 Thank you all for coming. Lois, the SEDIC initiative is a group of people within the JCA, like 50 people who particularly wanted to do, to understand more about the inequity, the racial inequities of our system that have been uncovered in such painful and shocking ways. And as we're all going deeper individually, we felt collectively it would be more powerful. And as we learn enough to take action to, you know, be a voice and a vote to remedy inequities, we want to enlarge our leverage through working with more people. And first of all, is learning. So we're inviting people who share their understanding with us, as well as reading and watching and talking and listening to more diverse voices. So we had our first with the co-founders of Racial Equity Amherst. And we have two later, I'll mention at the end, but today we're really delighted to have Lois Ehrens, the co-founder and director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The website and the Facebook page are mentioned in the chat resources. Just a little bit about Lois, she's from Brooklyn, home of many activists. She said that she has been an organizer for all of her adult life. That's been her work. And one bounced around a little geographically, but came to the valley 40 years ago. And really an organizer entrepreneur, I would say, because you started your own little thing because you had a bit of a grant money and you knew what you wanted to do and you just needed to find a kind of legal framework, which was provided by the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C. And then you got started Real Cost of Prisons and it's grown and its impact. And your continued faithful nurturing and building the organization is a tremendous gift to us. And many of us have paid no attention, no attention to prisons in Massachusetts, except for the one on Route 2 that you see on your way to Boston. That was about it. So this whole uncovering, this racial reckoning we're going through, has so many reverberations and understanding mass incarceration and policing. The whole framework is our goal. So tell us about the state that we live in. That one of the fact sheet that you gave out to us had, when it comes to the criminal legal system, Massachusetts is not a progressive state. That's an interesting surprise for many of us. And I'd also like to know what does Real Cost of Prisons do and how do you have an impact? Well, yeah, I mean, that is the main thing that I want to communicate to everybody. And that is, when it comes to the criminal legal system, Massachusetts is, if there is a curve in the curve or a line and it starts here and it goes here, Massachusetts is down here. So it's at the furthest, lowest corner of all the states. And people are shocked to find out that if many things, it's worse than the demonized states of Mississippi and Texas and all the states that people in the Northeast love to hate. And but when it comes to the criminal legal system, we are down there with them, sometimes even lower than them. And that's, I think, the main thing for you to know. And aside from the specifics and some of the specifics, certainly not all of them, I tried to put in that fact sheet, which I don't know if people looked at. But anyway, I'm sure you can look at it. And it's about the racial disparity. It's about the length of sentences. It's about life without parole. It's about conditions, the confinement. And it's about the reticence, the stonewalling, the lack of interest, the racism of the legislature, and also, of course, the governor. And our governors, I mean, Deval Patrick wasn't any different. Weld was not any different. I mean, Weld said at one point that he wanted prisoners in Massachusetts to learn to love the activity of breaking rocks. And so that's, but that is not really, I mean, he said it, but it's not atypical. I mean, he articulated what the rest of them have acted on. And so that's, I mean, the main thing I want to communicate to people in terms of how I started, I started, in a way, kind of like you all, not knowing anything. And I started in the late 90s. And actually, Real Customs became an organization in 2000. So it's been 20 years. And I won't go into how it is exactly that I started doing it. But I did. And one of the things that I realized when I started was, and I thought everybody would be able to see this the way I thought, was that to me it was even back then the civil rights movement or the need for the continuation of the civil rights movement and the struggle for racial justice because of who's locked up, who is criminalized, who ends up being police, being hugely disproportionately black people, people of color, and poor white people. And those are the people that get trapped in the system. And those are the people because of their race and because of lack of access to money get trapped for a lifetime. And when I named the real cost of prisons, the real cost of prisons, everybody thinks, oh, I'm talking about money, which I am partly talking about money, like what it costs all of us to do this to people. But what I really want people to look at is the real cost to human beings, the real cost to those human beings, families, kids, parents, the real cost to the communities where millions and literally millions and millions of people are extracted from those communities and put in jails and prisons. And then most of them sort of pumped out of those jails and prisons back into their communities where they, because of their criminal records, have, I mean, huge less access to everything, to jobs, to education, to housing, to everything that people would need to actually try to rebuild their lives afterward and rebuild the lives of their families and rebuild their communities, which are viscerated by mass incarceration. And so when I talk about the real costs, that's what I'm talking about, the real cost to people and families and communities. And that's how I see it. When I first started, I knew maybe a couple of people that had been in jail. And that was it. And one of the first things that, one of the first projects of the real cost of prisons project was creating these three comic books, which you can see they're online, they're on the real cost of prisons website, one's on the war on drugs, one's on the incarceration of women and the impact on their kids and their lives, and the others called Prison Town. It's about building prisons and what happens to the locations where the prisons get built, which are usually rural communities. This is all over the country. And what happens to the communities where all of these people are taken out of their communities and put in these prisons. And so that's what that one's about. And the first printing I did of them was like I printed 5,000 of them. And by the time they basically came to my house, by the time they came to my house, I already had like 5,000 requests for them. And so I immediately had to start getting more printed and raising more money to print them. And in the end, I printed 135,000 of them. And most of them got sent to people, like at least probably about 100,000 of them, got sent to people who incarcerated. And as soon as I started sending them out, I started getting all of this mail back. And over time, I mean like physically over more than 15 years now, I started corresponding with a lot of people and then also sometimes their families or their kids. And some of those people, of course, are still in prison. Some of those people, thankfully, out of prison, I started visiting people in prison. And I always say that people always say, well, did you start out by having a loved one in prison? I always say, no, I didn't. But now I have hundreds of loved ones in prison. And so my connection to people that are in prison is deep, really, really deep. And that is the thing that really drives what I do because of my connection to people that are experiencing life inside and then also experiencing life outside. And some of those people, actually