Go to Jail: Community College Students and the Broken Bail System

Photo by Robert Hickerson on Unsplash

In community colleges in Houston, we rarely discuss the intersection of student lives with the criminal court practices in Harris County. Yet, our students often disappear during the semester, only to return and report that they had been arrested; students have to miss class for court appearance; students who are not physically in jail might have to show up to court for roll call, a lengthy process that takes hours out of a person’s day, or report to parole officers after serving their time, even as they strive to get degrees and rebuild their lives. Why does this affect our students particularly? Because harsh and discriminatory courts in Harris County can haul a poor person in for a minor offense and, if they fail to pay bail, hold that person in pre-trial detention for months, without sight of a trial. Further, many of our students are negatively affected because a family member is enmeshed in the jail system, leaving these students additionally burdened with child care, paying new bills, and increased anxiety.

The Lone Star College System is silent not only on the realities of students involved in the Harris and Montgomery county jail systems, but the ugly realities of the bail system. The bail reform movement has been addressed recently, and the November election might change Harris County policies that especially negatively impact our community neighbors, our students, and their families.

With less than hundred days to early voting, as volunteers are frantically phone banking and block walking for their candidates, one particular group is out in front of the jail on San Jacinto Street, speaking to visitors who’ve come to see their loved ones. Visitors walk up to the jail from the road in groups of two or three, whole families, mothers with small children. A volunteer walks up with a clipboard:

“Do you want to end cash bail?”
Immediately, the visitors stop. Eyes light up in concentration.
“What’s this about? Tell me more.”

The simple option is an important question for our elections and reaffirms the American Federation of Teachers statement on criminal justice and public safety:

RESOLVED, that the AFT and its affiliates will support and encourage policies aimed at reforming monetary bail requirements that lead to the unjust imprisonment of underprivileged offenders who can’t afford payment; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT will work with all constituencies to reclaim the promise of racial equity and justice in all our communities.

Franklin Bynum, currently running for judge in Harris County Criminal Court 8, sees the issues as simple: Bynum wants to stop jailing people before trial who can’t afford to pay to get out. The rich can pay bail and get out. But the poor cannot pay bail, and they languish in jail, sometimes for months, before their trial. Bynum is calling for due process regardless of income. Harris County is especially egregious in its discriminatory court practices, holding people without trial. In 2017, a federal judge ordered the courts to let people go if they cannot hold trial immediately. Republican judges in Harris County are suing to continue the practice of jailing the poor.

Visitors to jail often have a lot to report themselves. Reporting to roll call means standing in crowded hallways for hours waiting for a trial date. Not showing up exactly on time might mean being arrested on the spot. One mother with small children reports she had posted bail for her husband, but he was hauled back in after failing to show up for roll call once. This is before facing trial. This person has not been proved guilty yet. Another visitor reports that one hallway in the women’s jail is swarming with gnats. They didn’t have water for five days, so they closed down visiting, lest people find out the conditions inside the jail. If we asked our students and gave them the power to speak on our campuses, we might hear similar stories.

A fair court means that every person should be assumed innocent before they are proven guilty in a court by a judge or a jury of peers. Bynum wants to release people pending their trial and give them a fair chance to fight their case. A twisted consequence of holding people before trial (because they cannot afford to pay bail!) is that desperate people routinely plead guilty simply to get out and get on with their lives. Public defenders encourage them to do so. Pleas are treated like a foregone conclusion, and the court becomes extremely hostile when someone refuses to enter into a plea. There is no presumption of innocence, at least for the poor. Bynum also calls for more diversion programs, like the one that District Attorney Kim Ogg has started in Harris County.

As AFT members, we should see that this approach would immediately impact our students and their families: people will no longer be forced to enter into plea bargains for minor offenses.

In a series of recent tweets, criminal defense lawyer Bynum explains the discriminatory practice of pre-trial detention, holding people behind bars for months before they ever see trial. Effectively, this makes the police officer making the arrest the de facto decision maker on whether someone is guilty or not, rather than the court and the jury.
a href="https://twitter.com/franklinbynum">

Saw a map of marijuana arrests in Harris County, with an overlay of wealth and race. So obvious what neighborhoods are targeted. And because the system is a plea system, there is no real opportunity to challenge it.

— Franklin Bynum 🌹 (@franklinbynum) May 27, 2018

— Franklin Bynum (@franklinbynum) May 27, 2018

The message for union, faculty, and administrators: make the courts fair again.
We urge the college administration to support calls for bail reform, bringing the unfairness of pretrial detention and cash bail more into public focus, so that students can talk about their own experiences on our campuses.

Hungry Students, the Union, and the College's Responsibilities

A recent article in the Texas Tribune showed nicely how the increasing cost of Texas state college tuition is affecting working-class students. For example:

A student today would have to work 62 hours a week at a minimum wage job to cover the full cost of attending a public four-year college, according to research from Trellis, a nonprofit that tracks student debt issues.

We should not be surprised with these numbers nor are we surprised that the State of Texas government continues to ignore the relationships of poverty in Texas, access to higher education, and health in our communities' families (for more data on poverty in Texas, see here). All student costs are increasing, while local household incomes are stagnant. Here, we focus on food costs for student college students:

Source: Trellis Company

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates the minimum dietary needs of an adult can be met on $267 per month provided that all food is prepared at home, an unlikely scenario for young adults. Many of our Lone Star College students, however, do not have sufficient employment for even $267 per month and many of those students actually bring their income back to their families collectively (this is another blog post, forthcoming). Many students live in areas where they cannot find jobs; other jobs struggle with transportation, course demands, jobs, and family responsibilities. In short, our students are hungry. That hunger is both a distraction, but cognitively affecting academic performance.

