This year, the ACLU of Kansas released our bail report The Price of Freedom analyzing how Sedgwick County’s current bail system violates presumption of innocence and instead delivers punishment before trial or conviction disproportionately on the poor, women, and people of color. To further highlight points made in The Price of Freedom, Nykia Gatson explains the criminal justice system in practice.

Nykia Gatson is a Youth Leader at Progeny, an umbrella program of Destination Innovation focused on reimagining the juvenile justice system.

I usually come into spaces with a lot of dual hats on: one being a young professional, that works in the community with Cure Violence, ICT and then I also come in with lived experience from being formerly incarcerated—to being system-impacted both in a juvenile and foster care system. That kind of paved my way into my advocacy and being a youth voice for other people going through systems and advocating for better, and what does it look like to transform these systems with young people such as I and others at the table.

Throughout the bail report, and in your own story, we hear a lot about the cycle of debt and the way individuals and families are trapped in this cycle. Broadly speaking, what is the cycle of debt?

I think it is creating a cycle of poverty and criminalizing people for being poor. It looks like not putting a cap on young people's restitution. Fines and fees. It looks like having random [urine analysis]—those are accumulating fees [that] could potentially impact credit, collections and so forth. It looks like really having to struggle, especially as young people, such as I, dealing with loss of parents when I'm in the system. So, there's no responsible party for me. I lost both of my parents, so they were putting the social security benefits in a fund. But they were also taking out of that fund…

My parents passed when I was 15 years old. I got out when I was what, 18? So you're talking about almost three years of restitution, fines and fees, right? You're talking about thousands of dollars that could have been used towards my education, my housing, food—the basic necessities that I needed when I got out were taken from me. I still had to experience homelessness. And even in the essence of being in a transitional living home, there was still some of those basic needs that were still needing to be met. I'm getting out of jail with just the clothes on my back, but I'm getting tossed an invoice receipt for fines and fees a restitution.

In order to get off, you have to pay X amount of dollars that I just don't have. Because in that transition, you're still dealing with obtaining identification, social security cards, everything that you basically need to thrive and survive as a young adult. Those were some of the prime factors that money could have contributed to, right? But instead, we're put out into this world where we have the highest expectations for young people to get out, do better and rehabilitate. But that number of percentage of those who reoffend is way higher than the success rates of young people who actually get out here and have the support and wraparound services that they really need.

What do the collateral effects of fines and fees associated with bail look like in practice?

I think it goes into, you have to choose, right? Sometimes you have to choose. Am I gonna eat or am I gonna still be on probation for an extensive amount of time for another year or so because I can't afford to pay a $600 fine? Am I gonna choose to pay my rent or my bills versus going and paying the state that already accumulates millions and trillions of dollars, right? Millions of dollars to incarcerate people all over the world, right?

We're talking about a system that that constantly revolves around injustice in criminalizing people for being poor. So I think that's what it looks like. When I'm sitting here having to figure out my life and just meeting, like I said, the basic needs of maybe going to get some food.

[For example,] I go see my probation officer tomorrow and my probation officer says, "You got $1,500 left in restitution. Looks like if you don't pay that then we're going to have to go in front of the judge and we're gonna have to talk about this before you get off probation or whatnot.” So then you say, "Okay, well, I got this amount of money, but this is my last of it." Just paying literally, paying for your freedom. That's what you're doing. You're paying for your freedom. And it's just like, at what cost is this costing me? You know what I'm saying? Is it better off just sitting in jail?

In the bail report, there was emphasis on the way race, gender, and income exacerbate these disparities. In your experience, and in your work, does the report accurately reflect those realities?

Absolutely, especially being a person from a brown and Black community, I visit my community almost every day… I lived on the north side of town. We had parks or whatnot, but you're talking about food deserts that are now happening out there. Also with this current administration, not to be political, but that is also a contributing factor to poverty. Especially those that are redlined in Wichita. There's a whole bunch of [disparities] with food stamps and people not having access to transportation. You look up and you see kids… not even having transportation to school now because of how the districts are running. You do a disservice to those who are in need in the community, and not even just talking about brown and black people, but everybody that's in need of help.

I didn’t grow up with having everything made, college, and proms and everything like the whole kid's childhood dream. That was not the reality for me. So just looking back in time, yeah, that was a disaster. You're talking about my mother who's a single mother of three, having to figure it out. You're talking about kids that are barely making it, having to walk to school. And that's my reality. That's the reality of the situation.

Being poor isn't a crime, but what is a crime is when you close and slam the door on the poor when they just ask for help.

You're talking about a single parent household. You're talking about one car, full-time working parent that's barely making ends meet. They' also talking about different grade levels of kids. You got a baby, then you got a middle aged, you got one in high school. So those are all different contributing factors. Kids grow out of clothes, shoes, those kind of things. And so it's a whole boxful of stuff that you got to think of and unpack.

I always say too, you can't really understand those problems if you're not closest to those solutions. You really have to be in that in that community to really feel what it's like to grow up like that. You got so many houses out there now that are, you know, being gentrified. You got Walmarts and gas stations and stuff like that that have been ripped from that community. But you can see that now, oh, they're building on the WSU and on to local campuses and stuff like that. What about providing healthy produce for people? But every other corner, you go out there, you'll see a liquor store or a damn smoke shop.

In a perfect world, what would a fair system look like?

Well, I don't believe in systems at all. I believe that systems shouldn't even exist. I believe community should exist. I believe there is beauty in the communities where we can all get together and be a collective and just live in a green life and not have to fight for the liberation of our people or our kids. There's already been a fight for decades now against these things that just don't even need to exist. You're talking about a system that is existing to harm people, right? It's ridiculous. They do an injustice by incarcerating kids. I mean, you don't even fully develop at 12 or you're nowhere near it at 10.

There's alternative solutions to criminalizing young folks out here. The solution is not to incarcerate them, though. That's taking them away from developing. That's taking them away from rehabilitation. That's taking them away from normalizing them, period, as an adult... I mean, even if you think about it right now, if you have kids right now, and they go and they make some bad grades, they go do something crazy, what's the first punishment for them inside the house? Is it to lock them in their room for the rest of the year and say, “don't come out”? No. You know, that's outrageous. That's neglect. These are the things that they punish real people for in the real world. It's neglect when you whip your kid or something like that. But it's okay for them to be inside of a system where they get the doors slammed on them and then they get talked to crazy and sexual abuse still goes on, even inside of prisons… What world are you protecting your kids from when you're sending them to jail and incarcerating them for years? And then they get out institutionalized, and they don't know anything. They get out, they don't even know how to fill out a job application. They don't even know how to damn work a phone or they're so delayed. They don't even know how to read or write or just to fill out a simple application because everything is online now. You take away normalcy from kids when you lock them up. You traumatize kids when you lock them up. And that's why the relationships out here in the community with the police are so messed up now… And the judges, the judges have to do a better job, too.

I'm a firm believer in abolition. I don't believe systems could even exist. I think that should all go away because then we wouldn't have no other option but to revert to the community. It puts communities to be together.