criminal justice

What Thomas Jefferson Said about Elena Kagan and Juvenile Life Without Parole

Eric Lotke — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:25:25 -0400

Today’s news is the Supreme Court decision that juveniles cannot be locked up without possibility of parole for offenses committed while juveniles (in this case, a very clumsy store robbery by a 16 year old with a crowbar).

Yesterday's news was the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.

Between them come all kinds of accusations about judicial activism and judges rewriting the constitution.

One more thing. Also between these events I visited the Jefferson Memorial with some family in Washington, DC. Here’s what's inscribed on the wall. Jefferson’s own words:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Jefferson is entitled to an opinion about constitutional intent. He was there.

The Quiet Revolution in Criminal Justice Reform

Alan Jenkins — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:28:35 -0400

A panel of federal judges has ruled that conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons violate the constitution. Quoting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s words from 2006, the court found that "immediate action is necessary to prevent death and harm.” The state must formulate a plan by mid-September to reduce the prison population by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years.

As the state scrambles to comply with the order, they should look to successful reforms in other states that are reducing crime, saving money, and upholding constitutional values.

While the nation is debating hot button issues like health care reform and economic recovery, states around the country have been quietly reforming their criminal justice laws to prioritize rehabilitation and prevention over retribution and execution.

Texas—long known for harsh criminal justice sentencing—is investing in drug courts, where people can avoid prison by undergoing treatment and submitting to close supervision by a judge. The state has also reduced its average probation time from 10 years to 5.

Maryland now has one of the country's most advanced community-based corrections programs and has made significant investments in drug treatment programs. New York has rolled back its harsh Rockefeller drug laws, under which many people have languished in prison for decades based on low-level drug convictions.

New Mexico, New York, and New Jersey have all ended the death penalty after many years. And Rhode Island has restored the right to vote to people who’ve served their time for felony offenses, with other states contemplating similar moves.

In some important instances, the federal government has quietly followed suit. In 2008, President Bush signed into law the Second Chance Act, to help people with criminal records reenter society. President Obama’s Drug Czar, Gil Kerlikowski, is pushing for treatment over incarceration. And centrist Virginia Senator Jim Webb is pushing for a blue ribbon commission on reforming the nation’s incarceration practices.

Why is this happening now? Three factors: Crime, Cost and the Common Good. Crime is at historic lows, states are strapped for cash, and they are realizing that it is in everyone’s interest to rehabilitate rather than incarcerate people forever or execute them.

These governments are finding that investing in crime prevention and the opportunity for rehabilitation promotes public safety and saves money. And they are finding that, in resisting those measures, they’ve been behind public opinion, which has favored rehabilitation for several years now.

Despite more than a decade of falling crime rates, the US has the world’s highest incarceration rate—more than one out of every 100 adults in the US is in prison or jail; that’s the highest rate in our nation’s history, and the highest in the world. But that may be starting to change. States and the federal government are increasingly investing in drug treatment over imprisonment, in community policing over aggressive sweeps of neighborhoods, and in solutions like drug courts that help people get back on track.

California can learn from examples around the country. As Prison Law Office Director Donald Specter told the LA Times, "If done right, this could be a win-win situation for the entire state, as the prisons will be safer for my clients and the staff who work there, taxpayers will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year and communities will be safer as a result."

In this economy, however, the biggest question is whether the rehabilitation programs that make these changes work—and that make them economical in the long run—will continue to be funded. Without them, we may see a new cycle of crime and over-incarceration.

We Can’t Afford the Death Penalty

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:16:04 -0500

Paul Young

Paul Young — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:22:48 -0500

Bringing New Integrity to Our Criminal Justice System

Alan Jenkins — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:29:37 -0400

There is a saying in many African-American communities that our system of criminal “justice” means “just us.” While overstated, the expression reflects longstanding, as well as very recent, experiences of racial profiling and unequal treatment.

For many years the evidence has been mounting that, despite our progress as a nation, race continues to have a strong and unequal influence on outcomes in the criminal justice system. Research has found racially biased treatment in many state and federal systems at the stages of investigation, arrest, charging, plea bargaining, jury selection, and sentencing. That bias contributes not only to stark racial imbalances in our nation’s prisons—some three-quarters of prisoners in the US are African-American and Latino—but also to a dangerous erosion of public trust.

