The Reflections of a Hypocrite

By Leo Kim

Guest Blogger

What happens when you learn that you’re a hypocrite?

That was the thought bouncing around my head as I fumbled around a row of black trash bags lining the street, dealing with the aftermath of a sudden eviction.

A few hours earlier, I had been at my desk at Justice Policy Institute’s office working when I got a call. “You need to get here right away,” a panicked neighbor told me. “The guy you’re subletting from is being evicted and the marshals are taking out everything.”

First, I thought it was a joke. There’s no way, I thought. It was too ironic. After all, I had only recently finished helping with research for JPI on the intersection of homelessness and the criminal justice system in Maryland.

Thirty minutes later, when I got to the apartment and saw my entire life in D.C. tossed indiscriminately into trash bags on the side of the street, I knew it was no joke. I had received no word of the eviction. No forewarning. But there it was.

It was quite a scene and on a busy Georgetown afternoon; I stuck out.

Most passersby tried to avoid eye contact. Some talked amongst themselves about what could have happened. A select few actually came up and asked me themselves, leaving with words that, while comforting, amounted to little more than “I’m sorry, I wish I could help.”

It was at that point that a man of about 50 approached me. Despite looking worn and tired, he told me that he wanted to help. He told me that something similar had happened to him, and he understood. If I needed anything, I should come get him— he’d be across the street.

This man, homeless, was the only stranger to offer me help that day.

All this started to get me thinking. What would I have done had I been one of the people walking by? After all, I should have known how swift and terrible something like this could be. I had spent the better part of a summer specifically researching it, and I knew that for most people, the same event would have been far worse than I could ever hope to comprehend. I knew from my research that homelessness could have devastating impacts and often lead to involvement in the justice system.

I, who could rattle off dozens of facts about the worst parts of homelessness, wouldn’t have offered substantial help. And while I’m sure there are better souls out there, I think most people would do the same— they did do the same.

So where does this leave me?

The thing is, I’m a little bit of a dork. But not just any kind of dork, I’m a philosophy dork. So naturally, that’s where my mind went.

There’s a theory in philosophy that essentially says that your beliefs are intimately linked to your actions. If  you believe something, you’ll act in accordance with that belief. If you act in a way seemingly contradictory, we can say that you never believed that thing in the first place. After all, it makes sense to say a person who acts bigoted doesn’t believe in equality, even if they explicitly say they do.

Plus, if beliefs don’t cause action, then why would we bother teaching correct information? What’s the purpose of teaching people about global warming if we don’t think it’ll lead to positive change, to something happening?

So how would someone who believed in the inequity surrounding homelessness have acted in that situation? The obvious answer seems to be that they would have helped. But, contrary to my belief that people who are homeless need more than a few meaningless words, that’s exactly what I would’ve done, like so many did that day.

What conclusion did I have? I was a hypocrite.

I thought I had done all the right things to help myself become more understanding of the world around me— to become more understanding of the privilege I have that so many lack, of the obligation we all have towards one another. I had researched, written, and learned about the relevant issues. I had taken classes on ethics and waxed philosophical.

But at the end of the day, this intellectual education wasn’t enough to ensure that my beliefs translated into actions consistent with those beliefs. I didn’t have the right beliefs in the sense that we want them, beliefs in the sense that they matter in a tangible way. There was still a vast chasm separating my intellectual knowledge, and this visceral, acting knowledge.

It’s probably safe to assume that many reading this, like me, are interested in reform and have a genuine desire to—pardon the hackneyed expression— “be the change that they wish to see in the world.”

Yet, this isn’t something that can be achieved in a purely academic setting, as so many of my university peers may think. Rather, there needs to be something connecting you to the people the problem affects; it needs to be human, not solely intellectual.

Fighting this abstraction through personal involvement is important. With it, the divide between the two kinds of knowledge can start to inch closer and closer together.

When I came to my internship at JPI, I was told that my primary job was to “learn.” By the end of my internship, I realized that the most valuable kind of learning I did was unlike the academic kind I had become so accustomed to in the past 15 years of my life.

Getting a chance to meet those that the problem affected and becoming more personally conscientious of the issues at hand gave me something I could have never taken away from a report or a classroom. And this is precisely what we need if we are to become more like the person we all want to be, rather than the ones we so often are.

Leo Kim is a student at Yale where he studies philosophy and writes for the Opinion Section of the Yale Daily News. He is also a former JPI Research Intern.

Help Young Adults Succeed: Create Alternatives to the Justice System

By Marcus Bullock

Guest Blogger

On October 2^nd, the Washington Post published “Why 21 year-old offenders should be tried in family court”. As I read the op-ed, I was reminded of the young guys that I knew while I was locked up as a 15-year-old kid.

