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Description

Host Jay Ellis has dealt with shoplifters first-hand, back when he was a teenaged retail manager at a high-end shoe store. But he never learned about the other side of the story – what motivates people to shoplift and what happens to them if they’re caught. In this episode, Jay learns that people can become convicted felons for stealing as little as $200 in value in some states, because of Felony Theft Thresholds written into state law. Jay hears from people who have first-hand, personal experience dealing with the fallout of felony theft convictions. He also speaks to experts who unpack why these policies aren’t helping anyone. Listeners can learn more about felony theft policies in their own states, and find out what they can do to help increase felony theft thresholds at raisethethreshold.org.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Miriam Krinsky, Jay Ellis, Kim Foxx, Jake Horowitz, DeRay Mckesson, Katie Ryan, Raymond Richard, Tiara

Jay Ellis  00:02

Yeah, a lot of people don’t know this. But before I was famous actor Jay Ellis, I was retail manager Jay Ellis. You know, when I was 15 and a half years old, I decided that I wanted stuff. So I busted my butt at Athlete’s Foot, Smoothie King, Old Navy, I moved around. And eventually, I worked my way up to being a manager at Steve Madden. And it was there, turn into all those expensive shoes that I learned in the retail world. Shoplifting is no joke. Most of the time, spotting someone was pretty obvious, right? Like when someone would walk out of the fitting room and suddenly be a little larger in the stomach than when they went in? Yeah, like what I can’t see that immediately? But you know, I didn’t take it personally, right? I knew that Mr. Steve Madden was getting a big check at the end of the day, whether someone ran off with a pair of shoes or not. So I wasn’t going to try and stop them. And I wasn’t exactly going to hold the door open for me too, we got a runner. Now once those people got caught, we usually get our stuff back. And as far as I was concerned, that’s it. I’d go back to ringing someone up and play in store manager. But what I didn’t understand at the time was even just the attempt to take that pair of shoes could absolutely ruin that person’s life.

Jay Ellis  02:55

This is the Untold Story, Criminal Injustice. I’m Jay Ellis. That’s right, we’re back was good. It’s been a while. Let’s see pandemic check, it’s still going on. Insecure had an amazing season. And this show, we won a Webby. And if you’re one of the voters out there, yo, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart and all of the folks who work on the show, we are really glad to know that we’re doing it right, because this season, we got a lot of wrong to tell you about/ Last season was all about policing, some of the policies that put up roadblocks to prevent real reform. And if you only just found us now, and you haven’t heard season one, well, you got to run that back. You should check it out right now because you were in for a treat. There’s this whole other side to this big justice puzzle, right? We can change how the police are held accountable, the procedures, the culture, but once you’re tangled up in the criminal justice system, there’s a million things that can and do change your life and not in a good way. This year. Throughout the year. We’re getting to just that with even more untold stories. Let’s get started. So back to the boring jobs I worked while I was a kid. I pictured this little Jay locking up for the night. Alright boxes on the shelf, the floor is swept, security gate rolls down with a funk, and I’m out of there. I’m going home. But all the while across town.

Raymond Richard  04:32

I don’t have nothing but my bed and a few […] I get from Catholic charity. So this is how I’m living on a day-to-day basis.

Jay Ellis

Raymond Richard has worked very hard and been through a whole lot to become the author, activist and the speaker that he is today. But back in the early 2000s, he had a very different reputation and a nickname that came with it. Petty Eddie.

Raymond Richard 

So Petty Eddie, was a petty thief He didn’t do much just a little bit here near to supply my habit, my addiction, right? That takes filling in and out of the retail stores, body washes, deodorants, small things, nothing major. 2006 I was strung out on drugs, I was homeless, I ain’t got no employment, no housing, I have nothing. So I’m in survival mode, you know. So all hope was going out there strong guy. So I would go in retail stores and CVS, the Walgreens and local pharmacies, and just steal whatever I can get my hands on. It came to a point to where as my addiction grew and grew and grew. So the more strung out I began, the more in demand my habit would be. So my tolerance level would get higher. So that means I would have to go steal more than two body washes, I’ll have to go steal five or six body washes, maybe 10 things of deodorant, and maybe six things of body oil from J&J things of that nature, right? So, on a day-to-day basis, I might go in the store, I might steal maybe two or $300 worth of stuff.