almost all of the people that I know have gotten out and have been out are doing remarkable work. They were doing remarkable work inside. And they are now doing remarkable work on the outside. So that's really how I started and that my connection to people inside and also once they came out and families is the thing that has driven the areas of interest that I work on. So one of the big categories is conditions of confinement. And that's everything about how people are kept locked in cages, which is how people are kept in cages. If you can try to wrap your mind around being in a cage for 50 years and the kind of control that people have over other people and what happens to the people in the cages and what happens to the people that keep them caged, which is a whole other area of what happens to the keeper in the cat. And so conditions of confinement is all about treatment. It's about solitary. I mean, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people, at least 70,000 people in solitary every day, every prison has solitary every jail. But when you drive down Route 66 and you see that building up on a hill, there are people in solitary in that building up on a hill, if I don't get the view. And so solitary, what people get to eat or not eat, how much they spend or their families spend on telephones so that they can communicate with each other, with their family members, what kind of, whether they have clothes or not, whether they have enough money to buy something warm because a jail doesn't give them enough warm clothes. All of those things have to do with conditions of confinement and also the brutality that people experience every day and the racism that people experience every day. One of the words that I don't use and I try to encourage people not to use is the word inmate, which is used constantly. And people are called inmates. They are not called by their name. And they sometimes are called by their number. So they lose their names. And that's a way of just dehumanizing people, degrading those people. And so to me, it's prison language. It's carceral language. And I really, I mean, not just me, but many, many, many formerly incarcerated people try to get people to stop using these words, inmate, felon, offender, people that, words that freeze people based on this thing that they did. A felon, you're always a felon, regardless of what happens to you or an ex-felon or a parolee, not a person on parole. So all of this is part of this sort of dehumanizing language that the carceral system has just built into it. So conditions of confinement, the other area that I work on because I know so, so, so, so, so many people have this sentence, which is the sentence of life without the possibility of parole. And I have some statistics in that fact sheet about how many people in Massachusetts have that sentence, how few used to have it in the 70s. I don't remember, I don't have the number right in front of me, but like maybe 150 or something like that. And now it's like 11 or 1200 people out of about 7,800 people that are incarcerated in prisons in Massachusetts. That's one of the highest in the country. And this is not because everybody's crimes have gotten so much worse. That's not what's driving it. What's driving it is the power of prosecutors, the professional victim rights organizations that are constantly, constantly, constantly trying to create longer sentences, like three strikes. And so all sentences for everything have gotten longer. And one of those categories is the sentence of life without the possibility of parole. And I know many, many, many people that have that sentence. Some of them really good friends of mine, two really close friends of mine die in prison and with that sentence, one who was in prison died at 85. It was in prison from more than 50 years and in Pennsylvania, which has extraordinarily high rate of lifers. And another friend who died in his 50s of a heart attack who had that sentence. But I just know dozens and dozens of people who have that sentence. And so that got me interested in the growth of that sentence and what it means to have a sentence of life. And also some of the extraordinary people and the extraordinary work that those people have been able to do despite that sentence. And if you go to the real class prisons website, there's a category there called writing from inside. And there's a lot of writing, amazing research and amazing work by lifers that are up on that site. Many of those people are really good friends of mine. I should just say, and then the other thing, of course, that I became interested in is decarceration, like how to get fewer people in prison for shorter periods of time. And that is all kinds of things, starting with bail and ending money bail and then going to the other end of that, ending life without the sentence of life without the possibility of parole. There are campaigns around the country. We have a campaign here in Massachusetts, a small one, but hopefully it'll be larger on ending life without parole. So last year in the legislature, there was a bill for that. And there was, for the first time, a hearing on that bill. And it didn't get out of committee just like everything else doesn't. But there were about 60 of us that testified at that hearing for that. And so that was a first for Massachusetts. And then it's part of decarceration, alternatives to incarceration. And so there are all kinds of alternatives. And so it's that spectrum of decarceration that I do work in. And just depending on what's happening where, what the interest is, then some of my work is in Massachusetts and some of my work is national, like the Life Without Parole work, I'm connected to a lot of people all around the country who also have more, let's say, robust campaigns to end life without parole. And we do here in Massachusetts. And then the other areas that I've been really interested in is Son Hall is coming up in a month or so. He can talk more about this because he was a DA, is the power of prosecutors. And the power of prosecutors has been the thing more than anything that has really driven mass incarceration. And the power of prosecutors to extract plea bargains either with the hammer of mandatory minimums or with the hammer of three strikes. And it's charging people with so many charges per crime that, in a way, the only alternative for people, unless they're really rich and have great lawyers, is to accept a plea bargain. And despite all the court shows, I don't watch any of these shows, but whatever they are in order, I don't know if that's Perry Mason. That's my last favorite reference to it. But I mean, those kinds of shows, 95% of cases in the United States now are plea bargain. So all of these shows that you see about trials and courts and lawyers doing fantastic things is basically non-existent. So almost everything gets plea bargained. And the power of the person to set the charges and then agree to the plea bargain is the DA. And so there are DAs in every county. And they are the drivers of mass incarceration. They have incredible, incredible power. And one way that they have so much power is nobody knows what they do unless you end up in court with them or you end up having to being arrested and having to negotiate some kind of plea bargain. And that's who knows about them. But most people don't. I mean, here we have this sort of jolly DA who always seems like such a great guy, Sullivan. And but he is a DA. And that is who he is despite this other thing that you see him publicly doing. And so that's another area that I do work in. The other area that I've been sort of like the leader of in Massachusetts is opposing new jails and prisons. And most states now are not trying to build new jails and prisons. There was a huge building boom in the 90s and the early 2000s. And by and large, that's kind of leveled off as the prison population is leveled off. So like they built enough to they built enough to incarcerate 