Federal Crack sentences reduced!

Folks, this is GREAT news! And i'm not just saying that because I'm reading Michelle Alexander's fantastic book The New Jim Crow about racism in the criminal justice system, especially the war on drugs (okay, maybe). But it really is a great move for the federal government to reduce mandatory sentences for crack. The sentences have been overly long and punitive compared to other drugs, and the African-American community has felt the impacts of this policy most severely.

So, what will this do? Will this reduction in sentences lead to a crack epidemic a la the 1980s? Not likely. The individuals in prison who will be affected by this (an estimated 12,000 prisoners) will be able to be released early from their sentences and return to their communities. But these folks are criminal! you might be saying to yourself. Yup, they broke the law. And they were sentenced to jail for their crime. But that sentence was deemed to not fit the crime and so they will be released earlier (depending on their charges) because they have already paid the price for their crime. Will they be rearrested? Well, it depends on so many factors. According to the numbers (which i'm not citing here), 70% of people released from jail recidiviate within three years. That is huge. Sure, some people are hardened criminals and fall back into that, but others simply have no other resources. They've been locked away and their families have moved on. They have no support at home. They can't get a job because they've not only been out of the workforce but they've been in jail. There are no reentry programs to help people coming out of jail. But you know what? Those are problems they would still be facing at the end of their 37 month longer term. They've served the appropriate time for their crimes.

Plus, this reduces the federal prison population, freeing up space for violent offenders and saving money for other things, like drug treatment and alternative to jail programs (ha! I wish). 

Justice for Juveniles

Judge Lippman, New York's Chief judge, is kind of awesome. So, I don't know if you aware, but New York state is one of two states (along with North Carolina) that charges juveniles 16 and over as adults for all crimes. Most other states have the legal age of adult at 18 and those under 18 go through family court. There are a couple of benefits to this. For one, in Family court, your record is sealed, which means that a dumb mistake at 17 isn't going to haunt your employment opportunities for the rest of your life. Second, Family Court provides more opportunities for social services and intervention. When a juvenile is arrested and charged as an adult, studies have shown that this leads to more arrests later on. it is more costly in the short run (when we're looking at it from a budget deficit point of view) but in the long run WAY less costly for the state and society. I support this, and I've excited that my agency will be involved in running some pilot projects as we await for this to pass through the state senate. In fact, i better get back to running those numbers for the Bronx right now... looks like we have 585 16 & 17 years olds who could've been affected by this since January of this year.

Read the article in the NYTimes here. 

A chance for a clean slate

I'm including the full text of a really powerful article I read this morning from the New York Times about a woman being given the chance of a clean slate from her prostitution convictions as a minor. This law will give so many women the chance to move past their past. Also, FYI, we'll be working with Kate Mogulescu in the Bronx to help make some changes at the criminal court there too!