Jay Ellis  06:11

Raymond was living on lower Wacker Drive in Chicago, which is sort of an underground city within a city for a lot of people who really have nowhere else to go. And he wasn’t alone. The people there became a second family to him, and there were outreach programs and shelters. But it wasn’t enough.

Raymond Richard 

The rehabs we felt it was unsafe, meaning in rehab, we still get high. And then the shelters people were getting raped and robbed and beat up. So we felt safe outside. So that’s why we stayed outside.

Jay Ellis 

Now, Raymond is quick dimension that the whole time he was running out of CVS with body washes and deodorants. He knew what he was doing wrong.

Raymond Richard 

People, let me share this with you guys. Nobody wakes up to say be a killer, a robber, a  murderer, a sex offender, none of that. This is a learned behavior over time. You don’t just grow up. That’s what I’m stealing. I’m saying, man, it’s got to be a better way. It’s got to be a better way. But right now I got to do what I got to do. Because I need to get high. I’m just thinking about these things. But I’m saying in my back of my mind, I always knew that God has some for me, but I didn’t know what and because I was afraid because I was stuck in this lifestyle. You know, they say the drugs don’t kill you the lifestyle will, and the drugs and the lifestyle was killing me slowly. And I didn’t understand that.

Jay Ellis 

So for years, Raymond kept doing what he knew to do. And sometimes he get caught. And sometimes he would. Sometimes he’d served prison time. But what he didn’t know until much, much later in his life, was that every time he was racking up $200-$300 worth of stuff, he was crossing a very important legal line.

Jake Horowitz 

So when people steal stuff, if they steal a small amount of things, it’s punished with later punishments called misdemeanors, when they steal more, it’s punished with more substantial sanctions known as felonies. If you get convicted of a misdemeanor, you can’t be sentenced to more than a year in jail, you tend to get lesser probation sentences or smaller fines. If you get convicted of a felony, you can do prison time, you have the collateral consequences that go along with a felony record like housing, employment and the dividing line between these two types of punishments is called the felony theft threshold.

Jay Ellis  08:30

Jake Horowitz is a researcher at the Pew Charitable Trust, and he’s done some important work on this felony theft threshold line that Raymond was regularly crossing. I got into it with him. But before I tell you about that, quick question, what do you think the dollar amount is that opens you up to the long-lasting world of hurt that comes from a felony conviction? Think about it for a second timer starts now. Like 5000, maybe 10,000? Well, it turns out..

Jake Horowitz 

It depends on what state you’re in in $200 jeans in New Jersey is a felony. So yeah, you’re exposed to felony penalties. $200 in your home state of South Carolina is not So you’re not supposed to a felony states off to establish these. And of course, that leads to massive variation across the states. You’ve got states like New Jersey, which set their level at $200 back in the 80s. You have Texas that more than 10 times that amount $2,500 to differentiate the misdemeanor and felony theft.

Jay Ellis 

Okay, if you’re anything like me, your guess was a way off. Many states like Florida or Illinois, for example, have thresholds so low, they end up scooping up a lot of people who aren’t exactly Bonnie and Clyde and sending them to prison again and again. Now, back when Raymond was getting into all this trouble, the threshold for felony theft in Illinois where he lived was just $150. $150 worth of bodywash equals to a felony. And if you’re thinking, well, okay, but don’t steal stuff and you won’t be a felon. Well, yeah, sure stealing is a crime. But not all crimes are equally bad. And since felony conviction can come with significant jail time, and because they follow people around hobbling them for the rest of their lives, we need to think carefully about which crimes rise to that level. I mean, it’s still in $150, or $200 really bad enough to deserve a felony conviction, all that life changing stigma that comes with it. Or maybe we can still call the crime what it is, but we just say it’s a misdemeanor. There’s still consequences, but the consequences come to an end. Now for Raymond, racking up felony thefts, for stealing deodorant, things didn’t look so good on the consequences coming to an end front, he was stuck in a bad cycle.

Raymond Richard  10:52

You don’t want people grabbing you. You don’t want people chasing you up and down the street. You don’t want the police looking for you know, you don’t want that but when you in this life style, you got to do what you got to do.

Jay Ellis 

Until finally, one day, something snapped. He had been arrested again and found himself standing in front of a judge who, in all likelihood had about a million of the defendants to get through that day.

