Review: What if we ended the injustice of bail?
Speaker: Robin Steinberg
TED2018
Date: April 2018
Location: Vancouver, BC
Description from TED website:
On any given night, more than 450,000 people in the United States are locked up in jail simply because they don’t have enough money to pay bail. The sums in question are often around $500: easy for some to pay, impossible for others. This has real human consequences — people lose jobs, homes, and lives, and it drives racial disparities in the legal system. Robin Steinberg has a bold idea to change this. In this powerful talk, she outlines the plan for The Bail Project — an unprecedented national revolving bail fund to fight mass incarceration. (This ambitious idea is part of the Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.)
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My Review / Notes / Thoughts
This is an amazing talk from someone who has worked inside the legal system for years. She and her husband started a fund to help bail people out of jail… to help people keep their jobs, homes, and families.
I believe that this would be an excellent talk to include in courses on Criminal Justice, Social Justice, Public Administration, and Political Studies to name a few. It would probably also work well in the Social Work studies realm.
Instructors could leverage this talk as a primer, then have students research the project she mentions or other similar projects and talk about the statistics she goes into, as well as advancements since this talk was released. They could compare it with other efforts in the US or around the globe. The students could write papers, post on discussion boards, or perhaps even have live “debates” on the topic (one side for the topic, the other against).
What do you think? How can you see leveraging this material in your courses?
Until next time … live long, life-learner!
