The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

We’re here in Washington DC, Massachusetts Avenue at Voices for a Second Chance. We’re talking about Congresses introducing certain bills to roll back progressive laws that impact District of Columbia residents. One such law is the Second Chance Act. The Second Chance Act has been very instrumental in allowing people to get out of prison after they demonstrate they have changed, but Congress want to change that. You’ll hear different testimonies today about how these things impact everyday citizens, people that want to do right. Stay tuned. Joining me today is Chelsea Canterbury. Chelsea Canterbury, welcome to Rattling the Bars. Hi,

Chelsea Canterbury:

Hi. Welcome. Thank you. All

Mansa Musa:

Right. So today we are in front of Voices for a Second Chance service organization in the District of Columbia. And full disclosure, I actually work here. Chelsea Canterbury is, and I’ll call her Chelsea from here on out. Chelsea is a case manager here at Voices for a Second Chance.

Chelsea Canterbury:

So I do connect one-on-one with clients. We’re client facing. The work we do here, we help individuals that have been involved within the justice system or are recently entering society from incarceration. We actually start connecting with clients prior to their release, and that’s part of our first responder services. So we are going into DOC. We’re connecting with individuals that have been released to the halfway houses from federal prison. So we’re actually connecting prior to release. And we offer wraparound services, making sure individuals have all their vital documentation. As you know, can’t get anything done without those documents. So that’s kind of where it all starts. We offer full case management services, employment services, housing, and any resource that we do not provide in-house, we do connect with our partners within the community.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And I open up by making it known that Congress, they had centrality over the District of Columbia in terms of any bills or laws has passed. Congress has a finalacy on whether they’re going in effect or Congress has the authority to create laws. And recently it came out that they put 27 bills to impact some of the things that’s going on such as cash bail. How do you think changes in the law to make laws harsher in DC will impact the services that Voice for a Second Chance offer?

Chelsea Canterbury:

So yeah, definitely with certain bills being passed, it will in turn affect our community and also the resources that are available to individuals. It’s not reducing recidivism. It’s actually rising it. I don’t believe that’s the answer. I believe offering the proper resources for individuals while they’re still incarcerated prior to release and our youth.

Mansa Musa:

Our youth. And in terms of the youth, in the District of Columbia, they really got a target on the youth back. You hear a lot of negative reporting about the kids in District of Columbia, mainly in certain areas. What’s your views on, if you had the money and the authority to do something about what’s perceived as juvenile delinquency, what would you do? Well,

Chelsea Canterbury:

I definitely think it also starts in the home. So I think providing appropriate resources, I can’t say it enough, but as a community, we have to come together. We have to stand together. So even providing appropriate resources to not only the youth, but also the family. I think that will definitely help our community.

Mansa Musa:

And talk about how many people do y’all do Voices for a Circumchange service during the course of a week? What’s the caseload per week?

Chelsea Canterbury:

It definitely varies, but I mean, we can see up to 50 clients per week, but it definitely varies.

Mansa Musa:

So in terms of the 50 clients, and that’s on an average that you see 50 clients on a week, but in terms of the clients that you see, what are their major needs?

Chelsea Canterbury:

Definitely housing is a huge need. Housing employment is very scarce within our community and the district, providing more food resources.

Mansa Musa:

Right. And the general attitude about Congress interference in DC’s politics is the general consensus is they’re using the District of Columbia as a test case for how they can go throughout the nation and do these things. If you had the ability or the authority or you was able to talk to Congress about what you think should be done, what would you tell them?

Chelsea Canterbury:

I would definitely have a discussion on funding and just allocating that funding appropriately that will actually give back and assist in our community. For instance, we are, as you know, a nonprofit organization and we have seen the results of the services that we have provided to individuals. And if we had additional funding to do so, we could provide more, not only us, just throughout the district alone, more assistance to provide more food resources, shelter resources, employment resources. And in turn, that is what is going to reduce recidivism.