The young men around me may have been older than I was, but these guys were no different from me. For Youth Justice Awareness Month at the Campaign for Youth Justice, I created this video about why experiencing prison while still developing is extremely harmful for young adults. As I learn about the brain science and behavior research that shows what seemed obvious to me at the time, I now know that there’s not that much difference, developmentally, between an older teenager and a young adult.Now that we know this, I hope we can create approaches and programs that are based on what science tells us.

Instead of treating young adults the same as if they are much older and putting them in the criminal justice system, we should create systems for diversion, community-based services, and maybe even special facilities to address their unique needs. I now run my own home remodeling business, and am the founder of the Flikshop mobile app, which generates postcards from digital downloads to help keep people in prison more connected to their loved ones. If we provide supports that recognize the needs of young adults, even if they are in the adult criminal justice system, we can see lots more people succeed like me. Doing this would be the ideal game plan, and would ensure that our communities are safer in the long run.

Marcus Bullock is the CEO and Founder of the mobile app Flikshop. He is also a Board Member at the Justice Policy Institute. 

A national agenda for criminal justice reform: Not just second chances, but a rational first response

By Marc Schindler

Executive Director of JPI

Originally Posted on Huffington Post's Crime Blog

During a powerful speech to the NAACP convention on Tuesday, President Obama outlined sweeping reforms to ensure our justice system is more fair and effective. He will be the first President to visit a federal prison, and he commuted more sentences in a single day since Lyndon B. Johnson. 

These efforts will surely illuminate some of the most glaring problems with our nation’s justice system, such as the excessive incarceration of people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses and deplorable practices of solitary confinement. Solving the nation’s crisis of incarceration will require sustained attention and committed action. And while removing or reducing time served by people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses would be significant, ending the era of our incarceration generation requires deeper changes where incarceration is used as the last resort. This would be a dramatic shift from current practices where incarceration is too often used as the first response to social problems.   

Obama’s speech rang like music to the ears of community activists, advocates and experts who have long called for reforms like eliminating mandatory sentences, ending the use of solitary confinement, and investing in hard-hit neighborhoods. As the President noted, there is nothing new about recognizing the failures of the criminal justice system. What has changed is a growing political and popular consensus that business as usual isn’t working for anyone.

When I learned of Obama’s scheduled visit to the El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma on Thursday, my first thought was gratitude for an encounter that is long overdue. My second thought was disbelief. Was it possible that a sitting President of the United States, which spends $80 billion each year to house the world’s largest incarcerated population, has never before investigated the impacts firsthand? Imagine a nation where health care or education policy is designed and implemented on state and federal levels without the Commander in Chief ever stepping into a hospital or school.

It’s well known that the justice system disproportionately impacts young men of color, and treats people of color differently for the same crimes. Essentially, there is glaring unfairness in our so-called justice system. The President also spoke to the enormity of the system in terms of its costs and impact on children and families.

Consider the magnitude.  Expanding on an estimate from a Bureau of Justice report, roughly 2.5 million children have incarcerated parents. Using the same math and considering that about 70 million people have criminal records that means approximately 78 million children have parents with a record. In the end the total number is staggering: out of a national population of 318.9 million people, 153 million are either in prison or jail, have a criminal record, or have parents who are in prison or jail, or have a conviction.  

And this is the first time a sitting President has visited a U.S. prison?

I have every hope that the President will be deeply impacted by what he experiences in El Reno. In my own work, visits to prisons and encounters with people in prison have been some of the most powerful ways to motivate reform. Following the President’s lead, every governor, mayor and county executive should be called on to visit an adult or juvenile facility within the next 60 days. 

I know that the commutations the President ordered this week will mean everything to the people who have been given a second chance. And diverting individuals or reducing sentences for people convicted of nonviolent offenses would make a significant dent in the imprisoned population. But sentencing reform should be considered more broadly and account for actual public safety benefits. 

Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project has advanced the idea of sentencing maximums, which cap sentences at 20 years except for the most extreme instances. Decades long sentences increase costs without advancing safety. To implement comprehensive reforms we need to address excessively long sentencing system-wide, not just for non-violent drug offenders.

The President says that we are a people that believe in second chances. I agree with that, but we also must scrutinize our first responses. Now is the time where we must work together to ask and answer the hard questions: In what instances is prison the correct response? For whom is it the right option? And what is it intended to do?

To truly transform our justice system, we need to not only open our eyes to its failures but also question its intent. We all need to work together to make sure that this shift is not just in the way we talk about prisons, but ultimately in how they are used—as a last resort, in limited circumstances, and always measured by their fairness and effectiveness.

