Episode 12: The Criminalization of Poverty
Justice In America
The Appeal
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2019
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, we explore the countless ways the criminal justice system criminalizes poverty—and homelessness in particular. From what is considered criminal to how it is punished, people that are poor or experiencing homelessness in America are punished exponentially more in our system.
We talk to Sara Totonchi, the Executive Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based organization that, among other things, fights the criminalization of poverty in Georgia and throughout the South. Give it a listen!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you look a little deeper you see that this system is actually set up to have two |
| 0:09.6 | tiers, one for people who have means to purchase their way out of consequences and the other for people who don't. |
| 0:18.0 | This two tiered system has really tragic consequences for individuals and for their families. |
| 0:24.4 | When people are forced to stay in jail because they can't afford to purchase bail, when people |
| 0:31.2 | are hounded by probation officers because they're behind on paying fines and fees and ultimately are incarcerated, |
| 0:38.0 | individual lives and family lives are absolutely destroyed. See Duffy Rice, and I'm Clint Smith. And this is Justice in America. |
| 0:54.3 | Each show we discuss a topic in the American criminal justice |
| 0:56.7 | system and we try to explain what it is and how it works. |
| 1:00.0 | Thank you, as always, everyone for joining us today. You can find us on |
| 1:03.4 | Twitter at Justice Undercourt Podcast. You can like our Facebook page at |
| 1:07.1 | Justice in America and subscribe and rate us on iTunes. We'd love to hear from you. |
| 1:10.8 | We open the show with a clip from our guest, Sarah Tautanchi, |
| 1:13.9 | who's the executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights |
| 1:17.1 | in Atlanta. |
| 1:18.4 | The Southern Center is one of the most incredible organizations |
| 1:21.2 | focused on providing legal counsel to people who wouldn't otherwise have access, |
| 1:25.6 | and it's brought and won some extremely important cases. |
| 1:29.4 | Sarah is brilliant and I'm thrilled she's going to be joining us today to talk about our topic which is the criminalization of poverty |
| 1:37.3 | Yes, today we're going to look once again at the intense consequences of being poor in the American criminal justice system, and how the system both criminalizes poverty and uses poverty as an excuse to punish a person even more. |
| 1:50.0 | But first, we have to talk about our word for the day. This season every episode we talk about a word or a phrase related to the criminal justice system that we think is misused, misunderstood, or just straight up bad. We want you to think twice when you hear the phrase, |
| 2:04.3 | interrogate its usage and ask yourself what is it really supposed to mean? Today's |
| 2:09.4 | word is recidivism. Yes, recidivism. |
... |
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