Mansa Musa:

I am talking to Lynwell Muse in front of Voice for a Second Chance. Mr. Muse, Congress is trying to pass a series of bills that’s going to have a devastating impact on the citizens of the District of Columbia. One such bill is to remove the second look at. Another one is what they call the Youth Act. And both of these bills they want to get rid of, both these bills lead to people upon being released under conditional term. The only way you can get access to them, you have to have certain behavior and certain attitude towards your change in life. What do you think if you had the authority or the ability to tell Congress, what do you think they should be doing? Well,

Lemuel Muse:

I don’t think that is a good idea because the Second Chance Act, people like me need that because I’m 67 years old and I’m just getting out of jail February the 20th.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, what wrong?

Lemuel Muse:

And I did 35 months and I was placed on the street the next day. So in my situation, I don’t know what they expect me to do. I’m out here, I’m homeless. All the shelters are full. They got hundreds and hundreds of Black men out on the street just homeless. You know what I mean? And I just don’t think that’s a good idea because people like me need the Second Chance Act.

Mansa Musa:

The money be best spent on doing what?

Lemuel Muse:

The money would be best spent on helping the people, the citizens that live here. I’ve been here all my life. I’ve been here all my life. And the resources that I need, they seem like they cut them and taking them away from us and just leaving us out here with nothing. You know what I mean? Go ahead. Right now I’m going to Voices for a Second Chance to receive some help. And I’ve been to Marca over on Good Hope Road.

Mansa Musa:

Mayor’s office on return to.

Lemuel Muse:

Right. And all I want is just a little bit of help just to help me because being in jail 35 months and being placed on the street the next day, it’s just difficult. It’s difficult when you don’t have help.

Mansa Musa:

So the crime is not really in people committing crime. The crime is in the misappropriation of funds.

Lemuel Muse:

I agree with you. I agree with you because I didn’t have a chance to work my way back in the community slow. I’m just back on the street.

Charlina Mcbride:

Right. My name is Charlena McBride. I was incarcerated for about a year. I’m a DC citizen.

Mansa Musa:

All right. So today we’re talking about Congress trying to roll back some of the progressive laws that the District of Columbia City Council has passed, such as they want to reduce the age of charging kids to making them adults from 16 to 14. They want to roll back mandatory minimum. Mandatory minimum is that they’re taking it out the hands of the judge to give a person a sentence that he think they should get based on whatever crime they committed. It’s a mandatory sentence they got to get. So a judge don’t have no discretion. They try to institute cash bail, making it difficult for people to get out of prison. But more importantly, they try and roll back what they call a Second Chance Act. If you had the authority to tell, or if you was in front of Congress and you wanted to tell them what you should think they should do with this money, what would you tell

Charlina Mcbride:

Them? I would tell them that I think they should create an alternative plan for the youth or for people that make mistakes in the society that get locked up because it’s a lot of stressful times out here. The economy is constantly rising. Housing is being unaffordable to people that’s not making enough money. When people get locked up, I think they should have some more facilities where they can be rehabilitated versus getting a lot of time because people can change and I don’t think they should give them more time and take away their choices or their right to be able to get out, being locked up with no bail. And I don’t think the youth should be charged as an adult because they have a mind of a youth.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Charlina Mcbride:

So they should have more programs or more facilities where they can go to versus going to jail to an adult jail. Having more outreach programs, having more voices for second chance to provide for people, more counselors, more mental health sponsors and mentorship programs so that somebody can help guide the youth into the right direction. Because everybody needs somebody to guide them. And if they’re not getting guided when they step off the porch from at home, then there should be other big brother programs, big sister programs that’s reaching out to the community and the youth so they don’t have to go through taking from somebody else or involved in something that’s going to cause them to go to jail.

Mansa Musa:

I’m talking to Jerry Mack, a client at Voices for a Second Chance. Mr. Mack, tell us a little bit about yourself first.

Jerry Mack:

Well, born and raised in Washington DC. Been in the city my whole life. There’s a lot of things that’s changed in the city from pretty much my youth to now. And I think that us as pretty much the older generation can pretty much reach out to the adolescents and pretty much try to see what it is that we can do for them to pretty much get back on track and just pretty much enjoy theirself while they’re in the city instead of having Congress and everybody else try to intervene and pretty much take their youth and stuff away from them. All

Mansa Musa:

Right. And you formally incarcerated?

