Reducing high violence and incarceration rates can stem from reinvestment. For those caught in cycles of poverty, structural support and social welfare resources could help Syracuse’s crime-related problems more effectively than increased spending on police or prisons. We have to focus on the complex, interconnected root conditions that lead to violence, not just treat the symptoms.

In March 2022, the Less is More Act was put into effect in New York state. The law ended the presumption of incarceration for individuals on parole in the case of non-criminal technical violations, meaning prison is no longer the definite endpoint for those who violate their probation terms. Violations now outside the presumption of incarceration include missing or showing up late to a parole meeting or violating curfew and also allowed individuals doing well to qualify for early discharge through earned time credits.

Displacement from the construction of I-81 and redlining has put BIPOC and low-income members of the Syracuse community at a structural disadvantage that made them vulnerable to over policing. Onondaga County spent an annual $7 million a year to reincarcerate people for technical violations. Now, some of that can go towards other avenues.

We must begin to move away from reliance on police and prisons as our only resource and look toward organizations and services with proven results. Especially since police are tasked with responsibilities they are not equipped to deal with, like restorative mental health practices or addiction services, ultimately criminalizing them and causing additional harm.

Before Less is More’s enactment, New York led the country in sending individuals back to prison for technical violations at a rate six times higher than the national average. Parole was a contributor to mass incarceration rather than serving as a rehabilitative stage, and 40 percent of people sent to prison were convicted of these violations. Specifically, Black people were sentenced for these violations at a rate 12 times that of white people.

Unchained is a Syracuse-based organization that co-wrote and co-sponsored the law. Emily NaPier Singletary, a criminal legal system reform and abolition activist, co-founded Unchained with her husband Derek Singletary, who is serving a 20-year incarceration sentence. The couple believes that those directly affected by the system can best identify the problems and changes needed within, and have worked with their team to pass legislation with tangible impact on system-impacted individuals.

One of Unchained’s partners calculated that the cost saved by decarceration efforts was over $600 million annually. In a forthcoming report, Unchained and their partners gathered in multiple town halls around the state to listen in on where people directly affected by public funding would like to see that money reinvested.

What they heard: infrastructure and systemic remedies.

“If we as a society had infrastructure in place that actually allowed people to thrive, they would not need so many services and so much assistance. A lot of this comes down to things like affordable housing,” said Singletary. “If people didn’t have to worry about how they were going to pay their rent or mortgage and had opportunities to have jobs that pay a living wage, you wouldn’t see the same crimes of poverty and desperation.”

We’ve traditionally viewed the police as the only option for public safety, but despite tough on crime approaches, violence prevails. The police do not always prevent violence. They respond to violence after it occurs. Rather than taking the money saved from the Less is More bill’s passage and funneling it back into the police system, legislators throughout New York should look towards funding local organizations with community roots.

“If police and prisons were actually deterrents we wouldn’t still have the violence problem that we have right now. We can over-police and over-incarcerate these communities to death at this point and it has not stopped the violence,” said Singeltary.

Lifelong resident Cliff Ryan is the founder of OGs Against Violence, a boots-on-the-ground violence prevention organization in Syracuse. The organization was founded after Cliff lost his son Duriel Lamar Ryan from gun violence. Within the last five years he has de-escalated 44 shootings, 300 stabbings, and over 1,000 fights. OG’s Against Violence is an example of a community oriented approach to interrupt violence.

“The poverty is overwhelming and it’s caused a ripple effect of negativity in the community. And we know the systemic role played a key factor in it,” said Ryan. “When the racial inequalities and poverty are addressed, all of these things will play a role in correcting communities across the United states.”

Cliff has exhausted his life savings to fund his organization’s work to create such significant change. If Onondaga county legislators offered more public funding to his cause and those similar, further progress towards an entirely new system could be made.

This solution is only a small step to a much larger goal.

In the U.S, there are 2.2 million people in prison, a quarter of the entire world’s incarceration population, with well documented racial disparities. The prison-industrial complex continues its reign because of how much certain people profit off of it. The ultimate goal should be mending the social fabric of our society to a place where everyone is able to thrive regardless of their racial or socioeconomic background. Human life should be valued more than profit.

We should rethink accountability through transformative justice that actually facilitates healing and rehabilitation.

The history of policing in the United States is intrinsically entangled with racism and the management of inequality, not justice. Our practice of organized policing evolved from southern slave patrols. The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime, so black people were disproportionately criminalized to profit from their free labor.

In the north, police were used by businesses to break up labor strikes and by political machines to harass opponents. Around the 1950s, the US government began to militarize police. Through the war on drugs and broken window policing, black, brown and poor communities were massly incarcerated.

“If we think about the communities and neighborhoods we picture as the safest, they are not the ones with the most police, they are the ones with the most resources,” said Singletary.

The violence will continue as long as certain groups are systematically held in low socioeconomic conditions. Our inequalities are the result of the capitalist model of maximizing profits through exploitation and the accumulation of generational wealth. Reinvesting from prisons and police back into communities is an important first step in addressing historical injustices.

Brian Joseph Cohen is a junior Magazine, News and Digital Journalism major with a Sociology minor. His column appears bi-weekly. He can be reached at bcohen10@syr.edu.

Published on September 3, 2023 at 11:27 pm