The Justice Imperative: Juvenile Justice Initiatives and In-School Programs

Barack, known to his friends as “Barry”, was a third-year honor student at a private college preparatory school in New Haven. One week from celebrating his 17^th birthday, he was convicted of cocaine possession and distribution. Upon such conviction, his life changed forever.

His father, a native Kenyan, met his mother in New Haven while attending college as a foreign student on scholarship. They were married the following year. Within a year of Barry’s birth, his parents separated. His father returned to Kenya and had little contact thereafter with Barry. His mom eventually moved to Indonesia to pursue her interest in archeology. Barry chose to return to the U.S. to attend high school. He moved in with his grandparents.

Barry excelled in school. He had several Ivy League schools interested in him. All indications were he would qualify for an academic scholarship that would fully cover his tuition, room and board. He aspired to become a lawyer. He also liked to indulge in the recreational use of drugs with his friends. He was a member of the “choom gang”, with whom he regularly used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine.

As part of its war on drugs, Connecticut in 1987 passed legislation imposing mandatory punishment on the possession of a ½ gram of crack cocaine.

One night in the winter of 1988, Barry’s junior year, the choom gang pooled their monies to buy a gram of crack. Later that night, three members, including Barry, jumped in a car to make deliveries to the rest of the gang. The car had a busted tail light and an expired registration. The police stopped the car. After noticing a crack pipe on the backseat, they conducted a search, resulting in the discovery of the crack and several ounces of marijuana. All three teens were arrested and tried as adults. They were convicted and sentenced to prison.

Upon serving his sentence, Barry lost any chance he had of a college scholarship. He searched in vain for meaningful employment. Eventually, he resorted to using hard drugs, including heroin. He has been in and out of prison all of his adult life.

______________

The above story, while fictional, underscores a cold, harsh reality. The war on drugs has led to the imprisonment of multitudes of teenagers across two generations for crimes that qualify as youthful indiscretions. Even our current President could have fallen into this snare. The consequences of incarceration are dire, not only for juveniles, but also their families and the communities in which they live.

A criminal record often slams shut the door leading to one’s pursuit of the American dream and the opportunity for upward mobility.

Can we, as a nation, afford to subject yet another generation of youth to the overreach of our current criminal justice system?

See More: Please go to Chapter Eleven in “The Justice Imperative”

www.TheJusticeImperative.org

San Quentin inmate Nelson Butler, right, takes a coding class at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. (Photo: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY)

The nonprofit that developed the six-week program says it could be a model for other states and a solution to address California’s growing prison population.

Re-post from Huffington Post Crime

By Mark Godsey, Carmichael Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law; Director, Ohio Innocence Project.

Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pled guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife. When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statementsfrom the crime’s only eyewitness that Morton wasn’t the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson’s career flourished, and he eventually became a judge.

In today’s deal, Anderson pled to criminal contempt, and will have to give up his law license, perform 500 hours of community service, and spend 10 days in jail. Anderson had already resigned in September from his position on the Texas bench.

What makes today’s plea newsworthy is not that Anderson engaged in misconduct that sent an innocent man to prison. Indeed, while most prosecutors and police officers are ethical and take their constitutional obligations seriously, government misconduct–including disclosure breaches known as Brady violations–occurs so frequently that it has become one of the chief causes of wrongful conviction.

What’s newsworthy and novel about today’s plea is that a prosecutor was actually punished in a meaningful way for his transgressions.

I give speeches about the Innocence Movement, and tell stories from real cases, all around the world. No matter where I am, when I finish speaking the first question usually is, “What happened to the police/prosecutors who did this to the poor guy?” The answer is almost always, “Nothing,” or worse, “The police officer was promoted and now is the chief of his department.” The adage that the powerful go unpunished is no truer or more visible than with police officers and prosecutors in America–even when they send innocent people to prison from their misconduct.

