Walk With Us

The Situation

Due to a range of interlocking factors that criminalize poverty, race, addiction and mental illness, and make successful reentry nearly impossible, too many people are spending too much time in Berks County jail.This pattern of incarceration does not improve public safety, and is economically and psychologically harmful to individuals, families, and our community as a whole.

The system we have here is not designed for returning citizens to be successful. Quite the opposite: incarceration makes a mess of their lives and returns them to our communities without basic documentation, housing or job opportunities. Tripwires abound that ensure than more than two-thirds return to jail.

The situation in Berks exists within the larger context of mass incarceration in the United States. There are currently 2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails—a 500% increase over the last 40 years. Changes in sentencing law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and fiscal burdens on states to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety.

At present, despite extensive research and planning, we cannot answer the basic question of who is in the Berks County jail. We do know that as of May 2024 there were 770 people in our jail, notwithstanding the Commissioners' commitment to cap the population at 700, with 72% pretrial and 35% of those unable to post bail.

As the county anticipates building a new jail, we ask our Commissioners to take advantage of this rare opportunity for change by building on the good work they’ve done in previous years and taking additional steps to minimize incarceration, mitigate harm, and facilitate successful reentry. In February 2023, they paused the building project to explore how to do that.

This is the time to get the quantitative and qualitative data we need, not just about bed count, but about who, why and how we choose to incarcerate people in our community.Like most counties, we have numerous stakeholders holding different parts of our criminal legal system, and it has been difficult to gather nuanced data or assess the impact of incarceration on Berks families. Having a more holistic data set is essential in determining what interventions are most effective in maximizing community safety, reducing the number of people in the system, and ensuring that everyone is treated with dignity and equity across race, ethnicity, socio-economic status and gender.

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Walk With Us Listening Tour

No policy should be decided by any representative without the full and direct participation of members of the group affected by that policy. Impacted people have direct experience that must be factored into policymaking, and often superb ideas about how to improve the situation.

And yet, in the planning for a new jail, our commissioners and their hired consultants conducted no surveys, polls or direct inquiries into the experiences of those who will be most affected by the jail. Building Justice in Berks is doing that research now.

Our Walk With Us listening tour involves in-depth interviews with more than 100 formerly incarcerated individuals whose race, ethnicity and socioeconimic status mirrors the jail population. Interviewers likewise have been incarcerated or impacted. We are grateful for the support of numerous organizations in this endeavor, including Connections Work, Easy Does It, New Journey Community Outreach, Hope Rescue Mission, and Berks Community Action Program.