records without doing any time–through arrests that don’t lead to conviction or through probation-only sentences.

All in all, between 70 million and 100 million Americans—or as many as one in three of us—now have some type of criminal record. And due to the rise of technology and the internet—as well as federal and state policy decisions—having even a minor criminal record can stand in the way of employment, housing, education and training, building good credit, and even meager public assistance. For example, nearly 9 in 10 employers use background checks in hiring, and 4 in 5 landlords conduct background checks on potential tenants. Even a minor criminal record can mean every door is closed to you as you seek to get back on your feet.

The result? Punishment has been transformed from a temporary to a lifelong experience for many justice-involved individuals. In addition, mass incarceration and the barriers associated with a criminal record have come to serve as major drivers of poverty in the US. This has broad implications—not just for the tens of millions of affected individuals, but also for their families, their communities, and our national economy. For example, the cost of shutting people with criminal records out of the labor market runs as high as $65 billion per year in GDP terms. Thus, as the criminal justice reform train continues to move forward full speed ahead, it’s imperative that efforts include reforms to give people a second chance.

Senator Rand Paul’s and Senator Cory Booker’s REDEEM Act, introduced yesterday, is a good first step. Take a look at this summary if you want to see everything it does. Here are three key provisions, which, if enacted, would go a long way toward putting second chances within reach for Americans with criminal records.

1. Creates a mechanism for cleaning up a federal criminal record. As my colleague Sharon Dietrich and I explained in a recent Center for American Progress report, cleaning up a criminal record is one of the most powerful tools for overcoming the barriers associated with a criminal record. While state laws vary a great deal, the vast majority of states have “expungement” or “sealing” mechanisms to allow people to put their criminal records behind them. In fact, as the Vera Institute documented in a recent report, 23 states broadened these laws between 2009-2014 through efforts such as expanding the categories of offenses that can be expunged or shortening wait times.

Yet despite the exponential increase in federal criminal prosecutions that resulted from the War on Drugs, there is no such mechanism to expunge federal records, even those resulting from arrests that did not lead to a conviction. Federal law thus lags far behind the states. By creating a judicial mechanism for sealing federal nonviolent records, the REDEEM Act thus fills an important void. (We have called for including all federal arrests that did not result in conviction, given that the presumption of innocence is a bedrock principle of our criminal justice system—but the REDEEM Act is a good first step.)

 2. Improves the accuracy of FBI background checks. Understandably, employers and other users of background checks believe the information presented there is reliable. However, that information is often incorrect or not up to date. FBI background checks in particular are notoriously inaccurate – some 600,000 jobseekers received an inaccurate FBI check in 2012. One of the most common problems with FBI background checks is that they fail to provide the outcome of a criminal case. Given that many cases don’t result in convictions or are resolved on lesser charges, having a criminal record that has not been updated to reflect the outcome of criminal charges can be highly prejudicial.

In recognition of this widespread problem, the REDEEM Act would require the FBI to review each record for accuracy and completeness before it can be provided to a requesting party. It would also prohibit the FBI from distributing criminal record information pertaining to arrests that are more than two years old if they don’t contain a final outcome of the case.

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3. Reforms the harsh and outdated lifetime ban on public assistance for people with felony drug convictions. In many states, even meager public assistance is out of reach for people with certain types of criminal records. The 1996 welfare law included a lifetime ban on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) for people convicted of a felony drug offense. The law gives states the option to modify or waive the bans, and many have. Yet most states continue to enforce the ban in whole or in part for TANF, SNAP, or both. This outdated and harsh policy deprives struggling families of nutrition assistance and pushes them even deeper into poverty at precisely the moment when they are seeking to regain their footing. According to The Sentencing Project, in the 12 states with the most punitive policies, an estimated 180,000 women were subject to the TANF ban in 2013. The REDEEM Act would lift this ban for people who were convicted for drug use or possession. (The ban would remain in effect for people convicted of drug distribution crimes.)

