They are incarcerated because they cannot pay bail. And even as to the other 40%, they are more likely to be incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay the fees for probation then because they were dangerous, or sentenced to spend time in a prison or a jail. The research and legwork was done by the Prison Policy Initiative – here is a link to the full report. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017women.html As the report says, if your annual income is $11,000 a year, you are not going to be able to pay $10,000 cash bail. I will take that further – because some of these women are my clients, or my client’s mothers. You are not going to be able to pay $250 or $500 bail.
So what happens to your children? They go into foster care. Besides the reality that the Care and Protection cases filed when a child goes into foster care are up 45% [you read that right], each child in foster care costs $23,000 to the state. And there is a shortage of foster homes. Some foster parents are indeed selfless, mature, and experienced. Some are 22 year old single mothers struggling to get by receiving $500 a month [right, a MONTH] to care for another struggling, maybe incarcerated, mothers traumatized infants, toddlers, elementary school students, and teenagers. 
I took this photo last year at a Christmas season visit to an incarcerated client in Framingham Women’s Prison. I call it Angels visit mothers everywhere. You can kind of see angel’s wings in the barbed wire and search lights. And yes, that client has children, one of whom is autistic and unlikely to understand why his mother is gone.
I have seen children go into foster care because their father is dead, and their mother could not pay a $500 bail; and a year after the mother is out the children are still in foster care because the mother cannot get a job and while the state will pay $23,000 each to house her three children in foster care, there is no money or housing or help with finding work for this mother.
While the Republican party goes forward with trying to further glut the rich at the expense of the working classes [you know, those who live on salaries and work for other people] the destruction of families and children by the so-called criminal justice system and the prison industry continues unabated, including modern debtor’s prisons.
Will the recently released Supreme Judicial Court case Care and Protection of Walt help chip away at this injustice by holding that the Department of Children and Families [DCF], aka the State, actually has to follow its statutes and provide help except for four exceptionally heinous circumstances enshrined in law help? ONLY time will tell. I expect not many here are aware of the Walt decision because it affects mostly destitute women and children, and the working poor, who do not have much of a voice. You may not know this, but DCF typically allows a child and parent only one hour a week of time together, and forces supervision even when abuse is not even alleged.
In their summary of Walt, the Committee for Public Counsel Services Website states:
“The decision: The Court rejected DCF’s argument that the Juvenile Court can excuse DCF’s failure to make reasonable efforts for a reason other than one of the four exceptions. The SJC further held that when a court determines that DCF failed to make reasonable efforts to keep a family together, it can enter orders to hasten the family’s reunification. Such orders could require DCF to provide more parenting time to families (when children are placed in foster care, DCF typically allows them to see their parents only one hour per week); enable parents to continue to participate in their children’s education and medical care; and mandate the provision of specific services that a family needs in order to be reunified, such as housing assistance.
The SJC also made clear that:
DCF should consider short-term informal custody arrangements as an alternative to removal;
DCF has a continuing obligation to make reasonable efforts after removing a child;
If a parent’s circumstances change (at least in a no-reasonable-efforts case), the court should revisit the initial custody order and determine whether it should still stand; and
DCF has an array of services available, and it should provide those services to parents and children who need them.
This is a major victory for CPCS’s clients and for other vulnerable families. By requiring DCF to fulfill its legal obligations to keep families together, the Court is also protecting children from a type of harm, often traumatic, that is frequently ignored or discounted in our cases – specifically, the harm caused by the inappropriate use of foster care. Walt also has the potential for helping children for whom removal is appropriate. At a time when the foster care system is operating well beyond its true capacity, ensuring that DCF keeps children at home when they can stay there safely means that scarce foster care resources will be available for children who really need them.”
I consider the Walt decision a “must read”, and then lets honor the court appointed attorneys who fought the fight for this family, despite meager pay, grudgingly paid by this state. Here is the website from which the summary quote was taken: https://www.publiccounsel.net/blog/2017/11/08/care-and-protection-of-walt/
Here is a link to the decision: [Justicia has it up as both a summary and as a .pdf] https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/2017/sjc-12295.html
I don’t think that chart means what you think that chart means.
60 percent of women in local jails have not been convicted — 58,000 / 96,000.
But this chart contains status of over 200,000 women: 96,000 in local jails, 99,000 in state prisons, 14,000 in federal prisons, and several thousand in youth programs or more unusual adult circumstances.
Amber, are you asserting that there are over 120,000 women locked up who have not been convicted, or are you asserting that a significant fraction of the women in state and federal prisons are not convicted?
And to be clear, I’m not arguing that ~30 % of incarcerated women have not been convicted of crimes is OK either, especially the ~75% of not-convicted women who are being held on property, drug, or public order crimes rather than violent crimes.
