ON THE SUNNY Monday before Easter 2015, roughly 60 people, some wearing clerical collars, gathered in front of Key Arena in Seattle. “Build futures, not cages,” one sign read. “Love youth/build hope/invest in futures,” read another.
The timing of this protest against a proposed new youth jail in Seattle’s Central District was no accident: Activists had dubbed it Holy Table-Turning Monday, a commemoration of Jesus flipping over the tables of money changers in the temple square in Jerusalem.
The group, a mix of church people — Methodist, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, and others — and organizers from Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) and Ending the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC), crossed the street and entered the lobby of a building housing the offices of Howard S. Wright, the contractor hired to construct the proposed detention center. An uneasy PR man walked out from the glass-walled offices and chatted with a pastor in a purple stole.
Meanwhile, members of the group set up a card table and laid a purple tablecloth on it. They piled it high with nickels, symbolizing the 30 pieces of silver Judas received in exchange for his betrayal of Jesus, and cards with hand-written messages. “Change agent,” one said. “Be accountable to our history and dismantle the prison-industrial complex,” said another. The group prayed, acknowledging their own complicity in the system they sought to destroy. Then, as a unit, they flipped the table over.
Nickels crashed to the ground and the tablecloth fell in a heap of purple and lace. Folding up the table, the group walked out. A few office workers peeked out into the lobby.
Round up the usual suspects
Table-Turning Monday was a drop in the tidal wave of protest against the new youth jail that has been sweeping through Seattle and the surrounding King County for more than three years. The current facility, a leaky building administered by the King County government but located in a historically black Seattle neighborhood known as the Central District, hasn’t been updated since 1972, according to the South Seattle Emerald.
Although a new jail was approved by 55 percent of county voters in 2012, it has been the subject of intense debate almost from the outset, with YUIR and EPIC among the groups that have led protests, including the one on Table-Turning Monday. NoNewYouthJail, a project of Washington Incarceration Stops Here, names 36 local organizations that want an alternative to the new jail.
To these groups, the “Children and Family Justice Center,” as it is to be called, is not simply a new civic building to replace one in desperate need of repair. Rather, it is the latest incarnation of institutionalized racism that has marginalized black communities in the United States as far back as the colonial era. According to a 2012 report by the Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System, while “black youth make up 6 percent of the Washington population, they make up 21 percent of youth sentenced” to state facilities. Recent numbers run even higher: The Seattle Globalist reports that although the total number of youth in prison has decreased, more than 50 percent of all incarcerated youth are black. Black and white youth commit roughly the same number of crimes. But black youth are sentenced far more often than white youth.
These statistics should surprise and enrage us. Yet racial bias is so engrained in society that across race, class, and age, people have been socialized to expect violence from black men and crime from the black community. Michelle Alexander details the system of “rounding up” and incarcerating black men in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander, a former lawyer for the ACLU, argues that jails and prisons are the latest tools for social control of the black population. Eliminating a youth jail in Seattle is only one step toward challenging this larger system of disproportionate incarceration, but it could create measurable change.
‘My goal is to put myself out of a job’
The day after Table-Turning Monday, King County executive Dow Constantine issued a statement that the number of beds in the new jail would be capped at 112, just over half the number at the current facility. County councilmembers said they’d seek $4 million to help shift to a “restorative and transformative justice model,” including education and alternative rehabilitation programs that are “meaningful to youth.”
In September, the Seattle City Council adopted a resolution setting a goal of zero youth detention, following an assessment by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights that found that the new jail would have negative effects on youth of color. And in November, the council also passed an amendment to the city budget to spend $600,000 on alternatives to incarceration through the Social Justice Fund. The allocation directly funds community groups working to change the prison system, according to Sarra Tekola of the office of councilmember Mike O’Brien, one of the sponsors of the measure.
Still, it isn’t clear what will happen to youth in the current system, and as of this writing King County is on track to construct the new youth facility.
A social movement is still needed to address the racist treatment that follows black youth from incident to court to prison. The image of the black man as criminal and black youth as future criminal must change. Some churches are engaging this issue by practicing radical hospitality to those “re-entering” society from the criminal justice system (although “re-entry” seems a false promise in a system where ex-convicts are barred from jobs, housing, food stamps, and other social services). This new “prison ministry” goes beyond visiting prisoners to taking action that will change the prison system entirely.
Several church members from across the city attended a “Healing Communities” conference at First AME Church of Seattle last spring. The Healing Communities model gives congregations a frame for providing direct accompaniment and support to those returning from prison or those at risk for incarceration. It also teaches church members how to advocate for policy changes.