Raymond Richard 

So when I go in front of Judge Sullivan, the state we recommend he’s […] Mr. Richard is […] is all over, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we’re looking at 4 to 15 years. And I was like, whoa, damn. They were saying that […] can I speak? And she let me speak. And I said, your Honor, I need help. The penitentiary will not help me.

Jay Ellis 

The penitentiary would not help him. And it will not help the store owners and the retail managers either because felony convictions for low value thefts don’t in crime. Okay, I’m gonna walk you through it. Low felony thresholds assume that the threat of harsh consequences will deter theft. The idea is that potential criminals will pause, take a beat and be thoughtful. Well, you know what, I bet and I do the crime if I can’t do the time, Before, they go through with their […] plans. But reality doesn’t back this up. And that’s what Jake Horowitz found when he actually pulled the data.

Jake Horowitz  12:23

We looked at 30 states that raised their thresholds between 2012. And we found that the downward trends in property crime and larceny rates that began before the policy change, continued without interruption after they changed the policy. So it didn’t affect property crime in those States.

Jay Ellis 

So that’s to say that like in the state of Colorado, let’s just say the number got raised from 200 to 1000, folks in Colorado, or like, Hey, let’s go hit these stores. Like they weren’t running out to go grab stuff out of stores, because the number went up, like the trend stayed as or even kept going down.

Jake Horowitz 

Exactly, it was as if nothing happened. And then we even compare those 30 states to the 20 states that didn’t raise their felony theft thresholds during that period. And there was no difference in the crime trends between those states. That was back in 2017. And you know, you put information out there, you put research out there, and the different people, the stakeholders who really pay attention, this stuff, they say, oh, okay, that’s interesting, didn’t cause a crime with. But you know what I bet it did, I bet maybe the same number of thefts, but people probably stole more expensive things, or more of them, right?

Jay Ellis 

We’re leaving Old Navy, and we’re going to Gucci.

Jake Horowitz 

Exactly, exactly. So we’re like, well, this is a question or a theory that research contest, right, so we pulled a ton of data from law enforcement in South Carolina, and we found that it didn’t change, it remained about $200 on average, regardless of what the felony theft threshold was.

Jay Ellis 

So, the threat of felony convictions does not deter theft. In fact, close to the opposite is true. felony convictions often end up pushing people into lives of crime. We’ll hear more about how after the break. Did you hear that? There’s an elephant in the room. There have been a lot of stories recently about theft being on the rise in some areas of the country. And maybe you’ve heard some of these stories. And maybe they’ve left you with the idea that maybe now’s not the time to go soft on thieves. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to ease up on the law during a crime spree. Right? But if you have heard these stories, you should also hear that they just aren’t true. According to data from a source, no less reliable than the FBI theft is actually decreasing significantly, in 2019, which is the most recent data available, thefts we’re down to full 18%, over the previous decade. You know what has been on the rise since 2010, though? Cellphones, videos, cell phone videos, yeah, there are now way more images of people stealing than ever before. And that creates the illusion of more theft, that retail trade industry groups can then go and use the term public opinion and lobby for whatever they think is in their interest. But let’s just say for a second, that we’re not in the mood to ease up on consequences for criminals. But what if I told you that just sitting back, not touching the law at all, doesn’t keep consequences the same. In this case, doing nothing makes the law harsher and harsher each and every year. Like some kind of slow tightening medieval torture device.

Jake Horowitz  18:00

And the problem with this is that dollars become less valuable over time. So if you always say $1 doesn’t buy what it used to. And that’s absolutely true. So $500 back in the 1980s is worth a whole lot more than $500 today. And so the end result, is that when states leave these laws untouched, which they often do for years and even decades, we end up applying felony punishments to crimes of lesser and lesser significance. It’s like a law that gets more punitive without changing.

Jay Ellis 

Can we talk about the potential policy problems that this creates?