My client Roger Dean Gillispie of Dayton, Ohio, for example, spent 20 years in prison as a result of police misconduct. In 2007, we presented overwhelming evidence that the police officers, like Anderson in the Morton case, failed to turn over evidence to the defense before trial that would have cleared Gillispie. We also supplied the court with evidence that the police officer in charge had harassed and intimidated witnesses helpful to the defense, and had manipulated the evidence. Before going to court to clear Gillispie, we met with the local prosecutors, hopeful that they wouldn’t tolerate such misconduct and would do a thorough (and neutral) investigation to get to the truth. Instead, they simply denied everything in knee-jerk fashion, and fought to keep Gillispie in prison until a federal court finally found government misconduct andthrew out his charges in December 2011. To this day, the police officer in the case has not been investigated by a neutral, independent body. The only thing he has received is promotions.

Rogue cops and prosecutors going unpunished is the rule rather than the exception. In Illinois, two police officers whose improperly grueling interrogation techniques led to the wrongful conviction of Juan Rivera and others were not penalized when their 3rd degree tactics came to light. Rather, they were recently hired at taxpayer expense to teach interrogation courses to other police officers around the state.

A recent study found prosecutorial misconduct in nearly one-quarter of all capital cases in Arizona. Only two of those prosecutors have been reprimanded or punished. This led the Arizona Republic to conclude:

There seldom are consequences for prosecutors, regardless of whether the miscarriage of justice occurred because of ineptness or misconduct. In fact, they are often congratulated.

 Other studies/articles with similar troubling results can be found here, here, here, andhere.

Fortunately, there is something very simple that judges across the country can do to eradicate this problem. All judges, state and federal, should issue the standing “ethical rule order” proposed by the Hon. Nancy Gertner and Innocence Project Co-Founder Barry Scheck. The proposed order requires prosecutors to disclose, pre-trial, all evidence that “tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense.” Details regarding the proposed ethical rule order, including all the justifications supporting it, can be found in this article by Barry Scheck.

The reason such standing ethical rule orders are important is that they allow prosecutors, like Ken Anderson, to be held in criminal contempt if they are later found to have engaged in misconduct. Anderson could be punished today only because such an order had been issued in the Morton case.

Today’s conviction of Ken Anderson stands out as an extreme aberration in a society where police and prosecutorial misconduct goes largely unpunished. But it is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, today’s result will deter rogue cops and prosecutors in the future from engaging in similar misconduct. But this will happen only if judges across the country do what the judge did more than 25 years ago in the Morton case: issue an order requiring that proper disclosure to the defense, or risk criminal contempt proceedings.

Follow Mark Godsey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WrongConvBlog

Aaron Swartz was no criminal

Dan Purcell, one of Swartz’ lawyers, writes about the spiteful and unreasonable charges that led to his suicide—and MIT’s gutless support of his prosecutors.

Reprinted from boingboing.net, Nov. 18, 2014.

By Hamed Aleaziz Photo: TIM HUSSIN / Special To The Chronicle

Web developer Eddie Griffin just finished an internship at a tech company and is on the hunt for a new position. But his background sets him apart from many of Silicon Valley’s programmers.

Just over a year ago, the 58-year-old Richmond resident was in San Quentin State Prison, serving the 13th year of a 27-to-life prison sentence. He was given a second chance under Proposition 36, the 2012 measure that reformed the state’s “three strikes and you’re out” law, and appears to be making the most of it.

While Griffin’s story is unique, Prop. 36 proponents say it’s emblematic of a wider trend of inmates released under the law faring well, despite arguments that the repeat offenders would be dangerous.

More than 1,900 prisoners have been released under Prop. 36, with the average person out for a little over a year, according to Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project. Just 3.5 percent have returned to prison for committing a new crime, state data reviewed by the group shows.

That’s roughly 10 times lower than the rate for all California prisoners released for a similar amount of time, according to Stanford’s analysis.

“You cannot find another group of prisoners who have been released from almost anywhere that have had such a low recidivism rate,” said Michael Romano, who heads the Three Strikes Project and helped write Prop. 36. “I think it really does prove that these sentences were just not effective law enforcement policy.”

Waiting to gauge results

Advocates for crime victims, though, say it’s too soon to draw conclusions about Prop. 36, one of several measures passed in recent years designed to throttle back a tough-on-crime trend that crowded California’s prisons.

“Two years since Proposition 36 has passed is not nearly enough time to gauge recidivism rates. … Let’s put these guys on the streets for three years and see how they fare,” said Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter Polly’s murder at the hands of a career criminal led to passage of the three-strikes law in 1994.

