Why Criminal Justice?

At Empower Mississippi, we’re dedicated to creating opportunity in our state so that people can flourish. One very important piece of living a successful life is having a job. Right now, Mississippi’s workforce has a problem. We have nearly 40,000 unfilled jobs, as well as a record number of people who are not working. How is that possible?

We’ve found that there are significant barriers to finding and keeping a fulfilling job, especially for people who have made a mistake and had an interaction with our criminal justice system. There is a growing realization around the country that our criminal justice system is very efficient at finding people and incarcerating them, but too often it fails at rehabilitating these people and setting them up for a successful life after they are released.

95% of people who are currently incarcerated in state prison will be re-entering the community at some point in the future.

This realization has helped fuel criminal justice reform efforts in states around the country. States like Texas and Georgia have made strides in safely reducing their incarcerated population, prioritizing resources on high-risk offenders, and reducing barriers to work for those who are reentering the community.

Mississippi has made some progress on criminal justice reform in recent years. In 2014, HB 585 set new criminal sentencing ranges and established standards for parole eligibility. This change led to a 10% decrease in our incarcerated population and hundreds of millions of dollars in savings.

HB 387 was signed by Governor Phil Bryant in 2018. This bill builds on these efforts by making it easier for individuals to maintain jobs once they’ve reentered the community. The bill eliminated debtors’ prisons, where people were placed in jail for their failure to pay a fine. It also allowed individuals on parole and probation to check in with their parole officer while on the job using technology like FaceTime. These are common-sense reforms that concentrate our limited resources on the individuals who pose the biggest threat to public safety, while helping low-risk offenders safely reenter the community to seek work.

Since Mississippi’s initial work on criminal justice reform, momentum has been building nationally. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump declared April Second Chances Month to promote efforts to help incarcerated people pursue productive work as taxpaying citizens in the community.

While Mississippi has been a leader in criminal justice reform, much work remains to be done to set more people up for successful work and improve our criminal justice system to help accomplish this goal. For instance, Mississippi is one of only twelve states that suspends people’s driver’s licenses for non-driving related offenses. In a rural state like Mississippi, a driver’s license is necessary for getting to and from work. This simple policy change would yield big dividends in helping people get back on their feet as they reenter the community.

We envision a Mississippi where everyone has the opportunity to work, providing for themselves and their families, and a fresh start is attainable for those who have made mistakes.

In the coming months you will hear more from us as we partner with you, our supporters, to develop and promote public policy solutions to these issues. We anticipate the release of an ambitious legislative agenda in 2019 and beyond to address these critical challenges. We are excited to begin work on these issues to help make Mississippi a better place to live, work, and raise a family.