by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Mar 3, 2014
For many prisoners reentering society, debts and the inability to save money while in prison create serious obstacles to a successful transition. This debt usually comes in the form of child support arrears, restitution, and various court fines and fees that result from their conviction.
Photo courtesy of pixabay.com In
Georgia, offenders are released from prison with only $25, a change of clothes, and a bus ticket. Meanwhile, they may likely carry tens of thousands of dollars in debt as well as the mark of a criminal record, making their prospects of securing a job and housing very difficult.
Because of this fact, offenders usually struggle to provide for their own basic needs upon release, much less service the debt they have incurred as a result of their felony. These offenders transition from a place where all their basic needs were provided by the state, to a situation where their subsistence depends largely upon their ability to get a job. Having been out of the job market for potentially several years, simply affording rent payments, buying food and clothing, and covering transportation expenses can be remarkably difficult. Often additional liabilities, such as child support payments, make circumstances even more difficult, leaving an offender little to no money to spare for the repayment of debts.
Still the demand placed upon offenders to repay their debts and obligations is high, and the penalty for not complying can be stiff. A person under parole supervision in Georgia can be revoked and re-incarcerated for failure to pay child support, restitution, or parole supervision costs.[i] An offender may not be intentionally avoiding paying these costs, but simply not have the means to do so – especially when they have spent the last several years in prison with no means of earning income.
As a result, an inordinate amount of debt can discourage offenders from making current payments (i.e. child support), encourage them to seek illegitimate sources of income, or lead them to abscond.[ii] These responses are harmful for all stakeholders in the community, as unpaid debt and obligations leave children and mothers without financial support, victims lacking financial compensation, and taxpayers burdened with the cost of debt collection, legal fees, and re-incarceration. Moreover, such responses inhibit offenders’ rehabilitation by preventing them from amending past actions and accepting current roles and responsibilities within their families and communities.
It is important for the state to consider how various debts and obligations present unique barriers for offenders reentering society, and to work where feasible to remove those that are unnecessarily punitive. In this way, the state could encourage offenders to meet current obligations and develop a realistic plan for repaying what is owed.
Endnotes
[i] Jake Arbes, “How Parole Works in Georgia,” Jake Arbes Attorney at Law, accessed March 3, 2014, https://www.arbeslaw.com/how-parole-works.html.
[ii] Vicki Teretsky, Staying in Jobs and Out of the Underground: Child Support Policies that Encourage Legitimate Work, CLASP Policy Brief, March 2007.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Mar 1, 2014
Elementary pupils outside classroom talking to teacher. Courtesy: nspt4kids.com
Hidden beneath academic benchmarks, league tables, and other measures of success in education, are the relationships and personal traits that fuel positive and negative outcomes for students. Attending the College Access Challenge Grant Georgia Conference earlier this week, I realized this theme as presenters with extremely challenging backgrounds–such as one man who was abandoned at a bus station when he was 5 years old–shared their stories of trial and triumph. Relationships–both the ones we build with others, and the one we nurture with ourselves–are the true challenge of preparing students to be successful in school and in life.
Prefacing the College Access Challenge Grant Georgia Conference, Georgia Center for Opportunity hosted a meeting focused on the non-academic needs of students earlier this week. Presenters Reginald Beaty and Tony Owens, independent consultants and Co-Deans of Students at Paine College in Augusta, Ga, enlightened the College and Career Pathways working group with trend leading research on non-cognitive variables.
If I just lost you, non-cognitive variables, more commonly referred to as “soft-skills,” are the qualities such as self-awareness, resilience, and even time management that bridge testable knowledge with actual successful outcomes. Notable scholars such as Angela Duckworth, and William Sedlacek, Ph.D have led the conversation on how these skills can be fostered within traditional and nontraditional school settings to transform individual students’ mindsets to ensure they are better prepared to overcome adverse learning challenges.
Paring my experience at the conference with the meeting on non-cognitive variables, I gained 2 important take-aways this week:
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Personal experiences with adversity can build “soft-skills” such as self-perception and grit (the ability to preserve past challenges to reach long-term goals) that aid academic success. However, the framing of these vital skills in a negative context can potentially render them useless to students.
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Actively working to connect with students on an individual level, in some cases weeding through the traumas of a student’s life, can change the context through which students utilize these traits to close achievement gaps and reach personal redemption.
Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D notes in her acclaimed book A Framework for Understanding Poverty, that “support systems are simply networks of relationships.” From both meetings, the consensus was that more streamlined support systems are needed to empower students, and there is still much debate around how to deliver a more relationship-focused infrastructure. Seeking a solution for this issue will continue to be at the heart of the College and Career Pathways working group.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Feb 28, 2014
Sharing wisdom between generations. Courtesy: Thegospelcoalition.org
In addition to remembering the legacy and accomplishments of many great men and women, the essence of Black History Month is also about continuing to build a sense of family within communities. Our mothers, fathers, and grandparents are our first teachers in life. It is strong relationships such as these that help shape who we are, and prepare us to be the new writers of history.
In my own life, I am always amazed at the power of the relationships I share with the beautiful women in my family. I am very blessed to have known my maternal great-grandmother, and to still receive endless wisdom from my grandmother and mother. The special interactions between the generations in my family were the ones that taught me about values and morals, hard word, and dedication. My relationships with these women are also the ones that anchored my commitment to my education. They are the type of relationships, much like I discussed last Fellowship Friday, that seem to be foundational to reaching academic and personal success for all students.
Recognizing that all students can benefit from the guidance and mentorship of older generations, the value of close relationships is not a luxury that has to be confined between blood-family members. These important ties can also be duplicated by the teachers, pastors, friends, and other influential people who enter students’ lives. Finding new points of support for students is particularly important for disconnected youth, who continue to be disproportionate across racial and socioeconomic lines.
