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biggest misconception about misdemeanors is that they are minor to start hearing more and more stories

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of voter suppression that broke my heart they're the ones that are using the

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[Music] system

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my grandma was fighting for integration back in her day and i'm fighting for the same thing now

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the problem is the system is working the way it's supposed to

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we're recording all right

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sometimes i feel like my life ended that day my car died on the side of the road a

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cop walked over to my car and asked me if i needed help and i said no john clark was convicted

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on a misdemeanor gambling charge and was forced to work on a chain gang i just remember being pushed

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like being cornered into a wall i was just starting out life and i didn't

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think i had anything to hide mary gay was sentenced to 30 days plus court costs for stealing a hat i was arrested that

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evening it was a misdemeanor that was the beginning of the nightmare that i had to go through

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henry nelson was arrested for using abusive language in the presence of a female and was sent off to the coal mines he

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said you're going to jail and i'm like what for

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misdemeanors have historically been the chump change crimes that we didn't pay attention to

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[Music] i just got beat up by the police last night but i could have lost my life

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13 million well that's about 80 percent of all american criminal documents 80

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of what our criminal courts do is misdemeanors the story of misdemeanors is the story

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of law enforcement continuing to prioritize african americans mexican immigrants america's so-called

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criminal class you act like i really just committed a serious crime i did do something illegal you crossed the crosswalk

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you might see two or three police standing and waiting cops to jump out the van anytime anywhere

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[Applause] the misdemeanor system has not gotten its fair share of blame misdemeanors

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are the invidious first step in the racialization of crime in this country too often

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arrests for minor crimes devolve until police violence and death for black and brown people

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[Music]

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they got me jaywalking not wearing a seatbelt my taillight was out i was arrested

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how far back that goes is a really dark [Music]

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story

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reconstruction was an error when four million african americans made it out of bondage and were able to

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achieve at really high levels whether it was in business in education

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different ways of prosperity that really threatened white supremacy

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[Music] they elected many black men to positions

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of power [Music] of course that was a sea change from how

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power had been exercised during slavery and a lot of white folks just didn't like it

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they were nostalgic for the old days of overt white supremacy and so they

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subverted reconstruction if you look at misdemeanors and you

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track them from the reconstruction area to modern day you see the fingerprints everywhere of white supremacy and control of black

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bodies the bland owners they had nearly lost everything

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and the only way to get that back is to somehow corral the black labor force back into the same

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plantations that they had once worked the most effective way of forcing

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african-americans back into this condition that would be so similar to slavery was to begin to criminalize black life

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itself misdemeanor offenses for incredibly trivial or made-up things

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what should have been tiny penalties for non-existent defenses turn into years of people's lives where

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were you taken i was taken out to the camps where did you sleep

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slept on some hay chain was on me i'm being put into handcuffs i'm being

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dragged into this cold space i don't have anything to cover myself and i'm asked to sit inside of this tiny

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little room and i have no idea why i'm there was there any jury that tried you no sir

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did the recorder ask you whether you wanted a lawyer no sir and i thought that i would have time to

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talk to a court appointed attorney so we could talk about what happened i can ask them to get other you know pieces of evidence that

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would prove that hey i'm poor it wasn't like i was trying to run off with this money did they furnish any copy of the charge

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against you no sir they did not did they give you any opportunity to

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plead to any accusation it never gave me anything at all when they asked me how i played i played no

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contest i didn't understand that no contest is the same as guilty and that i would walk away with a

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misdemeanor that would affect my ability to get hired

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the justice system after emancipation was weaponized against black people

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it perpetuated slavery by making the mechanisms of enslavement

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pretty much the same family separation back-breaking labor people having no rights

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you could be sold on the steps of the courthouse that you were convicted in and given to the highest bidder a whole

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separate criminal code that applied to african americans

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was established many misdemeanor offenses are best understood as mechanisms of

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social control they're not designed to catch dangerous or guilty people

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but rather they are tools we give them to police as additional ways of exercising their authority

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some of these laws were overtly race-based and with others then and now the

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understanding was that the laws would look race neutral but they would be applied and

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enforced almost exclusively against black people for these governments to sell prisoners

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into slavery you first have to arrest lots of people there's a big problem with that though

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there's just not enough crime for this system to work and for it to be profitable the state

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governments of the south had to invent new crimes

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southern legislatures which are essentially run by confederates at that time

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are trying to re-inscribe a form of slavery through a system of laws called black codes