Jake Horowitz 

Yeah, so just to put this in big context, right, I think like a lot of people, maybe not everyone now knows that the US has the highest imprisonment rate. We also have one of the highest correctional control rates of any country in the world, by which we mean probation, parole and prison and jail and all the other forms of correctional control. The reason we have so much correctional control in this country is because of policy choices. It’s not underlying crime rates or socio demographic trends or things like that. It’s that for the most part, we passed laws that increased the punitiveness, our punitive response to crime. And a lot of these are well known, right, the mandatory minimums, three strikes, the curtailing of parole, but the felony theft threshold, the thing we’re talking about right now, it’s less attention grabbing, but it’s in a way more insidious, because it is, again, this policy that gets more punitive when public sector officials don’t take action, right? So it just sits on the books and no one pays attention to it. And then all of a sudden, 10 or 15 or 20 years go by, and you’re basically handing out felonies for conduct half as serious as you would have back when you wrote the law. That’s irrational. You know, you would never write your salary into statute and say, I can only make $50,000 for the next 30 years. You would never write a statute that says retailers can’t charge more than a couple bucks for a gallon of milk? But yet we write a law that says if you steal this money amount, this dollar number, it’s going to be a felony regardless of what happens in the next 20 years.

Jake Horowitz  18:37

So we don’t do anything about it. And with each passing year, it becomes easier and easier to crash right through that felony theft threshold without even knowing it. And this matters because felonies have the power to destroy lives. And remember earlier, when I promised we’d get around to talking about how felony convictions can actually push people into committing crimes, they wouldn’t otherwise commit. […] learn that the hard way, she was practically still a kid when she found herself in a horrible situation.

Speaker 4 

I was 20 years old at the time, so I had never been arrested. I had never been to jail. I had worked, went to school had my children, but I wasn’t familiar with the criminal justice system.

Tiara 

After an ugly domestic fight with our boyfriend, […] had some frightening and crazy inflated criminal charges hanging over her head.

Speaker 4 

Initially they were trying to charge me with attempted murder.

Jay Ellis 

Naively and without adequate representations, […] pled to a lesser charge, aggravated domestic battery, it sounds better, and it let her avoid jail time.

Tiara 

I didn’t realize that in taking a plea deal, that I will be a convicted felon.

Jay Ellis 

Tara thinks she’s done what she’s had to do to put the antonym behind her move on with her life and focus on taking care of her kids.

Tiara 

I didn’t know I was a convicted felon until I went to an interview. She was like you have a felony on your background, aggravated domestic battery, and we can’t hire violent criminals. And I was like, huh?

Jay Ellis 

Those words, convicted felon, they carry a lot of baggage in our society. And that wasn’t the only job that’s here a loss because those words were permanently attached to her name.

Tiara 

Nobody is willing to hire me. So I had to get creative in my think. And I had to work on the different social security numbers, I had to shoplift, to pay for things that I needed for me and my children because I cannot seek employment. And if I did get employment, it was lower paying jobs that I had to take. So they wouldn’t run a background check, which ultimately led to shoplift. And I can go to Macy’s, I can go to JC Penney’s, I can go to Walmart, and get items that I can sell and get money to provide for food.

Jay Ellis  22:23

So many doors were closed at Tiara, so many options off the table because of that initial felony conviction on her record. But she still had basic needs.

Tiara 

You’re in survival mode, because it’s not like this is something I wanted to do, or really would there’s not a career path that I was like, you know what, in secondary, you’re not thinking about being a shoplifter or like a kleptomaniac is what they call it like, no, I had other plans for my future. I remember I was shoplifting at Walmart. It was around school time and my daughter, she needed uniforms, and I didn’t have any money. And I went to Walmart, and I tried to get them. And when I got to the door, the loss prevention, he stopped me and said, I need those clothes back. And we got into a tussle. And I just do the clothes down on the ground. But by that time, they had already called police. And they were like, that’s her right there.

Jay Ellis 

Tiara says having a felony conviction on her record pushed her into the dire situation where she had to shoplift in order to survive. But it also changed her attitude about herself. And about crossing that felony theft threshold.