The landmark measure put violent criminals behind bars for at least 25 years to life after a third felony conviction. But Prop. 36 exempted offenders whose third strike wasn’t defined as violent or serious, qualifying about 3,000 inmates for release or resentencing — as long as they successfully petitioned the courts.

Mark Zahner, who heads the California District Attorneys Association, an organization that opposed Prop. 36, acknowledged that people released under the law have had a lower return-to-prison rate than other offenders. But he said some of those released have returned to county jails, and he agreed it is too early to draw conclusions.

The Stanford researchers do not have data on total arrests involving the released prisoners, which are not collected by the state.

The debate is likely to heighten with Tuesday’s passage of Proposition 47 on the state ballot. It reduced certain lower-level felonies to misdemeanors, including most drug possession cases and crimes such as forgery and theft of goods worth less than $950. And it could free more three-strikes inmates.

Romano said about 800 inmates who applied for resentencing under Prop. 36 are awaiting court decisions, while more than 150 have been denied. The law says courts can continue to hold a three-strikes prisoner found to pose an “unreasonable risk of danger to public safety.”

Specific violent crimes

That phrase was undefined under Prop. 36. But under Prop. 47, it now means the court must believe a prisoner is likely to commit specific crimes such as homicide or sexual assault. The new definition could help those in the petition process, Romano said, as well as those who were previously denied.

Zahner said he is concerned. “So we won’t have murderers and rapists roaming the streets,” he said, “but we will have carjackers, armed robbers and arsonists.”

Romano said the early data on three-strikes releases show such fears are misplaced.

“Our basic assumptions about recidivism risk were just wrong,” he said. “People can be released from prison safely and, given appropriate support, successfully reintegrate with their families and communities.”

Sentence for crack cocaine

Romano points to Griffin, a Navy veteran who moved to the Bay Area from his native Detroit in the mid-1970s and settled in San Jose, as an example of what is possible.

While Griffin’s future appears wide open, his past was anything but. Between 1990 and 2013, he spent about three months outside prison.

According to legal filings by Santa Clara County prosecutors, who opposed Griffin’s release under Prop. 36, he has eight felony convictions. He picked up one strike for beating and robbing a prostitution customer in a motel, prosecutors said, and another strike for robbing a man and throwing him out of a car.

But the big blow came in 2000, when he was sentenced to 27 years to life after being found with a couple dozen rocks of crack cocaine.

“When I first received the sentence, it didn’t totally sink in, because I just felt that, you know, I mean I possessed some drugs, and you’re going to end my life because I possessed some drugs? That was really hard to take,” he said.

During his final prison term, Griffin took college courses. He went to Alcoholics Anonymous along with Narcotics Anonymous to deal with a cocaine addiction, and he helped start Criminals and Gangsters Anonymous. He taught other inmates how to read.

“My thing was, if I’m going to die in prison, what’s going to be my legacy?” he said.

Griffin enrolled in the Last Mile program at San Quentin, started by two Silicon Valley venture capitalists, where he learned about technology, social media and how to start a business — even though prisoners didn’t have access to computers.

Griffin was freed by Prop. 36 on July 30, 2013. Prosecutors sought to block his release, citing his “abysmal criminal history,” but his public defender said he had “tried to take advantage of all opportunities to better himself as a person and gain insight into his past mistakes.”

Internship extended

Griffin was released in downtown San Jose. He’d never held a smartphone or used a computer. So for three months, he studied CSS and HTML at a veterans center in San Jose.

Next came a three-month internship with Mindjet, a software firm in San Francisco that had supported the Last Mile program. That turned into a nine-month stay. His boss, Austin Walne, said the company extended the internship because of Griffin’s “great work ethic, strong progress and positive attitude.”

“I’ve picked up quite a bit,” Griffin said. “This is a tremendous opportunity. … I still don’t get a lot, but there’s a lot that I do understand. It gives me a better idea of what it’s going to take for me to move forward to be a better programmer or working in the tech field, period.”

‘I have to pay them back’

Since his internship ended in late September, Griffin has been training with a few San Francisco tech startups and has interviewed for other jobs.

Romano said it’s difficult to explain what is behind the low recidivism rate, other than that many three-strikes prisoners are older and weren’t as dangerous as their long prison terms suggested. Re-entry services, which the Stanford group coordinated, also probably helped, he said.

