Category: Policy

Moral panic over sex offenses results in cruel and self-defeating overpunishment

logo(4)National Lawyers Guild Review Editor-in-Chief Nathan Goetting has published a thought-provoking piece in the most recent issue of the Review, commenting on America’s “moral panic” over sexual offenses, which has “created self-defeating policies, unconstitutional laws, and cruel punishments.”   Among those punishments are a plethora of collateral consequences that stigmatize and shame without regard to actual risk.  We reprint the editorial here in its entirety, with permission.      

It should go without saying that human sexuality is rife with complexity and mystifying contradictions. It’s a puzzle palace from which all sorts of behaviors—routine, bizarre, and sometimes dangerous—can emanate. Yet our criminal laws and procedures regarding sex crimes respond to this swirling welter of incomprehensible impulses with stubborn and self-defeating simplicity. We choose to punish that which we fear to understand, as if learning what motivates the behavior is to show a little too much sympathy and solidarity with “perverts,” toward whom only contempt can be shown. As with suspected terrorists since 9/11, our mercilessness leaves no room for anything else, not even enlightened self-interest.

Read more

European employment discrimination based on criminal record I – mandatory bars

There is no body of research on European criminal record-based employment discrimination (CBED) comparable to the employer surveys and field studies done in the United States. While European concern for informational privacy keeps criminal records out of the public domain, European countries do not prohibit employment discrimination based on criminal record. In fact, as in the United States, European countries make certain criminal records disqualifying for a vast range of public sector and some private sector employments.

This posting provides background on European, and especially Spanish, mandatory CBED. Our next posting provides background and discussion on discretionary CBED by private employers.

Read more

Michigan takes baby steps on criminal justice reform

Michigan spends one in five tax dollars on corrections so the state continues to explore strategies to safely reduce these costs.  In its most recent session, the legislature fishconsidered bold criminal justice reforms, but strenuous last minute objections from the Attorney General succeeded in halting much of the reform agenda. In the end, only a few reforms were implemented and most of them were passed in watered-down form.

The new laws include (1) the establishment of a Criminal Justice Policy Commission; (2) narrow expansion of set-aside eligibility to victims of human trafficking; and (3) authorization for Certificates of Employability for prisoners who complete certain in-prison training programs.  A more ambitious (though still narrow) expansion of the set-aside law is currently on the Governor’s desk for signature.  These “baby steps” leave lots of room for improvement, but constitute a blueprint for future reform efforts.

Read more

States “rethinking” collateral consequences? Vera Institute jumps the gun

The Vera Institute has published a new report that claims states are “rethinking” collateral consequences through enactment of laws intended to mitigate their impact.  The report (Relief in Sight? States Rethink the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction, 2009-2014) includes an excellent introduction to the issues, helpfully categorizes different types of relief measures, and makes a number of useful recommendations for future reform.

However, the report seems unduly sanguine in suggesting that wholesale dismantling of the regime of collateral penalties is just around the corner, or that reforms of the past five years augur a sea change in public attitudes.  Of greater practical concern, the report has methodological shortcomings that limit its usefulness as a research and advocacy tool.

Read more

The need to eliminate barriers to diversifying police departments

The shootings and beatings of unarmed black men, boys, women and girls by police officers are sickeningly repetitive.  Also repetitive are the calls in response to diversify police departments by hiring officers who better reflect the communities and neighborhoods they would patrol.  These issues have surfaced starkly in Ferguson, Missouri, where three out of 53 officers are black. There, efforts to diversify the police department have been non-existent. Similarly in Cleveland, where twelve-year old Tamir Rice was killed by an officer while playing in a park, black residents make up 53 percent of the population but black officers comprise only 27 percent of the police force.

In Baltimore, the racial composition of the police force more closely approximates the city’s population.  Nevertheless, the city has paid $5.7 million since 2011 in court judgments and settlements of police brutality claims.   In 2013, 70 percent of Baltimore’s police officers lived outside the city.   Thus, racial diversity alone is not a solution.

Read more

Clean slate remedies help overcome collateral consequences

Eliza Hersh, director of the Clean Slate Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center and one of CCRC’s contributing authors, has co-authored a most persuasive op ed in the LA Times, which we are pleased to reprint here in full.  