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a whole category of new statutes passed in almost every southern state that attached these enormous penalties

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to what were in reality very minor thefts those were laws and

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many others like it that were only ever enforced against african americans

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and so it became a way to have a basis for arresting huge numbers of black people

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i don't remember much about writing the check john owen was caught taking six years of

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corn from a cornfield and was arrested under the black codes

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this is four dollars and we have one two three four five six seven seven times

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four is twenty eight dollars so just this pile right here is how much i went to jail for owen was

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put in jail for months until he was finally tried for theft i have a theft charge it's

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death by check i had money in the bank but i didn't know how long it took for checks to process like i know better now

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i could have donated plasma gotten 25 under a sentence owen was leased in the

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convict labor and sent to the chain gang where he served two years for the corn and a third year for the court costs i

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was in the hayes county jail for a total of 45 days for 25 worth of food michael brown

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who was the teenager who was killed by police in ferguson whose death led to the

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explosion of the black lives matter movement he was stopped for jaywalking he stepped

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off the sidewalk and was walking in the street and there was a local criminal ordinance that made it a crime

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to do so african americans are being cited for jaywalking

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at three five ten times the rate of white pedestrians the legislatures of

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the white south make it a crime to walk alongside a railroad in an era which there are no paved roads the

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easiest way for a poor person to get from one place to another is to walk alongside a railroad that law

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didn't say this only applies to black people but those were laws that were only ever enforced against

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african americans all of us engage in what would be considered to be

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minor crimes and for some people it's crossing the street at the wrong time

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but if you're black or brown then it becomes categorized as something that's criminal

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so what are you doing didn't use the crosswalk all i'm trying to do is go home man i'm tired i just got off of work

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nandi kane says he was walking home from work when it happened since i felt like they were going to

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draw a gun out and shoot me in my back i'm tired of all this [ __ ] man

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um vagrancy laws were passed that

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essentially meant any black person who was found on the streets unemployed and couldn't show evidence of work

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was a criminal a vagrant trespass laws originate from this idea that african americans only belong

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in certain spaces and at certain times and so they give police officers the ability under the guise of law to

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dictate where an african-american person can be what time they can be there and how they

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can operate in certain spaces my kids daycare was inside of one of the buildings to the um skyway

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so i figured i'd take a walk find somewhere to sit down and um wait on them to get there i'm going to new horizons to pick up my kids i was

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sitting there for 10 minutes monroe dolphis was standing in the train yard when he was grabbed by the

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sheriff's deputy monroe stated that he had not committed any crime why are you going to go to

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jail i'm not doing anything wrong hold on hold on can you hold on please i'm not no no come on brother brother this is the

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fault at this moment i saw my children's daycare class and their teachers and

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everything um walking past while this was happening he took the taser and drove it into my leg and pretty much

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at that point it lost all control of the leg the deputy later claimed that the crime committed by dolphus

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was taking a 25-cent tent of fish from the lunch pail of a southern railway worker unable to provide any evidence to

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support this the charge was changed to vagrancy and i kept asking them what i was being

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charged with they'll create false charges just to make sure that everything is perpetuated judge

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longshore found dolphis guilty of misdemeanor vagrancy and sentenced him to five months and 20

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days of hard labor and the minds of tennessee coal iron and railroad

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going back to the vagrancy laws of the late 19th century the people who make those laws have in

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mind another group of people for whom there is an inherent threat to their livelihood like breaking

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barbecue ordinances and public parks or sleeping in dormitories that white people don't think you live there

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i have every right to call the police it allows law enforcement to regulate whether or not certain

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behavior for one group of people is deemed a criminal and another group of people is just

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frivolous activity many people remember the starbucks debacle in philadelphia there were two

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african-american men at a starbucks the employee had them arrested for loitering where they're clearly not

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engaging in that behavior

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loitering is a police tool of choice it's the go-to offense that police often use to impose

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their authority in the misdemeanor system there is no conduct to minor no act too small that the state cannot

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render a crime black people charged with a misdemeanor are 75 percent more likely to be locked

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up than white people you have to realize that these laws didn't happen by chance they were

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part of a a system to continue to oppress black bodies our misdemeanor system

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includes all kinds of offenses and some of them can be quite serious domestic violence

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dui but most of the time we treat minor harmless conduct

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as misdemeanors traffic offenses jaywalking order maintenance offenses spitting

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driving on a suspended license for failure to pay a fines and yet these minor meaningless

