Tag: Just City Memphis

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Mark Loughney’s ‘Prison Buddies’ 

On display at Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library (Photos: Abigail Morici)

In 2012, Mark Loughney committed a crime in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, and went to prison for 10 years for it. He hurt people, he knows and regrets as he looks back, but during his time, he rediscovered his humanity and that of the men incarcerated with him through drawing their portraits by the hundreds. To see those portraits side by side, even just 20 of them, “was really overwhelming to me. And I realized that people need to see that we are people still in prison. And that even though we’re somewhat voiceless, that we can still have a bit of a voice in a way,” Loughney said in an interview with Just City’s Permanent Record podcast.

Those portraits went on to be featured in galleries across the country, including MoMA, and in publications like The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Some of the portraits are on permanent display in Just City’s office here in Memphis. 

“He uses his art to deliver the same kind of message that we are trying to deliver at Just City,” says Josh Spickler, Just City’s executive director. That message is one of accountability and one of reforming the justice system to be based in fairness. Since hearing Loughney’s story, Just City has kept in touch with the artist, who has been released and still works on justice-inspired art. 

In fact, some of his work is now on display at Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in his “Prison Buddies” exhibition. Unlike the realistic drawings that drew attention to him initially, most of these works are cartoonish portraits of those incarcerated, with a dark sense of humor. “They’re kind of like caricatures of people’s personalities,” Loughney said to Just City. “It kind of spread to people that I was in prison with, who saw them and asked me to do a version of them. And that’s how it all started. And I started to see this real value in them, that there’s such a relatability because they’re very childlike, but they hold such content that is otherwise hard to bridge with people, to talk about these issues like mass incarceration.”

“[Mark] is not alone,” Spickler adds, “in that there are people who are in prisons and they have talent and they have other people who love them. That’s the main reason why we wanted to bring his artwork here — because it helps us think more deeply about what we do as a community when one of us harms another. Mark harmed people, and he was held accountable for it. But he was able to maintain some of his humanity for his art. And we need to work really hard to make sure that that is possible way more often.”

You can listen to Spickler interview Loughney on the Permanent Record wherever you get your podcasts. Check out episodes 45 and 58. 

“Prison Buddies,” Goodwyn Gallery at Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar, on display through June 30. 

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Clean Slate

America loves a comeback story, except when it’s ex-offenders seeking redemption after they’ve served their time. For these men and women, a criminal record often stands between them and a job, an apartment, or a loan. Although they’re no longer behind bars, they’re not free.

But last week, a new nonprofit organization committed to criminal justice reform brought emancipation to a few people.

In one of its first official actions, Just City wrote six $450 checks to cover the expungement fee for six people who’d completed the process to have their records wiped clean.

The Clean Slate Fund covered the cost through a grant from the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center and the Memphis Bar Association.

“One of Just City’s core values is that you should not be defined by the worst thing you’ve done,” Kerry Hayes, one of the organization’s co-founders, said.

Of the six Clean Slate Fund recipients, three were first-time offenders convicted of theft of property under $500, said Josh Spickler, director of the Defender’s Resource Network for the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office.

After they served jail time and paid monthly probation fees and court costs that may have totaled more than $1,000, another hurdle awaited: an expungement fee that rivals the amount of property that they’d taken.

“These are shoplifting cases, and then they’re stuck, because $450 is rent,” Spickler said.

Helping ex-offenders reintegrate into society isn’t a conservative solution or a liberal solution, Hayes said. It’s just common sense.

“This is an investment we’re making in the lives of people who want to work, who do want to contribute to society, but for $450, they would probably be unable to do that,” Hayes said.

I wasn’t able to talk to any of the people who had their records cleared. It defeats the purpose of getting a fresh start if your name or identifying characteristics show up in the paper, Hayes said.

The motivations of some who want their records expunged were sometimes more psychological than practical, Spickler said. “I was just really surprised about how many people have wanted it for peace of mind,” he said. “They feel like they’re marked. And what we see and know about people who have been in contact with the criminal justice system is they are marked.”

In 2012, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) issued a report denouncing the “vast, half-hidden network” of collateral consequences that create a second-class status for the 65 million Americans who have a criminal record.

