- The prison industrial complex incarcerates millions of people annually.

A recent report states that there were 2.3 million people that were in prison as of 2016.

Minorities are overrepresented in the penal system.

Organizations like the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute are challenging the detrimental effects of the justice system here in the Lehigh Valley.

As a pastor, I've had to help countless people who have been trapped in the school-to-prison pipeline and caught in the snare of the prison system here in the Lehigh Valley.

We are here to have Courageous Conversations.

Hello, my name is Pastor Phillip Davis, the senior pastor of the Greater Shiloh Church of Eastern Pennsylvania.

Today, we are broadcasting from the PPL Public Media Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The reality is, is that the NAACP recent report says that there has been a 500% increase over the past 40 years in prison inmates because of the policies created to get tough on crime.

There are about three million people in jail in prison today.

Between 1980 and 2015, the prison population grew from 500,000 to over two million.

The reality is, is that America makes up 5% of the global population and has about 25% of the world's prison population.

African-Americans and Hispanics make up about 32% of America's population, and 56% of the prison population here in America.

African-Americans are jailed at five times the rate of whites, and African-American women are two times more likely to be jailed than white women.

The reality is, we are here to have a courageous conversation.

Joining us to talk about the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute and issues of prison reform, reentry, and how to bring change to a system that oppresses the poor is Joseph Wells, a former civil rights attorney who litigated police misconduct and prison condition cases.

He is currently the founder and executive director of the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute.

Marvin Boyer is also a member of the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute where he serves as the board president and the political action committee chair of the eastern branch of the NAACP.

I should note, I am also a member of that board, which is an independent, nonpartisan research policy and advocacy organization working to develop and promote a reimagined criminal justice system that is equitable and fair for all.

And I want to thank you all for joining us.

Let me go right to you, Marvin, and give you a question.

What is the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute?

- Well, thank you for that question, Pastor Davis.

Lehigh Valley Justice Institute came into being now, time flies, in we're in our fifth month of existence.

We were incorporated back in October 2020.

And the incorporation of the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute was an outgrowth of the Color of Justice, a group of concerned citizens and organizations here in the Lehigh Valley that started, uh, it came into existence now a few years ago, going back to 2018 when we met and we decided that we wanted to address the issue of criminal justice reform.

In my role as the political action chair of the eastern branch of NAACP, I look to partner with the other NAACP organizations here in the Valley, specifically Bethlehem and Allentown, along with other organizations such as the Community Action Committee and the Lehigh Valley, Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, End Mass Incarceration, the East End Boys and Girls Club, just to name a few, there were a collaboration of approximately 12 organizations.

The more organizations that you have working collaboratively, the better chance you have, obviously, for success.

So, we started planning on laying the groundwork to hold a series of forums under the title of Color of Justice.

We use the term "color of justice" because justice impacts adversely those folks of color, and those folks who do not have the financial means to afford equal treatment in the system.

Bryan Stevenson said it best in his book, Just Mercy.

"It's better to be rich and guilty in America "than poor and innocent."

- So, so true, Marvin, so true.

And I mean, when you think about the imbalances in the numbers, in the statistics that we just quoted, there are so many more across the board.

And I think it's so important to have this conversation.

Joe, what was it in your background that influenced you to found the institute?

And why is the institute important to the Lehigh Valley?

- Well, first, I don't want to claim to be the only founder.

There were many, many people involved in this effort.

And also I've certainly had the benefit of the Unfinished Business Foundation, which has pledged multi-year support to get us up and running.

So there are a lot of good people involved.

But what really interested me is I've been doing these cases mostly on police misconduct and prison conditions.

And ultimately, all I was really doing was getting some little form of monetary justice, as inadequate as that is, for some of the victims of the criminal justice...criminal justice complex, really.

- Yeah.

- And I just was so happy for this opportunity to take the big picture approach and to actually deal with what are the policies that are driving these inequities.

- So, really... Yeah, really policy-driven.

And so, you know, I know that we are kind of data-driven, so that's going to give us an opportunity to do research and to really dig in to what's happening behind the scenes, because many times what we see is the fruit of, you know, what's going on.

And we see that more African-Americans are locked up and we see laws that are created.

But a lot of times, we don't know what's driving it.

You know, I thought I think it's really interesting, Marvin, that you serve as the chair of the board.

As an African-American male, why is it important for you as a black man to be involved in this?

And how does it feel, serving as a chair and having an opportunity to really steer the ship?