Labor Pains: Banning shackling during childbirth isn’t enough

BY Daniel Landsman

Former JPI Intern

In November 2008, Jennifer Farrar was arrested for cashing fake payroll checks and booked into Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois. Farrar went into labor during a hearing in January 2009 and was rushed to the hospital, shackled and chained. When she arrived at the hospital, the belly chain was removed but her hands and feet remained cuffed, despite doctors and nurses asking for their removal. Finally, when it came time to push, all but one cuff was removed, leaving her left arm cuffed to the hospital bed while she was giving birth.

Farrar became one of the many women to give birth while under the custody of a prison or jail and with one or more of their limbs shackled.

Women throughout the country are at risk of being subjected to the same treatment Jennifer Farrah received during the birth of her child. 29 states (report was completed before legislation was passed in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Minnesota) do not have state laws preventing the shackling of pregnant women who are in the custody of correctional systems during childbirth. Of those 29 states, 21 have departmental policies banning or regulating the practice. The remaining seven states view women in labor as a safety risk that must be shackled at the ankles, wrists, and across the belly. These shackles can cause serious health risks during childbirth and are clear violations of our protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

It seems that state laws or departmental policies addressing the issue are not enough. Take, for example, the State of Tennessee. Following a lawsuit against the city of Nashville, after a woman in the U.S. without documentation was detained for driving without a license and forced to endure the pains of labor while cuffed to a hospital bed, the Tennessee Department of Corrections created a policy against the use of restraints. However, the policy did not specifically ban the practice during the total duration of labor. Instead, the policy gives discretion to corrections officers, directing that “restraint devices and methods employed during movement and transportation be appropriate to the medical and security needs of the inmate”. In other words, because women are likely to be at the prison when they go into labor, they can be shackled while they are being taken to the hospital and in any movement throughout the hospital.

Similarly, despite state legislation to end the practice in New York, women continued to be shackled during labor. According to a report by the Correction Association of New York, 23 of 27 women interviewed were shackled during pregnancy in direct violation of a law banning the practice.

As the population of women in prison continues to grow—  an increase of 100,000 since 1980—we cannot allow state and federal prisons to continue the barbaric act of shackling women during childbirth. These states need to enact legislation (or even policy) that contains clear language banning the practice, such as the bill enacted in Washington, D.C. in 2013. The bill provides many rights to pregnant women in the correctional system, including banning shackling of pregnant women beginning in their third trimester.

Passing legislation or enacting policy is an important step in the process of stopping this practice, correction officers must be trained on anti-shackling laws as they are passed and women must be properly educated on their rights under anti-shackling laws. States need to clearly communicate to the Department of Corrections and the correctional officers that the practice of shackling women in labor is no long acceptable.  A shift in attitude about shackling women during labor is a long time coming and will likely go a long way to ensuring the safety and well-being of women and their babies.  

Bringing an End to the Incarceration Generation

By Marc Schindler

This blog post originally appeared on The Huffington Post's Crime Blog 

In the not so distant past, election cycles inevitably saw a political race to incarcerate where candidates competed to be the toughest on crime. Making history as the first candidate to raise the issue of ending the "incarceration generation" during a presidential election, Hillary Rodham Clinton has effectively repudiated the very policies her husband and others designed and implemented during the drumbeat of the lock 'em policies of the 1990s. The hallmark of that effort was the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, which was signed by Bill Clinton and resulted in increased federal funding for police and prisons, and encouraged longer prison sentences.

The political landscape has changed dramatically, and leaders from all across the spectrum are finally embracing "smart on crime" reforms to reduce the costs and size of a criminal justice system widely recognized to be broken and ineffective. In just the last few months, amidst calls for racial justice and policing reforms in communities like Baltimore and Ferguson, over six hundred interested lawmakers, advocates, faith leaders and researchers attended a national bipartisan summit in Washington calling for criminal justice reform.

The radical shift in rhetoric, however, has yet to be followed by the kinds of sweeping, comprehensive reforms that would result in a serious dent in our nation's prison population. By contrast, when the tough on crime movement took hold in the '90s, it was followed by expansive and widespread policy changes at every level of government that resulted in an explosion in the prison population. With the exception of a two-year dip, prison and jail populations nationally have continued to rise. As of 2013, there were 2.2 million people in prisons and jails and 4.8 million in the community on probation or parole, for a grand total of nearly 7 million people under the justice system's control. If we are serious about ending the failed era of mass incarceration, we need to have the rhetoric followed by concrete policies and implementation.