Snared Into Prostitution at 13, and Now Given a Chance for a Clean Legal Slate

By JIM DWYER

Her previous employment had been bagging groceries for tips in a Pathmark, wearing the uniform of the Catholic middle school she attended in the Bronx. That summer, in 2001, she was outfitted by a 21-year-old man who paid her less than she had made at the supermarket and brought her to Hunts Point.
"He gave me the little shorts to wear, and the little tank top thing to wear," said Ms. Johnson, now 22, who asked to be identified pseudonymously. "He told me: 'Just stand right there. When the car pulls up, just tell them, "You want to have a good time?" You tell them the price, then you go and do whatever.' "
For the next eight years, she was sold by men to men. She went through spells when her young body was bringing in $1,600 to $2,500 a night. All of it went to the pimps, she said. They gave her stiletto-heeled shoes, and Ecstasy, and two babies, and beatings with a stick for looking at other pimps.
On Wednesday, she will be part of a small, vital revolution in New York State. Her lawyers from the Legal Aid Society and prosecutors from the district attorney's office in the Bronx will jointly ask a judge to overturn her convictions on prostitution charges before she had reached the age of consent. A law that took effect in August 2010 recognizes that children and minors who perform sex for money are not criminals but victims, and says that they should not bear the residual burden of convictions.
If her request is successful, as is likely, Ms. Johnson will become the third woman in the state to have used the new statute to erase prostitution convictions, and the first United States citizen to do so, said Kate Mogulescu, a Legal Aid lawyer who is representing her.
How many girls are involved in similar situations? In 2007, the state commissioned a survey of every social services agency that had contact with minors in trouble.
In New York City, the study found 399 children who were first "commercially sexually exploited" at age 12 or 13, and 922 at 14 or 15. The state and city have made reforms to move young people like them out of the criminal justice system and to help them with social services.
"The majority of the girls out there had started when they were young," Ms. Johnson said. "They find a little bit of happiness in the game."
That means there are vast numbers of women who were arrested as minors on prostitution charges.
"This is a landmark moment," said Steve Banks, the attorney in chief at Legal Aid. "There are thousands of women who will benefit over time. It removes a blot on their lives."
Ms. Johnson lives in Georgia and works in a Waffle House, supporting her daughter, who is not yet 3. (An older son lives with Ms. Johnson's mother in the Bronx.) She hopes to get a second job, Ms. Johnson said, but the first question on a supermarket application was, "Have you ever been convicted?"
The court hearing on Wednesday will address three convictions for prostitution in 2006, when she was 17. Her pimp, who is under investigation and whom she did not want to identify, had given her false identification that showed she was over 18.
She grew up in the Bronx, the eldest of three daughters born to a hard-working single mother who ran her household with rules and attention that you might expect would keep a child from going astray.
As she tells her story now, a decade later, of the headstrong, damaged, bright, pretty girl that she was, it is hard to grasp all the forces that brought her to a life on the streets. In 2001, a few months before she first left home, her father, who did not live with the family but with whom she was close, was murdered in New Jersey. She cherished the attention of the older boys and men.
It came to an end in 2008, she said, when she learned that she was pregnant and was expecting a girl.
"There was just no way she could be around that," Ms. Johnson said. "Not having it."

MIcrofinance as a way out of prostitution

Nick Kristof wrote this piece for the New York Times today about a former prostitute in Kenya sewing her way out of poverty. It's an interesting piece and I recommend you read it. He tells the story of this woman who was abandoned by her husband and due to poverty, ended up in prostitution in order to support her family. She joined a women's cooperative and learned to sew dresses, and with the help of a microfinance organization that encouraged her to save her earnings, she managed to start her own business sewing dresses. She's doing okay now, though still living on the edges of poverty, but her kids see a brighter future for themselves.

This story is inspiring and made me wonder if this could work in the US prostitution context. Current alternative to prostitution programs focus on job readiness skills and decreasing addiction and connecting to public services. But I don't think that microfinance is something that is really considered here. For one, starting your own business is incredibly expensive, and saving money and getting all the paperwork alone would be incredibly complicated. But I really like the idea of it-- it somehow feels more empowering than to get a job at McDonald's. Are there US based microfinancing organizations? Would a cooperative model work here to help get women out of poverty and empower them to save? Our current system also doesn't encourage saving at all. I'll have to look into this.

The Misuse of Life Without Parole

Great opinion piece in the NYTimes today about the misuse the life without parole sentence (since I agree). I feel like it is an appropraite sentence as an option to the death penalty, for murder and eggregious crimes, but should be meted out not quite as liberally as perhaps it has been in the last decade. The sentence should match the crime, and not all crimes deam that the person should be locked up with the key thrown away. People change, especially young people.  

Ticket meters for Prostitutes

The city of Bonn, Germany, has decided to start using an automated ticket meter for prostitutes to get permission to walk the streets, much like a parking meter, according to an article in the New York Times. Prostitution is legal in Germany, and so this is one way the city has come up with to tax streetworkers. If they are caught without their ticket, after a warning they can get a $150 fine. You can count on the Germans to make even prostitution efficient.

It's kind of a brilliant way to clean up a street-- charge a fee to be there, and then ticket people for not paying the fee. It will cause prostitutes to raise their fees, which in turn will lead to a decrease in demand and shrinking of the market. The market will probably move elsewhere too, if people are unwilling to pay the fines. It also decreases the likelihood (I think) of trafficked girls who have pimps in that area because the pimps will be unwilling to have it cut into their profits. If you can't address demand head on, raising the price can certainly make a dent. Not bad, Germany.

To Watch: Prostitutes: Leaving the Life

Oprah's new network does it again with another documentary i can't wait to get my hands on. Prostitution: Leaving the Life is about the lives of women who have been arrested for prostitution and their struggle to leave that life with. So intense!

This is something I'm super interested in, considering the work that I've been doing lately analyzing prostitution arrest data in the Bronx lately. Prostitution arrests are up and more women (since they are mostly women) are coming through the criminal justice system, but over 30 percent of those have been arrested more than once-- some of them many, many more times. How can we really help them leave the life? That's the million dollar question. But the billion dollar question is-- how do we get rid of the demand?