- Well, simply put, Pastor, we African-Americans are most adversely affected by the criminal justice system.

- Right, so true.

- Just speaking very basically.

So I think it's important from an optics standpoint that we are kind of at the tip of the spear, so to speak, in terms of driving this march towards reform.

Reform is absolutely needed.

As you stated in your opening monologue, African-Americans are adversely affected by the criminal justice system.

And increasingly, what we're seeing is an uptick in the population of females.

At the end of 2015, over 25% statistically, of those incarcerated were women.

- Wow.

- So there are challenges, you know, across the board in terms of making the necessary changes to effect criminal justice reform.

We cannot lock our way up to a better society.

That seems clear with each passing day.

We have to take more proactive measures to impact reform, as far as treatment.

Over half the folks that are incarcerated have either a drug, alcohol, or mental health problem.

Locking them up is not the answer.

We need to come up with strategies to afford them to treatment so that they could be more productive members of society.

- Yeah, you know, it's interesting, when the crack problem was out, you know, back in the '80s and really hit the inner cities really, really hard, you know, for those African-Americans who lived in inner cities, crack just kind of came through our community and really wrecked it... - Absolutely.

- In multigenerational ways, I will say, the impact is still long-lasting from those that are being incarcerated, and there were laws that were created to, you know, get tough on crime, right?

And back then, you know, the people were called thugs and they were called, you know, predators, and all that other kind of stuff.

Now, that opioid has hit not just the African-American community, but it's hit the white community, now there's an addictions problem, right?

But back then, you know, it wasn't the same level of equity as it relates to, you know, how to deal, how to deal with that.

I want to I want to ask Joe a question.

Joe, I know that you all have on your website, you know, a number of issues that are important to you.

One of them being overpolicing is an issue that happens in minority communities.

How will the LVJI approach that?

And is there a strategy, or is it more from a policy perspective?

- Well, the first thing is to actually collect the data.

And we intend to be geocoding a lot of this data that we get from the court system, which will show which communities are being impacted the most.

But I do have to just bring up one point with regard to the characterization that 40 years ago, laws were passed to get tough on crime.

- Mm-hmm, yeah.

- They actually were passed to get tough on crime.

And in fact, John Erlichman, I believe, was one of Nixon's top advisers later in life admitted that the motivation behind the get tough on crime was to target enemies of President Nixon.

- Yeah, African-Americans and hippies are African-American.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

- And that was really the genesis of this absolute failure, disaster... - Yeah.

- The so-called war on drugs.

- Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

- I agree.

- Yeah.

- So really, it all became a pretext for overpolicing of African-American communities.

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And then there's the issue of, in African-American communities, you know, where folks are getting locked up versus getting written a citation.

You know, of course, we all know the history of Eric Garner and those folks who have died in the streets literally for selling cigarettes or CDs, or just, you know, and they end up dead.

But we know that in minority communities, there's overpolicing.

And then, where they could be given a citation, essentially, they end up, you know, in prison and having charges that ultimately they can't pay fines and end up staying in prison.

I know, Marvin, I know you were working with some of the local police departments to address the issue of equity in the hiring of black officers.

How did that go?

And what was some of the outcomes that you found from the local police chiefs?

- Well, we found out, we had some interesting and productive conversation.

Of course, it all starts with dialogue.

And we have met with a few local police departments to date.

And, you know, the positive thing is, I believe at this point in time, with the leadership of our local police department, specifically, we have met with the Houston Police Department.

We have met with the Bethlehem Police Department, and some members of our board had had conversations and dialogue with the Allentown Police Department.

Thankfully, those conversations have been productive, and they have been a start.

- Right.

- How do we better communicate between those people who are pledged to serve the people in the community?

How do they better interact?

Because there is a perception, and rightly so, that there are issues with the interaction of the police with our community.

So thankfully, there have been an openness with the conversations we have thus far, and a realization that there has to be a better communications, better dialogue, better dialogue, better training, which will result in better interaction and better perceptions by those people the police departments are pledged to serve.

So I think we're on the right path.

- Yeah, yeah.

I know in the city of Easton and Bethlehem and Allentown, there is a, in other words, the police departments do not represent the population.

So there is not equity right across the board.

And I think that's a challenge that has to be addressed because we were talking to someone about how do you reengage African-Americans, you know, in the medical field?

And they were like, you have to engage people who look like them to give them a level of comfortability.

And there's a long, sordid history with African-Americans and police within our community.