As bipartisan members of Congress take up criminal justice reform, we must not lose sight of the need to include reforms to give people a second chance. Passing the REDEEM Act would be a great start.

After a four-decade incarceration binge, the state is taking steps to reduce prison populations, which have come at ruinous costs for state coffers and for the disproportionately black and Latino individuals and families who are affected.

The latest step came last month, as California voters approved a ballot measure to reclassify a number of low level offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.  Under Prop 47, offenses such as shoplifting, writing hot checks, and drug possession would be punished less harshly.  This would potentially allow 10,000 individuals currently imprisoned to petition to have their sentences reduced and to return to their families sooner.

In recent years, California has served as an intriguing case study for reducing prison populations without harming public safety.  After the state was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 to address its prison overcrowding crisis, lawmakers responded with a policy of “realignment,” which shifted supervision of non-violent offenders and parole violators to local communities.  In 2012, California voters approved a ballot proposal to ensure that the state’s notorious Three Strikes Law would not send people to prison for life for non-serious offenses.

The effect of these and other changes has been dramatic.  Between 2006 and 2012, California’s prison population decreased by nearly a quarter and while doing so, its drop in violent crime exceeded the national average.  These developments, along with similar developments in New York and New Jersey, show increased support among both policymakers and the public for a public safety strategy that is less reliant on incarceration.

But the largely untold story of criminal justice reform in California is what could happen with the savings.

Under Prop 47—of the hundreds of millions of dollars of projected state prison savings each year—a significant portion will be allocated to preventing crime from happening in the first place.  This will include investments in mental health and substance abuse treatment, programs to reduce school truancy and prevent dropouts, and support for victim services.

Research—as well as common sense—suggest that such interventions can be more effective in reducing crime than incarceration.  But that is not the way our nation has been operating.

Like other states, California has for decades used the criminal justice system to respond to social problems.  Following the failure of other institutions to provide opportunity and education—and yes, to deal with behavioral problems—police, prosecutors, and prisons have taken on roles that used to be left to schools, parents, social workers, and others in local communities.

This is particularly true with the war on drugs, which is a primary driver of mass incarceration and racial disparities.  Today, about 75 percent of incarcerated individuals have a history of substance abuse.  One of every six has a history of mental illness.  Many were abused.   About two-thirds of individuals imprisoned on a drug charge are black or Latino, even though people of all races use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates.

Though we have initiatives aimed at early childhood education, therapeutic interventions for at-risk youth, and treatment for substance abuse and mental illness, they are painfully underfunded compared to the scope of the problem.  Instead of investing in such interventions, we have turned to the criminal justice system, which is an extremely expensive way to address these problems.  Few would dispute that incarceration is sometimes necessary, but the question we should be asking is whether incarceration is the most effective way to ensure safe and healthy communities.

In a definitive report earlier this year, the National Research Council concluded that the rise of mass imprisonment in the United States has “transformed not only the criminal justice system, but also U.S. race relations and the institutional landscape of urban poverty.”

To truly address America’s mass incarceration epidemic, we will need to divert people to substance abuse and mental health treatments rather than sending them to prisons and jails.  We’ll need to remove barriers that keep people with criminal records from starting a new life.  And above all, we’ll need to shift resources away from prisons and invest them in communities.

Prop 47 is only a start, but it may mark a new day for criminal justice reform.

This is not an issue unique to New York City. Across the country, people with mental health needs are too often warehoused in overcrowded, chaotic, and violent correctional facilities rather than treated in the community.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, presents a tremendous opportunity to address this national crisis and ensure that patients like Murdough don’t end up on Rikers Island. The ACA provides one of the largest expansions of mental health coverage in U.S. history—extending it to 27 million people who previously lacked health insurance—and a wider range of benefits to 62 million U.S. citizens overall. Millions of uninsured, undertreated, and destitute people cycling through correctional systems will be covered for the first time.

This expansion of treatment opportunities, coupled with bipartisan agreement that we need a comprehensive overhaul of the criminal justice system, presents a rare opportunity for reform that we can and must seize.

