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HEARING: "Moving America's Families Forward: Setting Priorities for Reducing Poverty and Expanding Opportunity" MAY 24, 2016 — HEARING     Hearing Information HERETuesday, May 24, 2016 at 10:00 AM in Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office BuildingHearing AdvisoryWitness ListGovernor John EnglerPresident, Business RoundtableTestimony (Truth in Testimony)Ms. Karin VanZantExecutive Director, Life Services, CareSourceTestimony (Truth in Testimony)Ms. Olivia GoldenExecutive Director, CLASPTestimony (Truth in Testimony)Mr. Tarren BragdonPresident and Chief Executive Officer, Foundation for Government AccountabilityTestimony (Truth in Testimony)Public Submissions For RecordPlease click here to submit a statement or letter for the record

Executive Summary: Calls for criminal justice reform have been mounting in recent years, in large part due to the extraordinarily high levels of incarceration in the United States. Today, the incarcerated population is 4.5 times larger than in 1980, with approximately 2.2 million people in the United States behind bars, including individuals in Federal and State prisons as well as local jails. The push for reform comes from many angles, from the high financial cost of maintaining current levels of incarceration to the humanitarian consequences of detaining more individuals than any other country.

Report Highlights

In recent decades, the U.S. incarcerated population has grown dramatically, despite falling crime rates.Growth in U.S. incarceration has been fueled by criminal justice policies.Interactions with the criminal justice system are disproportionately concentrated among Blacks and Hispanics, poor individuals, and individuals with high rates of mental illness and substance abuse.Economics can provide a useful lens for thinking about the costs and benefits of criminal justice reform.Improving safety and reducing crime are central goals of the criminal justice system.Criminal justice policies have the capacity to reduce crime, but the aggregate crime-reducing benefits of incarceration are small and decline as the incarcerated population grows.Investments in police and policies that improve labor market opportunity and educational attainment are likely to have greater crime-reducing benefits than additional incarceration.The direct government costs of the criminal justice system are significant.Criminal justice policies also generate a number of indirect costs, or collateral consequences, for individuals with criminal records, their families, and their communities.Given the total costs, some criminal justice policies, including increased incarceration, fail a cost-benefit test.

 $ $10 billion dollar increase in incarceration spending would reduce crime by 1 to 4 percent (or 55,000 to 340,000 crimes) and have a net societal benefit of -$8 billion to $1 billion dollars.

o   At the same time, a $10 billion dollar investment in police hiring would decrease crime by 5 to 16 percent (440,000 to 1.5 million crimes) have a net societal benefit of $4 to $38 billion dollars.

Fathers & Families Coalition of America is committed as one of our priorities to address the elimination of poverty in America and globally. We facilitated a release of two 2015 winter briefs on the Elimination of Poverty. In 2016, we will go to Jamaica to support the overwhelming homes in poverty. Throughout the United States, the growing cascade of the disproportionality of poverty rates has continued. During our National Families & Fathers 17th Annual Conference, February 18, 2016 Fathers & Families Coalition of America brought international experts to address Building Healthy Families and Communities.

 

 

We are honored to share the following speakers for you to listen and take a ways from  Dr. Maria Cancian, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Policy Administration for Children and Families Washington, DC; Ms. Vicki Turetsky, Commissioner for the U.S. Office of Child Support Washington, DC;. Dr. Ronald B. Mincy, Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice Columbia University, New York City, NY and Ms. Joyce A. Thomas, Regional Administrator, Administration for Children and Families, Region II New York City, NY

Fathers & Families Coalition of America is committed to the elimination of poverty world-wide. We share a fantastic new partnership led by The Urban Instite to make a difference in the lives of all Americans, not just those in poverty

A partnership  made up of a group of 24 leading experts, advocates and academics from across the country. Harvard Professor David Ellwood, former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government and noted poverty expert, is Chair. Over the next two years, these remarkable minds will work to determine what it would take to increase dramatically upward mobility for those in poverty. They will situate the challenge in the broader global economy and US context; they will explore structural barriers to opportunity. And they will uncover the country’s most successful programs; collaborate with outside innovative organizations to test promising new models; and identify new approaches.

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