So it's good that there are conversations that are going on to really address some of those employment inequities as well.

Another issue, Joe, is pretrial detention and bail reform.

Can you share with us what some of the challenges are for those who are in pretrial detention and challenging, and being challenged with not having enough bail and being able to get... be able to get out of prison?

And how can LVJI approach that?

- Well, the problem with cash bail is that it essentially criminalizes poverty.

- Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Yeah.

- What is the purpose of bail?

There are two functions of bail.

One is to protect the community from truly dangerous people that, even before they're adjudicated guilty of a crime, we need to keep them out of the community, and that's a very small handful of people.

- Mm-hmm.

The other purpose is for people to show up for their court appearances.

And nationwide, there have been all sorts of studies showing that cash bail really does nothing to increase or decrease the likelihood of someone showing up for a subsequent court appearance.

- Mm-hmm.

- So what it really does is it punishes people who do not have the ability to post the money.

- Yeah.

- That's just repugnant to everything that this country claims to stand for.

- Sure.

And it...yeah.

- I mean, ultimately, we have to move away from cash bail.

Cash and socioeconomic status should not be a part of criminal justice decisions.

-Absolutely.

And it only reinforces the disparity, right?

- So if you're in a middle class, if you have middle class income, you're probably going to be more likely to be able to raise that bail, and therefore not have to stay in the prison system.

That's got to be very difficult for people.

We have actually some stories of individuals who have had to come to us to try to get bail money to get their family or their loved one out because they just don't have the resources.

And when you think about the average wealth, right, in America, African-Americans own about one tenth of the wealth of white Americans.

So, where the average net worth of a white family is about 170,000, an average net worth of a black family is about 17,000.

So you can see the disparities, and then it just reinforces this idea that folks are not going to be able to get out of prison.

Does LVJI have a strategy for that, or is that strategy being developed, Joe?

- Yeah, well, one of the areas that we want to look at very quickly is, in Northampton County, there was a rubric developed for pretrial services to make recommendations to magisterial district judges regarding bail.

And that rubric was basically a risk assessment tool.

Now risk assessment tools have their own problems and their own biases, but at least they're a step away from simply putting out some dollar amount and not looking at the factors the bail was really originally supposed to be addressing.

- Mm-hmm.

- So one of the things that we want to look at is, when these risk assessment tools are filled out, how many MVJs actually follow the recommendations?

Do they deviate from the recommendations?

Do they incorporate this in their decision-making?

That's an area, we had a good meeting with President Judge Cory in Northampton County.

And, you know, this certainly popped up as an issue.

- Yeah.

- To what extent the MVJs are following the guidelines that have been established?

- Wow.

You know, it's, yeah, it's amazing.

Marvin, did you want to say something?

Well, I agree exactly with Joe saying we were trying... What we're looking to do is to get the data, do a deep-dive study and get the information, get the statistical information that would help support what we're trying to do as it relates to bail reform.

One of the committees that we have with our board of directors is a committee on bail.

And we have some folks that were on that committee that do have experience with bail in terms of their time either working in the system, or being adversely affected by the system.

So they will be working collaboratively with Joe and his staff, and researching and putting together the necessary information to make our case, in terms of bail reform.

- That's exciting.

It sounds like a really comprehensive approach to a number of issues that are existing within our penal system here in the Lehigh Valley, or our prison system here in the Lehigh Valley.

On the website, it talks about also neglect and abuse.

How has the Covid hit our prisons, our prison population here in the Lehigh Valley?

And are there issues of abuse that maybe our viewers are not aware of?

Because a lot of time, what happens in the prison, people are not talking about.

It's not making it to the newspaper, whether it's sexual abuse, physical abuse or Covid.

I didn't read a whole lot about Covid.

So either one of you can respond.

- It's been, I mean, Covid has been a disaster.

- Wow.

Last March, the end of March on the Supreme Court ordered all of the present judges to get together with the county executives or administrators and try to develop some way to reduce jail populations.

And in both counties, they did that.

And in fact, in Lehigh County, they reduced the jail population, I think, by about 200 inmates.

But then, that all sort of went away.

And today, in both Lehigh and Northampton Counties, we have more people incarcerated than we did when the Covid epidemic began.

- Wow.

Wow.

- Wrap your head around that.

- Yeah, what a failure.

- We had X number of inmates... We then took steps to reduce the population.

- Right.

- And now we have more inmates!

- That doesn't make any sense at all.

I'm not laughing out of... Yeah, it's horrible.

- I know!