Tiara 

It didn’t really bother me because I’m already stuck with one felony that is not […]. So like me personally, I didn’t care. I was working, I had a really good job making really good money had my own place. I was doing great. And that was the way I wanted to keep it. But it was like, this is what y’all stuck me with. This is what you made my reality into. And you know, had I not had to take a plea deal. And I could have just went home and it’s like, there’s no way I could be a judge and just sit there and ruin someone’s life. Because that really growing my life. I would literally cry a lot. I was very depressed. It was just really rough. Because I’m like, this is not high vision, my life. This is not what I want to do. And I felt like I didn’t do anything wrong. I just tried to stay alive and even talking about it sometimes, be emotional and it took I want to say 15 years for me to ever really share my story with anybody. And I’ve never had intentions on breaking the law. I was like, this is not what I’m supposed to be doing. This should not be my life. Like sometimes I just be like a whale, can play it off. But it’s like a very hard thing you know that I did nothing wrong and I had to live like a criminal for 17 years.

Jay Ellis 

In the end, both Raymond and Tiara were able to find ways to turn their lives around, for Raymond, that judge he begged for help.

Raymond Richard 

And I said, your Honor, I need help. The penitentiary will not help me.

Jay Ellis 

The judge listened. She let him serve his time at a minimum-security prison where he was able to get legal help for his criminal record. After that, he was able to get back on track. Now, he’s an activist, a writer, and a public speaker working on criminal justice issues. As for Tiara..

Tiara 

Now, I was like, okay, Jesus, I’m not gonna use no more fake social security numbers, I’m not gonna do no more stealing, like that is done. I’m gonna go to school, get a decent paying job. And I’m gonna pay for everything. And that was my plan when I came to Vegas in 2016. And I did, I graduated from school. And I went to this interview. And this lady, she was I really liked you. She was like, I want to hire you. And I will send you the link to complete the paperwork and the background check. And when she said that, […] stop. So I explained, and I share my story. I just basically told her. And it was so funny, because when I shared, she got up out of the chair, and she walked out of the room. And I was like, oh, she’s going to get security. She came back with the board members. She was like, come on in. She’s like, come on, sit down. Everybody’s sitting down at the table. I’m like, okay, what is going on? She’s like, tell me the story you just told me again, because I want them to hear why I’m finna hire you. It was a feeling of like relief, like, okay, there is some decent people in this world that understand. It was like, okay, I don’t have to hide anymore.

Jay Ellis  26:59

Today, Tiara is a housing rights advocate, helping people with criminal records like herself, navigate housing, employment, and government assistance.

Tiara 

April 1, 2021, is the first time I have an apartment in my name. And then I’m in a process of buying at home. So I’m actually able to put my real social security number down and stuff like I don’t have to lie. And it feels so good when they say approve. Yay, I don’t have to do this anymore.

Jay Ellis

Now Tiara’s story and Raymond story. Look, ya’ll, they aren’t typical. Okay, at least not the happy ending parts of their stories. It’s not easy to call your life back from the […] of a felony conviction. And that’s why we got to make sure we’re wielding felony charges only when they fit the crime. That’s why we got to change the law surrounding felony theft. So we’re not just out here handing out felonies like beads at a Mardi Gras parade. And how do we do that friends, it’s all after the break.

Miriam Krinsky  30:17

So where have we gotten from criminalizing people? Where have we gotten from giving them a felony conviction with low thresholds, or threatening that felony conviction that forces them to plead? And when we recognize that we spend nearly $35,000 every year to incarcerate someone. Can’t we make a better investment with that? Can’t we think about ways that look at what is driving people to engage in felony theft? Can’t we think about how we deal with those underlying problems in ways that will better attend to the concerns of retail theft, organizations and businesses?

Jay Ellis

Miriam Krinsky is the executive director of fair and just prosecution, and it’s organization that works with prosecutors to transform their approach to the legal system. And her questions. Oh, they make me think about Sierra and Raymond and all the other people caught up in the net of felony theft.

Miriam Krinsky 

I think often what we don’t understand is that very often, these are crimes of desperation, they’re the result of individuals who are struggling to put food on the table, or to deal with a substance use disorder or mental health issues that they’re struggling with. And I think if we don’t fully understand or are bothered to think about the cause of this kind of conduct, we too easily find ourselves presuming that prosecuting people somehow solves the problem somehow reduces or deters future criminal behavior. That’s just not the case.