2.3 million people. That's what they built enough to do. And and there are some cities that have tried to build new jails. But by and large, this boom, this huge boom in jail and prison building has stopped except for one place that it still continues. And that place is Massachusetts. And so right now there's plans to build a new well, it's like rehab prison for women to close down this old prison called Framingham, which is the prison for women in Massachusetts, to rehab this other prison. And so that's going on. And there's also been an effort for years, which has, I mean, it comes up constantly. It never dies. And that is to build a new jail for women and maybe men in Middlesex County. And so I have been fighting, especially these jails, for years and years and years. This thing with this new one to replace Framingham has just popped up in the last year and a half. And so that's been one of the things that I always end up doing, even though I can't stand doing it anymore. It's because it's the same people thing. One of the things about Massachusetts that is very, very peculiar about jails is that even though, so in every other state, the county jail is paid for by the taxpayers of the county. So the taxpayers have a vote in whether they want to raise taxes to pay for a jail. But in Massachusetts, because there is no county government really anymore, all of the money for new jails comes from the state. And so it's basically the sheriff and the state that agree on whether to have a new jail in that county. So you have to fight, not just the sheriff, but you have to fight the bonding committee. You have to fight all of the legislators that is like, yeah, we'll vote for that. Because maybe one day we'll want a new jail in our county and we'll want you to vote for our new jail. So it's a much harder job to try to resist it. And it's something, it's about bonds. And so it's something that doesn't happen as part of the general budget of the state. So it all happens behind the scenes. I always say the first thing that happens that you usually find out about is there's a picture in the paper of people with hard hats and shovels and they're digging a hole. And it says, new jail. And that's how you find out there's going to be a new jail. And then the next picture you see is like a year and a half later, and it's those same people and they're cutting the ribbon. And in any other state, I mean, in any other county, they would have to be hearings, they would have to be protest or could be protest, there could be some accountability of county commissioners in that county to the population. And so that's part of the problem with trying to end or stop new jails especially in Massachusetts. Prison is the same thing. Only it's all the Department of Correction. But it all happens behind this veil. And you have to figure out how to get behind the veil. I do have to say, since you're at Amherst, that Mindy Dom is on the bonding committee. And when I first saw that, she was pointed to the bonding committee. I wrote her immediately. She was just finding out about it. And I've spent so much time trying to deal with people in that office and the bonding committee. And there was a hearing on the bond, which was one of the first. And actually, I think partly because of Mindy, usually they'll have a hearing, but you can't. There's no testimony. You can't be in. There's no public testimony. The people that want to, like the Sheriff presents, so the Department of Correction presents, but the public, there's nothing. You get to sit there and listen to it. So in this last thing, the last round of the bond for this, which would be for prison and jail building, I was actually invited to testify myself to one other person, which was a first. And Mindy, like I gave Mindy all of these questions and gave her all of this stuff to read. And so she was really prepared. And there was another person, a new person on that committee with her who wasn't like totally in the pocket of the Department of Correction. And so it was different. It was like the first experience. It was a different experience. As it turns out, the bond got passed anyway. Because this is the way it works. And it happened like at the last minute. We thought we were winning, winning, winning, winning, winning, and then in the Ways and Means Committee, somebody put in this little extra sentence that allowed the bond to be used for jails and prisons. And that's what we were left with. So that's the way that goes. Anyway, that's what I do. Well, there's so many more questions to be asked about all those things. And we've got the questioners. Actually, Jane Pearl, we all brainstorm questions. And Jane's going to take over and keep the conversation going. All right. I know. I feel I'm just talking, talking. Good, well, I know. Anyway, OK. Hi, Lois, this is great. I mean, it's just exhausting how much you cover and and how much more there is to do. So everything. Yeah. I want to start by asking you a little bit about legislation. I think there are five or six bills that have been up in the last session and none of them got through as far as I know. But I think one is has survived to be in the next session. Is that the one on bail? No, telephones, telephones, telephones. It's not it's not in the next session. It just hasn't died yet. The session isn't over. And so usually the session will have ended. But because of COVID, it's still like it's like in its last so to speak. And so it's not dead yet. But that doesn't mean that it's not going to. It doesn't mean that it will pass. It just means it's not dead yet. That list that I sent out, which was from PLS, it was bill after bill after bill about parole, about life without parole. It was that whole huge list. None of those bills, none of them got out of committee. So what do you think is the main bottleneck or political problem that just doesn't let any of this go through? Well, a number of things. I mean, the first thing I would say at the top of my list is it's a complete almost a complete, not that this is necessarily a criteria, but it's the legislature is, I don't know, like 90% white. And and not just the legislature. If you go to the statehouse, you feel like you've entered, you've been dropped into 1958. You know, it's it is such a weird environment and it's very, very, very. I mean, even though now the president of the Senate is a woman. Spilka, and there are some, you know, women legislators. It's such a white male environment and such a Boston centric. I would say Catholic environment, like, you know, everybody comes in a very out of a very particular world view. They all grew up, like, you know, in a certain radius, like from Boston, maybe 35 miles or something. And they all grew up in these white neighborhoods and they go to white schools and then they go to white colleges and then they go to white law schools and then they become prosecutors. And then they run for the legislature and they become legislators. So, I mean, to say Rokeal, it doesn't even begin to capture it. They are so backward. And the other thing about them is they live in Massachusetts and they think, and especially the ones that are from the Boston area, they think they're the best, the smartest, that they can't learn anything from what's happening in any other state or any other legislator, legislature is doing, they're from Massachusetts, you know, so that it just doesn't matter. Like, you can't bring in somebody from some place that's doing a thousand times better at a hearing and they wouldn't even give a damn. They wouldn't give a damn because they're from some other state. Like, it could be Texas or it could be even New York, you know. And so, they just have such disregard for anything outside of this tiny little white male circle. And it's really, I mean, you just feel it when you're in there and you feel it when you have to deal with them. Well, yeah. I mean, so that's like the, so they don't know people that are in prison. They