Last week, federal lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation that, if enacted, could begin to restore that trust. Senators Biden (D-DE), Specter (R-PA), Cardin (D-MD), and Kerry (D-MA) introduced the Justice Integrity Act. The Act would establish a pilot program within the US Department of Justice designed to eliminate unjustified racial disparities.

Under the legislation, ten U.S. Attorneys designated by the Attorney General would appoint and chair an advisory group composed of prosecutors, public defenders, judges, civil rights leaders, and other experts their region. Each advisory group would gather and analyze relevant data on criminal justice systems within its jurisdiction to determine whether racial inequality exists and, if so, its cause. Each would report key findings and recommend a plan to reduce unwarranted disparities. The ten reports would inform a comprehensive report and recommendations to Congress by the Attorney General at the end of the pilot program.

The bill grew in large part from a 2007 study by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and the National Institute for Law and Equity. (By way of full disclosure, my wife was one of the architects of that report). The report included the contributions of over a dozen former U.S. Attorneys, and won the support of public defenders as well as prosecutors.

To be sure, the Justice Integrity Act, if passed, would be a modest step. Its principal weapons against bias in the system would be rigorous investigation, honest reporting, and concrete recommendations, along with the reputations of the advisory group members themselves. The legislation, on its own, will not prevent or remedy injustice. Just a few years ago, however, such a bill would have been unimaginable, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle routinely ignored or denied the existence of racial bias. This modest step is, nonetheless, an important one.

In introducing the bill, Senator Biden noted that “nowhere is the guarantee of equal protection more important than in our criminal justice system.” If enacted, the Justice Integrity Act can help to make that guarantee a reality.

Charles St. Dizier

Charles St. Dizier — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:38:45 -0400

63 yrs old.--Born in Lake Charles--Defining event was the 1960's; good fights were fought; proud to know patriots who fought to conform American action with American ideals--Now practice Criminal Defense Law--Those fights are never over!!

Michael Israel

Michael Israel — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:49:01 -0500

Retired criminologist, 33 years at Kean University, Union, New Jersey;
Washington Representative, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, 2002 to present.
For VITA, see my website, www.crimeletter.net.

Striving for Equality: An Honest Assessment

Alan Jenkins — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:25:14 -0500

Last spring, the Bush administration quietly submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination articulating the Administration's version of the state of equal opportunity in America. Last week, a group of 250 independent U.S. experts submitted their own report to the U.N. committee, providing a much-needed reality check to the administration's story.

Coordinated by the U.S. Human Rights Network, the independent experts' "shadow" report examined government data and investigated evidence on equal opportunity in employment, education, criminal justice, housing, health care, environmental protection and other gateways to opportunity. My organization, The Opportunity Agenda, was among the groups providing data and analysis, particularly on access to quality health care.

The Bush administration submitted its report under the international Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which the United States helped to craft, and which the U.S. Senate ratified into our federal law in 1994. Each of the nearly 170 nations who've adopted the treaty—including the U.S.—must periodically report on their progress to the U.N. Committee on Racial Discrimination. This year, it's the U.S. government's turn.

A recent national poll commissioned by The Opportunity Agenda found that overwhelming majorities of Americans believe that equal opportunity regardless of race and freedom from discrimination are fundamental human rights that all people should enjoy. For example, 84 percent believe (and 70 percent believe strongly) that "when the police stop and search people solely based on their race or ethnicity they are violating their human rights." More generally, 81 percent believe (58 percent strongly) that "we should strive to uphold human rights in the U.S. because there are people being denied their human rights in our country."

Human rights, Americans believe, are crucial to upholding our national values.

Though unfamiliar to many Americans, our international system of human rights embodies those same shared values of fairness, dignity, and opportunity. As the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination declares, "the Charter of the United Nations is based on the principles of the dignity and equality inherent in all human beings." The United States and other countries that have ratified the treaty have pledged to work with the U.N. "to promote and encourage universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion."

The shadow report filed last week is part of an important accountability system, revealing problems that governments themselves may shy away from, and proposing positive solutions.

