Jo has lived and worked in western Massachusetts since the late 1990s, arriving fresh out of New York City’s Hunter College School of Social Work where she focused on homelessness policy, prison reform, and earned an MSW.
While I was completing my Masters in Social Work at Hunter College in New York, I had the opportunity to help lead a national campaign called Mothers In Prison, Children in Crisis, which called attention to the mass incarceration of women—especially poor women and women of color—and the impact on their children.
In Massachusetts crime rates have declined every year for the last six years, and with them, overall rates of incarceration. Yet there’s much more to this story.
And it begins with focusing first on continued disproportionate rates of incarceration in communities of color.
While roughly 6.6% of the state’s population is Black, approximately 28.3% are incarcerated. And while roughly 10.6% of the state’s population is Latino, the incarceration rate for Latinos is approximately 26%.
We must also end the practice of incarcerating people struggling with addiction or mental illness, overhaul our bail system, end the practice of solitary confinement, and more.