JAY-Z’s Kalief Browder docuseries was only just a stepping stone in the path to eradicate mass incarceration tactics championed in the United States.
TechCrunch is reporting that along with Roc Nation, 8VC, Kapor Capital and Y Combinator, a de-carceration startup by the name of Promise has been born. The mission of the movement is to simply prevent low-risk individuals from overcrowding jail due to lack of disposable bail money.
“We are increasingly alarmed by the injustice in our criminal justice system,” Shawn Carter said in a statement. “Money, time and lives are wasted with the current policies. It’s time for an innovative and progressive technology that offers sustainable solutions to tough problems. Promise’s team, led by co-founder and CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, is building an app that can help provide ‘liberty and justice for all’ to millions.”
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Ellis-Lamkins chimed on to the statement, telling TechCrunch, “People are going to jail because they look at a piece of paper and misread it, or are going to jail because they can’t afford a class because they’re instead paying child support. If we’re putting people in jail because they’re poor, brown or black, we’re spending money the wrong way.”
Research by the Vera Institute of Justice estimates that 62 percent of people in jail are awaiting their day in court for predominately nonviolent offenses and are simply being held because they can’t afford their bail.
Why should America care? It reportedly costs an estimated $22.2 billion a year to keep those aforementioned individuals detained.
More information can be found at www.joinpromise.com.
Trent, please do even an inkling of due dilligence research like journalists should. Promise is technology and services that Counties can contract with to support their pre-trial and probation departments. instead of having social workers, case managers and probation officers monitoring if folks are attending their meetings and gathering documents, Promise allows folks to do that at a fraction of the cost through smart phone tech. San Francisco County is starting a pilot program using Promise and San Diego is in the process of contracting with Promise.
That’s pretty cool so long as it doesn’t turn into another loan sharking scheme