By: Steve Grumm

A local-interest story from the Post, but I suspect the trend exists elsewhere:

According to a study of homeless youths in the District that will be released Monday by the D.C. Alliance of Youth Advocates (DCAYA), a growing number of parents younger than 24 are seeking shelter. The group surveyed nearly 500 people ages 12 to 24 who were living in emergency shelters, on the street or in other unstable housing arrangements. About half had children — and most had custody of them.

Most of the respondents were driven from their parents’ households for economic reasons, said Daniel Brannen, executive director of Covenant House Washington, a youth shelter in Southeast Washington that participated in the study. About four of every five said they left because of eviction or because their homes had become too crowded with multiple families in one house.

More youths have been expected to “bring to the table, not just take from it,” said Dan Davis, director of outreach at Sasha Bruce Youthwork in Southeast Washington, which also surveyed young people for the report. If they can’t contribute, youths are sometimes asked to leave, Davis said.

A lack of education, particularly among young parents who haven’t completed high school, and high youth unemployment rates have exacerbated the problem, the report says.

Here’s an announcement about the DCAYA report, which includes a link to it.

by Kristen Pavón

The U.S. Dep’t of Justice and U.S. Dep’t of Education released new guidelines for schools, clearing up how and when race can be considered. The more flexible guidance is largely based on the following Supreme Court cases: Parents Involved in Community Schools v Seattle School District No. 1; Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.

The two sets of guidance documents—one for K-12 school districts and the other for colleges and universities—cancel out those that were issued by the Education Department in August 2008 during the Bush administration.

“Racial isolation remains far too common in America’s classrooms today and it is increasing,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “This denies our children the experiences they need to succeed in a global economy, where employers, co-workers, and customers will be increasingly diverse. It also breeds educational inequity, which is inconsistent with America’s core values.”

The new guidelines are meant to clarify how school districts may legally consider the race of students in their plans to promote diversity and limit racial isolation in schools. . . .

According to the new guidance, school districts may use “race-neutral” approaches to make decisions about whether to admit individual students into competitive admissions schools or programs, as well as for drawing school boundary lines. Such approaches would include using students’ socioeconomic status, parental education levels, the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods and the composition of an area’s housing, such as its share of subsidized housing or rental housing.

The guidance says that such race-neutral approaches are required to be used “only if they are workable. . . .”

When a race-neutral approach doesn’t work, the guidance spells out that school districts may use “generalized race-based approaches” that employ express racial criteria as long as it does not involve decision-making on the basis of any individual student’s race. The generalized approach could include consideration of overall racial compositions of neighborhoods when drawing attendance zones.

School districts will also be able to consider the race of individual students if it is “narrowly tailored to meet a compelling interest” such as avoiding racial isolation, the guidance states [in other words, it meets strict scrutiny].

Read more here.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday (and December), dear readers.  On this date in the year 1409, the University of Leipzig opened.  Never forget.  Also, on 12/2/70 the EPA began operations.  It is surprising to many that President Nixon established the EPA.  Guess what other federal agency he established.  It’s the Legal Services Corporation.  And LSC figures prominently in this week’s Bulletin, which includes coverage of:

• state court systems feeling the fiscal pinch;
• Maryland’s governor pressures law school clinic to back off environmental suit;
• Tennessee’s high court launches a pro se assistance website;
• OPM provides details on the new federal gov’t internship programs;
• an update on the deferred-associates-take-public-interest-placements phenomenon;
• a Florida legal services program’s fiscal struggles;
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Empire State;
• exciting law student pro bono news;
• outlook for state budgets bleak, according to new report;
• a Missouri legal aid lawyer fights for equal smiles under law;
• declining Biglaw pro bono hours – temporary or here to stay?
• Prairie State Legal Services’s $ struggles;
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Mountain State;
• boosting pro bono among retiring and retired lawyers;
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Old Line State
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Garden State.

This week:

• 11.30.11 – hardly surprising, but budgetary belts are tightening in state court systems throughout the country.  From the National Law Journal: “Deep state court budget cuts are hurting access to justice, according to a recent survey issued by the National Center for State Courts.  The survey, released on Nov. 29, tabulated a poll of state courts conducted from July through October.  Results indicate widespread recent budget cuts, including 42 states with substantial court budget decreases; 39 states where clerk vacancies were not filled; 34 states where court staff were laid off; and 23 states with reduced court operating hours.”

