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Racial Justice
By Meghna Philip – 05/21/12
A new documentary by University of Pennsylvania law students chronicles the story of Philadelphia’s aggressive criminal justice debt collections over the past two years. As the Brennan Center has previously written, these efforts have targeted one in five Philadelphians for a total $1.5 billion in alleged fines, fees and court costs dating back to the 1970s.
The filmmakers questioned a number of men and women impacted by the collections. The interviews highlight the fundamental injustice of fees and fines that force people to pay over and over for their crimes, long after having served their sentences.
In Philadelphia, and in many jurisdictions around the country, outstanding criminal justice debt can prevent people from accessing public benefits for themselves and their families. It can also bar people from accessing pardons or expungements of their criminal records, which is a huge barrier to employment.
“This is another example of just kicking the poor down,” Pennsylvania State Senator Shirley M. Kitchen says in the film. “The budget is being balanced on the backs of the poor, the working class, and the middle class. And all of this is just not fair.”
Criminal justice debt policies all over the country demand reform. But the collections process in Philadelphia is particularly egregious. The courts in the city lack crucial documentation to substantiate many of these debts. Thousands of formerly incarcerated people – overwhelmingly poor and from communities of color – are locked in battles over debts that they should not owe, and that they cannot pay. Seventy percent of those who allegedly owe money to the courts are elderly, disabled, impoverished or unemployed.
The ACLU and Community Legal Services of Philadelphia serve many clients trapped in cycles of criminal justice debt. The groups have asked that the Philadelphia courts waive all debts owed prior to 2005. This is the best way to ensure that the city is not wrongfully pursuing people for debts they do not owe. It is beyond time for the city to take this important step to encourage the reentry of hard-working people trying to lead productive lives after incarceration.
Said Malissa Gamble, a formerly incarcerated community organizer who was interviewed in the film: “I take full responsibility for what I have done, but I would like to move on with my life. I don’t want to continuously be beat over the head, and beat down, so when I think that I’m doing something good, the city comes again and they try to tear me down. There’s something strange about that.”
Watch a trailer for “Pay Up! Criminal Justice Debt in Philadelphia:”
The full-length film is available here.
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Civil Justice, Criminal Justice, Fees & Fines
By Roopal Patel – 04/12/12
In Louisiana, people who are represented by a public defender and are later convicted must pay a $35 fee to augment funding for public defenders even though they have already had a judicial determination made that they cannot afford an attorney. The fee creates a system that undermines the Constitutional right to conflict-free counsel by forcing attorneys to rely on their clients’ convictions for much needed funding. The existing fee already acts as an illogical tax on indigent defendants. And now there are two bills before the Louisiana House that would raise the fees on people who are likely unable to pay.
Like many states, Louisiana has systematically underfunded its defender offices – recently resulting in a layoff of 10 percent of the staff in the Orleans Parish public defender office. Even though their indigent clients face potential incarceration for failure to pay, cash-strapped defenders have been forced to advocate for more vigorous enforcement. In 2011, the Louisiana Public Defender Board sued 23 New Orleans judges who failed to collect the $35 fee. Richie Tompson, the chief public defender in Jefferson Parish argues that the fee increase is a necessity; otherwise defenders would be forced to restrict services.
Increasing the fee to $55 as proposed by State Representative Jeff Arnold or to $100 as proposed by State Representative Marcus Hunter – a former public defender – would only lead to an increase in the number of people unable to pay, along with a likely increase in costs related to collection.
Although intended to help fill budget gaps, Louisiana has failed to track the costs of collecting criminal justice fees and fines. There has been no formal study done of how many people are able to pay the current fee of $35, but the number could be as low as 20 percent of convicted people. The exact numbers of the poor affected by increasing the fee are difficult to determine, but the numbers are significant. Public defenders in Orleans Parish alone represent about 80 percent of all criminal defendants, taking on over 45,000 cases in 2010. Ironically, a fee scheme that doesn’t adequately assess the likelihood of actually collecting the funds may likely lead to greater deficits and further burdens on defenders
The Brennan Center urges the Louisiana state legislature to consider the example of Massachusetts. That legislature formed a commission that conducted a cost-benefit analysis weighing the possible revenue to be generated from a largely indigent population against the costs of implementing a proposed jail fee and ultimately decided not to impose the fee. Without such analysis, Louisiana runs the risk of imposing fees that cost more to track and enforce than any revenue they generate.