The criminal justice system has expanded to such a degree that mass incarceration is now one of the major public health concerns facing poor communities, according to a new report from the Vera Institute of Justice. Since the 1970s, state prison populations in the U.S. have grown by 700 percent. Yet the nation’s overuse of incarceration succumbed to the law of diminishing returns long ago—creating more harm than good—with widening disparities in health as one of the results.

The concentration of incarceration and the omnipresence of the criminal justice system in the lives of residents in poor communities of color are well documented.  Now research is starting to reveal the extent to which mass incarceration impacts community health. For example, decades of disparate exposure to incarceration among communities of color has fractured families and exacerbated socioeconomic inequities in ways that have contributed to wider gaps in infant mortality rates between black and white Americans.

The criminalization of addiction and mental illness is a core driver of overall health disparities in the criminal justice system. The War on Drugs in essence delegated to criminal justice agencies what should be the responsibility of our community health system. As a result, people coping with serious clinical conditions are gravely overrepresented in correctional facilities. Yet the traditional punitive tactics that corrections departments too frequently turn to—such as solitary confinement—tend to promote the very behavioral problems that lead to incarceration.

There are signs that the social and political climate is changing. U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have reached across the aisle to work on federal legislation that aims to remove the stigma and legal barriers that prevent millions of Americans with a drug conviction from securing employment and public benefits. Additionally, state officials are pursing legislative and programmatic solutions to trim their prison populations: A recent Vera study found that more than 29 states have amended, scaled down, or repealed laws that mandated lengthy prison sentences for drug and other crimes.

But undoing mass incarceration’s public health crisis will require more than changing sentencing laws and providing people with health insurance. We also need state and local investments to establish a robust network of community health centers and a culturally competent workforce in neighborhoods where mass incarceration is most entrenched.  These investments are needed in order to stop relying on jails and courts as default healthcare providers.

This strategy is being pursued in New York City, where Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced a sweeping plan to prevent people with mental health needs from ending up at Rikers Island when they encounter law enforcement. The plan includes the opening of a Public Health Diversion Center, under the auspices of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. It would redirect people to community-based services—in lieu of arrest and prosecution—in communities where health disparities and incarceration are most prevalent. The diversion center would include a 24-hour drop-off location where people accused of low-level crimes could receive health services, withdrawal treatment, case management, overnight shelter, and food.

Finally, we need our political leaders to repeal unjustly harsh policies that deprive individuals who have served their time—and their families—of a fair chance at finding secure housing, entering the labor market, and rising out of poverty.

Momentum is building in the right direction. Ending mass incarceration and restoring the health of our communities is a mission that we all must get behind.

State economies would be much stronger over time if states invested more in education —which many states have cut in recent years — and other areas that can boost long-term economic growth and less in maintaining extremely high prison populations.  Our recent report discusses how states can reduce incarceration rates and shift the savings to more productive uses.

When I first started working in criminal justice in the early 1990s, it was almost impossible to have a conversation with an elected official or a high-ranking criminal justice policymaker of any political persuasion without talking about the need to be “tough on crime.”  The backdrop for these conversations was a pervasive sense of fear (of lawlessness on the streets) and despair (about the prospects of successfully rehabilitating offenders).

Today, I turned on my computer to discover that Newt Gingrich has endorsed the idea of reducing incarceration in the United States.  He is not the only voice on the right calling for change.  Indeed, hopeful analysts have cited criminal justice reform as one of the few potential areas where Democrats and Republicans in Washington might find common ground in the final two years of President Obama’s term.  Clearly, the center of gravity has shifted in terms of the politics of crime.

A lot of hard work has gone into making this happen. The “justice reinvestment” movement has played a particularly crucial role, advancing a bipartisan approach to criminal justice that relies on hard data rather than the politics of emotion.  The U.S. Department of Justice has also made an important contribution by documenting what works and then disseminating this information to the field (crimesolutions.gov).