Should a shoplifting conviction be an indelible scarlet letter? Not in California

What exactly is the appropriate punishment for someone who commits a low-level, nonviolent crime? Should a conviction for minor drug possession, shoplifting or writing a bad check result in a lifetime of stigma and denied opportunities, or do people with criminal records deserve a second chance?

Read more

“Sex Offender Laws Have Gone Too Far”

We recently came across this five-part series on sex offender registries, written by three Yale Law School students and published by Slate.com.  It traces the recent history of registries since the passage of the Jacob Wetterling Act in 1994, examines some of the fallacies and flawed stereotypes underlying the expansion of registries in the past 20 years, and spotlights three areas in which the authors argue their growth has been especially unwise:

  • more non-violent “outlier” crimes are covered;
  • states are keeping people on registries for longer periods of time and making removal harder; and
  • more harsh collateral consequences attach to those required to register.

Read more

Indiana’s new expungement law the product of “many, many compromises”

In May of 2013, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law what is possibly the most comprehensive and forward-looking restoration of rights statute ever enacted in this country.  Under the new law, courts are empowered to “expunge” most criminal records, after waiting periods keyed to the seriousness of the offense.  The effect of an expungement order varies to some extent according to the nature of the crime, but its core concept is to restore rights and eliminate discrimination based on criminal record in the workplace and elsewhere.  This new law has already resulted in relief for hundreds of individuals, due in large part to the proactive approach of the state courts in facilitating pro se representation.

We r150px-On_the_Banks_of_the_Wabash,_Far_Away,_sheet_music_cover_with_Bessie_Davis,_Paul_Dresser,_1897ecently had a chance to talk to the person primarily responsible for shepherding this law through the Indiana legislature, and his experience should be instructive to reform advocates in other states.  Jud McMillin, a conservative former prosecutor who chairs the House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code, might once have been regarded as a rather unusual champion of this unique and progressive legislation.  But in an age of bipartisan support for criminal justice reform, apparently anything can happen.   Read more

Federal agencies reportedly (mostly) satisfied with their collateral consequences

In 2013, the Justice Department launched its Smart on Crime Initiative, which included a call for federal agencies to review collateral consequences in their own rules and policies, to determine which could be narrowed or amended without jeopardizing public safety. According to an NPR report, the results of that long-anticipated review are now in:

Amy Solomon was appointed by Attorney General Holder to oversee the twenty federal agencies charged with reviewing their regulations and policies for potential changes. She reports that hundreds of regulations were reviewed, but the vast majority were deemed “appropriately tailored for their purposes,” including HUD’s discretionary housing policies. So far, only three agencies have submitted changes.

In assessing the “appropriately tailored” conclusion in the context of HUD housing policies, NPR reporter Monica Haywood tells the story of Maurice Alexander, a 67-year-old man who was turned away from subsidized housing in the District of Columbia based on a six-year-old misdemeanor threat conviction, despite guidance from HUD encouraging property owners and agents “to develop policies and procedures that allow ex-offenders to rejoin the community.” The HUD guidance urges property owners to consider all relevant information when reviewing applications from people with a criminal record, including evidence of rehabilitation and “probability of favorable future conduct.”

Haywood concludes that, “If Alexander’s case is any indication, owners may not be taking HUD’s advice.” Read more

“One Strike and You’re Out:” Center for American Progress reports on criminal records policy

CAPREPORTEarlier this week, the Center for American Progress published a new report on the effect of the proliferation of criminal records in a nation of mass incarceration and criminalization. The report (“One Strike and You’re Out: How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records”) explores the debilitating effect that a criminal record – including records for relatively minor offenses and for arrests that did not result in a conviction – can have on an individual’s access to housing, public assistance, education, family stability, and, in turn, their prospects for economic stability. The report’s authors are Rebecca Vallas of the Center for American Progress’s Poverty and Prosperity Program, and Sharon Dietrich of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (and of our own CCRC Board).

The report makes the point that the proliferation of criminal records, and the ease with which they can be accessed, harms not only individuals but society as a whole. The collateral consequences of a criminal record result in employment losses of $65 billion a year in GDP according to one study cited. Another study estimates that the national poverty rate would have dropped by 20 percent between 1980 and 2004 if not for mass incarceration and the accompanying criminal record crisis. The report notes that the war on drugs and the “criminalization of poverty” has resulted in a disproportionately high incidence of justice system contact in communities of color. Criminal records are thus both a cause of poverty and a consequence of poverty.

Read more

1 … 9 10 11 12 13