In Mississippi, 27,000 people are incarcerated and legislation now in Congress might let them cast their ballots from behind bars.
The nonprofit Common Cause helped to create the National Voting in Prison Coalition.
Keshia Morris Desir, justice and mass incarceration project manager for the group, explained the bill, known as the Inclusive Democracy Act, would restore the right to vote in federal elections for individuals who are incarcerated or on probation and parole.
"What that does is help to disenfranchise the 4.6 million individuals that currently do not have access to the ballot box in federal elections," Morris Desir explained.
Under current state law, Mississippians' right to vote is permanently revoked if they're convicted of one of 23 serious crimes outlined in the law. During periods of incarceration, probation or parole, people also are ineligible to vote in the state. Voting rights can only be restored through action by the governor, or passage of a bill in the Legislature.
Morris Desir noted Maine and Vermont allow people who are incarcerated to vote, as does Washington, D.C. She added a national poll reveals widespread support for maintaining people's voting rights.
"More than 50% of people across the United States support voting for currently incarcerated folks," Morris Desir pointed out. "People across the country know that, you know, just because you made a mistake in your past and you have a criminal conviction does not exclude you from citizenship and your right to vote."
She added the bill would allow voting access only for federal offices -- like president and members of Congress -- but it would not affect state elections unless a state already allows it. Those with restricted voting rights in the state would not have their ballots counted in local elections.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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By Marilyn Odendahl for The Indiana Citizen.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Citizen-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.
One Indiana lawmaker is expecting the Indiana General Assembly to step back this coming session from continually approving requests for more trial court judges and, instead, start shifting judicial resources from slower courts to busier courts.
Rep. Chris Jeter, R-Fishers, said he anticipates legislators will insert language into the biennial budget that will mandate that the Statehouse take a look at the Indiana court system as a whole when considering bills for new judges and magistrate judges. The new language, he said, will probably require a judgeship to be closed somewhere in the state, before a new judgeship is opened.
“I do think that we have gotten in the habit of adding,” Jeter said. “All we’ve done over the last decade is add judges, add judges, but nobody’s ever looked to see are there some counties that maybe we should take them away from?”
The Fishers Republican, who chaired the Interim Study Committee on the Courts and the Judiciary, and will chair the House Judiciary Committee, said the data provided in the Indiana Trial Courts Weighted Caseload Report supports reallocation of existing resources.
According to the 2023 weighted caseload report, the most recent analysis available, Indiana has enough trial court judges, overall, to handle the demands of the docket, but the problem seems to be the distribution of those judicial resources. Identifying a utilization rate of 1.0 as indicating a county has enough judicial officers to meet its needs, the 2023 report calculated Indiana’s utilization rate at 0.98. However, a closer look at the individual counties shows utilization rate swings between Hamilton County’s 1.34 – the most severe in the state – and Union County’s 0.35 – the lowest in the state.
Jeter said he does not believe judges in the state are “sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing” and he realizes that judges in some rural counties are presiding over a wide range of cases from criminal and family to probate and commercial. Yet, he said the legislature has to look at the data.
“I think that what we’ve decided is we don’t need to create any more new judges,” Jeter said. “We have the right number of judges in the state. We just need to get them in the areas that are growing or get them in the areas where the population is.”
Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, D-Fishers, who served on the interim study committee and will be the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, pointed out in a statement to The Indiana Citizen that the members of the interim committee did recommend that judgeships from less busy county trial courts be moved to counties with busier trial courts. However, she noted the General Assembly might need to do more to address the issue.
“It’s critical that we make sure we are maximizing the working time of judges and relieve the burden on high-need counties like Hamilton County,” Garcia Wilburn said in her statement. “At the same time, we need to consider that reallocation may not be a long-term solution and start to explore other thoughtful solutions.”
Cannot continue adding judges
Along with recommending reallocation, the interim study committee advised the legislature to provide additional judges and magistrate judges to Elkhart, Hamilton, Lawrence and Vigo county courts. They rejected a request from Spencer County for a magistrate judge, because that court had a low weighted caseload utilization rate of 0.64.
Hamilton County requested two new Superior Courts, two new judges and two new magistrate judges. Jeter said he plans to carry the bill that would give Hamilton County the additional judicial resources it wants.
Any judgeship approved by the legislature in the 2025 session will probably not be new, Jeter said, but, rather, be created by closing a judgeship in another county. The reallocation will be done in a “fair and humane manner,” he said, by allowing judges in positions or courts targeted for elimination to finish their elected terms before being removed. Consequently, the state’s overall utilization rate could increase because of that lag, but the rate will self-correct as sitting judges in the less busy counties end their tenures on the bench and the judgeships are closed, he said.