Irene and Riker's Island

When Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, thousands of inmates were left locked in jails and prisons for days while the rest of the city evacuated. 

I just read an article in Solitary Watch titled "Locked Up and Left Behind: Hurricane Irene and the Prisoner's on New York's Rikers Island", and realized that though I wour with the criminal justice population, I had completely forgotten about what would happen to the people loacked up in the many deteniton facilities around the city. But it looks like I wasn't the only one. 

A few days after Hurricane Irene came sweeping up the east coast without causing major damage to New York City, it is easy to brush of the mandatory evacuations as just the city being overly cautious. But the day before the hurricane was to hit, the city was a in a panic. I was anxiously following developments and the mandatory evacuation of low lying areas of the city. Nearly everyone I know filled their bathtubs on Saturday night and charged their phones, convinced that we'd be without power and wake up to howling winds. The anxiety was real and the possiblity for some major damage was as well. However, with all of the preparations made by the city, including shutting down the entire public transportation system, Riker's Island was not evacuated. it wasn't even in an evacuation zone, though built on a landfill and surrounded by water. In fact, the Department of Corrections admitted that there was no evacation plan for the 12,000 prisoners on Riker's Island. We are lucky that Irene didn't hit. Many of us were a little bummed out that it really seemed like NOTHING happened in the city aside froma few downed branches (we do realize that parts of the country were really devastated). But when we think about what could've happened had the storm been a little bit worse, I think we can all agree that we avoided a major tragedy. Had Irene lived up to her forecast, we don't know if we would be facing a Katrina-like situation with a vulnerable, immobile population trapped in locked cells full of water. I hope that the city DOES create an evacation plan. No matter what crime someone committed (and Riker's is a jail housing mostly midsdemeanor and low-level felony offenders usually serving no more than a year), they don't deserve to be abandoned or forgotten.

Suing after stillbirth

This isn't one of my usual criminal justice themes, but it does have to do with courts and hits close to home. 

Just read this article in the NYTimes about women suing hospitals after stillbirth. I have such mixed feelings about that. They are suing because they felt that malpractice by the doctors and the hospital caused the death of their babies, and they are asking to be compensated for emotional distress to the tune of 1 million dollars. One case in Brooklyn succeeded. On the one hand, such a payout will most certainly lead to the hospital being much more careful. On the other hand... only in about 30% of stillbirths is the cause known. How can you put a price on the mother's emotional distress? It is hard to go through that, but it is hard to lose your baby or child at any point in time and I'm hesitant to say that suing actually would help alleviate the emotional distress. Especially if the court cases drags on for 13 years like the Brooklyn one did. People die. There are accidents. People make mistakes. Doctors aren't perfect. People have the right to sue if they want to, but my gut says- money and fighting won't help you heal.  

After Stillbirth, Courts Try to Put a Price on a Mother’s Anguish

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: August 23, 2011

Two New York cases offer a view of the legal system’s first computations to set a new value on elemental maternal loss.

Should felons be allowed to vote?

The Crime Report had a great op-ed piece about why felons should be restored the right to vote. And the reason isn't just that they've done their time and should be granted their civil rights again, or that it is a racist policy to control elections (both of which are reasons), but it actually helps to reduce recidivism among felons. The right to vote, which so many people don't take advantage of, is fundamental to feeling like you are part of society- you belong.

Viewpoints

NY Bill to curb assistance by Rikers to Immigration Officials

Council Bill Would Curb Assistance by Rikers to Immigration Officials

By SAM DOLNICK

Published: August 1, 2011

Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said federal officials at Rikers Island had misused a program that was meant to detain only dangerous immigrants.

Riker's Island is a jail here in NYC that typically houses low level felony offenders and misdemeanor offenders. Not a maximum security site. Look, if someone is here illegally and committing crimes, my initial reaction is deportation should occur. Get rid of the bastards. But then after watching "World's Most Dangerous Gang" on MS-13 where deportation of gang members led to the spread internationally of a violent gang, and the increased use of extreme violent tactics by gang members in the US, my sentiment on deportation has changed a little bit. Exporting the problem isn't the solution, necessarily.  

But back to Rikers. Bottom line for me is-- let's focus on the high-level or repeat offenders, and let's not worry about the immigration status of defendants whose case is dropped or who have a first time offense. Is that what this bill will do? it sounds like it, so I vote yes.  But i'm open to having my mind changed. 