• 11.30.11 – a few days back my colleague Kristen posted about the Maryland governor pressuring a U of Maryland Law clinic to back off an environmental suit against a poultry farm.  (This gives me an opportunity to gratuitously refer to the poultry industry as “Big Chicken,” which I find funny.) Where were we?  Oh, a Washington Post editorial takes aim at Governor O’Malley: “Mr. O’Malley’s Nov. 14 missive was a misguided protest against the school’s environmental law clinic and its involvement in a lawsuit against Perdue Inc. and Alan and Kristin Hudson Farm, a Maryland-based operation that works for Perdue.”  Here’s some more detailed coverage and background from the Baltimore Sun.  Here’s Dean Phoebe Haddon’s – hey she was my torts professor! – reply to the governor.

• 11.30.11 – Tennessee’s high court is hands-on in addressing the justice gap.  From the Daily News Journal: “The Tennessee Supreme Court launched a new website this week to provide the public with valuable resources to help navigate the court system. The new site, JusticeForAllTN.com <http://www.justiceforalltn.com/> , is intended to assist people with civil legal issues who cannot afford legal representation.  The Justice for All website includes downloadable court forms, resources for representing yourself in court, information about common legal issues and an interactive map with resources for each of the state’s 95 counties. Thanks to a partnership with the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and the Tennessee Bar Association, the site also gives visitors the ability to email a volunteer attorney with questions.”

• 11.29.11 – lots of changes affecting employment pathways into federal government.  From Government Executive: “The Office of Personnel Management plans to launch the federal government’s new internship program by May….  The [Student Pathways Initiative] will consolidate several federal internship programs into three pathways, replacing the Federal Career Intern Program…. The initiative’s three options are an internship program for current students, a new Recent Graduates Program and the Presidential Management Fellows Program for graduate students. OPM confirmed that all three pathways will be launched simultaneously, and that the organization aims to be ready in time for the Recent Graduates pathway to accommodate students graduating in May 2012.”

• 11.29.11 – the Legal Intelligencer, based in the Glorious City of Philadelphia, has a piece reviewing the phenomenon of associates whose law-firm start dates were deferred taking short-term public interest placements.  This mostly affected the law school graduating class of 2009, but also some subsequent grads. According the article, while deferrals certainly marked a rocky patch on a law-school-to-law-firm employment path that was typically smooth, some deferred associates enjoyed rich experiences that have impacted their careers, and lives, for the better.  I’m glad to know that deferred associates are re-integrating into their law firms.  Here at PSLawNet we played a role in facilitating deferral placements, and in 2010 I looked in on the trend and concluded that things were going well.

• 11.29.11 – in Florida, Gulfcoast Legal Services has been battered by the recession.  IOLTA revenues in the Sunshine State have plummeted from $40 million to $6 million.  And the governor vetoed a $1 million appropriation that would have gone to GLS and other providers.  GLS has also seen other grants dry up.  “Because of the fallout [GLS], which started 2011 with 20 staff attorneys at its five offices, will end the year with 13.  Read more from the Bradenton Times.

• 11.29.11 –  The Rochester Daily Record reviews how Legal Services Corporation funding cuts will impact providers in Western New York State. 

• 11.29.11 – here’s a pair of stories about law school pro bono developments:
• at GW Law, six new pro bono programs are up and running according to Dean Paul Berman, including a new Street Law initiative, a homeless advocacy project, and a pro se resource project at the DC administrative hearings offices.  GW Law also launched an Innocence Project last year.
• from a Charlotte School of Law press release: “A pro bono student services organization at Charlotte School of Law has assisted more than 450 homebuyers file $3 million in claims against a multi-million dollar restitution fund supported by Beazer Homes U.S.A. The outreach is being offered to homebuyers who were victims of the fraudulent business practices acknowledged by Beazer in July 2009 as part of a deferred prosecution agreement reached with U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.”

• 11.29.11 – we’ve focused a lot recently on the federal legal services funding cut, but it’s important to remember that state-level legal services funding has declined in many jurisdictions too.  And as noted in this Washington Post piece, state governments face tough times ahead: “Things have improved since the worst of the recession, but states still face a dire fiscal situation, according to a report…released…by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO).  The Fiscal Survey of States says that even as states struggle with tepid revenue growth, they will be called on to spend more because of the economic distress caused by continued high unemployment.”  Here’s a link to the report.