A client- and conviction-dependant funding scheme places well-intentioned public defenders in conflicting positions relative to their clients. Creating a structure that results in a need to lobby against clients’ interests is the wrong response to a budgetary problem.
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Right to Counsel, Criminal Justice, Fees & Fines, Indigent Defense Reform
By Roopal Patel – 04/04/12
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Lamar Smith (R-TX) presided over a hearing called “Holiday on ICE” to mock the Obama administration’s plans to improve immigration detention conditions. Smith jeeringly referred to the minimum standards set earlier this year for medical care, protections from sexual abuse and assault, and access to counsel as “hospitality guidelines.” The new immigration detention standards are far from perfect: they do not provide alternatives to incarceration options, even for minors and the disabled. However, they are a much-needed first step in improving the incarceration conditions for immigrants, and a long overdue move towards treating detainees with the human dignity they deserve.
Smith’s sarcasm insults immigrants and obscures the harrowing conditions detainees face. There have been over a hundred deaths and numerous rapes and sexual assaults in detention facilities since ICE was created as a part of Department of Homeland Security in 2003. In 2007, Boubacar Bah died from head injuries that were left untreated for thirteen hours while in detention in New Jersey. In 2007, Rosa Isela Contreras-Dominguez, a thirty-five year old pregnant woman died after she was refused medical treatment while in custody in El Paso, Texas. These are just two cases of many.
Thousands of men, women and even children are being detained for violations of immigration law. Since immigration cases are civil and not criminal in nature, ICE is legally prohibited from detaining immigrants for punitive reasons. However, even though the cases are civil, the agency models immigration detention after criminal incarceration systems. And although modeled on criminal systems, detainees do not have the protections applicable to those incarcerated under criminal laws. As a result, immigrant detainees face unique challenges. For example, the Prison Rape Elimination Act does not apply to immigration detention centers, and immigrant detainees have no right to counsel. Also, ICE employs a haphazard detention system that includes privately-owned detention facilities, ICE facilities, and county facilities, making tracking and oversight extremely difficult. Often, many of the detainees are transferred far from their families and from any legal counsel they may have established.
Immigrant detention conditions in the US have long been criticized by human rights groups. ICE only made the regulation changes after years of being criticized by investigative news reports and human rights groups. The new standards seek to reduce detention transfers by placing centers in strategic locations, require strip searches to be performed by guards of the same gender to lower risk of sexual assault, require safe water and improved medical treatments, and seek to improve processes for reporting sexual assault.
When we place people in cages, we assume a responsibility to treat them humanely. Rules designed to prevent death, rape, or assault and providing basic medical care are not luxuries. And the absence of those rules is no joke.
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Civil Justice, Criminal Justice, Sentencing Reform
By Meghna Philip – 03/23/12
On the heels of a recent string of criticisms of racial and religious profiling by the New York Police Department, a Quinnipiac University poll released last week reported that a majority of New Yorkers approve of the way the police are doing their job. However, only 46 percent approve of the controversial policing tactic stop-and-frisk. The racial breakdown of reactions to this policy is striking: 59 percent of white voters approve, while only 43 percent of Hispanic voters and 27 percent of black voters support stop-and-frisk.
The results of a January 2011 study called “Understanding Stop & Frisk” shed a more nuanced light on minority communities’ reactions to the policy. The Global Strategy Group conducted the study amongst adult residents of the six neighborhoods with the highest frequency of stops, in Brooklyn, East Harlem and Queens. Participants were chosen to include the most highly impacted demographics: African Americans and Latinos. Focus groups included participants who reported they had never been the target of a stop-and-frisk.