Jay Ellis  32:00

See, felony theft threshold policy is legislation and with enough light shed on the problem, that legislation can change, and we’ve seen it improve in some states. But this can take time, time that people like Raymond and Sierra don’t have. So some prosecutors have found that because our justice system gives their officers a lot of power, they can use that power to make changes happen a little faster. Like Kim Foxx, the Illinois state’s attorney for Cook County. So Chicago area,

Kim Foxx 

part of the blessing and curse of having the power of a prosecutor is the ability to say no, right? So when the police are like, Look, I’m just going to sweep up this whole corner of people who I know are addicted people who I know, have mental health issues and struggle, and I’m just going to charge them as the prosecutor, I’m able to say, what else can we do here? Do we want to knock this person with a felony?

Jay Ellis 

The threshold according to the law was still 300, her policy effectively tripled that she decided that her office would not prosecute any retail theft charges under $1,000 as felonies.

Kim Foxx

And it raised a lot of eyebrows. I mean, people were mad, people are still big mad about that. There was a segment of people who understood it, who said, Are you still gonna hold them accountable? Okay, cool. And then there were others, you know, the Fraternal Order of Police. Oh, my God, they were hot like fish grease. I mean, they were unrelenting in there. You are a law-and-order role, enforce the law. And it didn’t matter that we had a homicide clearance rate at that point of like 18%. Y’all saw the murders is easy to catch a shoplifter like. That’s the easiest. So that’s why we had so many it’s the easiest. And then the legislators there had been ongoing talks about changing the law, but they hadn’t had the political will. So I think for many, they were grateful that I would step out and do this where the largest county in the state, was second largest county in the country to be able to prove that the experiment would work.

Jay Ellis  34:10

Did reactions change over time?

Kim Foxx 

From police, no, from the FOP, not at all, from the general public we are in an incredibly violent year right now in Chicago. People talk about violence. Nobody is talking about low level shoplifting. Right? I think some of our more affluent neighbors are affluent constituents who have conflated the looting from last year in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings as like, Aha, this is because of Kim Foxx’s shoplifting standards. And it’s like, are you are you watching what’s happening? This is not that. This is not what we’re talking about. There’s so much fear. We’re in very, people are very afraid right now people are feeling very unsafe. And so if there’s a way to tie with their feeling to a policy. So it’s like, I don’t feel safe. It must be that shoplifting policy. There’ll be a segment of people who do that. But I think the data supports, and I’m very much about being data driven, that it has not had an impact on public safety and has freed our resources to deal with more violent crimes.

Jay Ellis 

What got you to a 1000? What was the reason? Like, why wasn’t it a higher amount? Why wasn’t it 750? Why wasn’t it 5000? Like, what kind of got you there?

Kim Foxx 

Yeah, I think we looked at like, what were the cases that were coming to us? And what we were seeing we were averaging somewhere around like on the high end of like a regular person, right? So we do have Michigan Avenue, we have some very Tony shops there. If you go in and you steal from Louis Vuitton, one bag, you out there, so we’re not that’s the outlier. What is the average. And what we were seeing was, it was somewhere around the average person comes in, and maybe steals $100-$200 worth of stuff. The problem is, we have if you’ve been convicted of a retail theft before, even if it’s just that low amount, it raises it to a felony. So one of the things we said, it wasn’t even just $1,00, it was or 10 previous convictions, because you could have the same person stealing toothpaste, but that third tube of toothpaste and we know you’re the homeless, like we know the pockets, where the unhoused congregated in the stores that are near. And so they were getting dinged for very low amounts. So what we decided was, what are the areas around us? Indiana has a threshold of 750, Wisconsin had a threshold of 2000. And so we were just like, well, what are the averages and who has comparable demographics in terms of major cities, and to go from $300 to $2,000, seemed a lot. So that’s how we got it just looking at other demographics and trying to figure what is the average amount? What does that person that, you know, you know what, you should get a felony at this point. Because this isn’t about feeding your baby. This isn’t about having your basic needs met, you out there trying to get the Gucci bag. Come on, man.

Jay Ellis 

that’s a whole another story. That’s not survival.

Kim Foxx 

It’s not survival. Now you are booster of that share, like your hustle is that you go and then you resell stuff, that’s a different hustle. And so trying to be mindful of what are crimes of poverty. And really, what are enterprises that are meant to hurt was the differential.

Jay Ellis 

So can you speak to the effect that has had overall on this overloaded system? You know, do case those look different? Are you still using the same number of public defenders, incarceration rates gone? I don’t know, up or down sideways, like, what are you seeing?

