“A jail is not a school. It is not a health facility nor a home. “

Malina Amjadi delivered these remarks on Oct. 17 during Iowa City’s No Kings rally:

Looking back, “new” isn’t the adjective I wish we had focused on. I acknowledge that inmates and staff of the Johnson County Jail deserve an updated facility, but I am also in fierce opposition to the one featured on this ballot. The proposed jail has almost 50 more beds than the reported needs assessment by the Prison Policy Initiative.

What this new jail proposal does is build bigger infrastructure for more incarceration.

I’m gonna say that again: a bigger jail for more incarceration.

Living in Iowa City, I have experienced compassion, forgiveness, and love — all values that make me proud to live here. I don’t see expanding the carceral system as part of the goals of this community. So when I see a bond item for $94.5 million, I pay close attention to whether that money spent will reflect the values of our community. When I think about this community, I think about care, compassion, and brilliance.

We care about each other enough to not use jail as the answer. We are compassionate enough to want to heal with those who harm. We are brilliant enough to foresee how a larger jail will perpetuate the violence of disproportionately jailing people of color, poor people, and people with disabilities.

We are blessed with care for our neighbors and with the brilliance to always be finding new ways to support our neighbors before they are in crisis.

Jail diversion is not a checklist, it’s a continuum. The farther we go in the direction of jail diversion, social support, the less need we have for bigger jails.

This community has time and time again invested in jail diversion. It is precisely for that reason that while our county’s population has been growing, our daily inmate population has been decreasing. As much as we believe in the values of care, compassion, and brilliance, it takes moxie to practice them.

Our society’s threat-based culture is constantly inviting us to separate ourselves from “inmates,” from “criminals,” from human beings dealt another hand. This vote is an invitation to choose hope or fear. It asks that we respond to our problems through exclusion and punishment by supporting a bigger carceral system.

As I have heard from the Sheriff Brad Kunkel himself: we can always do more. Education, public health and healthcare, and housing are key elements to keep people from committing crime and violence in the first place.

A jail is not a school. It is not a health facility nor a home. A jail is where we keep the people who slipped through the cracks and did not receive the things they needed to not end up in jail. Now is not the time to imagine “if we have 140 people arrested, where would we put them?”.

Now is the time to imagine: how else do we make crime go down? How else can we support one another?

If we allow a 140-bed jail to be built, we allow ourselves 140 neighbors to slip through the cracks.

That is not consistent with the character of this city and county. Not where our mayor’s motto is “we all belong here.”

Ask yourselves: does a jail say “you belong”?

While I don’t believe our local administration’s goal is to incarcerate more people, this ballot measure is dangerous because it creates the infrastructure for it to happen in the future, and right now we have an opportunity to stop it and build something better. A yes-or-no vote is deceptive. A yes on the ballot looks like doing something while a no vote looks like doing nothing.

That is not true.

The power of “no” in this vote means we get another chance to keep working on something else. A “no” vote means we didn’t already spend $94.5 million and we still have the spending will for ideas that reduce harm both long and short term, rather than perpetuate it. If the yes vote wins, there will be a new facility and it will be built bigger than necessary. It will be built with a vision of fear that we cannot change. That we cannot do anything to lessen the amount of people who enter the carceral system.

This is not true.

I believe we have the power to take care of one another and keep people from entering the carceral system. Vote “no” even if you believe we need an updated facility. There are so many more possibilities if you vote “no,” because we can keep the conversation going and make a better plan that doesn’t start with the vision of our community’s safety deteriorating, but with the action of strengthening it.

We can find new solutions that do less harm. And we will deliver on our commitment to care, compassion, and brilliance.