The strongest supporters of the policy — African American and Latino seniors — almost universally agreed that it can be a violation of civil rights, yet still supported it. And the most adamant objectors — African American and Latino men — expressed outrage at the policy, yet were not fully committed to ending it altogether. A majority of participants recognized crime as a major problem in their neighborhood, but agreed that stop-and-frisk doesn’t reduce crime or improve quality of life enough to justify its tendency towards racially-based harassment that ruins community relationships with the police.
“There are so many [officers] who have had no experience with our community. Somebody must have told them, ‘You have to be aggressive instead of coming to [these people] in a proper way.’ Some of them come and speak to us like animals,” said one African American woman.
Stop-and-frisk has had an overwhelmingly disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics, who represented 87 percent of those stopped last year. It is unclear what positive effect, if any, the practice has had on improving public safety outcomes. Close to 90 percent of stops in 2011 resulted in no arrest or summons whatsoever. Criminologist Frank Zimring, who has written very favorably about most of the crime-fighting tactics the NYPD has used in the last two decades, finds no evidence to support the use of stop-and-frisk.
"The New York City Police Department is one of the most aggressive police departments we've ever seen. And the big question…is, does getting aggressive, does making 600,000 stops add value to these techniques? And the answer is a great big we don't know."
The Brennan Center supports efforts to improve police-community relations in ways that allow minority communities to be both safe and free. Non-aggressive community policing, and increased foot patrols with properly trained and supported officers, should be part of coordinated strategies to improve a community’s health. Such programs would achieve the results all New Yorkers seek, and that we all deserve. The NYPD must identify fairer and more intelligent practices than stop-and-frisk, because a growing chorus of politicians, advocates and citizens demands it.
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Civil Justice
By Rebekah Diller – 04/14/11
The Maryland legislature this week took an important step toward helping formerly incarcerated individuals reintegrate successfully into society. In the final hours of the legislative session, it passed a bill that promises to reform a significant financial burden the state has placed on persons on parole.
For 20 years, the state has charged people on parole a $40 monthly fee for their supervision even though the fee is largely uncollectible. The unemployed, disabled and those enrolled in education or job training programs are supposed to be exempt. However, a 2009 Brennan Center report, Maryland’s Parole Supervision Fee: A Barrier to Reentry, found that the exemption system was broken. Most persons on parole are not even aware that the exemptions exist, much less of the system for applying for one. As a result, people emerge from parole in debt and, in many cases, with bad credit.
Maryland has finally taken steps to fix this problem. A bill passed Monday and awaiting the governor’s signature, will ensure that persons on parole are made aware of the opportunity for an exemption and the process by which to apply for one. More will need to be done upon its passage to ensure that the process for obtaining exemptions becomes truly accessible. However, the bill marks an important first step toward fixing the broken exemption system and removing a major barrier to reentry for the thousands of people coming out of prison each year in Maryland . Read the Brennan Center’s testimony in support of the bill here.
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Criminal Justice, Fees & Fines
By Laura Klein Abel – 02/28/11
This month, the Attorney General instructed the head of every executive agency to take immediate action to ensure that the agency is able to communicate with the people it serves, regardless of English language ability. While this move has been overshadowed by the justifiably loud celebration of the Justice Department’s decision to stop defending the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, it promises to have an equally profound effect on civil rights.
In order to serve its customers, the federal government must be able to communicate with them. As the Attorney General wrote, “[e]vents such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Gulf oil spill, and the 2010 Decennial Census highlight the need for federal agencies to ensure language access.”
Miscommunication can lead to tragedies. Human rights groups have documented instances of immigrants unable to communicate their need for health care, food or other assistance to staff at the detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security. Domestic violence victims have been unable to inform law enforcement officers of their need for protection. Parents have been unable to obtain Food Stamps or healthcare for their children.