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misdemeanors can have terrible consequences for individuals

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[Music] to understand the misdemeanor system

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follow the money the accused are paying for the judges

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the prosecutors and three and a half million dollars off phone commissary at the jail it's a

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known money maker they call it the 20. family member transferred money

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today's system is estimated at 80 billion dollars

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the misdemeanor side of it it is a way of saddling people with fines and fees

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that will put money in the pockets of the administrators of that system the first time i got a

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ticket my insurance had lapsed so i got the speeding ticket and i got a no insurance ticket at the

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same time the next time i got pulled over i was arrested for driving with a suspended license i paid the tickets

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pay the court costs paid my fees and fines but they said we're driving with a spinner license the punishment for that is we're going

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to suspend your license for two years i would often have to choose between paying my inspection or my registration

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or paying my light bill or other bills that i had i had to drive my car to get to work

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because i had a construction job if i needed to take material to the job i couldn't take plywood or two by fours on a bus

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i felt like there was no way i was going to be able to take care of the kids on my

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own while you were out because i didn't know how long you were going to be in jail this officer saw me a young hispanic guy

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driving a 63 impala and said you know what that guy he's up to something i was trying to go to work

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trying to pay bills and he's treating me like a hardened criminal that misdemeanor charge ended up becoming something that i

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couldn't get rid of

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they are being treated as revenue sources charged daily fees for being in jail

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supervision fees tether fees drug testing fees database fees to fund bail bondsmen

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private probation companies electronic monitoring companies drug testing companies

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it is disturbingly similar to the way that we saw african-americans being exploited in the

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post-war south

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[Applause]

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i'm the mario davis uh linebacker of new orleans saints i was born and

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raised in mississippi pretty much raised by a single mom entering into my second year of college

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me and a teammate were caught shoplifting groceries from from walmart it kind of

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felt a lot more like a drug bust than uh us having stole some groceries

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the bail was set at ten thousand dollars and you know i have ten thousand dollars the football coaches bailed us out a

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misdemeanor is supposed to be able to uh be in front of the judge within 90 days but this is not happening this is

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not happening in our country we have people who are spending seven eight months in jail who

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have not even been

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[Music]

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sentenced cop arrested me and i was charged with the misdemeanor the term chain gang

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was coined on account of the shackle worn by convict laborers they said okay listen we're gonna let you go home now

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but scram's gonna come and uh put a monitor on you they were taken to an anvil where a

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rivet was pounded into the ankle cuffs to keep them closed then the cuffs were chained together the

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initial fee to get on this ground was 250 that's just to have it put on then after

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that they charged me 220 a month for the actual monitor many of the convicts suffered from shackle sores

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ulcers were the iron ground against their skin gangrene and other infections were also

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common right after they put it on me you start causing these really severe sores and rashes

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and their attitude pretty much is it's court-ordered it's by a judge and you'll wear it or you can go back to

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jail the emaciated convict laborers worked their entire days barefoot but the shackles were always on their

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ankles they mined in them slept in them and those who died of disease or beatings

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were buried in them what they're doing is unjust what they're doing is profiteering because you you're paying

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them you're their slave with their shackle on your foot

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i remember this hopeless feeling just overcome me i couldn't take care of my family the

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biggest misconception about misdemeanors is that they are minor the full consequences of getting a

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misdemeanor can be astronomical it hurt me for 10 years and it

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completely disrupted my life and i have been trying to figure out how to get my life back on track

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this will be a part of my story for the rest of my life when people

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are booked into jails for a week or a year or even a day you just

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cannot avoid the trauma that inflicts upon you the moment you hit the jail you don't

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come out of that unchanged or untouched you witness trauma you witness violence

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and it changes you it changes your community i tried to get a job at amazon where my

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roommate worked i called to walmart and i called to several other retail stores

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i got turned away because i had a misdemeanor charge for theft not enough people talk about what it

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means to have a misdemeanor on your record it can determine the kind of job that you get to the kind of housing that you

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can qualify for to the kind of schools that you can go to a lot of people

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are harmed for life because of the smallest infractions they're being rendered homeless they're

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going without food without medication their children are suffering due to misdemeanors i lost my housing

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shortly after that i lost my vehicle which led to me losing my job and it was

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just one thing after another like like kicks to the face

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i had full custody of my children they had to get to school we had to

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sleep in the car waking up at like four in the morning getting to a laundromat to make sure that they have

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clean school uniforms and work so hard and all of that was ruined by one charge