Jerry Mack:

Yes.

Mansa Musa:

How much time did you serve? If you don’t mind me asking.

Jerry Mack:

A year and a half.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. So you served a year and a half. Where was you at now? DC Jail?

Jerry Mack:

I started at DC Jail. They transferred me to Philly. I left Philly and went to New Jersey in Fort Dix.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Now while you was in DC Jail, did you see a lot of young individuals in there?

Jerry Mack:

Yeah, it’s a lot. You know what I’m saying? I mean, it’s just basically, it feels like that’s what they trying to do to pretty much the youth. They’re not trying to let them enjoy theirselves, not realizing that they was once kids at

Charlina Mcbride:

That

Jerry Mack:

Point in time. So it’s just basically kids going to be kids, but they really don’t have too much for them to do nowadays. So it’s just kind of hard for them to actually really enjoy theirselves.

Mansa Musa:

So if you was able to tell Congress what your views are on what they should do in terms of helping the city become a more profitable city, a more productive city, a more humane city, what would you tell them?

Jerry Mack:

I mean, I would practically tell them that instead of just trying to lock them up and pretty much push them out or put them in prison or jail and stuff like that, sit down and talk to them. Find out what it is that they want and what they need. You know what I’m saying? Because like I said, it’s basically they just kids. They being kids. So basically you could take the money that you’re trying to put into all these other bills and cash bonds or whatever. Have the kids, you know what I’m saying, really not even into some of the foolishness or whatever. But it’s just basically they just out enjoying themselves and they just getting a bad rap.

Mansa Musa:

And as Mr. Mack said, invest in them as opposed to try to penalize

Eric Franklin:

Them. Yeah. My name is Derek Franklin. I’m the reentry navigator here at Voices for a Second Chance, and I’m a returning citizen and also a IRA recipient.

Mansa Musa:

Today we’re talking about Congress introducing a series of bills to roll back some of the progressive laws that the DC City Council passed. And one of the bills that they’ve introduced is they want to roll back the Second Chance Act, which is basically IRA. Talk about, because you’re in that space and dealing with IRA, you’re IRA recipient, as you say. And talk about that and what that means.

Eric Franklin:

So yeah, these new laws that’s been introduced by Congress, the rollback IRA and all these other laws that changed in sentences for young people, young adults to get more time at the age of 14 sentences as adults. These things doesn’t work. They’re going back to what mass incarceration, which they did back in the 90s, the 80s and the 90s that didn’t curve the crime. So it’s all about rehabilitating the people, the young people and giving them a second chance. Like me, I was sentenced to 40 years to life. And I mean, I changed my life way before I even knew IRA was in existence. You know what I’m saying? So this shows that the people will change, especially the youth as they do their time. So locking them up and throwing away the key is not the answer. It’s not the answer.

Mansa Musa:

And how old were you when you got out there?

Eric Franklin:

When I got out there, I was 22 years old. I came out, I was 47 years old. You know what I’m saying? So I spent most of my 20s, all my 30s, most of my 40s in prison. And like I say, I changed my ways and my way of thinking, I want to say probably 15 years ago before I came home. You know what I’m saying? So these things, locking the people up, these young people up and saying, okay, look, what they was calling them, predators or whatever like that. No, the sign says what? The frontal lobes don’t fully develop to the mid – 20s. So the decision making of these teenagers, they don’t fully develop. So give them a chance. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their crimes, but locking them up and not giving them a chance to come out, this is, I want to say, inhumane.

You know what I’m saying? This is something that you don’t do to people or do to your residence in DC. I said far as the law, especially containing to the youth. More programs for the youth. Giving them something to do as far as education. It goes back to their family, helping their families out with jobs so they won’t be just running the streets and getting to things. You know what I’m saying? This will change. This will help the youth and not to be on the streets like that. And another thing, the law should be changed, not just for a certain age. Take away the age and just give everyone who gets incarcerated another chance to come home. Instead of just locking the people up and having them in prison, which doesn’t help at all. You know what I’m saying? So we got the age where now, before the age of 25, have no age for someone who can have a time reduction.