To all: Questions such as Stormv’s can be answered by going to the link and reading the “biography” articles. Yes. It is that bad out there. And I won’t go back in forth about percentage points. The issue is compassion, and taking care of those among us who are failing and need help, rather than having punitive debtor”s prisons that only feed the beast of the prison industry at the expense of the working class tax payer. That an allegedly “democratic” legislature suffers this in our state is hugely shameful. And worse, if you take into account the 70% of women in Framingham Women’s Prison who have documented major mental illness disorders, and the total dismantling of the safety net for those with mental health illnesses. If you have not read the article “The Desperate and the Dead” at this link, please do: https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/the-desperate-and-the-dead/
And I won’t go back in forth about percentage points.
That’s weak tea. You put up a graphic that appears to directly contradict your headline. You and I have been here a long time, and we’re reality based over here, We try and get the facts right, and when we err, we do our best to fix them. You’re not doing that here. And so, I went digging, and here’s what I found in your source
Moreover, 60% of women in jail have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial.
You’ll note that this quote is NOT your headline, not by a long shot. In fact, it’s exactly what I pointed out. the comment for which you “won’t go back and forth.”
I hope you’ll fix your headline. Frankly, given that you’re such an expert in this area, I’m really surprised you got it so wrong in the first place. I’m hopeful that you (or an editor) fixes it, because it’s an important issue and there’s no reason to lose wind in the sails because of sloppiness and stubbornness.
Can I try to referee this?
As I read Stomv’s comments, he believes that the headline ought to expressly state that 60 percent of the women in local jails have not been convicted of a crime BECAUSE THEY ARE STILL AWAITING TRIAL.
I understood that fact to be implicit in the headline — and to be confirmed by the first sentence of Amber’s piece, which says that the women are incarcerated because they can’t pay bail (to stay out of jail while awaiting trial). But maybe that’s because I practice law too.
Anyway, assuming I’m right and there’s no real inconsistency between headline and story, I think it’s Amber’s call whether to amend the headline.
And some good news on the merits of all this — another SJC decision, this one from August, requires judges to consider a defendant’s financial resources when setting the amount of bail and imposes strict limits on a judge’s authority to impose a higher bail amount than the defendant can afford.
Well, I added the bit in brackets to clarify. Hope that’s ok.
The addition in square brackets does, in fact, correct the erroneous headline.
As I read Stomv’s comments, he believes that the headline ought to expressly state that 60 percent of the women in local jails have not been convicted of a crime BECAUSE THEY ARE STILL AWAITING TRIAL.
No. The distinction is that 60% of incarcerated women [in local jails] haven’t been convicted, whereas roughly 0% of incarcerated women [in state or federal prison] haven’t been convicted. In both cases, if you leave out the portion in square brackets, you’re not telling the truth, because in both cases the preposition (in … location) is about a proper subset of the women who are incarcerated. It’s not about awaiting trial, it’s about 60% of what. Amber clearly stated it was 60% of incarcerated women — clearly stating that 6 out of 10 women who are incarcerated haven’t yet been convicted. But, that’s wrong. It’s 6 out of 10 in local jails, and 0 out of 10 in state and federal prisons, and as it turns out, that comes out to be just about 3 in 10 total.
The first sentence in Amber’s piece doesn’t in any way clarify the distinction. The foundation for Amber’s article — the actual report — also doesn’t defend Amber’s headline. On the contrary, it completely undermines it.
Which is why Charley’s correction is important. Because facts matter.
Misunderstanding. When I came on the scene yesterday afternoon, Charley had already added the square brackets content to the headline but I was not aware that he had made this improvement (although the brackets should have tipped me off). Agree it was very important info.
strangely, I can’t reply to hesterprynne’s comment directly [8:20 AM]. So, I’ll do it here.
🙂
I just enabled more nesting of comments …
This brings back bad memories of a situation we both know about,when a woman was thrown in jail despite being pregnant with twins,because as her pregnancy advanced she found it more difficult to get to the probation office.
Then the state took her new born twins away, citing the jailing as evidence that she might endanger her children.
True. It does. And of the way stigma impacts such cases.
There seems to be a solid constitutional case here as the 8th amendment explicitly forbids excessive bail.
An appropriate comment, useful, and well phrased. What might not be “excessive’ to one person might be impossible, even crippling and totally unpayable to another. This situation, at least in our state, arises from what was done under the Romney administration, when funding in the budget for the courts was cut by 20%, and the Courts were told to make it up by assessing and collecting fees. Folks may not know this, but, for example the so-called “counsel fee” does NOT go to the appointed attorney but to the State’s general fund. So do all the probation fees and so forth, with the Courts receiving a percentage [their cut as a funding source for the state’s general fund] of all fees assessed and collected. Under the Romney administration, a court’s “success” at impacting and collecting fees was relevant to how well funded it was in the first place. Courts in this state are NOT treated like an equal branch of government, access to justice is not funded or treated like a beloved constitutional right, but wrung out of the legislature and grudgingly paid. Per my assessment, Fiscal Year 2018 may be as much as 60 million underfunded for indigent defense. I see the locking up of these women, including pregnant women as mentioned by Bob Gardner as an unconscious and unconscionable extension of the the Puritain disdain for the so-called undeserving poor. Hester got it right, don’t mind her courteous tinkering, And, of course, courteous language is an appropriate way to show appreciation for our three editors by not making them work harder than they should be pressed to do.