Taylor eng 145 podcast

Poverty and incarceration rates are closely connected. In Illinois, many households struggle to meet the high cost of living, leaving them below the poverty line. This leads to high crime rates and a revolving door in the prison system. Social workers witness the difficult conditions families face, especially among the homeless population. Harsh laws criminalize homelessness, creating a vicious cycle. Children growing up in these circumstances may unconsciously repeat the same behaviors. To break this cycle, community-based mentorships and programs are needed to provide support and opportunities for children. Advocacy for increased funding for job training can also help adults and at-risk teenagers develop the skills they need for success. The Correlation Between Poverty and Incarceration Rates Today I will be talking about how intertwined poverty and the incarceration rates are. Many people live in poverty. According to a recent Illinois census, the average household income in Illinois is $72,563. The average cost of living for a family of four in Illinois is around $87,000. That leaves $15,000 that a family would need to come up with in order to help support their families. Now those numbers are a luxury to some. According to the same Illinois census, around 12% of Illinois residents do not even make enough to be above the poverty line. That means that around 804,000 people do not make enough money to support themselves. First, I will look at this through a criminal justice lens. There are currently 41,000 people in prison in Illinois according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, also known as the ICJIA. They describe our prison systems as like a revolving door, which is pretty sad to think about. Often you see the same types of people in and out of the prison system. A good quote from this source is, communities most disadvantaged featuring high levels of poverty and unemployment and low levels of education tend to be concentrated in urban cities that also experience high crime and incarceration. I think this shows how we ultimately become a product of what we are raised in. Behavior is something that is learned and taught from an early age, and if we have our youth continuing to grow up in these conditions, then the outcomes have no choice but to stay the same. Reflecting on one's childhood brings us to the next lens that we will be looking at this issue through, which is the social work lens. Social workers have the ultimate task of seeing these conditions that these families are in firsthand, which can be and is very hard for many of the social workers. While they try to help as much as possible, they are only able to do so much with what they are given to work with, with both funds and their time. A recent issue that many people are seeing is the effect that this has on the homeless. According to the American Action Forum, others are imprisoned indirectly for their poverty, such as violations related to homelessness. Throughout the article, they come to the consensus that the laws surrounding the homeless are harsh and ultimately give them no choice but to break the law. Some of these laws ban sleeping, sitting, or lying down in public, sleeping in your vehicle, begging, and loitering. Now, those are all issues that we have all seen at some point in our life firsthand. I know for me personally, almost every time I go to the grocery store, there's always one or two individuals sitting in the road asking for anything to help them out with their situation. I know that that's probably more adamant in bigger cities than just where I'm from or normal where we all go to school. They quote, all these laws make it hard to be homeless and to not break the laws, which creates a vicious cycle. I think that calling it a vicious cycle is an understatement. These people do not choose to be homeless, and if possible, they would not be. Many homeless individuals have caseworkers that help them find success with looking for jobs, getting interviews, finding shelters, and so much more. Imagine the effects that a life like this could have on a child. They see their parents working hard every day just trying to make ends meet, but due to the ever-changing economy, their parents can't make it work. Their family is forced to move out of their home, and so with nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to, they find themselves living in their car or living in homeless shelters. But because of laws in place or there's no access to shelters due to them being full in bigger cities or there's not any near them where they live, their parents could be arrested for breaking the homelessness laws. And those children are then put into the foster care system in hope of finding them a better environment to grow up in. While some might think that this is a better outcome for children, they could see this pattern and continue it for themselves without even noticing it. Like I mentioned before, behavior is something that is learned, and so that is something that the children could do unconsciously. This then creates another cycle, a cycle that we often see today, and without the proper help, this cycle cannot be broken. This leads me to how we can help solve this problem. By creating community-based mentorships and programs, we can help these children break that cycle. Organizations like these can help children early on by offering mentorships, skill-building activities and classes, after-school programs, and sports initiatives. By allowing these children access to supportive environments, we can help them break that cycle of poverty and reduce those incarceration rates. Another way that we can help is through advocacy, by advocating for increased funding for job training opportunities. Often, adults need more skills for simple jobs or even the etiquette to apply for jobs in today's world. By advocating for funding, or even donating yourself if you're able to, you can help adults and even at-risk teenagers build the necessary skills that they need to be successful in any career field.