• 11.28.11 – an attorney with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri has found an interesting niche practice: orthodontics.  LSEM’s Anne Morrow, now an attorney but formerly a nurse, “has secured orthodontics for 89 children in eastern Missouri who had previously been rejected under the state’s prohibitive Medicaid standards for orthodontics set by a dental advisory committee under MO HealthNet.”  State officials argue, however, that Morrow’s advocacy has the unintended consequence of setting back other children who have severe dental needs because her clients jump to the front of the line.  Read all about it in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch.  

• 11.28.11 – Fortune magazine looks at the recent declines in Biglaw pro bono hours: “Law firms are lagging in donating legal help because ‘they are anxious, and they don’t staff up quickly to meet the increase in client demand when the economy begins to improve,’ says Esther Lardent, chief executive of the Pro Bono Institute. ‘Much of the pro bono work is done by younger lawyers, but when they are in short supply, paid work is the priority’.”  Pro bono stakeholders are looking for new solutions in case this marks a systemic change and not a short-term fluctuation.  The piece reviews the ideas of building more pro bono into associates’ training curricula, and ramping up law student pro bono.

• 11.28.11 – in Illinois, funding cuts have forced Prairie State Legal Services to make significant cuts: “The agency has lost almost half its staff this year because of budget cuts and just last week congress approved another 14-percent budget cut. Because of limited resources, Prairie State can only help people with ‘basic human needs’ such as orders of protection, housing cases, and utility cases.”  Prairie State just announced that it’s cutting its telephone intake hours in half, according to WIFR.

• 11.28.11 -the LSC funding cut’s impact in West Virginia, reported by the State Journal: “West Virginia legal aid attorneys are searching for solutions following a congressional agreement that would cut services in the state by more than $400,000…. Adrienne Worthy, executive director of Legal Aid of West Virginia, said the state’s program has been fortunate to experience growth in the past few years.  ‘But as funding cuts have started to happen, we have gotten leaner and leaner,’ Worthy said. ‘There is no way we can lose those kinds of dollars and it not to have an impact on what we’re doing every day’.”

• 11.27.11 – a few stories above we read that they’re aren’t as many Biglaw associates to bolster pro bono hours.  What about the grayhairs partners heading toward retirement?  The Washington Post looks in on the issue of retiring/retired law-firm partners who, rather than leaving practice altogether, maintain robust pro bono dockets: “[M]any law firms in Washington are rethinking how they structure retirement and compensation for senior lawyers. Eleven firms…are working with the D.C. Access to Justice Commission on a project called the Senior Attorney Initiative for Legal Services. The program…targets a generation of attorneys who have retired or are on the cusp of retirement — the type of lawyers who at many firms make up a good chunk of the rainmaking roster — to encourage them to stay at their firms, transition commercial work to younger attorneys, and take more pro bono cases in-house.”

• 11.25.11 – the LSC funding cut’s impact on the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, courtesy of The Gazette: “[the] bureau received $4.3 million from [LSC] in fiscal 2011 and is slated to receive $3.7 million in fiscal 2012. [The figure is preliminary.] Maryland’s shortfall is roughly equal to the salaries of 11 of the bureau’s 154 staff attorneys, each of whom makes about $60,00 annually, [bureau official Shawn] Boehringer said.  Although bureau officials have not yet decided how to fill the funding gap, they likely will look to first cut travel and office expenses in order to avoid direct cuts in services to clients, Boehringer said.”

• 11.24.11 – the LSC funding cut’s impact on New Jersey legal services providers, courtesy of The Record.

By: Steve Grumm

The Legal Intelligencer, based in the Glorious City of Philadelphia, has a piece reviewing the phenomenon of associates whose law-firm start dates were deferred taking short-term public interest placements.  This mostly affected the law school graduating class of 2009, but also some subsequent grads. 

According the article, while deferrals certainly marked a rocky patch on a law-school-to-law-firm employment path that was typically smooth, some deferred associates enjoyed rich experiences that have impacted their careers, and lives, for the better.

The bulk of the piece focuses on Ballard Spahr’s deferral class:

When the “bottom fell out of the legal market” in 2009, [Ballard’s pro bono counsel] Mary Gay Scanlon said, [the firm] found itself unable to provide work to several dozen recent graduates who had accepted positions in the firm.

“We quickly said: ‘Wait a minute, maybe we can salvage something for everyone here. We can make sure that these young lawyers — some of the best and the brightest — have good work to do for this year,'” Scanlon said.

The firm offered stipends to first-years to develop their skills elsewhere.

