Jails and prisons don’t make us safer — but investing in our communities does.
Law enforcement is using fear to stop transformation and justice all over the country, but most recently and urgently in New York. For years communities fought hard and won monumental legislation that ended cash bail for most low-level offenses, meaning thousands would no longer be jailed simply because they were too poor to pay for their freedom. But prosecutors and police are launching a coordinated campaign to stoke fear about the changes to cash bail as part of an effort to roll back these reforms.
And the scary thing is, it’s working. Just days into the new law, New York lawmakers are already pushing for changes that would completely unravel bail reform and send more people to jail than before. They’re using the same polarizing scare tactics that created mass incarceration to perpetuate it.
One thing we know is that to stop fear, we must spread the truth.