don't know families that are in prison. They are family members. They're so detached from this that and they don't hear from people like you all. That this is important to you as a white person in Amherst, you know, that this has meaning to you in the same way as solar energy does, you know, or whatever, you know, but whatever has meaning to people, special meaning to people in Amherst or Northampton or whatever, Western Mass. And they just don't, they just don't hear from anybody or if they do, it's like, you know, so that's the basis of it. And, you know, you go to these hearings and, you know, there could be like a Judiciary Committee, like a Joint Committee and there could be like 25 of them or something on there. And when you look at them, they're literally almost asleep. I mean, I don't mean they, I mean, like they're literally almost sleeping during the hearing. And those are the ones that are there. Mostly they're not there. So they're not even there to hear, you know, everybody puts all this energy into these hearings. It's just this performance because you have to show up, you have to perform. But really it's totally a performance on the part of the people. I'm often one of those people being the performer. And, you know, you can't show disinterest, but there's really no, nothing really happens. And so legislation doesn't get moved. And if anything passes two years ago in April, there was this thing called the Criminal Justice Reform Act, or CJRA. And it basically did nothing. It just tinkered around the edges of these, all of these really big issues. And what they said about it is that this was the most significant legislation in a generation. And I said, well, yes, because nothing's been done in a generation. So you, if you knew the magic bullet, you know, to break through all this, I'm sure you would have done that. But there, you must have some thoughts on what resources you mentioned, you know, hearing from people like us. So how would you harness those of us who would want to become involved in trying to break through these log jams? Well, I think some of it is, you know, I mean, there'll be a new legislative session, you know, and there'll be bills. I mean, next week or whatever it is in a couple of weeks, it's gonna start being meetings about, you know, what kind of legislation do people think, you know, from last time to try to keep, to introduce again. And one of the things that I've been trying to talk to people about is, there are all of these issues. I mean, there's everything, right? There's like the complete everything that needs to be dealt with, every single everything. But what happens, and this is especially true in Massachusetts is a lot of the work has been driven by dealing with the legislature and these particular pieces of legislation. And so it ends up being very, I mean, I'll just use this word even though, I'll just use a different word, compartmentalized, I won't say siloed. Compartmentalized. And so, you know, the 10 people that are interested in life without parole work on that bill. And then the 10 people that are into five people that work on changing the parole board work on that. And then the telephone people work on the telephone and the anti-jail building people work on the anti-jails, you know, and so everybody is very, very, very segmented. And because what happens is in Massachusetts, because there is no base, there is no base of organizing that's going on, community organizing, not just here, but in almost every place in the state. I mean, there's some tiny exemptions like Bristol County, which has this lunatic for a sheriff. So everybody's very like, more people are organized there, I mean, he's like the main Trump sheriff, he's like our Pio only, he's replaced our Pio and he's in Bristol County in Massachusetts. And his name is Hodgson, he's really horrible guys and people there are more organized. So there's actually an organizing base of people. But in most of Massachusetts, there is no organizing base. And so what people end up responding to is these individual pieces of legislation. And people, I mean, I work on individual pieces of legislation too, because I get pulled into it and I can't stop myself. I mean, every session I think I'm not gonna do it and then every session I do. So, but still more and more at what I've been trying to talk to people about around the state in these various meetings happen is is that how can we create more of an organizing base and that the legislation and the support for the legislation comes out of that base, like from the bottom instead of the top. And the places that are successful around the country that I do work with where I see this, that's the way it happens. It doesn't start with legislation. It starts with people who are impacted by what is going on. Either they've been in the criminal legal system, they've been incarcerated or their families are, or they have this connection. And that's where the organizing starts. And then eventually they either write or start producing legislation and find legislators to support it and try to actually move legislation. And by the time they're doing that, they have the ability to move legislation because there's a base that it comes from. And so the places that I see where that's really happening like in New York state around release is a great group called RAP, Release Aging Prisoners or there's a great one in Philly called CABI, Coalition to End Death by Incarceration. There's a statewide ending life without parole organization in California. And it starts at the people that are impacted. And here for many different reasons that isn't what has happened. And it's really, it's very problematic. It's very, very, very problematic. And so that's a part of the thing. All of this is to say, I'm not saying that if there's, I mean, because I do it too, if there's legislation that people need to hear from people, I mean, and whether it's Mindy or Joe Comerford or my rep, Lindsay Sabadosa, who has been absolutely has become, even though she just started, same time as Mindy, Joe, she's become one of the leaders in the legislature on really working against mass incarceration. In this very personal, great way, she's gone to prison, she's met with people, she's connected with people, she's gotten really connected. I mean, I was just emailing her right before this meeting about that, and there's just this tiny little group of them in the state house, just a tiny little group of them, and there needs to be more. And the only way there's gonna be more is for people to understand that their constituents think it's important, like they hear from them. And it can't, like when I write to Mindy, I feel like I'm the only one that's writing to her, she's not even my rep. I mean, it's just, I know her, but I mean, she's not my rep. And anyway, so I think it's very complicated picture, partly where the population center is, where the most legislators come from, all of that, what their background is on, as I said, which is just, you know, antithetical to actually doing anything, the way the legislature is set up, there's DeLeo, who's the speaker of the house, has basically complete control over the legislature. Both the house and the Senate side, even though he doesn't have anything to do with the Senate, it's up to him to decide what comes out of committees. It's up to him to decide whatever comes up for a vote. He has control of that place, and that's the way the setup is. And if you have somebody like him or the other ones, all the other ones, before him, that's really an impediment to change because there are people that, they are people that do not want change. Not just on this, but on like, you know, a lot of other things, a lot of other things. And this is just one of them. Yeah, so I'm hearing that there, at least there's many things that we can do, but it seems like one of the things we need to do is to make these legislators and sheriffs and DAs to force them to have