Fifty Percent By 2015

Rep. Karen Yarbrough — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:23:17 -0700

In Springfield, we have many legislators committed to ending poverty, and each year many bills are introduced to tackle it. Everyone has their heart in the right place. This year we finally got our heads in the right place when we created a commission to target the reduction of poverty.

Our failure to move this issue forward was due in part to the lack of a unified effort. That is why I sponsored House Bill 4369, to create the Commission on the Elimination of Poverty -- the first step towards the primary goal of a 50 percent reduction of poverty in Illinois by 2015. The commission will provide recommendations on how the state legislature can address access to safe and affordable housing, food and nutrition, affordable health care, quality education and training, and dependable transportation. The recently signed bill is the result of several statewide forums on poverty organized by the Mid-America Institute on Poverty at the Heartland Alliance.

In Illinois, it is estimated that 1.4 million people fall below the poverty line and 700,000 live in extreme poverty. While anyone can find themselves in such dire circumstances, some are at greater risk than others. For instance, senior women are 61 percent more likely to live in extreme poverty than senior men, and individuals without a high school diploma are three times more likely than those with a college degree. These are just a few of the findings contained in the Heartland Alliance's recent report "Realizing Human Rights in Illinois."

In a changing economy, it is difficult to define poverty in dollar amounts. Indeed, it is easier to do so by pointing out what an individual lacks.

The poor don't have healthcare. They can't afford dental work or visits to the eye doctor. They don't have healthy eating habits because all they can pay for is processed junk food. They don't have a college education, which means they can't get a job and make a decent wage.

And just as important, they are worried day and night about how to keep the lights on and pay the bills, and as a result don't have time to participate in our civic process. This contributes to a vicious cycle. Each year we fail to act, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

But this isn't about the inability to buy new cars, houses, or toys. Poverty affects the health and well-being of all our state residents. Poverty is danger. Poverty is crime. Poverty is hopelessness.

By setting the goal of 2015, we are declaring that poverty can be reduced. The Commission on the Elimination of Poverty will make sure it happens, providing delineated goals and specific timelines backed by individuals tasked with making sure we fulfill them.

Our parents and grandparents have worked their entire lives, yet our country has squandered every opportunity to build a strong and reliable health and social service infrastructure that can support a rapidly aging population. We don't have much time to figure this out, but if we work together and get serious, we can change our quality of life for the better.

Hubert Humphrey suggested that the moral test of government is how we treat those who are in the dawn of life (the children), shadows of life (the homeless and working poor), and the twilight of life (the seniors). We need to support the American patriots who get up every day and serve food, wash dishes, and clean houses for a minimum wage. Every day they keep at it so their children won't starve. They hear the promises we make, and it's time we start to work together to actually deliver on them.

Karen A. Yarbrough represents the 7th District (Broadview) in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Previous columns by Yarbrough:

Tamms' 10th Birthday No Cause For Celebration

Tamms' 10th Birthday No Cause For Celebration

Rep. Karen Yarbrough — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:26:25 -0700

Ten years in service. Seventy-three million dollars to build. Sixty-thousand dollars per-year, per-inmate to run.

Zero sense.

Tamms Correctional Center opened on March 8, 1998, in the southernmost tip of Illinois, further south than Louisville, Kentucky. It was designed to be a 500-bed Super-Max facility to house the “worst of the worst” offenders, those who show an inability to live with other inmates or refuse to obey prison guards. These were supposed to be inmates who committed crimes in prison, including gang leaders. However, a recent report by the Tamms Year Ten organization claims that over half of the men currently imprisoned at the facility are not there for disciplinary reasons.

Convicts were originally sent to Tamms for one to two years of solitary confinement, but recent news reports indicate that nearly one-third of the inmates have been there since the first year it opened. If this was a normal prison, these extended stays might not be such an issue. But at a recent hearing I attended, former inmates described the conditions as mental torture. These men spend 23 to 24 hours of every day in solitary confinement, and when they have to endure this for months and years on end, it is hard to see any rehabilitative value in the way things are done at Tamms. Even more troubling is that those who testified at the hearing do not understand why they were sent there.

And yet we continue to hold these men at Tamms indefinitely. Extended stays of this sort tear families apart because the prison is so remote. While it is clear that we need such facilities to separate the most dangerous inmates, keeping them in mentally abusive living conditions does no good for the prisoners, no good for their loved ones, and no good for the communities in which we ultimately release them.

A recent report showed that the United States has the most persons incarcerated of any country in the world. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars, including one in every 36 Hispanic adults and one in every 15 African-American adults. We have five percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.

Meanwhile, more than five percent of Illinois’ general revenue -- $1.125 billion -- is spent on the prison system each year. From what I have seen in my years as state representative, I believe we need a better return on our investments.

Recidivism is too high, which leads me to believe that prisons operate mostly as recycling centers for crime. Our “War on Drugs” policies send too many non-violent offenders into hardened prison environments, where they must form strategic alliances to survive. Such relationships often last longer than the sentence and live on in the form of gang membership. These kids believe their lives are already ruined, so why not dedicate it to crime?

Since taking office, I have made it a priority to help ex-offenders find ways to rejoin society. It has not been easy, especially when our efforts to reduce recidivism by focusing on rehabilitation are derided as “soft on crime.” Many of the people in our prisons don’t belong there, and we need to do more to make sure they don’t return.

In some ways, Tamms represents all that is wrong with our country’s penal system. When a society has so much public money invested in these prisons, I can’t help but feel that our “tough on crime” mentality is in some way an effort to guarantee that these jobs last and these fancy new prisons remain full.

When it comes to crime in Illinois, our success in making our communities safer should be judged not by how packed our prisons are, but by our ability to keep people out of the prison system.

Karen A. Yarbrough represents the 7th District (Broadview) in the Illinois House of Representatives.