Not all deferred associates practiced law in the interim. Ballard Spahr made the temporary job location dependent on individual interest. Thus, the young lawyers worked in corporations, government agencies and public interest firms, with one deferred associate going to graduate school.

When deferred associates started at Ballard Spahr in 2010, Scanlon said their experiences developing new abilities in areas of personal interest to them were a plus to clients.

A major post-deferral benefit to the firm was the associates’ commitment to pro bono programs. Deferrals created “in-house experts and in-house advocates for a variety of different pro bono opportunities,” said Scanlon, bringing “strength in new areas” to the firm.

Scanlon noted that big firms appreciate this kind of specialized knowledge.

“Poverty law is not a part of our daily practice,” she said, and it’s highly beneficial to have “someone who’s an expert in U visas or a whiz with asylum or SSI disability cases” in-house

The piece goes on to look at the public-interest work of deferred associates from various firms, whose placements included stints in civil legal services, immigration and civil rights advocacy, and even an academic placement in Kenya, which last year implemented a new constitution.

I am most intrigued by the thoughts of one Ballard associate who practiced family law with Philly’s Community Legal Services:

As a trial attorney at Community Legal Services, [Lisa] Swaminathan handled cases from start to finish — mainly child welfare cases.

“That was the experience that I was looking for … [to get] to court … to know the people who I was representing, to learn how to work for a client,” Swaminathan said.

At the end of her deferral year, Swaminathan chose to stay on at CLS for an additional year, taking a temporary position the shop funded through stimulus money.

With two years of public interest work under her belt, Swaminathan finally joined Ballard Spahr this September.

Scanlon called Swaminathan a “star.”

She brings to the firm a client-focused philosophy of work from her two years at CLS.

“I learned … that [my clients were] the driving force behind everything I was doing, and it can be harder to learn that when you’re just starting out,” Swaminathan said.

Working with colleagues in the public interest community, I played a small role in facilitating deferral placements in 2009.  (In 2010 I wrote a status report of sorts about how deferrals played out.)  I was hopeful that the experiences would give the associates an understanding of the opportunities and challenges of public interest practice.  I further hoped the associates would come away with positive feelings so that they would become tomorrow’s pro bono advocates and financial supporters.  But I also hoped that the associates would develop skills and expertise that would be useful in their law firm practices.  I’m sure this trifecta did not come to fruition in every case.  But this article is welcome news.

by Kristen Pavón

Paul Schiff Berman signed on as George Washington University Law School’s Dean this year, and in the short time he’s been at GW Law, six new pro bono programs have been developed.

The programs allow students to gain valuable hands-on experience while tackling a variety of issues, including illegal and unnecessary school exclusion in D.C. public schools and public charter schools, sealing criminal records, and providing legal assistance to the homeless, as well as to unrepresented litigants in administrative hearings.

Here are the new projects:

• GW Cancer Pro Bono Project
• Homeless Pro Bono Project
• GW Street Law at the Arlington County Detention Facility
• Suspending Suspensions Pro Bono Project
• District Record Sealing Service
• DC Office of Administrative Hearings Resource Center Pro Bono Project

You can learn about each project at Dean Schiff Berman’s blog.

I think the Suspending Suspensions Project is especially interesting! What do you think? What innovative pro bono projects are available at your law schools?

by Kristen Pavón

Today, I attended a free webinar hosted by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty on their 2011 report on the criminalization of homelessness in the U.S.

Here are some of the highlights:

Types of Criminalization Measures

• Making it illegal to do things in public that people must do — for example, sleeping, sitting and storing personal belongings.
• Selective enforcement against homeless persons of seemingly neutral laws — loitering, jaywalking, etc.
• Restrictions on sharing food with homeless persons in public places.

Survey Results

• 73 percent of respondents (reported arrests, citations, or both for public urination/defecation
• 55 percent of respondents reported arrests, citations, or both for camping/sleeping in public
• 55 percent of respondents reported arrests, citations, or both for loitering
• 53 percent of respondents reported arrests, citations, or both for panhandling
• 20 percent of respondents reported arrests, citations, or both for public storage of belongings
• 7 percent increase since 2009 in begging/panhandling in 188 cities
• 10 percent increase since 2009 in loitering in public places in 188 cities

Alternatives to Criminalization

• Temporary [legal] encampments
• Increasing public restrooms
• Clinics to help homeless persons apply for various forms of identification
• Leverage housing resources in local communities with an effective framework (see below – 100,000 Homes Campaign)
• Outreach programs that connect homeless individuals with providers to divert them from the criminal justice system.