• 36 percent of university students were housing-insecure in the past year, as were 46 percent of community college students.
• Less than half of all students surveyed reported being completely secure, meaning they did not experience any food or housing insecurity, or homelessness, in the past year.
• Black and Native American students were more likely than non-Hispanic white or Asian students to experience food or housing insecurity.

We applaud our faculty colleagues who bring food to their offices, to the classrooms, to writing centers and other places for students to grab an apple or snack bar. Students are amazingly grateful for these gifts from faculty pockets. But colleges must realize that these students' hunger immediately and directly affect the college's success.

Houston Community College aggressively addresses hunger and we recommend the Tribune's summary and Houston Chronicle's recent attention to this too-silent discussion. We also applaud LSC-Montgomery's years of food pantry experience and LSC-North Harris's student emergency fund and emerging food pantry program. BakerRipley, partnering with East Aldine Management District and local churches, are aware of these food insecurity concerns.

But the college must be much more aware and assertive in addressing this long-term and persistent community problem.

We propose this in three prongs:

1. Each college should make their campus as centers for research of food in the communities, including food deserts, poverty, and student family access to nutritious food. 
2. Each campus should connect with current community resources for food banks.
3. Use the college's political influence to address these concerns at the legislative level, including decreasing tuition and fees. 

Readers, union members, and allies should address this with their union representatives and their Professional and Support Staff Associations and Faculty Senates. Academic departments should address this concern as part of their curriculums [sic] as community problems worthy of intellectual inquery. 

Additional Resources

Trellis Company. "State of Student Aid and  Higher Education in Texas." 2017. https://www.trelliscompany.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/SOSA.pdf  

U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels, U.S. Average, June 2016." (http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USDAFoodCost-Home.htm); 

Arizona Supreme Court Denies DACA Students In-State Tuition -- How this Threatens Texas College Students

This week, the Arizona Supreme Court decided that Arizona-resident DACA students no longer have in-state/in-district tuition status for colleges and universities. In their decision, the court agreed that DACA students have been granted "lawful status" by the federal government, but not "legal status" for state law to qualify for state resident rates. In other words, though these students live in the state, apparently the court does not see them legal but illegal. Wrap your head that one around for a while.

This decision affects over 2,000 students in Arizona and, without appeal to circuit court, these thousands of students will see immediate tuition increases or simply withdraw from college. The out-of-state rate will triple the tuition for these students, and of course, many cannot afford that tuition. For example, in-state students at Arizona State University will pay $9,834 for tuition next school year, while non-resident students pay $27,618.

This court decision is exactly why the federal DREAM Act is needed (and the Congress has no interest -- neither Republicans nor Democrats have the willpower to make this happen). The original federal DREAM Act was proposed in 2001, and nearly two decades later, the nation has failed these hundreds of thousands of young people. Because of this state's decision, thousands over another generation will not be able to afford higher education, promising more poverty in the state for another generation. We should notice that the Arizona Board of Regents Chair Bill Ridenour had been supportive of DACA students and stated:

"The board continues to hope that soon, a congressional enactment will establish the lawful status and presence of those who were brought to this country unlawfully as children and have remained here as law-abiding members of our communities," Ridenour said.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's response was merely that this was "his job," arguing that all along that colleges and universities were violating state and federal laws by granting in-state tuition to DACA recipients. “It’s about time someone held them accountable, and that’s my job. My role as AG is to make sure you’re following the law,” he said. As we argue elsewhere, this kind of response that mimics others' excuses for their own impotence endangers all justice.

The Arizona AG's response -- "That's my job" -- is parallels to Texas Attorney General Paxton, who has lead the charge to sue the federal government to cancel all DACA protection of youth: “Indeed, if the injunction is maintained through June 2018, amici States will be forced to consider filing a lawsuit challenging the original 2012 memorandum creating DACA,” said Paxton in January 2018.

Why Arizona Predicts Texas's Threats to Undocumented Students

We need to appreciate that, though the federal government has continuously failed to do what functional governments should, the State of Texas was the first state with a DREAM Act, in 2001. In 2001, a Republican-majority House of Representatives and Republican-majority Senate passed HB 1403 to qualify migrants -- including some undocumented -- as residents of Texas for purposes of tuition at the rate provided to residents of this state ... and was signed by Republican Governor Rick Perry. In 2001, the people of Texas had the moral motivation to both recognize the economic and social capital of state residents, regardless of their national document status. This Texas DREAM Act has permitted tens of thousands of students who live in the state to attend the state's colleges and universities with the economic privilege of residency. This is sensible, since undocumented families pay taxes in Texas and should have the advantage of those taxes. Specifically, the current Texas DREAM Act allows in-state tuition for students who have lived in Texas for three years and either have obtained a GED or graduated from the state's public or accredited private schools. Before this act, Texas colleges treated undocumented students as international, requiring them to pay international tuition, even though most had lived in Texas for most of their lives, paying Texas taxes.

Now, if Texas AG Paxton follows Arizona's lead to further attack our undocumented students, again tens of thousands of future college students will not afford tuition.

For example, the following table demonstrates the gross disparity of in-district tuition vs international tuition.

Credit Hours	In-District	International
1	$96	$252
2	$160	$360
3	$224	$524
4	$288	$688
5	$352	$852
6	$416	$1,016
7	$480	$1,180
8	$544	$1,344
9	$608	$1,508
10	$672	$1,672
11	$736	$1,836
12	$800	$2,000

See Lone Star College.

In future blog posts, we will address real problems of working- and poverty-class students, how their poverty affects college success, and both college support and college failures to support our community members.

For now, we need to reach out to our current legislators and start a very aggressive campaign to a) oppose the Abbott-Patrick-Paxton axis attack against our students, and b) demand stronger legislation to expand protection of our undocumented students. This is a core value of the college and -- importantly -- must be a core value for the union.