In Tennessee, a felony conviction means you can’t vote. You can’t work as a home inspector or reflexologist. You can’t be a security guard at the mall. You can’t even sell fireworks.

In 2012, the state legislature amended the expungement law, but it’s still so narrowly tailored that few ex-offenders qualify. Of the 10 recommendations issued by NACDL, number nine is exactly what Just City and the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office has done.

“Defense lawyers,” the NACDL wrote, “should consider avoiding, mitigating, and relieving collateral consequences to be an integral part of their representation of a client.”

The city of Memphis adopted a “ban the box” ordinance in 2010, but Shelby County and most private employers still ask job applicants about their criminal record.

“Some of these people are 20 years out of this mistake, and we still force them to answer this question this way,” Spickler said.

In late July, Just City held its inaugural event to introduce the organization to Memphis — and to ask the question: What is a just city?

“We titled it that so we would not give you an answer,” Hayes told the audience at Hattiloo Theatre. “What we want is for you to start asking the question with us … because when you start to ask the question, everything around you will change.

“If we believe that expectations create reality, which we do, it starts with having a different set of expectations for ourselves and our city. If justice is going to mean anything to any one of us, it’s got to mean absolutely everything to every one of us.”

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Prison Reform Task Force Prepares Recommendations

The Governor’s Task Force on Sentencing and Recidivism has been working for a year to make the state’s prison system more effective, and they may be making their first recommendations as soon as next month.

The task force was formed last year with the help of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Vera Institute of Justice out of New York. The task force’s 27 members were appointed by Governor Bill Haslam to reform the prison sentencing structure in Tennessee.

The group is focused on sentencing structure, sentencing classifications and enhancements, programming and treatment, and community supervision.

Among the 27 are seven from the Memphis metro area: John Campbell, criminal court judge; Rep. John DeBerry (D-Memphis); Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown); Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell; Shelby County Sheriff Bill Oldham; Blair Taylor, president of Memphis Tomorrow; and Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich.

Luttrell, who requested to be considered for the task force, said he believed he could use his previous experience in law enforcement and corrections.

“It’s a comprehensive look at sentencing reform and trying to keep people from returning to prison,” he said.

According to a Vera Institute of Justice report released in June, the prison population is expected to rise by four percent over the next five years, pushing the state’s prison population over maximum capacity.

“It’s not the intent of this task force to increase the [prison] population,” Luttrell said. “If you look at the multitude of recommendations that we’ve been making, we talk about some areas where it doesn’t have sentencing, but then it also talks about a number of areas where we are looking at reducing prison time, more effective ways to deal with behavior, more community-based programs, and establishing commissions and councils that will sustain this initiative going forward.”

At the August 6th meeting of the task force, Luttrell said he hopes they will complete the first draft of recommendations to be sent the governor.

“Certainly, there are instances where we need to enhance sentencing, but there are also areas that we need to ensure that the sentencing accurately reflects the severity of the offense, which would be a reduced sentence in some cases,” Luttrell said.

Kerry Hayes, an adviser to Just City Memphis (a criminal justice reform organization), said the task force may be biased: “The people from Shelby County [on the task force], by-and-large, are fantastic people. On the whole, the entire task force statewide is overwhelmingly oriented around law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges, which means there’s a whole half to the criminal justice system that’s hardly being represented at all, in particular, the public defenders.”

“Any time you have a massive statewide committee like this that is so completely biased in terms of one viewpoint that’s dealing with stuff this sensitive, you run the risk of having recommendations coming out that are tilted, which is what looks like is happening,” Hayes said.

Hayes said there are some task force-recommended reforms that may spell out progress for the criminal justice system, including recommendations to change the threshold for the felony property crime charge to $1,000 from $500. The Vera Institute’s analysis of the task force’s recommendations found causes for concern, including requiring that repeat drug trafficking and aggravated burglary offenders serve 85 percent of their sentences.

“They’re changing some parole policies that we think might increase the population of incarcerated individuals in Tennessee,” Hayes said. “That is really troubling, because that has ripple effects all throughout the rest of the criminal justice system, all the way down to the taxpayer. Suddenly, budgets are increasing, because prisons are increasing in size, and [private prison] companies like [Corrections Corporation of America] are increasing their contracts with governments. The whole criminal justice apparatus becomes more expensive and harder to unwind.”