The need for these changes has been evident for decades, and finally is getting the attention it deserves. Sadly, it has taken recent tragic events to put a national spotlight on problematic policing practices with racially disparate impact, neither of which is a new problem. That said, while policing reforms are critically important to eliminating the use of excessive force and reducing the number of people coming into the justice system, they remain part of a larger criminal justice approach that has devastated already vulnerable communities, and targeted people of color.

None of these problems are new and have been documented before, including by the Kerner Report issued in 1968 following unrest in communities of color across the country. Finding that the unrest in African American communities was largely the result of frustrations due to a lack of economic opportunity, the report called for investments to create jobs, improve housing and address de facto segregation in our communities.

Now, almost 50 years later little has changed and we see many of the same pervasive problems existing in cities across the country. And in fact, maybe the biggest change is that in addition to the problems of the past, we have now added mass incarceration to the list of problems plaguing these communities. For example, in a recent analysis, the Justice Policy Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative found that Maryland spends $300 million to incarcerate people from the city of Baltimore, who make up one out of three people in state prison. Freddie Gray's neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park has an incarceration rate eight times that of the state of Maryland, with the result being that $17 million in taxpayer dollars are spent each year to incarcerate people from that small community.

The same neighborhood has some of the city's worst indicators for public health, including lower levels of income and education, a high exposure to lead paint, and a shorter life expectancy than neighborhoods within a short radius, essentially the same types of conditions documented in the Kerner Report. The only "investment" with a clear impact in that neighborhood is the criminal justice system, which touches nearly everyone in Sandtown-Winchester in some way.

As the camera crews pull away from Baltimore, few have noted that policymakers in Annapolis and federally took no meaningful steps in the last legislative session to reduce prison or jail populations.

Without a dramatic change, spending on prisons and a criminal justice approach as the first response to economic challenges will continue to undermine the social fabric of the most vulnerable neighborhoods. And even millions of dollars invested in social services will do little to improve circumstance if the criminal justice system continues to touch nearly every element of people's lives.

Efforts to reform the justice system are not new, and many of the political leaders championing changes today are followers rather than the innovators. Some are even trying to undue the consequences of their own actions taken in the 90s. Those in the field know that ending mandatory minimum sentences by giving judges more sentencing discretion, reversing "truth in sentencing" laws that result in unnecessarily long times in prison, and providing treatment rather than incarceration to drug offenders are the types of changes that are needed.

It is important to recognize that progress has in fact been made in some states. The state of New York was able to reform its draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws in 2009, and saw an 18 percent decrease in the prison population without compromising public safety. California recently shifted a series of offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, which will mean fewer people can be sent to state prison. But mandatory minimums that keep people in prison too long remain on the books in both states.

No single category of reform will turn around the era of incarceration generation. Appropriate practices in policing that serve the community rather than fight it are essential to neighborhood and community interactions. Providing robust treatment and mental health options to keep people outside of the prison system is essential. Allowing people who have served their time to successfully reintegrate into communities is critical to allowing people to stay out of the system.
To make a significant reduction in the population of people in prison would also require a tough and unflinching look at who is in prison, for how long, and to what benefit.

An examination of violent offenses more broadly shows that, according to a recent report by the National Institute of Justice, even though burglary is categorized as a property offense, it is most often prosecuted as a violent offense. Looking at the aging population of prisoners, who research suggests are unlikely to ever offend again, would provide another class of individuals who could be returned to the community with minimal public safety risk.

Looking closely at the category of "sex offender," for example would reveal that many who are on registries are not the predators they are imaged to be. "Romeo and Juliet" crimes can fall in that category, as can exposure in public. And providing developmentally-appropriate approaches to 18-24 year-olds, who are neurologically wired to change, is another entire category of people who could be managed more effectively and save precious tax dollars.

The '90s saw impassioned rhetoric followed by sweeping changes and a rapidly different prison population. While no one is advocating for the knee-jerk policies of the past, we are still waiting for a comprehensive national reform agenda that looks closely at each point of the system, from the first contact with police to diversion, sentencing, or prison to reintegration after contact. We moved the ship but are still waiting for the tide to turn.

The good news is that more today is known than ever before about what works and doesn't work to address offending and promote safety. We have the information and research to support making big changes. We now need the leadership to usher in a new age.

Marc Schindler is the Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute. 

Adjusting Police Attitudes

By Tatiana Laing

JPI Intern

This month, I had the opportunity to attend two events on policing. They had different focuses, but a common tone, and left me sure of one thing: We need to reform the way we police in America.