A year ago, on behalf of the National Language Access Advocates Network, the Brennan Center warned the Justice Department about these problems, describing the failure of many federal agencies to comply with their language access obligations. As we had recommended, the Attorney General’s recent letter to the executive agencies instructs each to develop or update a plan for ensuring that the agency’s own employees are able to communicate with the limited English proficient people they encounter. And, it reminds each of its obligation to provide language assistance guidance to all non-profits, state and local governments, and businesses it funds. Most importantly, the letter warns that DOJ will monitor whether federal agencies are fulfilling their language access obligations.
Without interpreters, all too often federal agencies cannot communicate with the people they serve. Without monitoring, all too often the Justice Department’s warnings are just empty words. The Attorney General’s letter promises improvement on both fronts.
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Civil Justice, Language Access
By Nicole Austin-Hillery – 07/30/10
This week, Congress made two important advances involving two key pieces of criminal justice legislation that are part of the Brennan Center’s criminal justice advocacy efforts.
On Wednesday, the United States House of Representatives passed historic legislation that will help to end the longstanding sentencing disparity for offenses involving crack and powder cocaine. After more than 20 years of sentencing with a 100-to-1 disparity (a disparity put in place as a response to combating, what was then perceived, as the more harmful effects of crack cocaine on urban communities), legislation that reduces that disparity down to 18-to-1 is now headed to the desk of President of Obama.
This legislation, previously passed in the United States Senate in March of this year, is historic not only in terms of how far it goes in lowering the disparity but also in terms of the bi-partisan support behind passage of the legislation.
This legislation is particularly important to the Brennan Center because it is a key part of an effort in our Justice Program to offer reforms that will help reduce the impact of racial disparities in our criminal justice system. As noted in our report Racial Disparities in Federal Prosecutions, the sentencing disparity for offenses involving crack and powder cocaine is one of the harshest examples of racial disparities in our criminal justice system. It has long been argued that the unequal sentencing involving crack and powder cocaine disproportionately punishes African-Americans and the poor. This legislation goes a long way towards completely eradicating one of the systems most insidious disparities.
Advocates, including the Brennan Center, actively sought to pass legislation that would completely eliminate the disparity but ultimately a compromise was reached in the Senate between Judiciary Committee leaders, Chair Dick Durbin and ranking Republican leader, Jeff Sessions, which resulted in reducing the disparity down to 18 to 1. This compromise also eliminates the five year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of five grams of cocaine. This repeal is the first repeal of a mandatory minimum drug sentence since the 1970’s. The passage of this bill is expected to reduce the federal prison population by thousands and save an estimated $42 million in criminal justice spending over the next five years.
While this legislation is not and cannot be the final word on ending sentencing disparities, it is a major step on the road towards ultimate and complete elimination of the disparity.
The President is expected to sign this bill enthusiastically into law once it reaches his desk -- as lowering the disparity has been one of this White House’s criminal justice goals.
One day prior to passage of the historic sentencing legislation, the House of Representatives passed legislation that will create a blue-ribbon, bi-partisan commission charged with examining and making recommendations for reforming the nation’s criminal justice system. H.R. 5143, introduced by Representative William Delahunt is the companion piece to a bill originally introduced in the Senate by Senator Jim Webb (S. 714), who has made creation of this commission one of his key legislative priorities.
If the Commission is created, it will be the first comprehensive review of our nation’s criminal justice system since the Johnson Administration.
The commission will study all areas of the criminal justice system, including federal, state, local and tribal governments’ criminal justice costs, practices, and policies. After conducting the review, the Commission will make recommendations for changes in, or continuation of oversight, policies, practices, and laws designed to prevent, deter, and reduce crime and violence, improve cost-effectiveness, and ensure the interests of justice. The Commission will consist of a bi-partisan group of commissioners from various realms of the criminal justice system, including prosecutors, defenders and advocates. The Commission will spend eighteen months reviewing the system prior to making final recommendations for reform.
The bill has been endorsed by approximately 100 organizations including the Brennan Center, which is part of a coalition of advocates engaged in an effort to reform certain areas of our federal criminal justice system.
