Brennan Center for Justice

The Brennan Center is proud to share the inaugural edition of the Justice Update. The Center's Justice Program has embarked on an exciting new phase under the leadership of Inimai Chettiar, formerly of the ACLU’s Initiative to End Overincarceration, who has gained national recognition for her use of economic analysis and novel legal tools to reform the justice system. These updates will provide a snapshot of our justice-related work and latest developments in the field. If you would like to receive future updates, please sign up for this new newsletter here.

The Justice Program advances data-driven and innovative legal reforms to achieve two goals: ending unnecessary incarceration and closing the “justice gap” for low-income Americans, starting with combating the foreclosure crisis. Our system of incarceration has grown wildly, with all Americans suffering the consequences. Meanwhile, the economic crisis has brought many struggling communities to their breaking point. Enacting smart reforms in our justice system has never been more crucial to helping us achieve a shared prosperous future.

Please join us as we fight to secure our nation’s promise of “equal justice for all.”

“Shadow Convention” Spotlights Overincarceration

As part of the Huffington Post’s “Shadow Conventions” coverage, which spotlights issues neglected by the party conventions, Inimai Chettiar spoke with Arianna Huffington and The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander about mass incarceration. With 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The country spends over $70 billion locking up people, many who pose little threat to public safety. “People don’t realize that overincarceration affects all Americans,” Chettiar noted. “Not only has it devastated African-American communities – and increasingly white Americans, Latinos and South Asians – but it funnels tax dollars away from other public priorities, like education, jobs programs, infrastructure and public benefits.”  

Read a companion post by Chettiar and Roopal Patel on states’ misbegotten efforts to collect revenue by imposing onerous “user fees” on criminal defendants, which creates new paths to prison for those unable to pay. Writing for ThinkProgress, Chettiar called these policies “unsustainable, irrational, and just plain bad economics.” For more on how these fees lead to unnecessary incarceration, read the Center’s recent report, Criminal Justice Debt: A Toolkit for Action, by Roopal Patel and Meghna Philip, which provides practical policy recommendations and concrete strategies to enact them, and Patel’s follow-up piece in The Clearinghouse Review. Watch Thomas Giovanni discuss this new form of debtors’ prisons on the Rachel Maddow Show.

In the Supreme Court: Race-Conscious Admissions Benefit All

On October 10, the Supreme Court will hear a case challenging the admissions policies of the University of Texas at Austin. Under current practice, race is one factor the school considers in admissions, which the plaintiff seeks to eliminate. The Brennan Center and the League of Women Voters filed a friend-of-the-court brief showing that social science research demonstrates that racial diversity positively affects students of all races. Racial diversity enhances cognitive and leadership skills, confidence, social engagement, tolerance, and the ability to work collaboratively for all students. Inimai Chettiar provided commentary for SCOTUS blog explaining the Court’s misinterpretation of equal protection and Mark Ladov explained the case further in The National Law Journal. This case is of particular importance to the Justice Program given the link between education and incarceration. Future editions of The Justice Update will provide a preview of cases to be heard before the Court’s oral arguments each month.

Mortgage Settlement Money Misses Target

The Office of National Mortgage Oversight, created to monitor the $25 billion banks paid to settle fraud allegations by regulators, issued its first report. Of the 138,000 homeowners who received reported relief, more than half received aid toward closing short sales. Short sales, in which families sell homes at an economic loss, do not meet the settlement’s goal to help victimized families keep their homes. Only 12 percent of homeowners actually received loan forgiveness. Further, the report lacks data on the demographics of borrowers receiving the funds, making it impossible to determine if the money is going where needed. Meanwhile, the National Conference of State Legislators reports that many states are actually diverting mortgage settlement funds. For example, Georgia has directed all of its $100 million to economic development and Nebraska has retained all its $8.4 million in a “rainy day fund.” The Brennan Center will continue to fight to prevent unnecessary foreclosure. As Mark Ladov noted, “foreclosure prevention and mitigation is plainly a cost-effective investment that benefits all Americans.”

Recent Writings

• As the first in a series on pre-trial detention, Thomas Giovanni reviewed a new Justice Policy Institute report and explained how money bail is a part of a broken justice system.
• At ThinkProgress, Inimai Chettiar digested a study from Harvard and the University of Chicago documenting for the first time that racial bias affects judges when sentencing defendants.
• Over at Huffington Post, Inimai Chettiar highlighted a new solution to reduce prison populations. Social impact bonds  – now being considered by several states – create financial incentives for government programs to achieve social goals.
• In a friend-of-the-court brief for the Ninth Circuit, the Brennan Center challenged California’s efforts to restrict the right to counsel for parolees facing re-incarceration. Mark Ladov and Inimai Chettiar explain for the American Constitutional Society how providing counsel at these hearings will prevent unnecessary incarceration in a state already under Supreme Court order to reduce its prison population.
• Thomas Giovanni released Start Now at the Center’s annual Community Oriented Defender Network conference. The publication explains how underfunded defenders, the front-line guardians against mass incarceration, have devised innovative “holistic” solutions.

Future Events

• Criminal Justice in the 21^st Century: Eliminating Racial Disparity, Oct. 17-19, 2012. The Brennan Center, NY County Lawyers’ Association, and others will host this convening in New York City. Invited guests – including prosecutors, defenders, advocates, and former elected officials – will devise policy reforms to end racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. The Brennan Center will release a publication to start the discussion in October.

• American Bar Association Fall Conference, Oct. 25-26, 2012. The Brennan Center is cosponsoring the ABA’s Criminal Justice Conference in Washington, D.C., which will focus on overincarceration. Additional sponsors include the National Association of Attorneys General, National District Attorneys Association, and American Correctional Association. The keynote speaker will be former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, now at the Heritage Foundation.

• Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference, September 21, 2012. Inimai Chettiar will be speaking about “The Challenges of Criminal Justice Reform” as part of the 2012 conference’s Advancing Civil Rights Agenda.

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