On March 4th, I attended Values Based Policing, hosted by the Police Foundation. The presenter at this event was Dr. Richard Adams, Chief Inspector of Police Scotland. In addition to serving as a police officer in Scotland for over 20 years, Dr. Adams attained a law degree, a Master’s in International Law and a professional doctorate in Policing. As the one of the individuals charged with creating a code of ethics for Scotland’s national police force, Adams had a lot of interesting insights on the difference in policing between Scotland and the United States. Given the recent Department of Justice report concluding that the Ferguson police department had routinely violated the civil rights of the community, Dr. Adams’ talk on the values of policing was particularly interesting.

Reducing Incarceration & Scaling Back the Criminal Justice System: A Bipartisan Approach

By: Natacia Caton

JPI Intern

Nearly a week after President Obama stood before Congress and addressed the Nation at the 2015 State of the Union Address, a speech in which he urged Democrats and Republicans to join forces in order to reform America’s flawed criminal justice system, members from both sides of the political aisle came together on Capitol Hill to discuss the looming issues surrounding the topic of criminal justice reform.

On [January 28th, 2015], the Constitution Project hosted a bipartisan briefing, “Advancing Criminal Justice Reform in 2015,” featuring congressmen, activists and other experts dedicated to the cause. Moderated by TCP board member and former American Conservative Union chair, David Keene, the panel included Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.); Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio); Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.); Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.); prison reform activist and author of the memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, Piper Kerman; director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the American Conservative Union Foundation, Pat Nolan; former Obama administration advisor and political commentator, Van Jones; and Mark Holden, the general counsel and senior vice president of Koch Industries, Inc.

Say Hello to JPI’s Spring Interns!

By JPI Staff

The Justice Policy Institute is thrilled to welcome three interns for spring 2015! Each of our new interns brings a unique set of experiences and skills that will help us accomplish our goals for the new year.

Black Lives Matter - It’s More than Police Killings

By David Muhammad
Guest Blogger

I have struggled with the theme of “Black Lives Matter” in the protests against police killings of Black men in America. I totally agree with the sentiment, but I have just had trouble with the message that seems so basic and demands a low bar. Then after an argument with a friend who thought the theme was ridiculous, I found myself defending it and eventually fully embracing the notion that one of our biggest challenges is that so many people in this country devalue the life of Black youth. But it is much more than police killings.

I watched the March and rally organized by Reverend Al Sharpton in the nation’s capital recently. Toward the end of the event, he brought up numerous families of the countless Black men murdered by police in cities throughout America. It was a stage full of pain. The mothers of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Amadou Diallo and many more. It inspired great emotion and passion.

Somehow, the everyday injustice in America does not evoke the same response. Gross racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, incarceration, violations of probation and parole, and sentencing destroy millions of Black lives. Though the magnitude is much greater, it does not inspire the level of anger that a video of a White officer murdering a Black man does.

Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act’s Impact on Youth

By Kathleen Kelley
JPI Intern

(The White House)

There are 6.7 million opportunity youth in America, which is defined as young people ages 16-24 who are out of school and out of work.  The period directly after high school can be very tricky to maneuver and even harder for those without a high school diploma or a GED. Nowadays, for most jobs, a high school diploma is not enough to obtain and keep a good job.  If this Congress can take some action on legislation before it, this country can help these kids, get the help they need around work.

On July 22^nd of this year, President Obama signed into the law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) which replaces the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998. The National Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Coalition held a meeting held on Tuesday October 21^st to review the provisions of WIOA that directly benefit youth, and especially opportunity youth.

WIOA is a bipartisan act that is also the first legislative reform in 15 years of the public workforce system. The enactment of WIOA provides opportunity for reforms to ensure the American Job Center system is job-driven, responding to the needs of employers and preparing workers for jobs that are available. WIOA strengthens the public workforce system and creates partnerships that sustain it by unifying and streamlining services to better serve job-seekers. The Act empowers local boards to tailor services to their regions employment and workforce needs.

Community Policing to End Racial Profiling

By Povneet Dhillon

JPI Intern

(NY Post)

Recently, we have mourned the loss of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Charles Smith, Darrien Hunt, Kajieme Powell and Cameron Tillman – all men of color, all killed by the police. It seems impossible to count all the accounts of “use of excessive force,” all the “paid leaves of absence” and all the times that it seems we have not moved past the stark and startling injustices of the Jim Crow era. U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder expressed the frustration of our inability to facilitate discussion needed to promote positive racial relations in a powerful statement:  “though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

During the Jim Crow era, society regarded people of color as the lesser class. This was epitomized in public spaces, which were segregated between Whites and people of color. As enforcers of the law, police officers were expected to maintain the borders at all costs. One disturbing story of how the Jim Crow justice system works comes from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Christopher Lollie, a black father, made the mistake of sitting in an undesignated space. Mr. Lollie had just gotten off work and was waiting to pick up his children from school. A security guard walked past the other parents and told Mr. Lollie that he was sitting in a private “employee only” space. In an act of deviance evocative of—though perhaps not as memorable as--Rosa Parks, Mr. Lollie refused to leave.

