Vote NO on Jail Millage

A Kent County proposal, the so-called “Corrections and Detention Millage”, is on the ballot for the 3 November election.  This will substantially increase the present millage rate for the county jail by almost $10 million dollars yearly, and would follow substantial general fund increases to the jail in the last few years.

Some effects of this would be to raise property taxes (which will also mean higher rents at a time when rents have become increasingly unaffordable), add to the damage done by the criminal justice system, feed into a repressive and anti-democratic agenda of punishment and caging of human beings, and leave less tax money for real solutions to crime such as affordable housing, guaranteed medical care, and community-based restorative/transformative justice.

The original rate of 0.84 mills, which funded a substantial new addition to the jail, was approved by voters in 1990. That was the height of the largely manufactured “crack epidemic”. John Ehrlichman, one of the several close advisors to former President Richard Nixon who was convicted as part of the Watergate conspiracy, later revealed the logic of manufacturing such a focus on drugs: 

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what i'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be against the war or Blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

By the time the millage came up for renewal in 2008 the “crack epidemic” had lost most of its steam, and police-reported crime had been generally falling for nearly ten years. But the corporate media continued to highlight crimes of those disfavored and marginalized, such that most people believed that such crime was continuing to rise. Thus, the millage renewal got approved.

A few years ago the nation’s oldest and largest public health organization, the American Public Health Association, issued a report on incarceration generally. They recommended “moving toward the abolition of carceral systems and building in their stead just and equitable structures that advance the public’s health”. Note that they used the term “abolition” rather than simply calling for a reduction in incarceration. They specifically cited housing and employment as areas of needed focus. 

Now, following some fluctuation in police-reported crime rates, those rates have again been falling in the last few years. The jail population has recently been falling as well. Yet part of the justification for even more jail millage money is the supposed “need” to renovate in order to better “treat” people who have mental health crises. Think about it: should we be helping people negotiate such crises by locking them in human cages and treating them as criminals?

We note that our country has one of the highest rates, if not the highest rate of incarceration, mental health problems, and economic inequality, and that those are all related. At the population level, more economic equality equals less incarceration, which in turn equals better mental health.

The Kent County Commission approved putting this measure on the November ballot at a specially called meeting in early August — at an early hour on election day, in fact. During the public comment period 18 people spoke regarding this measure - every single one of them against it. But as far as Republican leadership on the Commission was concerned, those people — some of whom took off work to testify — might have been talking to a wall.

After some had noted that the County had declined to support an increase in child care support due to supposed lack of sufficient information, yet were pushing this through with even less information, one of those testifying asked pointedly: “I wonder what god we are praying to that says ‘no’ to children, ‘yes’ to jails.”

As we all know, or should know, available public money is limited. If we spend more on the jail, that means less available for affordable housing needed health care, and other measures that actually help people rather than punish them, and that are known to prevent crime rather than deal with it the best we can after it occurs.

With the proposed millage increase, total jail funding would be roughly $67 million yearly, which translates to a full $200 per inmate bed night, or a little over $6000 per month. We think that is pretty expensive housing. Those of us who believe in spending taxpayer dollars judiciously believe we can do better, and we hope you who read this will agree.

Along with an increase in inequality over the years has been an increase in housing insecurity for many, not to mention outright homelessness for some. That is stressful and dehumanizing, and leads to more crime among and by those most affected. With the millage increase alone we could provide stable housing for a thousand or more people, in other words the totality of those who were actually homeless in the last “point in time” count.

Given that police-reported crime has substantially decreased in the last 25 years, and that providing stable housing for those most in need would almost certainly reduce such crime further, we should go further than that and reduce the amount of our tax dollars being used to fund the jail. But here we are simply asking our fellow friends, neighbors, voters, and those who represent us to register your strongest opposition to the proposed increase for the jail.

In grassroots discussions over the last several years, it has become more clear than ever that people who are themselves or are close to those who are most adversely affected by the criminal justice system want much less money and other resources going to that system and much more going to unmet or insufficiently met basic needs. Doing this is a much more effective way of promoting public safety according to research, not to mention what should simply be common sense.

We ask everyone to vote against this very ill-conceived waste of both human lives and taxpayer dollars. We ask our elected officials to lead this effort. If you are one of those officials who has supported it up to now, we ask you to please reconsider.

Toward a stronger community,

Grand Rapids for Affordable Housing

(The full American Public Health Association report cited in this letter may be accessed at this link: https://www.apha.org/policy-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-briefs/policy-database/2022/01/07/advancing-public-health-interventions-to-address-the-harms-of-the-carceral-system)