This will help and have more programs and housing for the people when they return. You

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. We’re here in the historical part of the District of Columbia, U Street, 14th and U, 13th and U, 11th and U, 12th and U, all historic. Lincoln Theater and Benz Chillibo. We’re here today to talk to two representatives from DC Justice Lab about current legislation that Congress is attempting to pass to minimize the DC City Council’s ability to pass laws to govern this District of Columbia. Stay tuned for this interview. The District of Columbia has become the testing ground for Congress in terms of reforming so-called reform of laws that the city council has passed. So let’s talk about cash bill, what’s going on with it and what this bill is trying to do. Because when we look at what’s going on in over DC jail and how overcrowded it is, what’s our position on HI5214?

Bethany Young: Yeah. Well, DC has had a pretrial system in place for the last 30 years or so that has worked well. People are kind of released or not based on kind of a demonstrated threat to public safety. It’s not necessarily about how much money they have or starting with the presumption that someone should be incarcerated. And that system has worked well. Most people come back without committing any other crime. Most people show up for their court date. So it’s not a system that’s broken. So this is kind of a solution in search of a problem, this congressional bill that you’re talking about.

Mansa Musa: Who profiting from? Because the intent is not to change, get safer streets because we already recognize that the streets are safe. So who profiting?

Darby Hickey: We haven’t had cash bail in over 30 years in DC. And you know what that means we haven’t had in this city? Our bail bondsmen or these companies that are very predatory to poor people that require these payments and that make money regardless of what the person does after they’ve been released. And they make billions of dollars a year and we haven’t had that exploitative system in DC during this time. And as we’ve all been discussing, we’ve been safer for it. So that’s who is going to profit off of this. So we know that this is not about safety. This is about harming poor people, exploiting them for money. And it’s also ideological because I think I’m glad you started with this one as an example of this rollback and of using DC as kind of a Petri dish of what they can force on places around the country.
Because you see them pushing also on the national level to roll back bail reforms. And it’s ideological. I call it dumb on crime approach rather than following the actual evidence that shows that reforming bail systems, getting rid of cash bail actually makes our community safer because we know even a short time in jail, that destabilizes your life and that leads to worse safety outcomes in the long run.

Mansa Musa: Let’s talk about another aspect of this is mandatory minimums. And DC has always been real equitable in terms of taking into account the social conditions, really with sentencing the way they’re supposed to make a determination before they sentence. It’s always been like that. Talk about this attack.

Darby Hickey: I do agree with you that many of our judges do a good job of taking into account the circumstances around an event when determining a sentence. We actually already have some of the worst mandatory minimum sentences on the books in the country. And under this new proposal in Congress, the minimum that someone will be sentenced that would be longer than what the maximum is in some other states for the same conduct. So it’s really singling out DC. And again, it’s furthering this ideological agenda of just lock people up. We know all the companies are going to make money off of that. And to disempower and harm our communities, including unfortunately disproportionately black communities in DC and across the country are disproportionately impacted by mandatory minimum sentences. Is

Bethany Young: That in DC, nine out of 10 people sentenced under mandatory minimums were black. And so kind of same kind of look at every statistic as it relates to the criminal legal system in DC, and you’re going to see mostly black people. I think it’s eight out of 10 arrests. Most of the people in the jail. Most of the kids that are detained are black, certainly most disproportionately impacting black people and poor people.

Darby Hickey: And then we got to look at, going back to your point earlier, that the interconnection between these different policies, you were speaking on the efforts to roll back voting rights. And how we know that some of the origins of some of these sentences and some of the restrictions on voting after being convicted came out of reconstruction, came out of the backlash to reconstruction and trying to disempower and disenfranchise black communities. And so we have to see this and connect this as part of that lineage as well.