Kim Foxx 

Well, I’ll start with the incarceration rates. So the Illinois prison population has dropped in the last five years about 20 some odd percent, largely driven by less people coming from Cook. And so we knew and you know, the data Loyola University did studies to show that the change in policy or retail theft, dramatically pushed those numbers down almost immediately, we did see a shift in caseload and we did see, you know, as that volume went down again, I think there was another study that was done by Chicago Appleseed that showed, we prosecuted 5800 less cases in my office, did my predecessor did in that same three-year period, which is not insignificant. And so we were able to the cases are still high, we just are dealing with high violence, not petty theft. And so I think from the public defender’s standpoint, they too, could spend more time with their clients on more difficult cases, than having a caseload that is filled with these lower-level cases, which still is attached to a client, a person, you still have to defend them. But that takes away from your time than the more labor-intensive cases that involve violence. And so I think it’s been a win-win for the system and for our communities.

Jay Ellis  39:11

What do you think about legacy? I guess, are you worry that whoever may take your spot years from now, you know, does it worry you that this could all get reversed?

Kim Foxx 

I’m worried but not worried, right? Because I think we’re gonna change the law. Right? We’re gonna do it. And I think not even just from an Illinois standpoint, across the country, we have seen prosecutors who have said, you know, what, I’m not going to prosecute certain offenses now. And just putting it out there. I’ve seen a push of progressive prosecutors across the country like Rachel Rollins in Boston, who, when she came in and say here to 10, offenses, just we not Rockaway, we’re not prosecuting anymore. And that comes from having seen what we’ve been able to do in Illinois. So I think legacy is not even just what happens when I leave here. He is watching policies in San Francisco, in Boston, in Philadelphia, that, you know, have been impacted by the work that you did here. So, people in those places who may never hear Kim Foxx, I know that what we’ve done has had an impact. But we’re absolutely going to change the law here in Illinois before my term has ended.

Jay Ellis  40:20

I love that. Put that into existence. Yeah. So I’m curious now is there like, do you guys, like all the State’s Attorneys, like have each other’s number like, are you giving tips to folks like, what are you doing now? How does it play out?

Kim Foxx 

Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, when I ran in 2016, there weren’t a lot of people running on the same platform I was running, right? Like I was unapologetically like, we need to reform this, the system is broken. And you hadn’t heard that from a prosecutor before. And then you started to see other people saying it and doing it whether Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, like I said, Rachael Rollins at Boston, Marilyn Mosby out of Baltimore, who’d already been doing this work. So we would get together, right? Because the attacks were the same. You know, the police unions hated me, hated Rachel, hated Larry, hated Marilyn. And so there was first this kind of sense of like, therapeutic release of man, you understand this experience? And then it was, well, what are you doing? Right? So we were the first prosecutor’s office in the country to put every piece of felony data on our open data portal, I want you to see who we’re charging. And people were afraid, like, Oh, my God, can you put that data out there it can be used against you. And this is the people’s data.

Kim Foxx 

And so when I did it, it gave freedom for Larry to do it. And then Larry was like, alright, I’m doing that. And now one up you I’m no longer going to prosecute sex work. And you’re like, okay, can we not do that. And so the innovations that would ping off of one another, when you again, someone is the test balloon, and then you see that it works. And then you try it. And so this whole network has developed that is really like an innovation incubation lab, among progressive prosecutors. And then there’s a subset of Black women prosecutors, where we have, you know, a group chat. Yeah, you know, we do. We are here, we are here. And so they know the unique experiences of being Black women doing this work, because out of all the prosecutors in the country, they’re about 2400, less than 1% are women of color. And there are about only 20 Black women who do this work in the entire country. So we get it, we get it hard. So we have a special group chat, that is different than the rest of my colleagues. And then, you know, when I tell them that I did this podcast, they got like a million questions come in about the work, you know?

Jay Ellis  42:56

And for those of us who don’t have a district attorney on the WhatsApp, well, it’s in our hands for now. And you know, from last season’s episodes on policing, how important data is to understanding the scope of a problem. And remember, every state’s threshold is different. And there’s all kinds of little unique details. But there are good people working on this issue, and they have a plan. People like activist, DeRay Mckesson and Katie Ryan, and well, you know, I’ll just let them tell you all about it.