This is why we need a continuum of care

I just read an article in the NYTimes 8/3/2011 titled "Teenager's Path and a Killing put Spotlight on mental Care"  about a young man with a violent past, severe mental illness and trauma history, who killed a staff member at a transitional housing shelter in Massachusetts. It's a tragic story that, as you follow the paper trail, led to the inevitable conclusion of murder. Foster homes, instability, violence, psychiatric care, criminal charges.... This young man was known within the system, but the parts of the system didn't communicate with each other. The police didn't know about the mental illness, the psych hospital didn't know about the violence, the homeless shelter didn't know about any of it. A friend of mine is working on a city-wide system to enroll mentally ill clients at the hospital into a program where their information is shared with other city agencies. So if the police show up, they'd be able to find out that this individual is schizophrenic and receiving treatment, and can connect with their treatment provider, creating a continuum of care. I acknowledge that it is a lot of information for government agencies to have about you, but they already have it and it does them no good to have it all, locked away on a computer somewhere, if it can't be used to actually help. This case is just one of many that exemplifies why information sharing is vital, especially as funding for mental health services is cut.     

Justice or Revenge?

Check out this NYTimes article on the human need to avenge horrific crimes and the justice system's role in providing that revenge.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree, just that it brings up some interesting thoughts and feelings. I think that revenge is a very visceral reaction to a crime-- we want the wrongdoer to be punished to the extent of the harm they inflicted on us, our loved ones, our community, or our sense of right and wrong. The justice system takes that reaction out of our hands as a (sometimes) impartial actor to determine how and to what extent the perpetrator will be punished to pay for their crime. But does that satisfy the desire for revenge? When I went through rape crisis training, we learned that we can't promise the victims that "justice would be served" because most often, it would not be. The perpetrator of the rape wouldn't get caught or charged, and if they were there would be a messy he said, she said trial, and even after that, the sentence would be minimal, and even after all of that, the pain and fear would still continue for the victim. Does the death penalty for a murderer lead to a feeling that justice was served and revenge for their crimes exacted for the family members of victims? I don't know. I've been lucky enough to never personally be the victim of a crime, but I do work in the justice system and this is something that I wonder about. Especially when also considering rehabilitation as part of the equation. At some point, most offenders will have "paid" for their crime and will be released from prison, and they should not continue to be punished for it, but our society is not one where that is easy to do.

Serving Life

Adding to the To Watch List-- Serving Life, which is a documentary about a hospice network serving the dying lifers in Angola, Louisiana's maximum security prison. Done by the Oprah Winfrey network, it looks at the humanity that can exist even among the most hardened criminals who have committed atrocious crimes. Guaranteed tear-jerker. 

The Wire, Season 4

I don't know if you watch The Wire, but I got into it when I started working in the criminal justice world. And I've been amazed at how spot on they've been on so many of the things they covered in that show. I find myself thinking about it often and saying to colleagues, "This is just like in the Wire!"

So I heard a recent piece on NPR: Report Details Texas School Disciplinary Policies about suspensions and expulsions in schools and how those policies focus more on punishment than on changing misbehavior, which often leads those same kids (half of them) spending time in juvenile justice facilities. With that stigma and those associations, it isn't surprising if those kids suspended in 7th grade never finish school or end up in the revolving door of the criminal justice system. Not because they are bad kids, but because they didn't have anyone advocating for them. The reminded me of season 4 in the Wire which was all about education and the young kids, "hoppers", who wanted to go to school and do well but who really didn't have a chance. Heartbreaking.

I read this NYTimes op-ed by an old college friend of mine back in May about the California prison crisis and the best way to solve it. All I can say is a loud "Amen!" to what she wrote and post it in full here. There are so many people in prison who don't need to be there because they haven't even been charged with a crime but simply can't make bail. There are also so many people filling up our jails for minor offenses who are of no risk to the community, but become higher risk because of their interaction with the corrections system. What we need is a better way to determine who is high-risk versus low-risk and sentence accordingly thus saving prison space for those people who really should be locked up. That's what I'll hopefully be working on if a certain BJA grant comes through for us...