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one misdemeanor ruined my ability to get even just basic work

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they can't get a job if they have to check a box that says they've been convicted of a crime they can't even

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rent housing because they got poor credit when they received a ridiculous

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500 dollar speeding violation so this system was designed both to extract

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from people but also to marginalize their presence in society

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it's going to be a mass grave site this is the dormitory we stupid crowd

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these are the beds they're right beside each other and this is the space everybody just

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dying and getting sick and [ __ ] like this [ __ ] serious as [ __ ] bro you all right

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you want me to go get the police no what have you done this [ __ ] you ain't gonna do nothing about it

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this [ __ ] literally in this [ __ ] dying bro i don't know what to do

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one of the worst places to be during this pandemic is locked up in jail the

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same horror story is emerging of the unchecked spread of infection and inmates essentially being left to

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die now jaywalking or theft of a small amount or any sort of vagrancy type of behavior

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can lead to your incarceration and eventual contracting of the virus and death

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i've been in jail for two and a half months for a ready death a non-violent crime that carries a

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misdemeanor charge for the price value of um less than a hundred dollars there's been three deaths

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two being inmates one being a guard as far as like people who are working for the facility

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they're like intertwined they could easily be catching it that's how one of the guards caught

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it my life is in danger

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[Music] these human beings aren't valued enough

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for us to apply the same kinds of safety measures there that we are in other sectors of society

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if it wasn't already bad enough that you are booked into jail because you didn't have the money to pay

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the ticket and your license is suspended that is now life threatening to you

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sheriff's office is now releasing non-violent inmates as a next step in mitigating the spread of copenhagen

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hundreds of inmates have been released from shelby county's jail in an effort to put fewer people at risk

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for coronavirus

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19 thousands of misdemeanor defendants are rightly being released it's clear that these individuals should

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have never been incarcerated in the first place we can tell by the fact that after these

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releases we haven't seen any sort of crime wave

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there's a different type of crime wave that should concern us though and that's the crime of violence against black

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people post civil war [Music] [Applause]

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state violence has historically been used to intimidate people of color especially black people

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we see this all throughout history

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misdemeanors they have almost nothing to do with public safety

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what misdemeanors do is give police an extraordinary amount of

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discretion with any minor offense premised on the idea that the black man is a threat

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misdemeanors are a very specific mechanism that legalize violence toward black

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people and keep them in a very particular place not just as individuals but as an entire community of people

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when we look at so many cases in history often what started as an investigation or a claim of a petty misdemeanor

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offense led to police officer supported and sanctioned racial terrorism

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all too often we see police exercising that terrible authority of violence

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against people who have only been suspected of the most minor of crime

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the problem isn't bad apple cops the problem is the system is working the

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way it's supposed to

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[Music] police shot this boy outside my

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apartment they kill him

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[Music]

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pretty good

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[Music] i'm so sorry

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why gray appeared to be unable to walk and was screaming as he was carried

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feet dragging on the ground to a police van

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[Music] i know i know you just on your job

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[Music] please

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my life could have so easily been taken in that skyway

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george floyd goes to show further that the most minor offenses

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even no offense at all could result in death the very purpose of racial terrorism is

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control is social control what we have seen in the killings of

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those accused was that misdemeanors became the gateway for police violence and murder

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[Music]

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we are seeing decriminalization we are seeing citations instead of arrests we are seeing people let out of jail we are

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seeing pushback against fines and fees but at the same time there is so much more work that needs to be done

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who defined what a misdemeanor is the whole thing was built on exploitation on racial violence

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on building up industrial capitalism we should not be locking up people who speed who are too poor

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to pay a fine or a fee who loiter or trespass or jaywalk they're not dangerous they're

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not scary there's never been a good reason to lock

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up anybody for petty offenses like slavery back in the day the law

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itself is doing the work of oppression the criminal law is providing the

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authority to arrest black people to punish black people to kill black people

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and ultimately the real crime is that we're black

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[Music]

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when officers use their discretion and still choose to arrest low-level offenders instead of siding and releasing them

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they are choosing to lock a human into a cage we wouldn't even put our dogs in

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we got 123 people out of the hayes county jail yesterday

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it eliminated the penalty for being caught driving with a suspended license from another two-year suspension to a

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90-day suspension

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don't allow the outside world to corrupt you don't don't allow the

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outside world to tell you who you are

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i wanted to be a voice for those who are not able to be a voice for themselves

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[Music]

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you