100,000 Homes Campaign

This campaign, which is setting out to house 100,000 homeless individuals by July 2013, provides local communities with an organized system to leverage their housing resources to house homeless individuals. The model is pretty simple but is great because it supports the locality throughout the process.

1. Build a local team.
2. Clarify demand (this means, among other things, creating a registry of the homeless population in your community).
3. Line up supply.
4. Move people into housing.
5. Help people stay housed (through ongoing supportive services).

Misc. Nuggets from Webinar

• Homeless persons face barriers to employment, housing, public benefits and healthcare as a result of receiving a citation.
• Criminalization measures do not address root causes of homelessness
• On average, it costs $6,100 a year to house a homeless person in permanent supportive housing.
• Costs of shelter, jail, and hospital services: $6,600; $25,500; $35,000; and $146, 730, respectively (based on Utah data).
• Criminalization of homelessness can violate homeless individuals’ civil rights, including first, eighth and fourth amendment rights.

The webinar and slides will be available on the National Law Center’s website. Also, you can download the 2011 report on the criminalization of homelessness (which includes a 151-page advocacy manual!!) here.

by Kristen Pavón

Legal Services of the Hudson Valley‘s homeless prevention legal services have been completely eliminated — a loss of $443,228 — because of Westchester County’s 2012 budget.

Lucille Oppenheim, the vice president of LSHV’s Board of Directors spoke out on behalf of the entire board yesterday against the devastating cut and put the program’s elimination in context.

Legal Services of the Hudson Valley has been representing indigent, disabled and low-income working families and their children since 1967, when we began operations in Westchester County. At the request of state and federal funders, we expanded throughout the Hudson Valley, based on the excellence and cost-effectiveness of our work. Our legal services is one of the basic safety net services provided to those in need throughout our county. It is clearly not a “nice to have” service, but rather as essential a service as medical care and education.

We are astonished that Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino’s recently released 2012 budget totally eliminates legal services for poor, disabled and low-income households facing eviction or foreclosure.

The representation provided by Legal Services of the Hudson Valley ensures that parents have a roof over their heads for themselves and their children. Without housing, families face homelessness, and a downward spiral of family instability, physical and mental health problems and educational deprivation for their children. The categorical slashing of county funds, eliminating the option for struggling families to get back on their feet, does not eliminate the basic need for stability. Not only do families suffer, but local taxpayers must pay for sheltering the homeless and/or provide significant rent subsidies to keep families housed. This will cost much more to us as county taxpayers than our homelessness prevention program. The elimination of eviction-prevention funds amounts to the destruction of the community safety net at its most basic. Balance this against the fact that our eviction prevention program saved the county government (and us taxpayers) more than $1.6 million last year.

The concept that categorical tax cuts is an ideal way to balance a budget overlooks not only the importance of quality of life, but more basically glosses over the deep investment needed in human capital which has always kept our country strong going back to our founding fathers.

Every dollar in the eliminated homeless prevention budget has a face on it: the single parent recently laid off, grandmothers on fixed incomes being evicted, disabled persons who no longer can work, children in a family being foreclosed, and many more examples. As a former child advocate attorney representing children, I have seen first-hand the civic importance of assuring equal access to justice for the coming generation. A zero-based budget with a zero investment in our children and their families is very short-sighted.

Read more here.

The Washington Post has an article on a trend-in-the-making that’s been the subject of much recent discourse in pro bono circles: retiring or retired grayhairs senior attorneys ramping up their pro bono practices.  This makes sense, of course.  Baby Boomer attorneys will be retiring in large numbers quite soon.  The wonders of modern healthcare being what they are, there will be a large number of financially secure retirees who are in very good health and who wish to stay engaged with the practice of law, albeit free of the billing stresses.  Many will be attracted to the idea of full-time public-interest work, as well.

