Incarceration rates in New York have declined steadily in recent years due partly to reforms in drug laws. According to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, incarceration for drug offenses has dropped 71 percent since 1996. Last month, the state of New York closed its 13th prison in the last four years.
Colorlines describes the trend:
State officials say the rapid rate of prison closures is the result of sharp declines in the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses… Advocates attribute the decline to 2009 reforms of the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws, and to efforts to end the NYPD’s controversial stop and frisk policy. Stop and frisk has overwhelmingly targeted young men of color and led to an exorbitant number of arrests for marijuana possession.
While prison reform advocates have welcomed the sweeping prison shut downs, it has been a point of contention for residents upstate, many of whom depend on the prison industrial complex for jobs.
One proposed solution? Milk Not Jails -- an organization that works with both side of the aisle to push dairy farming as an alternative to New York’s prison-dependent rural economies:
“The organization lobbies legislators on policy initiatives including the decriminalization of marijuana, closing empty prisons, increasing the amount of locally sourced school food, and legalizing the sale of raw milk. On the commercial side, they partner with upstate dairy farms to market and distribute their products to consumers and farmers markets in New York City. The organization’s goal, according to co-founder Lauren Melodia, is to create closer ties between upstate and downstate economies and issues.”
Gabriel Sayegh, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance of New York, believes dairy farms can counterbalance the powerful upstate prison lobbies. DPA has worked with Milk Not Jails on marijuana decriminalization initiatives:
“Dairy farms make a sizable contribution [to the upstate economy] and participants in that industry have a powerful political voice in these very same regions where the only voices have being crying out to keep prisons open and build more of them,” says Sayegh. “We can build more relationships between downstate and upstate communities. We can also build a different kind of sensitivity around what those two communities should be sending one another. They should not be funneling black and brown bodies out of New York City.”
Not only does Milk Not Jails offer the possibility of bridging the gap of misunderstanding between the rural and urban communities of New York, but it also plans to provide jobs for formerly incarcerated people in a co-op that markets and distributes dairy products produced by Milk Not Jails farms. “The business will pay employees a living wage and will recruit from prisoner reentry programs such as Green Career Center, the Fortune Society, The Doe Fund and Exodus Transitional."
In fact, one of the founding members of Milk Not Jails just happens to be one of these former prisoners. Tychist Baker was arrested at age 21 and incarcerated from 1998 to 2006 for drug possession. He now recruits at-risk kids and former inmates to the worker owned and operated dairy cooperative in which he’s worked since his release.
Milk Not Jails is a small grassroots effort that currently works with 5 dairy farms in upstate New York (though it is now endorsed by 20). The organization hopes to expand its policy agenda come January when the New York state legislature is back in session. If Milk Not Jails succeeds in its mission, New York is on its way to becoming a healthier and a more just state – which is something that perhaps everyone can get behind.