Tim Murray Talks Bail & Pretrial Services on the Justice Podcast

By Tony Mastria

JPI is excited to announce the release of the second episode of the Justice Podcast, now available on iTunes and Podbean.  Listen, download, and subscribe to stay informed on the latest and best news in justice reform.

In honor of Incarceration Generation's first anniversary, we will be interviewing the authors who made this compilation possible, including researchers, advocates, community members, and other individuals in the justice field.

In the second installment of our Incarceration Generation series, JPI had the pleasure of speaking with Tim Murray, Director Emeritus of the Pretrial Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, whose mission is "to advance safe, fair, and effective juvenile and adult pretrial justice practices and policies."  During our conversation, Murray touched on the bail system, the private bonding industry, and pretrial services and how these components of our justice system affect detainees, their families, and the broader public.

12 Things You Should Have Learned from JPI's #MarylandMonth

In support of JPI's ongoing work with the Baltimore Grassroots Criminal Justice Network and other stakeholders in Maryland to advance sound justice policy reforms in the state, JPI declared last month "Maryland Month." Even though September is over, you can still learn about the state's policies and advocate for criminal justice reform.

We have highlighted statistics related to jails, prisons, parole, probation, pretrial services, community supervision, treatment, demographics on who is in the system, what taxpayers spend on the system, and ways to put the hard numbers on Maryland's overuse of incarceration into context.
  
 Read, share and advocate with our factsheets. Like, post and tweet our infographics using the hashtag #MarylandMonth and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram using #MarylandMonth as we share this information. 

   

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How Committed Are We?

By Kathleen Kelley

JPI Intern

Maybe it was the location or my personal perspective being a first timer on the Hill, but Rep. Tony Cardenas opening remarks for the Building Safe and Strong Communities: A Conversation about Community-Based Alternatives for Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth Congressional Briefing really resonated with me.  His words were powerful and passionate.

He was addressing the gathering of policy makers, advocates, lawyers, and other juvenile

justice related professionals that filled the seats, but yet Rep. Cardenas was also reaching out to the whole Hill, the others beyond the room.  He asked just how committed are we?  Are we as committed as Martin Luther King Jr. who marched on Washington with thousands of committed individuals?  He expressed the dire need for truly committed individuals to express their commitment strongly with the issue of the incarceration of juveniles and the overrepresentation of minority youth, especially African-American youth. 

Rep. Cardenas makes an excellent point, but as I enter the public policy sector of criminal justice and especially of public policy, I see the march being made.  The current group of extremely passionate and driven individuals making that march is very much present and devoted.  Good examples are the very panelists that were introduced by Rep.Cardenas. 

It’s Time for Pell Grant Justice

This Just Policy Blog re-post was originally featured on the website of the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings.

Picture this. Rodney, an 18-year-old who was adjudicated delinquent in the spring, is being held in a secure care facility where he will likely stay for another three to six months while
he completes his rehabilitative program. He just passed the new GED and hopes to start taking online courses from his local community college. His facility just implemented a new policy that enables him to have secure Internet access. Rodney is interested in technology and wants to take Introduction to Coding along with English 101. His initial plans are to get an associate’s degree and accumulate a number of programming badges.^*

There’s one big problem: he can’t afford the tuition, and both the counselor at his school and the financial aid officer at the community college are telling him he doesn’t qualify for a Pell Grant. It is their understanding that under federal law, criminals who are serving sentences don’t qualify for Pell Grants. No one seems to listen to Rodney when he keeps saying, “I’m not a criminal. I made a big mistake, and I want to get back into school now so I don’t fall further behind.”

So, instead of taking those two post-secondary courses, Rodney is slated to spend his days working on the facility’s grounds and sitting in high school classes that he doesn’t need to graduate, that don’t offer him any credits, and that aren’t in the field he is interested in. When he gets released later this year, mid-semester, he will be jobless and not enrolled in a postsecondary program. He will have to keep himself busy while starting the college application and financial aid process all over again. The odds are that a young man like Rodney won’t take those steps on his own, and that his education will end with his GED.

JPI is On the Air!

By Tony Mastria

We have landed in the pod-o-sphere! JPI is excited to announce the creation of its brand new podcast, available now on iTunes and Podbean. Listen, download, and subscribe to stay informed on the latest and best news in justice reform.