The shadow report documents the significant ways in which our government has fallen short in its responsibility to protect equal opportunity—and which the Bush Administration's report failed to address adequately or at all. While the U.S. government report barely mentions Hurricane Katrina, 60 percent of Americans believe that "the way residents of New Orleans were treated after Hurricane Katrina was a violation of their human rights."

The shadow report validates that belief, and documents that, even today, governmental authorities have failed to reopen essential public health care facilities in New Orleans, contributing to an increase in the number of deaths due to lack of medical services.

The shadow report documents the persistence of unequal opportunity in many other sectors, including in the juvenile justice system. The report explains that African-American and Latino young people regularly receive more severe sentences than white youth in juvenile courts. Young people of color, the report also found, are "held in custody and prosecuted 'as adults' in criminal courts more often than white youth and given adult sentences more frequently. Because this disparate treatment cannot be explained away based on differences in conduct, and because fairer alternative policies exist, the American promise of equal opportunity embodied in the treaty is violated.

Unlike the administration's report, the shadow report proposes a range of workable solutions for expanding equal opportunity for all Americans. Regarding juvenile justice, for example, it recommends training for judges, probation officers, and prosecutors on the developmental needs of children, alternatives to detention and incarceration, and monitoring of racial bias in the juvenile justice system. Also recommended are ensuring vigorous enforcement of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act-which requires states to demonstrate reductions in racial disparities—as well as using objective screening methods to ensure fair treatment of young people of different races, and investing in community-based support for young people and their families at the community level.

The next step in the international human rights process is for the U.N. Committee responsible for the Discrimination Convention to hear directly from the U.S. government, as well as from a delegation of the shadow report's authors. The Committee will issue findings and recommendations later this year. The timing will be ideal for Americans to probe the U.S. presidential candidates' positions on protecting the human right to equal opportunity here at home. And it can provide impetus and direction for needed human rights enforcement reforms in a new administration and Congress early next year.

Crime & The Big Con

David Sirota — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:10:45 -0500

Tom Geoghegan, otherwise known as One of the Best Writers in America, has a fascinating piece over at the American Prospect which I just got around to reading. He looks at how the criminal justice issue - and more narrowly, America's unfathomably high rate of incarceration - is rarely discussed in our political debate. I found this paragraph most interesting, in how it ties the issue back to Big Con:

"People are delighted when Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan goes to jail. When there was a chance that Karl Rove might be indicted, my friends were planning parties -- literally. Why celebrate Karl Rove or anyone else going to prison? It's hard to think of any greater tragedy in life than to be locked up in a prison. Certainly we have monsters that we have to get off the streets. But as a liberal, I take no pleasure when the rich and Republican go to jail. For one thing it's just another sad proof that the New Deal regulatory state has collapsed. We have to use criminal law to stop what our now deregulated civil administrative law used to stop." (emphasis added)

This is an incredibly important point. The criminal justice system is supposed to be the last, final, bedrock barrier between civilization and total chaos. Society is supposed to have all sorts of institutions to make sure people don't end up in the criminal justice system - and more specifically, in jail. When someone goes to jail, it means that beyond bad behavior of the individual actor, all those institutions of civil society broke down.

This is true, as Geoghegan says, especially as it relates to white-collar and political crime. Sure, when you see Enron executives or Jack Abramoff going to jail, it should be a relief at one level. At least, in the end, they finally caught those bad guys. But at another level, it should be very troubling because it means all sorts of institutions - from the SEC to the FEC - failed to set up regulatory or transparency systems that would have prevented or limited their crimes in the first place, thus preventing or limiting all sorts of societal damage they inflicted.

No, I'm not going to pull a Rush Limbaugh From the Left and say that all crime is the result of the Right's deregulatory ideology - just like it was absurd during the 1980s for conservatives to assert that the Left's more liberal criminal justice ideology was the cause of urban crime waves. Crime is a mix of all sorts of factors - some socioeconomic, some cultural, and some just straight craziness and evil. But within that mix of factors is the collapse of civil society aided and abetted by the Big Con.

By the way, if you want to delve further into the argument Geoghegan is making, go pick up his newest book called See You In Court.