But, you know, if it wasn't so tragic to individuals, to families, to communities, it would be laughable.

- Yeah.

- But it is tragic.

And that's a point that I did want to make.

When we talk about a system that is fair and equitable for all, we really mean all because the criminal justice system affects communities.

- Yes.

You put somebody who can't make bail, you put them in jail for just, let's say, 4-5 days...

They are very, very likely to have lost a job.

- That's right.

Yes.

- They may be the main wage-earner for their family.

So their family now is in serious financial trouble, and obviously was in some problems to begin with, because they can't afford the bail that was imposed on them.

And when families start to fail, communities fail.

- Absolutely.

- So, this is a community-wide problem.

This is not a problem about inmates in jail.

It's a problem about our community how and our community looks at the whole what was supposedly called the corrections system...

Which doesn't provide a lot of opportunities to change people's behavior even after they're adjudicated guilty of a crime.

- Yeah, and you know what affects one of us affects all of us.

In some ways, we're all connected from a community perspective, you know, and we're coming close to the end of the show.

But I wanted to just ask a question about the disabled community, Joe.

And I know you had some litigation that happened with that from the ACLU's perspective, our church is getting ready to open up outpatient, restorative, long-term structured residents that deals with people with mental disabilities who end up in prison.

And many times, they end up in prison for an extended period of time because the prisons are not set up to provide those mental health services.

How, and either one of you can comment on this, and I know, Joe, you did some litigation, so maybe you want to comment on it?

Can you talk a little bit about how the ACLU got involved and how that impacted folks with disabilities?

Yeah, it was it was ACLU legal staff, the in-house legal staff that prosecuted that case.

The Wolf administration very quickly entered into a consent decree to create more mental health beds, so that we start treating people in a mental health facility as opposed to thinking that we're treating mental health problems in jail.

- Right.

- That concept is absurd on its face.

Somebody with a mental health problem is going to get better by being locked in a cell.

I mean, it's... -It's absurd.

- It's insane.

- It's ridiculous, yeah.

But what happened was the Wolf administration was not producing the number of beds that it had promised to produce for a whole myriad of political reasons, you know, finding a location, all of that.

So, I mean, it is so great that private entities like you are stepping up to the plate and furnishing those beds so we can get people to where they need to be.

I mean, the actual cases where people were waiting for, once they were adjudicated as in need of mental treatment, people were waiting in jail for beds longer than if they had pled guilty and served a sentence.

- Yeah.

And that to me is just, you know, it's absurd.

And there's a real failure on the part of the administration to provide for folks with disabilities.

Marvin, we're coming close to a close.

Talk to me a little bit about the board of LVJI.

I wish we had a whole hour, but we don't.

Talk to me a little bit about the board of LVJI in two minutes.

Just talk about the strength and the diversity that is in the board.

- Well, our board is consisted of 25 of diverse folks from the community, including former... We have a member who is with the state legislature.

We have formerly incarcerated individuals, which is mandated by our board.

Currently at this point, we have three former incarcerated members who can speak directly to the challenges, the problems, to the horrors that they experienced as incarcerated folks.

So that's very helpful in keeping our feet on the ground.

A reality check, so to speak.

We also have members of different organizations in the community who are involved on our board of directors.

We have an academic team, a research team, which is kind of the engine of our board of directors who will be doing some very specific long-term research work, looking at the systems both here in Northampton County and Lehigh County, and subsequently at the conclusion of their research, which will probably take 2-3 years, publishing a research paper which will encapsulate what they see by looking at a deep dive of the systems, both in Lehigh and Northampton County.

- Thank you.

Thank you, Marvin.

I mean, we could go on, brother.

And, you know, the beauty of it is that there's a website that folks can go to connect with the LVJI.

And there's a lot of information.

And you all have done such a tremendous job in engaging the community, a cross section of the community to bring everybody together.

Marvin Boyer and Joseph Welsh, thanks for taking time to join me here today on this conversation.

- Thank you.

- There are many people in the Lehigh Valley doing courageous work to engage and enhance the lives of others.

And we would like to put them in the spotlight right here on this program.

So if you would like to connect with us or to highlight somebody on Courageous conversations, please reach out to us, reach out to the station.

Let us know by going to... Look forward to hearing your suggestions.

Make sure you stick around for Counter Culture with Grover Silcox coming up right after this program.

I'm Pastor Phillip Davis.

On behalf of everyone here at PBS 39, thanks for watching our Courageous Conversation.