Mansa Musa: And I think that when we look at the District of Columbia, how can you rule your house where somebody got the authority and ability to tell you what you can and cannot spend? Your own money, your own revenue that you generate. So in this regard, you’ve got Congress is interfering with the legislative process. The people that’s duly elected to determine what their constituents say they want, don’t have a voice. They can pretend like they do. They can vote on something. They can pass it. But if Congress don’t like it, the appropriation committee will just simply don’t fund it. And that’ll kill that, which brings me to, and this right here is one thing that I want y’all to dial down on heavily. This is about the youth because they got this push. They pushing this effort to criminalize the youth as young as 14. Talk about their attempt to push to make the laws change or create a law around dealing with our youth.

Bethany Young: A child, because we’re talking about children, could be charged as an adult. There are also some other laws that are for other young people, young adults would affect their ability to kind of have a second look at their sentences after they’ve served some time or that would impact their ability to have their records sealed after a certain amount of time and would affect the discretion that judges have in certain cases to sentence a young person in alignment with where they are developmentally. And what we know and what we’ve known for decades about laws like this is that they’re counterproductive. They’re as counterproductive as they are oxymoronic. If you think about treating a child as an adult, just because you say you’re an adult does not make a child an adult. And it actually ignores what science says about the developing brain. We know very well at this point that our brain, excuse me, as humans are developing well into our 20s, especially the part of the brain that deals with impulse control.
So there are certain things we take for granted with kids that they’re going to be impulsive, that they’re going to engage in risky behaviors. And we account for that. We know with the driving age, with drinking, with buying tobacco, with voting, with enlisting. We acknowledge in all of these different contexts that children are different and that we have to kind of help make decisions for them because their brains do not allow them to do this well. But in the context of crime and incarceration,
For some reason, we treat kids differently in that context and it doesn’t work. We know that for kids, contact with any part of the system. So even if they see someone getting pulled over by a police, they see their friends being encountered by police, that from that to being in a courtroom, to being arrested, to being incarcerated, that actually sets them back developmentally.

Mansa Musa: The fact that they’re saying in this cadence that youth are taking over the city and they’re using this as a pretext for getting tough on oil, as Bethany said.

Darby Hickey: What we’re seeing with these incidents with young people is, guess what? Young people are still recovering from the trauma of the COVID epidemic and of the shutdowns that happened and of the challenges with socialization they’ve had. We’re now learning so much more about the negative impacts of social media on them. And I’m a parent of a teen. Look, kids just want to get together. They want to not have to deal with adults. They want to be able to be with each other a little bit. And that’s what the vast majority of kids are doing in these situations. They’re just looking for a place to get together. And a lot of those places have disappeared. Yeah, we have our rec centers. Yeah, we have libraries. That’s really important. But think about the movie theaters, the malls. Union Station is largely blocked off to them at this
Point. So where else are they supposed to go is a question you keep hearing from them. I think it just goes back to a point that Bethany was making of like, these are children. Let’s give them the support that they need. Let’s invest in them. Let’s lift them up instead of continuing to tell them you are not welcome here. You can’t go there. This city and all the changing that has happened is not for you in these areas, which is putting a real distinct point on it, in my opinion, on top of the displacement and the gentrification that’s already happened in a city that has pushed so many people out of traditional neighborhoods like Southwest. You can even go back centuries, or decades rather, that was a very robust multi-ethnic community before it was destroyed by urban redevelopment back in the ’60s, I believe it was.
And then now has had this new wave happening as well. And you see it all over the city, unfortunately.

Mansa Musa: The attitude is we got to create a false narrative that in order for this place to be safe, we got to identify who’s making it unsafe, and that’s the youth. Which brings me to the point, the United States Attorney General for the District of Columbia recently said, “I know evil when I see it, no matter what their age.” How do y’all respond to that? They wearing hoodies. That’s evil. But he know evil respond to that.

Bethany Young: There is a really loud emotion that people respond to. And if you can make me afraid enough, I can support a lot of different things if you’re saying it’s in the name of safety. But what we know is that it’s not actually tied to safety, that the rest are down across the country, some of the trends that we’ve seen that we saw during COVID and immediately post, we’re turning the corner on those that the things that communities are doing to give young people other options to invest in them if given time are working.

