Voices That Must Be Heard

Talking Points

Prisons – Do punishments fit the crimes?

· By 2001, two million adult citizens were in prison and jail.

· By the End of 1999, more prisoners were added to America’s prisons and jails than any other decade in history – 25% more than those added in the 80’s and 16 times as many as the average number added during the five decades before 1970 (the first prison population increase)

· One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 were under one form of criminal justice control (prison, jail or probation) in 1995 – at least half the young men in Washington DC and Baltimore are under criminal justice control.

· 13% of African American men can no longer vote due to their prior criminal justice history. In states with restrictive voting laws, as much as 40% of black men are permanently disenfranchised.

· Federal mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offences takes the discretionary power away from judges for first time offenders, making punishment inflexible and excessive. Some also argue, unfair –the same minimum five year sentence applies to both possession or sale of 5 grams of crack cocaine OR 500 grams of powder cocaine – which many civil rights activists consider discriminatory as 96% of crack defendants are black even though more whites use cocaine than blacks.

· In 1999 the total cost of incarcerating Americans in state and federal prisons and jails reached $38.17 billion.

Immigrants and Migrant Workers – Can we learn to live together with fairness?

· A bill with bi-partisan support to help immigrant farm workers establish legal residency was blocked this year by Senate Republican leader Bill Frist. The bill, sponsored by 63 senators, would have allowed about 500,000 individuals who had worked 100 days for an agriculture employer within a 18 month period to “earn” their permanent-resident status by meeting requirements in employment for several years. Denying claims that he acted at the request of the administration Frist says, “It would open up all of immigration,” to debate, and “I feel we really don’t have the time. There isn’t time to debate all of immigration.”

· In the year 2000, its estimated that between 28.4 and 31.1 million immigrants lived in the US – one analysis suggests immigrants have almost doubled their share of the US population since 1970.

· Its estimated that in the year 2000, 36% of immigrants were legally documents, 32% were naturalized citizens, 28% were undocumented and 4% were legal non-immigrants (such as students)

· As of 2000, more than half of foreign born population in the US came from Latin America and the Caribbean – including 30% Mexico, 9.9% from the Caribbean and 6.6% from South America.

Welfare Reform – What do welfare recipients see as the way off welfare?

· In 1996, President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill that created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The US had the benefit of one of the strongest labor markets in decades. Now, the country is mired in “jobless recovery” that hits low-income single mothers hard with disproportionate job loss in key areas of potential employment – retail, personnel supply, child care, education, hotels and lodging industry.

· After falling faster than the national unemployment rate, the jobless rate of low income single mothers rose faster than the overall rate between 2000 and 2002 – averaging 12.3% in 2002.

· The “safety net” failed to respond to losses in the labor market and wages of low income single mothers – nationally, TANF caseloads have not gone up and income from public assistance fell on average by $137 for this group in 2000-2001.

· Families that loose TANF assistance because of sanctions or time limits are more likely to experience hardships than those that leave for other reasons – such as getting a job.

· The expansion of child care assistance programs in the last half of the 1990s increase employment and full time work among former TANF recipients.

· Provisions in the 1996 welfare reform bill that made many legal immigrants ineligible for various public benefits have lead to increased hardship among immigrant families.

Housing and a Living Wage: Are these the foremost fears for personal security?

· In 2000 the 50 states needed at least an additional 4.9 million rental units both affordable and available to the lowest income renter households. Nationally only 43 rental housing units are available for every 100 extremely low income families who need them.

· The average rent for a modest one bedroom apartment is equal to 105% of monthly SSI benefits for people with disabilities.

· 38% of seniors who rent pay more than half of their income towards housing.

· About 7.5 million workers would receive an increase in their hourly wage rate if the minimum wage were raised from $5.15 to $7.00 by April 2006. Of these workers, 72% are adults and 60% are women. Almost half work full time and a third work between 20-35 hours a week. Also, of these, one third are parents of children under 18, including over 600,000 single mothers.

· The minimum wage hasn’t been increased by congress in 7 years, the second longest stretch in history.

· Detailed minimum wage facts can be found at: http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefacts and http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefaq

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