contact, to know how, what the real cost of prisons, as you define it, are on the communities and not just the families and prisoners themselves. And that it needs to start from the bottom. I mean, I just have to say, I mean, I think that, you know, the DAs are very aware about what they do and their impact on what they do. It's not like they're oblivious. They wanna do what they're doing, that's their job. You know, I mean, so that's their job. I mean, the sheriff's job is to keep people locked up. That's what he's doing, you know, and that is what they do. I mean, some are doing it in a slightly better way than some others. But I mean, it's not about convincing them that, you know, they're not doing the right thing. They feel like they are doing the right thing. You know, I mean- So become legislators then. Yeah, well, and also to say, well, like here's an example. I don't know if you saw this thing that was in the paper about this so-called restorative justice program that the DA and the police have initiated in six cities and towns. Northampton, Amherst, two of them. And I mean, I had never heard other than this non-profit called Fee4RJ or something like that, that goes around working with police departments and DAs. Other than them, I have never ever heard of a restorative justice program come out of the police department and the DA. It's antithetical to restorative justice. They're the prosecutors. They're the people doing the arresting. They're having cops sitting in in these so-called restorative justice circles. The cops choose who should be in the restorative justice. Restored justice in every other community that every other program that I have ever, ever heard of or know about comes from the community, not from the police and the DA. So how far? How can we harness that and build on that? Well, I think they shouldn't do it. I don't wanna harness it or build on it. I think if people wanna have a restorative justice program in Amherst, then the community should meet with people that know how to do it and are restorative justice practitioners and create a restorative justice program and say, buy to the police and say, buy to the DA. And the way this has happened is it co-ops this idea, it like the idea of restorative justice and puts them at the center of it instead of the people who have been harmed and the people that have done harm. It said it puts the DA in the, you know, so I mean, that to me is like, oh, listen, you know, we're really not in favor of this. We're really not, we don't really want to have city or town money go toward this fake DA and police-controlled restorative justice. I mean, restorative justice quotes a program. I thought it was a good thing, but now I see what you're saying. In light of all this, the problems that you've identified and outlined, I think you're not, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're not in favor of actually abolishing the prison system. I am 100% in favor of abolishing the prison system as we know it. Well, not prisons then. You're not, am I correct? That you do believe that there are some dangerous people who need to be locked up, but that the system is the problem, not that they defund the police movement. You're not saying let's defund everything, but let's re-envision. Is that correct? I'm saying if it costs a billion dollars and billions and billions of dollars to keep the criminal legal system as it is now, right? I mean, one of the just statistics that you should know is like, I'm sure everybody here remembers like 1972, right? We all remember that 1970, 1972. During those years, there were 200,000 people in prison, total, jail in prison, total in 1972. Now there are 2.3 million people in prison. There is many women in prison now as there were the whole number of people that were incarcerated in 1972. And that has been this exponential growth in the prison system and in everything that goes with it, lawyers, courts, cops, all the equipment, everything about it, right? That is, that keeps that system going. And what I'm saying is let's work on bringing the prison and jail population down to where it was in 1972. Let's get rid of 2 million people, right? Let's get rid of those 2 million people. Let's find another place for them to be that actually could be helpful. Let's take some of those billions and billions and billions of dollars and put it in education, put it in healthcare, put it in mental healthcare, put it in substance use systems, do all of the things that we could invest in that we could reallocate instead of defund, reallocate all of that money, billions and billions and billions of dollars. I mean, in Massachusetts, the prison system is $1.2 billion for what? Yeah, I think I read that it was the largest line item on the state, the state budget. No, it's close to a higher education. I know that it's the same as higher education. So let's, but I mean, so this is just one of 50, right? But we have here, this one, our system. Let's reallocate that money into something that is useful, something that is corrective, if we wanna talk about corrections, rather than what it is that we are investing in now. And so we need to be able to parole people, we need to have shorter sentences, we need to have bail reform. So people, every jail, three quarters of the people there are locked up because they can't make bail, right? We need to have bail reform or get rid of money bail completely. All of these things that I mentioned that are decarceration. And so to me, decarceration is the road to abolition. I'm not saying, I mean, I think he's dead now, but I always used to say, well, okay, let's keep Charles Manson locked up, you know? I mean, let's find the people that really need to be locked up. But most people do not need to be locked up for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years. And that's people always say, oh, you know, like, how come we need so many prisons? And I said, well, because we don't let anybody go. If we let people go, or we locked up fewer of them, or instead of locking somebody up for 15 years, you locked them up for five years, the way they do like in, you know, most Western European countries, not 20 years, then we would be on the road to abolition. Yes, there's be crime, but if we invested more money in things that actually are crime prevention, then there could be less crime. Guess what? There would be less need for prisons. There would be less need for jails if we reinvested in a completely other thing than how we're set up to do this now, which all we're set up to do now is to arrest people, to plea bargain them and to stick them in jails and prisons. That's what the system is set up to do. When you're in there, it's not like anything good happens to you. You know, I mean, you'd think that there would be some, you know, more effort put into training and job placement and affordable housing so that there wouldn't be so much recidivism. I mean, I mean, even the recidivism, I looked up this number because I'm gonna find it. Oh, yeah, so in Massachusetts, 78% of the people that violate parole are there for parole violation. They didn't commit another crime. They peed in a cup and they had drugs in their pee or they missed a meeting or they missed two meetings and they had their parole violated, 78% and they went back to prison. So even the idea of recidivism is a scare war. Oh my God, oh, 78% of the people that we let out are returned to prison. Where are they? People out of control, animals, you know, like what is it that would make 78% of people end up back in prison? Well, you know, one of the things that you can't do if you're on parole is be around somebody who's on parole. Well, if you're on parole, my guess is that, you know, quite a lot of people that could be on parole too. And if your parole officer wants to violate you, it can send you back to prison. I know people that this happened to for being in contact with somebody else who's on parole. But when you look at