The cost of each new judgeship approved by the legislature is covered by taxpayers. A fiscal analysis by the Legislative Services Agency estimated the yearly salary and benefits for a judge and a magistrate judge in 2024 totaled $230,961 and $187,759, respectively.
Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush served on the interim study committee and, according to a spokeswoman, will work with lawmakers on a possible reallocation of trial court judges. However, Kathryn Dolan, Indiana Supreme Court chief public information officer, said Rush does not support reducing the number of judges statewide.
“Chief Justice Rush is supportive of working with the legislature on the best way to allocate judges to meet judicial needs throughout the state,” Dolan said. “A weighted caseload study has been conducted and it shows that Indiana has about the right number of judges, but not necessarily in the right location. Population shifts and caseload changes affect the need for judicial officers in specific areas of the state.”
Although some counties may lose judges and courts through reallocation, Jeter does not anticipate lawmakers will fight hard against it. He acknowledged some legislators might need some convincing, but the idea of shifting judicial resources to the high-need counties has been “floating out there” for some time.
“I think there has been an acknowledgement from both chambers that this is a change we need to make,” Jeter said. “It’s not going to be easy, but I think everybody acknowledges that we need to take the tough medicine and we need to start looking harder and not just keep adding, adding, adding, adding, adding.”
Marilyn Odendahl wrote this article for The Indiana Citizen.
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In Jackson, where violent crime rates have historically been high, a local organization called Operation Good is taking a proactive, community-driven approach to reducing violence without relying solely on law enforcement.
Frederick Womack, executive director of Operation Good, better known as Gino, focuses on violence intervention, mediation and mentoring to address the root causes of crime in Mississippi's capital city. In one recent case where homicide was involved, Womack intervened in a potential retaliation killing.
"Constantly killing someone for revenge is a never-ending cycle," Womack pointed out. "After we talk to the people involved and the person involved in the homicide, I think they ended up turning themself in. So that pretty much stopped retaliation killing in Jackson."
Womack noted violent crime in Jackson has dropped 38% based on early December data and reported a steady decline year over year since Operation Good began its community interventions. Unlike traditional policing, which he described as largely reactionary, Operation Good focuses on preventing crime by mediating disputes before they escalate.
Operation Good believes communities can best police themselves. While the Jackson Police Department did not respond to a request for comment, Womack stressed their relationship has improved, especially with his precinct commander, who understands the value of a different approach.
"Traditional law enforcement approaches are not the best approaches to causing a reduction in violence," Womack contended. "So with it, there's been success with our relationship."
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Black people are more than three times as likely as white people to experience use of force during law enforcement encounters, a pattern Womack said he sees regularly.
"The white population in our community commit probably 90% of all crime but they never get targeted as the person for the crime because they're white," Womack asserted. "They could be drug addicts, dope fiends, even in those conditions, police still don't mess with them, but they will kick in a Black woman's door."
Womack believes empowering communities to take charge of their own safety can reduce racial bias, as residents hold individuals accountable based on actions, not race. As more communities explore alternatives to traditional policing, Operation Good's model offers a blueprint for reducing violence and fostering safer neighborhoods without increasing police presence.
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If you have any unpaid traffic or parking tickets, the latest report on Wisconsin's municipal courts said in some areas, you could go to jail if you do not pay them, and the risk is higher for people of color.
The report from the ACLU of Wisconsin showed most municipal courts across the state do not issue jail sentences or fines, known as "carceral sanctions," but some still do.
Emma Shakeshaft, senior staff attorney and researcher for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said it seems the burden falls harder on under-resourced residents.
"The detrimental effect of these forfeitures in general, and especially warrants and commitments, fall disproportionately on communities without resources -- financial resources -- and people of color," Shakeshaft reported.
Of the more than 200 municipal courts in Wisconsin, the report showed about 52 still impose jail time and fines. While the report does not include a statistical analysis of racial disparities, Shakeshaft pointed out that court-provided data show about 70% of warrants and about 50% of commitments issued in Milwaukee between January 2023 and August 2024 were for defendants who are Black.
If you find yourself in a municipal court and cannot afford to pay your tickets, Shakeshaft noted you have the right to request what is known as a poverty hearing, to request payment alternatives. But the report found instead, most of the courts still using carceral sanctions implement aggressive tactics like jailing people for unpaid tickets to increase enforcement and funding.
Shakeshaft added some people have multiple unpaid tickets for city ordinance violations, from traffic or parking tickets to disorderly conduct and issues with vehicle registrations.
"Paying that off can be an incredibly difficult task," Shakeshaft emphasized. "For people who can't afford it, they're just continuously kept in the legal system."
Shakeshift stressed while the infractions are not criminal offenses, the outcome for some people is the same in courts issuing carceral sanctions. The ACLU of Wisconsin is asking all municipal courts across the state to end the practices and implement what it called a more rational and equitable approach to addressing debts.
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