Just yesterday President Barack Obama announced an initiative many constituents have been awaiting his entire presidency–one that addresses the unique challenges men of color face in reaching academic, economic, and personal success. My Brother’s Keeper, as the initiative is called, extends a plan for new research and programmatic efforts to empower this group of young people.
Locally, Georgia Center for Opportunity is always dedicated to empowering stronger families and communities. As a Breakthrough Fellow it has been incredible–through the Breakthrough Norcross, College and Career Pathways, and the Prisoner-Reentry projects–to see such concerted efforts to link all Georgians irrespective of their background to better outcomes in life. I am continuing to learn what extends the essence of Black History Month past February. Policy efforts that are underlined with an understanding of service and strong relationships between neighbors, friends, and family are an important start.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Feb 11, 2014
Georgia State Capitol image via Wikipedia
By Jacob Stubbs, GCO Legislative Intern
While I was a government major as an undergraduate, I had never really encountered anything close to actual politics. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for I was quite interested in the philosophical systems that underlie the beliefs that shape political action. With this focus, I did not take the general classes over political parties, the legislative branch, etc.
Following my time as an undergraduate, I served as a Fellow at the John Jay Institute where I read more political theory and continued to discuss the philosophy that underlies political science. When GCO approved my internship, I was quite nervous about actually encountering practical applications of political science. My professional mentors were all in agreement that this internship would be a great experience for me to finally be able to come down from the clouds and actually apply what I had been learning in a practical way.
When I started work at the Capitol, I realized that, despite my reading and research for the previous few weeks, my impression of how the political system worked was rather off base. For example, I was not aware of the amount of lobbyists that I would encounter. Reflecting on this with Eric Cochling, GCO’s Vice President of Policy Advancement, I was told that there were about 1000 lobbyists currently registered in the state of Georgia. Certainly, I would not have initially guessed this.
Though I did not expect to hear politicians talking about Plato’s Just City in Speech and its anti-utopian warnings, I was still a little surprised at how practical the discussions actually were. It makes sense that any discussion of Plato or Aristotle or virtue ethics would be out of place when you’re trying to determine how much money the state should allocate toward education expenditures. That being said, there have been certain “theoretical” discussions in some of the committee meetings I’ve attended thus far, such as issues of federalism, private property, and the extent of free speech. Furthermore, even deeper theoretical issues such as personal autonomy and privacy, have begun to make an appearance. Sorting through these issues on a more practical level has been refreshingly instructive in furthering my political education.
In terms of the legislative process, I have been quite amazed at how democratic everything actually is. Average citizens can come to committee hearings and register to give testimony as to how the bill at hand would affect them and their life. In one recent committee hearing, I heard concerns voiced from people whose case led to the bill’s introduction, as well as parents and various professional organizations who would be affected by the provisions in the bill. While I am sure that there is a certain forum for this in Washington, the fact that my family or neighbors can step into one of these committees to give their opinion on the legislation truly shows that state politics influences our everyday lives more than we may think.
The range of the General Assembly’s influence is not a bad thing, in my opinion. Recently, I asked a lobbyist if he had ever considered working in Washington. He expressed his love of state politics and assured me that the state politicians are intensely concerned with bettering the lives and situations of their constituents, not winning some political argument or jockeying for a better committee appointment. This lobbyist’s impressions helped reassure me that I was not naïve in my assessment of the political climate under the Gold Dome. While there may be some intense disagreements about the best ways to go about healthcare and other policy concerns, these disagreements reflect a care for the common man and a love for the particular. Certainly, the national political scene can quickly leave one jaded; however, my experience under the Gold Dome thus far has reinvigorated my interest in politics and my faith in the political process.
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Jacob Stubbs is a Georgia native who graduated from Berry College in May 2013 with a double major in Government and Philosophy. He has recently completed a fellowship at the John Jay Institute in Philadelphia, PA, and is currently serving as the legislative intern at Georgia Center for Opportunity. Following his time at GCO, Jacob is hoping to seek further graduate education in either political science or philosophy.
by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Feb 7, 2014
In a recent article addressing school choice alternatives – particularly the Georgia Tax Credit Scholarship program and its $58 million annual cap – some integral details regarding the execution of various school choice alternatives were somewhat blended together. We thought we’d take a minute to unpack some details about school choice and public funding of education.
First, the Tuition Tax Credit program is not a voucher program; rather, it simply allows individuals and corporations to donate money to Student Scholarship Organizations (SSO’s) that award scholarships to kids to attend private schools. A large number of these kids come from poorer families. Individuals or corporations contributing to SSO’s are eligible to receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits against their Georgia income tax liability for that year.
Second, those scholarships can only be used for private schools, not for homeschooling and not for charter schools. In fact, charter schools ARE public schools. So for what it’s worth, when a child leaves a traditional public school in order to attend a charter school, by definition, all the money being used to educate that child is still being spent by a public school.
Finally, it’s important to know that when a child leaves a traditional public school, the school no longer has the financial burden associated with educating that child. Additionally, the child rarely takes all of the money with him/her; a portion of the money – how much depends upon the program – stays at the original school. Typically, the amount the school keeps is not greater than the amount that is lost, but it hardly matters because they are keeping some portion of the money designated to educate a child who is no longer there. That means that on a “per pupil” basis, the school does have more money after a child leaves to take advantage of one of the state’s school choice programs.
Given the span of time in which the tax credit cap was met, it is apparent that Georgians are eager to exercise choice when it comes to seeking the best educational options for their children. As previously discussed, this high demand is no surprise but there are still many Georgia students in need of the opportunities presented by programs like the tax credit scholarship.
