On July 16, Heartland Alliance hosted our third annual women’s event, Standing Together: A Conversation About Equity. Although this year’s virtual format was different from years’ past, the speakers and their contributions to this vital conversation were just as powerful as ever.
The panel featured four Chicago-based women who came together to discuss a topic familiar to the professionals working in the criminal justice field, but one that the general public ought to know more about: the issue of permanent punishments. The term permanent punishments refers to a nebulous system of policies that prevent people with records from accessing necessary resources needed to re-build their lives. Often showing up as barriers to employment, housing, and education, to name a few, permanent punishments have a disproportionate impact on women of color, and subsequently, their families.
For this critical conversation, we selected criminal justice experts to help us understand the issue, and explore what can be done to help women who are impacted by permanent punishments. Their courageous efforts in the field are helping break down barriers for numerous women who have been justice-involved, in order to create a more equitable and just society.
Using Heartland Alliance’s Never Fully Free poverty report as a backdrop, the panel discussion explored how addressing racial and gender disparities are crucial to creating a more equitable legal system and world. The recently released report found that, in Illinois, nearly 3.3 million adults have an arrest or conviction record. Even after their interaction with the legal system, they face 1,189 laws and barriers that restrict access to crucial resources and opportunity. These permanent punishments, along with interactions with the criminal legal system, impact millions in our state and have a deeply gendered impact on women.
“I think it’s important that we name and we acknowledge the disinvestment in Black communities, as well as racism and sexism that Black women in particular face,” said Patrice James, Director of Community Justice at Shriver Center on Poverty Law. “We have spent so much time over the last more than decade looking at incarceration and looking at how it impacts Black men and men in general, but we have not had that same sort of energy and tenacity and really awareness to think about what is happening to Black women. Which has allowed the increase of incarceration for women to just spike, with little to no attention or even conversation.”
In addition to breaking down the systemic racism and sexism that permeates our nation’s systems, the panel also discussed new, bold pathways forward to achieve Equity and Opportunity for ALL, which included automatic expungement for justice-involved people, “banning the box,” or, asking about an individual’s criminal history on job applications, and in general, changing public perceptions of people with records so that they can access crucial opportunities and resources.
“Our past is not our future. Our future is our potential,” said Sadie Joseph, READI Job Coach and community leader. “And so I would love for people to just give us that opportunity. If you do nothing else, give us the opportunity to prove to you that you picked the right person to work for you.”
Watch the full event and read Heartland Alliance’s Never Fully Free report to learn more about the impact of permanent punishments.