The upper room of the church, an imposing brick building in the heart of the Central District, was filled with Lutherans, Episcopalians, Quakers, Unitarians, and even a Catholic police officer — the first officer to attend this conference — ready to learn how to make their congregations places of transformation for those incarcerated, as well as for those who minister to them. Many had read The New Jim Crow; some had participated in prison ministry before by visiting inmates or becoming pen pals.
The conference was led by Doug Walker, the national coordinator for criminal justice reform for the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society, who also spoke from his own experience of incarceration and return. Walker, a former pastor, exhorted the group to “change the face of incarceration in Washington.”
“My goal is to put myself out of a job,” Walker explained. In the future, he doesn’t want to have to educate anyone about the statistics — that 1 in 35 people in the U.S. are imprisoned or on probation or parole, leaving 2.7 million children with parents who are incarcerated. He shared a framework for thinking about prison ministry: action, conversation, education, relationship, and acceptance, followed by transformation on both sides. “It doesn’t require grant proposals,” Walker said.
There are simple ways churches can radically care for people, Walker said. For example, when someone is arrested, members of the choir, ushers, and mothers in the congregation could gather in court, just as they do for a funeral.
No one is well-served by the status quo
Though the majority of attendees at the Healing Communities conference were white, the “No New Youth Jail” movement is dominated by both black and white young men and women; both EPIC and YUIR are coalitions led by people of color. Some of the white progressives in this fight are striving to defer to African-American leaders, those affected most by incarceration. As Ryan Scott, a white man who served as a ministerial intern at Valley and Mountain, the church that initiated the radical Holy Mondays five years ago, said, “We don’t get to be Jesus in this story.”
There are those who disagree with the movement entirely. “We need a prison for those who are already criminals,” said Rev. Terri Stewart, a youth chaplain who works with kids in jail. She is looking forward to being able to meet with residents in private rooms in the proposed facility instead of the public hall she must use at the current jail. This view is shared by others who work with incarcerated youth who are violent.
And the desires of the group are not necessarily as unified as its message. YUIR and EPIC held a forum to explain their goals and invited local politicians. In a video of the forum, representatives from YUIR and EPIC called for the $210 million that is currently set aside for the new jail to be spent on other programs to benefit underserved youth, such as recreational programs. Others wanted the money to be spent to update the current facility, while some contended that there should be an alternative system put in place immediately, or that the money should be invested to improve education and health care in the city.
Still, the theme unifying all these independent groups is that no one is well-served by the current system.
She knows what these kids need
Perhaps the biggest problem is that the most important voices—those of black men and women in the Central District — go unheard unless they are shouting alongside white ones. Churches in this neighborhood have long been a part of traditional and nontraditional prison ministry because so many of their friends and family members have been incarcerated. Of the 40 people at the Healing Communities conference, nine had relatives in prison. Almost every single person of color in attendance knew someone in prison.
Velena Bryant, a member of Ebenezer AME Zion, spent time in and out of jail for many years — until a judge caught her reading John Cheever and set her on the road to college. Now, she counsels “baby felons” through programs such as a community garden. She has dozens of ideas for alternatives to a youth jail and wishes there was “eat and sleep school” so that these kids could enjoy three square meals and sufficient rest. Familiar with the problems that give rise to youth crime — HIV, instability at home, drug use — she knows what these kids need. If she had a say in it, Bryant would fill residents with education.
Despite Bryant’s positive contribution to youth prisoners, she feels excluded from the system that decides what happens to her neighborhood. “If they’re going to build a new baby prison, that’s what’s going to happen,” she said.
Her feeling that her community is disenfranchised is more than just a perception: Former felons are barred from voting in 12 states, and those on parole are barred in 20 states. Only two states allow current prisoners to vote (Maine and Vermont, whose populations happen to be more than 90 percent white). The Sentencing Project estimates that 1 in every 13 African Americans are prohibited from voting. Bryant argues for a better way: “If we can be rehabilitated, we make better choices and actually become more positively productive.”
Sonny Dudley is a member of the Ebenezer men’s singing group, which periodically visits youth in prison. “I don’t think it’s right to lock people up,” he said. Dudley would prefer a true rehabilitation center instead of a new youth jail. “I think you’re sending a bad message when you say you’re going to build this ‘prison’ for kids,” he said.
It’s as though you’re setting them up for failure.
Had these folks who work with those in prison or at risk of incarceration been a bigger part of the decision-making process, perhaps the new youth jail would have looked different from the start.
Alicia de los Reyes is a freelance writer in Seattle. She is a member of Valley and Mountain Fellowship church.
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