Tune in to our inaugural episode to hear the first in our Incarceration Generation series. In honor of Incarceration Generation's first anniversary, we will be interviewing the authors who made this compilation possible, including researchers, advocates, community members, and other individuals in the justice field.

In this episode, we talk with Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News, to discuss private prisons and the role they play in the American justice system.

From Intern Jitters to Justice Reform

By Nicholas Raboya
JPI Intern

It’s my dream to become a law enforcement officer after graduating from college. There is so

much injustice in the world and I really want to be part of the solution in reducing and solving

crime. I’ve worked hard in school so that I can have a career in law enforcement. I’ll be

graduating from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md.  in June 2015, so I wanted to

use this summer to intern in the criminal justice field. With the help of my mentor and superstar

attorney, Tara Castillo, I was referred to the Justice Policy Institute. 

To be honest, when I did some research on interning at JPI, I was unsure of whether it would be right for a future in law enforcement. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by all that I have learned and the great exposure to various experiences related to criminal justice. In addition to attending a meeting at C-Span, hearings on Capitol Hill on voting rights and meeting professionals in the criminal justice field, I’ve participated in staff meetings, and helped with research and other important JPI projects.

JPI took a real gamble on me. Most of the interns at JPI are college and graduate students. As the first high school intern at JPI, I was worried about rising to the challenge. But

from the first day, Zerline Hughes, JPI’s Director of Communications, and her team, had complete confidence in me. That confidence helped me overcome my “what if” jitters. You know, the “What if I’m not smart enough?” thoughts, or the “What if I mess up?” qualms, or questions like “What if I don’t ‘represent’ for the next high schooler?” 

The War Zone at Home

By Amanda Petteruti

States are changing sentencing laws, reducing the number of people in prison, and decriminalizing marijuana. All of this while crime has fallen to the lowest levels it has been in decades. And, yet, at the risk of undermining the reforms and the cost-savings of reducing the number of people in prison, we continue to invest in police. And not just any police, armored and battle-ready police. As a nation, our overall spending on police protection has grown 445 percent since 1982, with the federal government experiencing the most growth in spending. 

(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

The militarization of police in Ferguson, Missouri has been on full display since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed on August 9, but it isn’t the only police department that looks an awful lot like an infantry. In 2005, 80 percent of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a “Special Weapons And Tactics,” or “SWAT” team. Since one of the early SWAT teams was formed in Los Angeles in response to the Watts riots in 1966, federal funding streams, like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, and programs, like the National Defense Authorization Act, have funneled money and weapons to local police departments. The intention was to bring some real firepower to the war on drugs – a battle that is now widely understood to be ineffective and costly.

Since JPI released its report, Rethinking the Blues, in 2012, the ACLU conducted a more in-depth analysis on militarized policing with public records requests to 260 law enforcement agencies in 25 states. They found that 79 percent of SWAT deployments were to execute search warrants, not to address emergency situations. Police forces are using a sledgehammer to drive a nail and it is not without consequences. In his blog for the Washington Post, Radley Balko documents the frequent and devastating effects that mistaken raids and the excessive use of force have on families, from mistaken arrests and property damage, to the death or injury of children, family members, and pets.

People of color are also disproportionately affected by the continued investment in police, especially related to drug offenses. Even though Blacks and whites report using drugs at similar rates, Blacks are arrested at three times the rate of whites. In addition, the ACLU reports that 42 percent of people impacted by SWAT deployment to execute a warrant were Black and 12 percent were Latino.

There’s also no evidence that this approach is doing anything to public safety, and, in fact, may be making communities less safe. A safe neighborhood is the result of trust between neighbors, and this includes police. As in Ferguson, when police show up to a daytime demonstration with Kevlar vests, riot gear, vehicles designed to withstand a blast from a mine, and then launch tear gas into groups of demonstrators and journalist, it’s not likely that the police will be viewed as partners in community safety. Perhaps, treating a community like a war zone, makes the community act like a war zone.

Members of the U.S. Congress and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder are deeply concerned about the use of military tactics by police forces around the country. The result will hopefully be relatively swift policy changes that will limit or end local police access to military style weapons. At the same time, however, with crime at the lowest levels it’s been in decades, we should consider whether what we need is not just less investment in a militarized police force, but, rather more resources toward building communities over policing communities.

Amanda is JPI's Senior Research Associate.

OP-ED: Passionate Voices From the Youth Summit

This opinion editorial was originally posted on JJIE.org on August 5, 2014.