These national-level efforts have been bolstered by numerous reformers working at the state and local level to demonstrate that it is in fact possible to reduce the use of incarceration without undermining public safety.

Take New York, for example.  Between 1999 and 2012, New York reduced its prison population by 26 percent—a decline of nearly 20,000 inmates.  The use of jail in New York City has also been reduced—the daily head count on Rikers Island is now less than 11,000, down from more than 21,000 at its peak.

Even as New York’s jail and prison rolls have gone down, so too has crime, declining by 69 percent over two decades.

Most of the public acclaim for these developments has gone to the New York Police Department and New York City mayors who have made crime-fighting a priority. Under the radar, the judicial branch has also played an important role.

Thanks to the leadership of Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and his predecessor Judith S. Kaye, the New York courts have made a sustained institutional commitment to creating a variety of alternative-to-incarceration programs.  The courts have developed special programs for defendants with substance abuse and mental health problems.  They have sought to increase the use of services in cases involving 16 and 17-year old defendants and victims of human trafficking.  And they have launched a number of community-based programs that have sought to promote alternative sentencing in high-crime neighborhoods. (In the interests of full disclosure, my agency—the Center for Court Innovation— has worked with the judiciary to conceive and implement many of these projects.)

Crucially, the alternative programs launched by the New York courts target not just felony defendants but also people charged with misdemeanors.  Misdemeanor convictions may expose defendants to less time behind bars, but the consequences can be long-lasting in terms of employment, housing, child custody, student loans, immigration status, and a host of government benefits. For many, a misdemeanor conviction is another step along a path that leads toward a life of poverty.

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While much of the popular discussion focuses on federal sentencing guidelines and the need to reduce state prison populations, there is significant work to be done at the local level to reduce the use of jail.  (Jails are typically administered by counties and are designed to hold defendants awaiting trial and inmates sentenced to a term of less than 1 year. Prisons are run by the state or the federal government and typically hold inmates serving sentences of more than 1 year.)

One of the hidden truths of the justice system is that minor cases are much more voluminous than serious offenses. As John Jay College recently documented, nearly 75 percent of the arrests that the police make in New York City are for misdemeanor crimes – more than 235,000 in 2012, for example.

In response to the preponderance of minor cases, the New York courts (with an assist from the Center for Court Innovation) created Bronx Community Solutions to provide criminal court judges in the Bronx with additional sentencing options for non-violent offenses such as drug possession, shoplifting and prostitution.  This includes community restitution projects as well as social service classes, job training and individual counseling.

One challenge that has long plagued alternative-to-incarceration programs is the Field of Dreams question: if you build it, will they come?  Will judges actually avail themselves of alternatives?

The experience in the Bronx suggests that when alternative programs have been developed with the active involvement of the judiciary, they are more likely to win the support of the judges on the ground who ultimately determine whether someone is incarcerated or stays in the community.  According to the New York City Mayor’s Office, after Bronx Community Solutions began offering alternative sentences to misdemeanor defendants in the Bronx, the percentage of convicted defendants sentenced to jail fell from 23.7 percent in 2004 to 13.5 percent in 2012—a 43 percent reduction.  Keep in mind, this is not a boutique program dealing with a handful of participants; each year Bronx Community Solutions works with about 9,000 defendants.

But this battle is by no means won—plenty of work remains to reduce the number of people in Rikers Island, particularly those who are detained pre-trial.  However, Bronx Community Solutions has made one thing perfectly clear: change is possible—even in high-volume, urban justice systems.

Individuals processed through the judicial system in many states are charged fees and fines at every turn. There are fines intended to punish an individual for the commission of an offense, like speeding fines.  There are fees intended for repayment of any harm caused to victims, including restitution payments and contributions to victim funds.

