By Mary Lou Fulton, Center for Health Journalism, October 8, 2020
Kelly Lytle Hernandez is a UCLA scholar-activist with the instincts of a journalist. Her work sheds new light on this moment in which the nation is confronting racism embedded in policing, mass incarceration, health and other systems. Through Million Dollar Hoods, an innovative data and storytelling project based on police booking reports, Hernandez and her team revealed that Los Angeles residents were most often arrested for health conditions related to poverty, addiction, and mental illness, not for violent activity. The problems that get people locked up must be addressed, she says, but not by policing.
Million Dollar Hoods draws its name from the fact that more than $1 million a year is spent to incarcerate residents of particular neighborhoods in LA — places where low-income people of color live. Through developing data strategies in partnership with residents and advocates, the organization has helped win policy changes and improve law enforcement transparency across California. Hernandez is a professor of history, African American studies and urban planning at UCLA, where she also directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In 2019, she was honored with the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” fellowship.
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