In an interesting development, some large law firms see a transition from fee-paying practice to pro bono as a nice way to help senior attorneys wrap up their careers.  This means that attorneys could essentially retire but could maintain a full-time pro bono practice using law firm resources.  Here’s a little bit from the Post article, “Shifting the Pro Bono Paradigm”:

[M]any law firms in Washington are rethinking how they structure retirement and compensation for senior lawyers. Eleven firms, including Arnold & Porter, are working with the D.C. Access to Justice Commission on a project called the Senior Attorney Initiative for Legal Services. The program, created by the commission, targets a generation of attorneys who have retired or are on the cusp of retirement — the type of lawyers who at many firms make up a good chunk of the rainmaking roster — to encourage them to stay at their firms, transition commercial work to younger attorneys, and take more pro bono cases in-house.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” said Jess Rosenbaum, (no relation to Robert Rosenbaum) executive director of the D.C. Access to Justice Commission, a group of local judges, lawyers and law professors tasked with helping low- and moderate-income residents access the civil justice system. “It used to be you had a handful of lawyers wanting to transition to pro bono, and they would have to go to a pro bono organization.”

Now, firms are trying to keep those lawyers by providing resources such as office space and staff to support pro bono work. A few, such as Arnold & Porter and Arent Fox, already have “phase-down” programs for senior lawyers to ease into to retirement over several years as they ratchet down chargeable commercial work and ratchet up pro bono involvement.

by Kristen Pavón

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderfully relaxing Thanksgiving with lots of friends and family! After family-time, sleeping off severe gluttony, getting my bar card in the mail, and a bit of shopping, I’m back on track over here. 🙂

You may already know about the new measure of poverty — the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) — that the Census Bureau released earlier this month. If you didn’t know, read this from HuffPost and this from the Census Bureau.

The new measurement reveals higher overall poverty rates and higher rates for some groups, including Whites, Asians and Hispanics, individuals between the ages of 18 and 64 and those 65 or older.

However, SPM rates are lower for children.

In my opinion, a poverty measure like this, while not perfect, needed to be implemented decades ago. The original measure, established in the 1950s, had not changed much in the 60 years.

The original measure is based on the costs of feeding a family of four. Because, according to this model, food should cost one-third of your income, multiplying that number by 3 gives us the poverty threshold. Anyone making less than that number, is considered “poor.” Anyone falling anywhere above that number is not.

This measure does not take inflation (other than for food), regional costs, actual food costs, various incomes and health care costs into account. The new SPM is a step in the right direction in using a measurement that is more reflective of our current economy and reality.

Anyway, I’ve digressed from what I actually wanted this post to be about… Last week, the New York Times published an article on the new poverty rates according to SPM and how a contentious debate has been set off about how to describe families that are technically above the poverty line but still struggle to make ends meet.

The findings [on the “near poor”], which the Census Bureau plans to release on Monday, have already set off a contentious debate about how to describe such families: struggling, straitened, economically insecure?

Robert Rector, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, rejects the phrase “near poverty,” arguing that it conjures levels of dire need like hunger and homelessness experienced by a minority even among those actually poor.

“I don’t have any objection to this measure if you use the term ‘low-income,’ ” he said. “But the emotionally charged terms ‘poor’ or ‘near poor’ clearly suggest to most people a level of material hardship that doesn’t exist. It is deliberately used to mislead people.” . . .

[Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago said] “I do think this is a better measure, but I wouldn’t say that 100 million people are on the edge of starvation or anything close to that[.]”

I’ve always struggled with the arbitrariness of categorizing a family as “poor” or not poor. Poverty in the U.S. looks different than it does in other countries — and just because “100 million people [aren’t] on the edge of starvation” doesn’t mean they aren’t “poor.”

What do you think of the new Supplemental Poverty Measure? How about this categorization debate?

by Kristen Pavón

Friends! I leave you with this post until next week — I have to pick up my already-cooked, just-gotta-heat-it-up-tomorrow thanksgiving dinner and get ready to pick up my dad at the airport (read: clean the house!)!

Have a safe and happy holiday.  🙂

On Monday, the New York Times ran a piece titled “A Country of Inmates” that detailed our country’s mass incarceration epidemic.

This is an issue that I’m passionate about because it disproportionately affects minorities and consequently trickles down and affects entire communities. Overall, the article is a good read, especially if you have no familiarity with incarceration policies. Here are a few excerpts:

The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail.

Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan.

The prison explosion hasn’t been driven by an increase in crime. In fact, the crime rate, notably for violent offenses, is dropping across the United States, a phenomenon that began about 20 years ago.

The latest F.B.I. figures show that murder, rape and robberies have fallen to an almost half-century low; to be sure, they remain higher than in other major industrialized countries.

Read more here.

However, if you’re interested in learning more (and I hope you are), I recommend reading Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I found it to be a compelling read full of statistics and information about our War on Drugs and the skyrocketing rate of incarceration in the U.S.

I’m always up for  a chat about mass incarceration — let me know what you think!