But there are other, less visible costs as well.  For example, correctional facilities across the nation charge fees to their inmates for countless reasons. The Mason County Detention Center in Kentucky charges $25 a day to stay at the facility, in addition to a $20 booking fee, a $5 release fee, and a $7 medical co-payment fee. Other jails charge for toilet paper and clothing. Then there are fees for using the criminal justice system itself. Forty-three states and the District of Columbia allow fees for a public defender, and 44 states charge individuals for using probation services. Though many of these fees may seem relatively small – public defender fees range from about $50 to $200 – they add up quickly and a defendant can emerge from the system with thousands of dollars in debt.

These charges are an outgrowth of mass incarceration. As the criminal justice system expanded to include almost 7 million individuals under correctional control through supervision or incarceration, so did its costs. States – many facing tight or disappearing budgets – chose to shift the increasing cost burden to defendants instead of picking up the tab.  For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the city relied on rising municipal court fines to make up 20 percent of its $12 million operating budget in fiscal year 2013. These fees and fines impose an additional penalty on individuals above and beyond their actual sentences. Even worse, it is at cross-purposes with the goal of release: to reintegrate the individual as a productive member of society. This is an extremely difficult goal to accomplish when one is already set back by a mountain of debt obligations.

“Criminal justice debt” refers to the accrual of these fees and fines, and they are onerous for most individuals entering the justice system. Approximately 80 percent of those who enter the criminal justice system cannot afford an attorney for their own defense, which suggests that they have little additional savings to pay back new debts.  Upon release from incarceration, the average formerly incarcerated white male earns about $11,140, or just around the federal poverty line.  Studies demonstrate that African Americans and Hispanics who are released from prison earn even less.  All the while, new debts await their return to the community.

The collection of criminal justice debt can be aggressive and further prevent successful integration. Some individuals face the withholding of income from paychecks.  Others face liens on their homes.  Placing barriers to obtaining a driver’s license is a common practice among the states, even though it frequently impedes an individual’s ability to secure employment.

In many jurisdictions around the country, failure to pay criminal debt extends an otherwise law-abiding individual’s entanglement in the justice system.  Many states extend the term of supervision for failure to pay, despite the reality that supervision costs money.  Another enforcement mechanism – the issuance of warrants for nonpayment of fees – pulls individuals before the court and may result in incarceration. Therefore, an individual can pay a penalty for an offense, and then be incarcerated for failing to pay off the debt incurred as a result of that offense.

Ironically, these tactics are costly to the state.  Probation officers, judges and court personnel must spend time serving as debt collectors. The privatization of debt collection is increasingly common, but the success of these companies is difficult to assess.  By 2011, uncollected criminal justice debt in the United States totaled $50 billion. Very little of this debt will be collected.  Florida, for example, expects to recover just 9 percent of the fees and fines imposed in felony cases.  In Washington State, the county clerks collect, on average, less than 5 percent of the total fees and fines imposed in a particular case.

In the end, criminal justice debt burdens more than just the individual caught up in the criminal justice system.  It burdens the state through collection. It burdens the family of the individual who cannot cover the debt payments necessary to stay out of jail, so the family tries to pay it for him.  It burdens the communities where these individuals return because criminal justice debt perpetuates poverty and prevents the accrual of resources necessary for socioeconomic equality. Moreover, criminal justice debt hinders reentry, often leading to extended periods of court-supervision and incarceration for individuals unable to pay. Such realities burden society at large by threatening public safety and increasing incarceration in already overburdened jail systems. These realities make clear that criminal justice debt reflects bad policy.

The Brennan Center for Justice, along with a growing number of policy organizations, practitioners, and academics, are working to improve the policies surrounding criminal justice debt. Reforms include advocating for the elimination of fees for using the criminal justice system – like the elimination of jail fees for the incarceration of individuals the state chooses to detain.  It also includes improving the assessment of whether an individual has the ability to pay fees and fines prior to their imposition.  Finally, on a broader scale, addressing criminal justice debt requires recalibration of the justice system to understand exactly how resources are spent, and why.  These steps are all part of a bigger battle to reduce our overreliance on incarceration – with its harmful side effects – in order to create a more rational and fair justice system.