Read the article below!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31baradaran.html

Op-Ed Contributor

The Right Way to Shrink Prisons

By SHIMA BARADARAN

Published: May 30, 2011

Provo, Utah
LAST week the Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its prison population after finding that the state’s penal system was so overcrowded that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment. What the court didn’t do, however, was provide any guidance about how to do it, giving rise to fears of violent convicts being set free and increasing crime rates.
Rather than seek major criminal justice reforms to reduce the prisoner numbers, including scrapping California’s harsh “three strikes” sentencing laws, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed simply moving the surplus state prisoners to county jails. This does nothing to reduce California’s disproportionately high incarceration rates and could just transfer the overcrowding to local jails.
Fortunately, there is a more lasting solution to overcrowding, one that gets to the heart of exploding inmate populations nationwide: reform the rules governing pretrial detention, in part by using formulas to help judges better determine which defendants are unlikely to commit crimes while on bail. Doing so not only would make the system more fair, but also would significantly reduce the number of people who are unnecessarily jailed and even reduce crime rates.
Every year America spends close to $66 billion to keep people behind bars. But almost 500,000 of the 2.3 million prisoners aren’t convicts; rather, they are accused individuals awaiting trial.
While some defendants are able to pay their bail and go free, most cannot, because many judges, lacking firm insight into what types of prisoners are too dangerous to release, set high bail amounts knowing the accused can’t afford them. Though some of these defendants will eventually be found not guilty and go free, keeping them incarcerated before their trials creates a burden on the prison system.
What’s more, detention begets more detention. Defendants detained before trial are more likely to be convicted if they go to trial, more likely to receive prison sentences rather than probation when sentenced, and, given their weak bargaining power with prosecutors while locked up, are more likely to have longer sentences.
A few jurisdictions, however, have begun to think outside the prison cell. In line with recommendations endorsed by the American Bar Association, Miami-Dade County cut costs associated with detention by supervising defendants outside jail at a total cost of around $400 per defendant per year, compared with $20,000 for incarcerated defendants. In Iowa, alternatives to pretrial detention saved the state’s Southern District $1.7 million in 2009.
These and other jurisdictions have also cut costs using technology, like G.P.S. trackers and ankle bracelets, that allow defendants to remain at home — with supervision — while awaiting trial.
True, while these solutions may make sense from a budgetary standpoint, critics worry that increasing pretrial releases will present a threat to public safety, especially since judges are typically left to make bail decisions based simply on a gut feeling.
The risk of release can be largely reduced by arming judges with more data to inform their decisions. Frank McIntyre, an economist, and I recently examined data from over 100,000 felony defendants over a 15-year period, and we found very clear trends regarding which defendants are more likely to commit crimes while free on bail.
For example, judges often detain too many older defendants (people over 30), defendants with clean records and defendants charged with fraud or public order offenses — in other words, people who are less likely to commit crimes while out on bail. On the other hand, judges release too many young defendants with extensive records, people who are more likely to break the law while awaiting trial.
This data could be used to create a set of guidelines that would give judges a better sense of which defendants to release. Of course, judges must use individual discretion and carefully consider local data with pretrial detention decisions. However, our models indicate that such guidelines could safely lead to the release of up to 25 percent more defendants — and a significant reduction in prison costs and crime rates.
Given eye-popping local, state and federal deficits, it’s unlikely that California will be the only state to face the tough choices involved in reducing its prison population. With the right data on pretrial defendants, though, judges can help make that task a lot easier.

Shima Baradaran is an associate professor of law at Brigham Young University and the chairwoman of the American Bar Association Pretrial Release Task Force.

The Super-Lux Super Max - An FP Slide Show | Foreign Policy

The Super-Lux Super Max - An FP Slide Show Foreign Policy

I just read about a super max prison in Norway that looks like luxury college dorms. The purpose of the article was, I think, to enrage readers thinking that the mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik who killed all of those kids at a summer camp would end up in luxury accommodations. And I think that they will be successful in doing that. It doesn't seem fair. My initial reaction is that he should be locked up alone and made to suffer.

But on the other hand, I understand the intent behind the Norwegian criminal justice system. It is different from our American one, where we are entirely focused on the punishment aspect of the criminal justice system, to the extent that when someone does finally make it out of prison they can often not make it in society. Theirs is focused on rehabilitation, fixing people so that they can reenter society and not commit those crimes again. I don't know enough about the Norwegian system, but rather than scream in the injustice that these law breaker are living in the lap of luxury I'd rather take a closer look at what happens to prisoners ones they make it out. If the recidivism rate is lower than our abysmal 68%, it might be worth considering here. Not quite to the same extent, but maybe at least doing away with solitary confinement.