this number and you think 78% of people, all these people are being returned to prison. You know, what's wrong with them? Well, what's wrong with them is the system that is some people on parole in every place are on parole for their whole entire lives. Wow. So that means everything about their life is controlled by a parole officer who can show up where they work, who can show up where they live, who can demand that they drug test, who can, can, can, can, can, can. Look and see who they're hanging out with, see them on a corner and not like it. So maybe if you're a whole lifetime, but maybe for five years or maybe for 10 years, which means you can be violated, which means you can go back to prison, which means the prisons get filled up. I mean, there are so, I mean, but when you look at it and you think, oh, God, this is terrible. These people must be really terrible people. It's the system. It's the system. And I think when you know how this system works, you feel less into this trap. It's like, oh my God, prison abolition, we're gonna have, you know, murderers and rapists like marauding all over the town. And that isn't it. And I mean, to me, I mean, I will say this that, I mean, and people find it shocking, but it's true. I know many people who have killed somebody, they're serving life without the possibility of parole for a murder, one murder that was done when they were out of their minds or crazy or whatever, drug, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to me, when I say everybody should get a chance to be paroled, to go before parole for, that people should not be incarcerated for their lifetime, that people change. I mean, hopefully we all changed from the time we were 20 to the age we are now. So do you see any models out there that you feel might be replicable here? And here in Massachusetts? Massachusetts. And where do we start? Well, I think once we start is to actually like know what is going on, you know, and not be so susceptible to like the stuff that's on TV, you know, if it bleeds, it bleeds. You know, I mean that, all the cop shows, I mean, I don't know if you watch, I don't watch any of that. But I mean, but still all of these movies, I mean, just even seeing the coming attractions of movies, you know, of people and who they are and think and try to think about who is there? Who are we locking up? Why are we locking people up for this? You know, and what are the alternatives? I mean, there are systems, you know, I mean, people always use Norway as an example. I mean, Norway that first of all, no Western country has, Western European country has a certain supply for that, the possibility for all. We're the only ones that have it. We are the outlier. And of course there's, you know, tens of thousands of people that have this sentence. And I think that Norway is more of a homogeneous population. Well, yes, but also everything about it, there's less crime. Why? Because not just that it's homogeneous, it's a welfare state. You know, people have healthcare, people have good education, people have places to live that aren't, that have heat, people can get food. You know, I mean, everything about the system is different. So it creates a different reality. And then when people do commit a crime and they are the idea is, is to normalize prison with the outside as much as possible. That prison experience gets normalized. People can, after whatever it is, a year or a year and a go out to work, come back, do all of these things. We used to be able to do that. People used to be furloughed. Willie Horton was furloughed. I mean, really. But you know, but we used to have, I mean, I know people that are old enough that have been locked up long enough that were furloughed. They would go out and have jobs and they would come back to Norfolk Prison. And now they're in their 80s and they're still sitting there. And I mean, the other thing that I should say about Norfolk Prison just because this is why I was writing to Lindsay is there's a huge, huge, Norfolk Prison has the oldest prison population in the state. And there is a huge outbreak of COVID there. More than a hundred people have been infected with COVID as of today. And I mean, or yesterday, but I mean, I don't know what the full number is yet. And what they have done with them is, and I have to say I have a lot of good friends in there, is they have put them in a part of the prison that they closed down a year ago because it was completely, I don't know, infected or whatever, with mold. So that is where they have put people, a hundred people at least, in a big dorm that's filled with mold that's been closed for a year with who are old with respiratory disease, COVID. And so that is what is happening right now in Massachusetts, at Norfolk Prison. And we can't get anybody in the Department of Correction, anybody in the State House really, Mary Lou Sutter is the head of Health and Human Services, the head of the DOC, none of them to respond to what's going on there. And that is horrible and a crisis and very, very, very close to interrupt as a timekeeper. I mean, to this issue, and I want to get to the questions in the chat. I was looking at him talking so much. No, well, I mean, this is just a small amount of time for this whole enormous issue. I do want to make sure that we capture some ideas for what volunteers could do, what people know. Right, right. I made up a list, actually. Let me go through the list. The legislators from the Eastern part of the state care, not really, but I mean, there are legislators here, and they should be educated themselves and they should be contacted. I mean, I don't know if Delia cares about it, but I mean, we do, unfortunately, all share the same governor, you know, who has not given a damn. I mean, the thing about this, just back to this, sorry, the thing about the COVID thing. So there has been, so eight months, the DOC has not made, put one plan in place for how to deal with this. So this is how they're dealing with it by just shoving everybody in this room. Of some relationship to the Black Lives Matter, where the people in the communities where there are a lot of prisoners coming from those communities could be a base for organizing. Yes, I mean, one thing that is very interesting even here is there is a disconnect between Black Lives Matter and policing. Yeah. And then it sort of stops at policing. And I said to the Black Lives Matter people here, well, what do you think the police did? They arrest people. And some of those people go to prison, you know? There's the police, there's the DA, and there are jails and prisons, you know? And it's important for the Black Lives Matter people, not just here but everywhere, to look at this continuum of, you know, it starts with racist policing. And it ends up with what? This disproportionate number of Black and Brown people that are incarcerated. You know, I mean, they don't get there, but they don't just walk in on their own. You know, they starts with policing, but, and then the DAs and then incarceration. So, I mean, it's interesting to me, there was a group, this decarcerate group, not decarcerate, the Black Lives Matter group here, they sent me this thing about, there was going to be a rally or something, and I didn't want to go, I didn't want to be around with white people, and it was about Black Lives Matter. And I said, you know, you didn't mention anything about mass incarceration. And they were like, oh, and I said, they said, well, would you write something about that? And I was like, yeah, I'd be glad to write something about that, you know, and somebody would read it because I thought, can you have, actually have a Black Lives Matter rally without talking about mass incarceration? And the answer is yes, you can, you know. It's less visible. We see the police and we, now we have video cameras and we have that same. Exactly, exactly. You're not meant to see jails in prisons. They're stuck in the middle of nowhere. I mean, mostly