DeRay Mckesson 

There’s so much public conversation about the war on drugs. And people think that that is the single biggest driver or the biggest chunk. And the reality is that you could let everybody out of prison, in jail for drug offenses, and it still would not undo the mass part of mass incarceration. One of the next big buckets is property crimes. And this campaign is the first of a series of campaigns to help people to think about the consequence structure and the punishments that are currently set up for property crimes, so that we can think about alternatives. So punishment is about pain and consequences is about change. So when I look at a fairly hefty amount that says that you can go to prison for 18 months for stealing over $200 that is to punish you, that is to cause pain in your life, that is not about getting the money back to the person who lost it or the value of their property. It is not about making sure that you don’t reoffend, it is literally about causing you the maximum amount of pain. And we just believe that there can be a set of consequences that are not rooted in pain and not rooted in cages.

Katie Ryan  44:23

Our curiosity was certainly piqued when we read some of the research that came out of pew and started to dig into the actual felony theft thresholds across the nation and looking at how arbitrary all of them are and also how archaic those thresholds and those rates are. There’s no science data or research that actually lands on the fact that setting a $200 felony theft threshold has anything to do with deterring people from participating in property crimes or theft. And that’s when we really started thinking about a campaign that would actually have substantive impact on people’s lives. And also would bring us into the 21st century, which so many of these laws were written, you know, 70s and 80s, and are completely irrelevant to the current state of our nation.

DeRay Mckesson 

Most people engaged in theft are not having a calculator be like, hey, is this like, what’s the dollar amount of this before I steal it? They’re stealing, either because it’s crimes or poverty or other things, right? So I say that because DC and New York both introduced bills, I would take it up to $5,000, which is incredible. And the New York Times editorial board came out pushing for $10,000. So we know that the thresholds today are unbelievably low, and that we can actually do a lot of work to increase them and that the public actually will support us in increasing them.

Jay Ellis 

So they put together a website, it’s raisethethreshold.org. And you can go there now.

Katie Ryan 

Okay, okay. Let me try and do this. Let me find a state that was updated a long time ago. Oh, okay. Here’s an interesting state. So I just looked at Idaho. It looks like the threshold is $1,000 and was updated at some time before 2000, which is literally a lifetime ago for some of our listeners. Katie,

DeRay Mckesson  46:18

Katie, what state were you just looking at actually, can you tell me again?

Katie Ryan 

I was just looking at Idaho and New Mexico.

DeRay Mckesson 

No, you the hoe.

Katie Ryan 

Okay, speaking of taking it back to 2000. That also hasn’t been updated since 2000.

DeRay Mckesson 

I was waiting for that. Okay, back to real. When you go to the site, raisethethreshold.org, you will see the current threshold in your state, you’ll see when it was last updated, you will see all the exceptions that exist that say that if it is deft of those things, it’s an automatic only regardless of the value. And like, you’ll realize that in every state, it’s slow. And we want that to be the beginning of people’s advocacy, the beginning of people’s understanding. And that is some of the best work that we can do is like help people realize what’s true, what’s not true, and how close it is to them. My bet is, you didn’t know that this was close to you that you didn’t know that this was in your community you didn’t know was so wild, so low, that if I’d asked you straight up, what’s the dollar amount that you think somebody in your community to have to steal to go to prison for a year more? I know, you would have told me something like the value of a car or like something you just wouldn’t have said $200, you wouldn’t have $500. I know it. And it’s that sort of shocking surprise that I want you to tell your cousin and your neighbor and your sister and your mother. Like you should get people riled up about this because this is wild. And I’m excited to look back in a couple years and be like, do you remember those really low rates that they had those years ago? And it’ll be history.

CREDITS

The Untold Story of Criminal Injustice is a Lemonada Original. It’s produced by Matthew Simonson and Ray Solomon with production assistants by Rochelle Green, Carly Huckles and Rachel Lightner. Story editing by Matthew Simonsson. Music by Hannis Brown, sound design and mixing by Matthew Simonson, and the Untold Story is brought to you in part by the Just Trust. Our executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and me. Special thanks to Avalon Betts Gaston and everyone else who helped us with this episode. And if you’re looking for more Untold Story, check out Lemonada Premium. It’s full of all kinds of extra stuff that you won’t want to miss. I’m Jay Ellis ya’ll, thank you for listening