But we don’t just punish people for being poor.  In some cases, we punish them for being punished.

Consider the felony drug ban, which imposes a lifetime restriction on welfare and food stamp benefits for anyone convicted of a state or federal drug felony.  Passed in the “tough on crime” era of the mid-1990s, the ban denies basic assistance to people who may have sold a small amount of marijuana years or even decades ago and have been law-abiding citizens ever since.

Because the felony drug ban was adopted with little debate, it’s hard to know exactly what Congress intended.  But we can measure the law’s effect.  Last year, The Sentencing Project found that the legislation subjects an estimated 180,000 women in the twelve most impacted states to a lifetime ban on welfare benefits.

Given racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system — particularly related to the war on drugs — banning benefits based on a prior drug conviction has brutally unfair consequences for people of color.  About 60% of people in America’s prisons are racial and ethnic minorities.  Of those individuals serving time for drug offenses, about two-thirds are black or Latino.  Further, blacks are three to four times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than whites, even though they use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates.

People who cannot meet basic needs may be more likely to turn to dangerous activities.  A study by researchers at Yale Medical School found that women who are denied food assistance due to a drug conviction are at greater risk of hunger. These women are also more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior such as prostitution in order to get money for food.

The felony drug ban is just one of many collateral consequences that formerly incarcerated individuals face as they strive to reenter society.  Some of these barriers are informal: an employer who will not hire a person with a criminal record; a university application that requires all applicants to “check the box” for a prior arrest or conviction.

But private sector discrimination has been compounded by laws that erect barriers and cut services for people sent to prison.  In the 1990s, Congress barred Pell grants for incarcerated individuals — ensuring that most could not receive a college education prior to release — and restricted access to public housing and financial aid for higher education for some former prisoners.

Felony disenfranchisement laws – which date to colonial times but were tailored in the post-Reconstruction era to exclude black voters – place voting restrictions on an estimated 5.85 million Americans.  In the upcoming elections, more than one in five black adults will be denied the right to vote in Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia due to a criminal conviction.

Fortunately, as public attitudes about mass incarceration have changed, there is a growing recognition that fair sentencing can meet the mutual goals of punishment and rehabilitation.  Imposing collateral consequences after a criminal conviction is not only vindictive but also counterproductive to building safe and healthy communities.

In recent months, federal lawmakers in both parties have introduced legislation to remove some of these barriers and promote a safer transition into society.  The REDEEM Act, introduced by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY), would allow the sealing of criminal records and lift the ban on benefits for some people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.  Though the bill should go much further — for example, by also lifting restrictions on housing and education benefits — it is a good first step toward restoring access to assistance for individuals who urgently need it.

Former President Bill Clinton — who signed the felony drug ban into law — recently told a group of mayors and law enforcement officials that some measures intended to address crime have been misguided and others have gone too far.  Clinton predicted that criminal justice reform would be debated in the 2016 presidential race.  If so, it will represent a major shift in our politics, which have too often focused on getting tough on crime rather than on promoting healthy communities.  But for millions of people who are still being punished long after completing their sentences, 2016 is too long to wait.

It is an injustice to punish people for being poor.  It is doubly unjust to punish them after they have already been punished.

Many of us who work in the criminal justice system have come to understand the profound connection between poverty and mass incarceration.  Put simply, individuals with criminal histories – even minor ones – find it exceedingly difficult to enter the workforce and provide for their families.  One pragmatic response to this problem is to incarcerate fewer people, particularly in local jails.

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Without BJI, Rick and Meagan probably would have spent considerable time at Rikers Island, New York City’s jail.  A recent report from the Independent Budget Office documents that the City’s annual cost per inmate at Rikers is $168,000 – a significant expenditure at a time of rising public needs and increasing public concern about the overuse of incarceration.  While the institutional costs of incarceration are enormous, the human toll is even greater.  And for people struggling with limited financial resources, time in jail means time away from school, work, family, and other social supports, exacerbating an already formidable constellation of challenges to economic mobility.