By Natrina Gandana and Tony Mastria

As two of the Justice Policy Institute’s newest recruits, we are excited to join our fellow youth advocates from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ), the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), and our partner organizations in the juvenile justice community for the 2014 Juvenile Justice Youth Summit. This two-day summit taking place August 7 and 8 seeks to fuel a new generation of reformers, allowing participants to hear from leading juvenile justice organizations. Attendees participate in a series of workshops and info sessions designed to enhance their knowledge on juvenile justice and ignite their passion for advocacy.

The summit’s hosts and participants alike understand how important it is to engage young activists in the dialogue around juvenile justice reform. Not only does this give them an early foothold in the movement; it also allows them to become invested in a crucial public issue that is so patently pertinent to their own generation. This rare opportunity to interact with peers and experts in the field is sure to provide a memorable experience and have a lasting effect on this group of future leaders.

We are excited to hear from organizations with which JPI has partnered, such as Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth, Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ), Youth Law Centerand more. JPI works very closely with these organizations in the National Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Coalition, where we jointly seek to advance safe and smart youth justice policies that connect youth to school, work and opportunity, and advance public safety. Juvenile justice issues significantly affect whether we have a system that is fair, rational and effective, and that helps young people transition to adulthood.

For example, among the topics being discussed in the conference is the school-to-prison pipeline, a series of events that occur when a student is referred by police to the juvenile justice system, starting them on a path of serious, lifelong negative consequences. JPI played a key role in showing that there are better ways to ensure public safety than having police in schools, with our report, Education Under Arrest.

By meeting with colleagues and learning firsthand from these organizations, attendees will begin to grasp the depth of these issues and the best methods for addressing them. This includes networking with our fellow members in the juvenile justice community, both young advocates and seasoned professionals. We are confident that this exposure to such diverse experiences and perspectives will be exceptionally informative and serve to illuminate our own future efforts in the field.

As members of JPI’s communications team, we are especially keen on observing the panel “Take Action: Using Your Voice for Change” (presented by CFYJ and the Just Kids Partnership), which will discuss how youth advocates can use their communicative abilities to campaign and organize on behalf of juvenile justice reform efforts. We’re also looking forward to the panel “Empowering Young Adults: Strengthening Youth Involvement in Juvenile Justice at the State Level” (presented by the Illinois Collaboration on Youth and the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission), which will teach young reformers how to maximize their impact on state-level justice reform efforts.  Both of these issues — strategic communications and state and local advocacy — are areas in which JPI has long been involved, and we are hopeful that honing our skills in these subjects will give us the tools to contribute even more to our organization and to the broader movement.

While we have a lifetime of hard work ahead of us, we understand that the problems associated with juvenile justice cannot wait to solve themselves. This sense of urgency is what drives young reformers to action and demonstrates why it’s so crucial to engage youth in policy forums like this.

By taking part in this stirring congregation, we hope to collaborate with our fellow advocates to develop smart, proactive solutions to the myriad problems facing the juvenile justice system, as well as cultivate our own skills and knowledge to confront this crucial public issue. We are certain it will be an insightful and engaging summit that challenges youth to think critically about the issues in juvenile justice and encourage participants like us to become life-long agents for change.

Natrina Gandana is the Communications Intern at the Justice Policy Institute and Tony Mastria is JPI's Digital Media Associate.

Denying Democracy

By Hope DeLap

JPI Intern

As an attendee at a recent Bipartisan Panel on Restoring Voting Rights, I was thrilled to see the energy of this movement and the surprising diversity of its supporters. The Capitol Hill briefing featured introductory remarks from U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rand Paul (R-KY) on their respective bills (S.2235 and S.2550) seeking the restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. The senators were joined by moderator Nicole Austin-Hillery of the Brennan Center for Justice and an eclectic panel of experts representing the faith, civil rights, criminal justice and law enforcement communities.

The bills reflect the remarkable dialogue that is occurring now among politicians from both sides of the aisle. Panelist Deborah Vagins, senior legislative counsel on civil rights issues at the ACLU, remarked on the recent realization among conservatives that easing restoration requirements does not need to be a partisan issue. Another panelist, Desmond Meade, the state director of PICO Florida’s Lifelines to Healing Campaign and president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), commended the senators on “rais[ing] this issue above the fray of partisan politics.” Despite policy differences in the past, Senators Cardin and Paul have joined forces to ensure that “youthful mistakes,” as Sen. Paul called them, do not result in life-long punishments.

Although both bills target federal voting rights, Sen. Paul’s bill is limited to restoring voting rights for people with convictions for nonviolent offenses. Sen. Cardin’s bill, the Democracy Restoration Act (DRA), is more expansive and does not make the distinction between violent and nonviolent offenses.