they are. Let's go to the chat now and see what. And I just want to make my suggestions. Let me make the suggestions that I wrote down. Okay. So, well, one of them is, you know, to question the police and the DA about this bogus restorative justice thing, which I think is just horrible. It is an aberration. I think, you know, you've connected to the racial equity task force. I think to continue working with them and to see a ways to interface with what they're doing and what you might want to do. The other thing that I mentioned to you, Jamie, when we were talking about some of these things is there's, there are organizations throughout the country and basically they're called books through bars or something like that. And what they do is they collect, use books and then people who are incarcerated write to them and say, I want a book on, I don't know, yoga. And hopefully they have a book on yoga that somebody donated to them and they send them the book on yoga. And there's one in Turner's Falls. It's called Great Falls, Books Through Bars. And it started a few years ago. I mean, they always need books on yoga and other things. But, you know, they have to be paperbacks. It can't be hardbacks because prisons won't let hardback books in for fear that something terrible will happen with them. And the other good thing about it is, aside from, you know, the books and is if you do that what you do is you open mail and read letters from people who are incarcerated. And I mean, I get mail from prisoners, not just prisoners I know, but prisoners I don't know every single day. So every day I open mail from prisoners and every day I answer mail from prisoners every single day. And it is a good way. That's how I know what I know, mail from prisoners. I mean, that's how I started mail from prisoners. And so it has, you know, it's a way to connect with people who are behind bars. So there's that, Great Falls. The other thing is Great Falls, Books Through Bars. The other thing is this, we just finished. I don't know what the upshot of it is, but we did this project of people who are in jail who are there pretrial or are there for misdemeanors or who are civilly committed. I didn't even get into that, which is a whole other disgusting thing that goes on here. They're eligible to vote. People who are convicted of felonies are not allowed to vote. And so this year we had this project of getting, working with law clerk in the jails to get people ballots and request ballots and fill out ballots and vote. And so it was good. It didn't happen in every county. It only happened in counties where people were interested in doing it, you know? But we did it here. I don't think it ever happened in Springfield. It happened in Franklin County. It didn't happen in Berkshire County just because there weren't volunteers to do it. But the group itself is gonna keep going because in 2000, Massachusetts voted to take away the right to vote of people who are convicted of felonies in prisons. Up until that point, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts were the states that allowed it. And then Paul Salucci was the acting governor. And actually a lot of these guys I know at Norfolk where this COVID thing is going on now started a political action committee and Salucci went crazy. And he managed to get on the ballot question about whether people who had felonies and were in prison should be disenfranchised. And 60% of the progressive people of Massachusetts voted to disenfranchise people who were in prison. And it was, and is the only time people in Massachusetts voted to take away the rights of another group of people. And so that law is still there. And there've been various kind of efforts to try to work to overturn that law, get a new question on the ballot and try to re-enfranchise people who are disenfranchised because they have felony convictions in prison. And so that is something that, so this ballot boxes thing was one thing, but it's gonna continue. So if people are interested in that, that's another thing. And then the other thing is just being aware, finding out, and I'll be glad to, I mean, tell people when things start happening about legislation that's upcoming. And then the other thing that I mentioned to Jamie is that maybe some of you know about this organization that's in Boston, it's called GBIO, Greater Boston Interface Organization. It's a big, big organization in Boston with, I don't know how many, it's churches and mosques and synagogues and like everybody in this big organization, they have a criminal justice part and they're very powerful. They're a powerful organization. I mean, as these kinds of organizations go in Massachusetts. And I mentioned them just because not that you would join GBIO, but maybe to think about using them as a model for Amherst or for Western Mass or for Northampton and Amherst or whatever as they do, you know, lobbying, they do programs, they do, you know, all these kinds of things. They're based in the various churches and synagogues and stuff that they come out of. And they're very, I don't know when they start, but they're a very good group. I know the woman who's I think the co-chair of it named Bev Williams. And so just throw that out there as a possibility for something to do that. I think that's good. Yeah, it's always a challenge. Western Mass, we're just, you know, so we never have critical mass for things to get the attention of people in Boston. So I think that's an interesting idea about bridging that gap. So Keitha Swain, what have we got from the chat? Have you got some questions there? Oh, sorry. I don't know, let's see. Public, private prisons, differences. Anything to teach us? Well, there are no private prisons in Massachusetts. And the reason for that is we have a very, very, very, very powerful guards union. And private prisons don't pay well and prison guards in the state prisons make at least $100,000 a year. And they don't want private prisons there. Suddenly their income would drop to maybe $50,000 a year. And so that is a big, big incentive for them. And they're very powerful, a lobby. Police are very powerful lobby and prison guards are very powerful lobby in the legislature. And they will keep private prisons and states that have really powerful unions. California's a little bit of an exception, but don't have private prisons because they don't want them. There, even though we don't have private prisons, we have private healthcare, which is, I have to say healthcare is in quotes. And we have private phone companies. I think it's this year, 20 or $24 million of family members have gone to pay for phone calls just in Massachusetts, family members. People who are the least, least, least able to, like $3.15 for a 15 minute call. And then extra connecting charges and all of that. And so that's privatized. Everything in jails, in prisons basically is privatized, except the prisons and jails themselves. And so the focus is, that's why this telephone thing is so important. And just to be so that the jails are not all the jails, all the sheriffs get commissions off all the money, the department of corrections, basically, and what the sheriffs say is, oh, we need this money for programs. Well, the jails have a budget of more than half a billion dollars a year. And the DOC has 700 million, and 2% of it or 3% of it they put towards programs. So if they wanted to, they could put more money towards programs and they shouldn't have programs off the back of family members that are paying for these outrageous amounts of money for telephone calls so they can connect. And that's all privatized. So it's important to look at where things are actually happening here. And in the United States, only 10% of prisons for citizens, not the ICE prisons, but citizens are privatized. So that's like 200,000 people and the other 2 million are in city, state, county jails. So the private prisons is like, the thing that everybody wants to like rally around, but