Tags: Racial Justice, Criminal Justice
By Garima Malhotra – 07/06/10
In a political climate where the partisan divide makes allies and alliances more predictable every day, last week's USA Today shed light on a rather unusual set of allies: cops and individuals recently released from prison. As USA Today reports, re-entry programs in Michigan and Rhode Island pair corrections officers with inmates before and after their release in an effort to aid them with their transition back into society, with the ultimate goal of preventing future crime.
It is surprising that such a logical approach is untraditional – and it is not surprising that it is effective. For example, in the western region of the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative program, only 11% of the program’s 713 participants have been convicted of new crimes in last four years – compared to 70% nationally. It goes without saying that job training, mentoring, counseling and support help the transition from prison to community and prevent recidivism.
But the idea is not new to the Brennan Center. Since 2007, we have been building a similar partnership. After a national convening of law enforcement and criminal justice allies, we created a Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice Advisory Council with whom we partner on both on state and federal reform of criminal disenfranchisement laws. Current members include police chiefs, prosecutors, heads of probation, parole and corrections departments, and presidents of leading professional law enforcement and community supervision associations.
These law enforcement professionals recognize that restoring the right to vote after release from incarceration affirms the returning members’ value to the polity, encourages participation in civic life, and helps to rebuild the ties that motive law-abiding behavior.
The Brennan Center Law Enforcement Advisory Council has been enormously effective. The American Probation and Parole Association (APPA), the National Black Police Association (NBPA), the Association of Paroling Authorities International (APAI) and the American Correctional Association (ACA) have all passed resolutions in favor of voting rights restoration. Members of the law enforcement community have supported campaigns to restore the right to vote to people with prior convictions across the country, including in Kentucky, New York, Rhode Island, Washington and Virginia. In December 2009, high ranking law enforcement and criminal justice professionals wrote to members of Congress urging them to sign the Democracy Restoration Act, legislation that seeks to restore the right to vote to individuals upon release from prison. And just recently, a group of law enforcement submitted an amicus curiae brief in a case that challenges Washington’s felony disenfranchisement law, arguing that the laws impede rehabilitation and successful reintegration.
When testifying recently before a United States House Judiciary Subcommittee, APPA Executive Director and Advisory Council member Carl Wicklund stated, “One of the core missions of parole and probation supervision is to support the successful transition from prison and jail to the community. Civic participation is an integral part of this transition because it helps transform one’s identity from deviant to law-abiding citizen.” Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman, another supporter of Rhode Island camping and Advisory Council member, explained, “denying the vote to people who completed their prison sentence disrupts the re-entry process and weakens the long-term prospects for sustainable rehabilitation.” And Gil Kerlikowske, now the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, wrote when he was Chief of Police in Seattle, “voting is an important way to connect people to their communities, which in turn helps them avoid going back to crime. . . . We want those who leave prison to become productive and law-abiding citizens. Voting puts them on that path.”
In fact, the relationship between Rhode Island Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall and Andres Idarraga, described in the USA Today article, started well before Andres asked Director Wall for a recommendation to Yale Law School. Andres was one of the primary spokespeople for the Rhode Island Right to Vote campaign, and he is one of 15,000 Rhode Islanders with a conviction in their past who had their right to vote restored when voters approved a ballot referendum in November 2006. Rhode Island became the first state to approve Brennan Center’s model bill that not only restores voting rights to individuals upon release from prison, but requires the Department of Corrections to notify individuals in writing about their right and provide voter registration forms. It was through his work with the right to vote campaign that Andres caught the attention of Director Wall, who had endorsed the campaign and is currently a member of our Advisory Council.
This partnership between corrections/law enforcement individuals and people coming out of prison is exciting and promising. It shows an increasing commitment within the criminal justice community to help address some of the systematic problems that result in some individuals’ repeated contact with the criminal justice system. Hopefully, this collaboration among unusual allies will continue to grow across the country, and the intuitive link between civic participation and successful re-entry will no longer be ignored.
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice Advisory Council, Racial Justice
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