Mansa Musa: When you create an environment where you have summer jobs, like me and my sister, we was first generation when they first started summer jobs and we did the projects in the District of Columbia. And when they created summer jobs, the whole city became vibrant because we had money. Young people had money and young people had Princeburg.

Darby Hickey: We know that giving people the right to determine their own future is what makes them great and what makes our democracy great.

Mansa Musa: So what’s y’all strategy now around what’s going on? Because when we went down to Congress, I was there. I forgot the congressman’s name out of Florida. They introduced the bill. His town don’t have problems. They reading articles that didn’t have nothing to do with the district. They reading the article from Arizona or New Mexico and just reading the facts of the article and making it seem like this is DC. Talk about where y’all at in terms of y’all advocacy and y’all strategy around changing this narrative or more importantly, mobilizing people to be effective in terms of advocating.

Bethany Young: So we’re continuing the work that we do locally on that in terms of shrinking policing, shrinking incarceration. We recently, along with about 30 other partners in the district, put together a 2026 public safety policy agenda that runs the gamut from community-based investments around non-police alternatives to safety like violence interrupters, credible messengers, investing and protecting in youth. So before a kid even gets into the system, what are the things that we can be doing to surround them to make sure that they’re thriving, that they have access to opportunities, that they’re building confidence and self-efficacy and skills all the way up until ways that our local officials can stand up and make a stronger statement

Mansa Musa: To the

Bethany Young: Federal government about the respect for DC laws. And we talked about this a little bit earlier. There’s only but so much they can do, but they can make their voices and their position known in a way that I don’t know that we’ve seen our elected officials locally do satisfactorily.

Mansa Musa: I like what you just said. Y’all got a document that y’all putting out. So this opened the doors up for insertion in terms of application, how to get people to stop. Okay. If we talking about incredible messages, fund that.

Darby Hickey: Although we do have these threats from the federal government right now, we also know, as we were just discussing with the curfew, that unfortunately our local elected officials are also making some bad choices around policies. And of course we want to defend their right to make that choice. We want to also convince them to make the right

Mansa Musa: Choice.

Darby Hickey: But that’s what this document lays out is this policy agenda is a number of recommendations that are not new, that we’ve been making, that people in the community have been making, that experts have studied and the evidence backs up. And so in addition to that, other things that we’re also doing are educating the council and staff, educating the mayor, educating the public about these proposals in Congress to roll back our laws or to impose bad nuance on us. The more of a united front and the more voice we have, the better chance we have of beating back these fundamentally undemocratic attacks that are trying to set us back years and years.

Mansa Musa: And we shouldn’t be handcuffed because someone is to your point, ideologically think that we should be back and change. So I want to commend y’all on y’all work.

Bethany Young: We can pick up a phone. We have resources that we can share around how to advocate in the legislative process, but keep learning about what’s happening. Make sure that you understand what it is because it can feel distant to some people. It can feel like that’s not happening to me. But rest assured that it’s going to get closer and closer. And before you know it, it’ll be. It’s kind of at all of our doorsteps at this moment. So continue to stay aware and engaged and ask people to do what they can to push back.

Mansa Musa: Okay.

Darby Hickey: Yeah, I think we see unfortunately this playbook being tried out here, but we know where it’s going next. We know it’s already been being used in other places. People saw the violence that happened in Minneapolis and Los Angeles and Chicago. That’s the same stuff that we’ve been dealing with. And actually we’ve still got the National Guard in

Mansa Musa: DC

Darby Hickey: And all the rest of the places they pulled back. So we are really struggling and we need help from everyone that’s willing to help. All our residents need to speak out. We all got to be in this together. And we need help from friends and family all over the country who actually have a vote in Congress and should be reaching out and doing what they can. We can’t be satisfied, like you said, with our colonial status right now. Home rule is a bare minimum. So we need statehood and we need people to support statehood for DC.