if we close down all of those ones for citizens, not the ICE ones, but they would just go to all the regular city, state, county jails. It's not like, everybody would be let out of the private prisons and they could go home. They would go to the prisons that exist. So it's sort of like the wrong focus, I think. And people always want to talk about it because it's bad to profit off prisons, but everybody's profiting off prisons anyway. Everybody is, the people that work in them, all the services, the health, the phones, everything, the shoes, the guns, all of the things. Lois, can I ask you a follow up question? These suggestions, I mean, your information is overwhelming and fantastic. Can you just say, are there any actions going on that are more local, either about Hampshire County Jail or about Hampshire County that you think we could get involved in? Because I think the closer to home, the more we have contacts, the more we have influence. And it doesn't feel like we have a lot of influence with people like Delio and Karen Spilka, but we do have some influence out here in Western Mass. So my question is, are there any initiatives out here that we could become a part of? Well, unfortunately, this voting thing just ended because that, we just finished doing it because of the election, and so I would say, I mean, a lot of those things that I mentioned, book through bars, continuing with the voting project, this stupid restorative justice thing, which I think is so destructive, all of that. And I mean, so yeah, it's true. We don't have any say with Spilka, but some of our people that are here do, like I wrote to Joe Comerford about a couple of days ago about what's going on at Norfolk, which is, I mean, just terrible what's going on there. And of course, I haven't gotten almost any attention at all and because there's a bam about them anyway. And she wrote to Spilka, you know? And so I also, of course, wrote to Lindsay and Lindsay is having a meeting tomorrow, I think, with Jamie Eldridge, who's the chair of the Judiciary Committee and who's a very good guy, senator, and Joe and Lindsay, and I don't know who else, maybe Lindsay was trying to convince him to invite more people about what's going on at Norfolk. So yeah, it's true that, you know, if I write to Karen Spilka, you know, she's like, but if Joe write, if you write to her and say, listen, you know, this is horrible. And it's also bad for just Massachusetts. I mean, it's gonna be like the soldier's home all over again. So are you recommending that at this moment in time that we all write to Karen Spilka and say, you need to- No, I'm recommending you write to Mindy and Joe. Okay. I heard this and this is horrible. And what is the governor gonna do? What is Mary Lou Sutter's gonna do? What is the DOC? What's the plan? I see. That's helpful. And let them know you're concerned about this. You know about it. You're concerned about it. I mean, one thing I should mention is, I don't know how many of you see Facebook, but the Real Cust Prisons has a Facebook page and I've been posting stuff, you know, there's been a couple of articles on this Commonwealth Magazine about what's going on at Norfolk, not a lot, but I mean, anything that, I mean, there hasn't been that much written about it, of course, but maybe something will be. And so that, I mean, I post stuff on that not just about math about what's going on around the country, but I always post stuff about what's going on in Massachusetts. You know, I mean, Prisoners Legal Services, which is a fantastic organization. It's like legal aid for prisoners, but they do legislative stuff and they do individual advocacy. I mean, they filed a lawsuit last Friday, like basically saying, what are you doing? Like they already had filed lawsuits after lawsuits about COVID. And I mean, Lindsay filed a bill like right in the beginning of COVID, which I actually started with a conversation, a radio interview that the two of us did together, like right in the beginning of it about things that could happen. And she ended up writing this fantastic bill. And guess what? The bill never got out of committee. And it was all of the different kinds of steps jails and prisons could do to decarcerate so that we wouldn't be in the spot that we're in now. And I can't remember how many, you know, out of 200, maybe like 40 people signed on to it. So, you know, I mean, but still it's important. I don't know if there are people in the JCA that aren't amorous people, you know, like if they have other reps or other senators even lesser, you know, he's bad. And, you know, if people have him as their senator, it would be good for people to connect with him. I mean, he would probably be surprised. Yeah, Dan carries exactly. That's a good pathway. We, I think we should really let our reps know how much we care about this issue. And we have put in action on the phone bill in for the whole congregation, someone to write and so forth. Some of those, some of those would be really symbolic, I think, if you made some progress on that and meaningful to people, families and so forth. Oh, if it passed, it would be fantastic. Yeah. It would be amazing if it passed. You're absolutely amazing. It would be symbolic at all. It would be really this huge weight off people's shoulders. A huge weight. So Lois, what's the easiest way for us as a group or and where the group that then communicates to the larger community to be kept up to date on your legislative actions? Is it through the web? Is it through the Facebook page? Or do you, without bugging you, what's the easiest way to know what to be doing? Yeah. Right now we're in this like, you know, limbo, right? This would be the budget and then they wait and then they all get together and this is filing bills and all of that. So once that starts happening, just like that list that I set everybody, the PLS, you know, like, I mean, they'll have bills, different people will have different organizations. Well, I'll put out on a list, you know, like I always put out a good bill and bad bill list because there's always like a lot of bad bills. And, you know, like I can send it to whoever, you know, I mean, Susan and I sometimes in touch. I think you sent it to Jamie. That would be the best person right now. It's not happening now. No, I understand. I understand. Yeah, this is like the next time the legislature goes into session. So that, I would say. It doesn't seem to be valuable. You know, and if you see, I mean, if there's, I mean, I can send, I posted it on the Facebook page, this thing about, it came out about Norfolk a couple of days ago. I don't think there's been a newer one but I could send it to Jamie and you could send it to people. Just, and then to write reps and center. I mean, if Joe's gonna go, Joe actually, I mean, she, I have to say, I mean, she can write me back like right away. And she wrote, and she's very, very connected to Spilka. She really, she is very connected to Spilka. And that's good for us. I mean, so. Well, we have to, to an end. Okay. It's just an end of this conversation. I mean, I hope we're creating a relationship with you and that we'll be finding ways to latch on to a project or a feed that we can be activated. We will make the links to the information available again to the rest of the congregation. And this will be on Amherst media. I will see if we can. Okay. I mean, already I have my complete lack of awareness of Massachusetts prisons, paying no attention is different. I think that's certainly true for everything on our committee. So I am so grateful for you, for spending this time and doing your work. If we had more time, I want to ask you what keeps you going? It's such a discouraging picture. The people I know in prison. I kind of guessed. Yeah. Well, that's a, they have a powerful ally and a steady steadfast form. And a friend. And a friend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Lois. Well, thank you all. All right. Thank you, Lois. Okay.