“There’s also something to the fact that the government and the voters of California have said this was unfair, and you deserve to be out,” he said.

Sitting in Mindjet’s offices in September, Griffin said California voters should be rewarded for passing Prop. 36.

“So this is how I have to pay them back,” he said. “I have to do what I am supposed to do, get a job, pay taxes. It’s kind of like my duty to be a stand-up guy.”

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz

Photo :Griffin works on coding at Mindjet, a San Francis<130>co software firm that supports a program that provides technological training to former inmates entering the workforce.<252>

By Michael Calderone michael.calderone@huffingtonpost.com

A group of Alabama judges, legislators, lawyers and law enforcement officials recommended changes in sentencing laws saying they would save millions of dollars by reducing the number of inmates such as in this crowded dormitory at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in St. Clair County. (The Birmingham News/Bernard Troncale) ( )

By AL.com Editorial Board

Some of Alabama’s worst problems are cans dented by decades of being kicked down the road to be someone else’s disposable trash.

The state prison system is one of those cans.

But each time the state of Alabama is dragged kicking and screaming to court-ordered prison reforms, we first revert to an old habit.

We naturally recoil from the possibility the evidence is valid and seek reasons why it can’t be true. We blame the messenger.

A new report this week by the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery highlighted what it called repeated horrendous injustices, including rapes of young male inmates by guards.

It follows a lawsuit filed by EJI in October alleging that poor leadership, inadequate security and unsafe conditions had caused inmate violence to spike at St. Clair Correctional Facility, where six inmates have died in the last 36 months.

We will issue the traditional caveat in such matters. The EJI is an advocate with an agenda. But this is a much-too-familiar refrain for an Alabama prison system that earlier this year drew the ire of the U.S. Justice Department for its abusive treatment of female inmates at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, an issue the EJI first brought to light.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need EJI to intervene. Given the Tutwiler report in January, state government itself would have risen in self-driven, righteous indignation, revealed all the sordid details and pressed forward to repair state prisons.

But given the latest round of allegations, it is past time we know what is really happening in Alabama prisons.

We need independent investigations into conditions and practices, which should lead to a consistent culture of transparency and accountability.

We need neutral eyes in place. AL.com has waited for months to gain access to Tutwiler to verify the improvements state officials say are now in place.

The most recent lawsuit is not merely a legal challenge to a faceless agency. This suit is aimed directly at us — the citizens of Alabama. It accuses us by clear inference of allowing this to happen.

If Gov. Robert Bentley does not realize it, this suit also is aimed directly at him as the lead citizen of the state.

When the courts intervene, we all will pay for the remedy, not only in money but also in civic credibility.

One of every four dollars in the state’s General Fund goes to operate some of the worst state prisons in the country. Alabama puts more of its citizens in prison for longer than almost any jurisdiction in the civilized world.

And, if the suit by EJI is proven, the state is managing snake pits where cruelty is an organized game.

EJI says prisoners have been killed by other prisoners in their cells because dilapidated prison doors have locks that can be jimmied. It alleges that guards routinely order young prisoners to commit sex acts. Prisoners beaten by guards are paraded by senior officials as a warning to other inmates. Guards extort money from inmates and their families.

There is an underlying, relentless, depressing ugliness to the charges.

Equally concerning, the EJI says it has discussed, talked, negotiated, pleaded, and counseled state prison leaders to no avail.  The state promises remedies but never delivers, even when the fixes require no money and minimal resources.

The EJI’s condemnation of system leadership rings like a claxon’s warning through the general silence coming from the office of the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

Is a substantial reset the only cure with a chance of working? There are too many bad wardens, criminally inclined guards and too much crumbling infrastructure to ignore.

The state should act, but not merely because the federal justice system almost assuredly will do it for Alabama if we don’t.

There’s a much better reason.

It’s the right and necessary thing to do.

Reprinted from Prisonist.org.
The stars are aligning for the advancement of criminal justice in this country.  It is not surprising that the light seems to be shining on New York, and spreading out to the rest of the country. Here in neighboring Connecticut, we not only are not only doing significant criminal justice work of our own, we are also honored to be involved and included in these New York milestones.

On Monday, Nov. 10th, Andrew Kaplan and I attended the American Justice Summit at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.  Babz Rawls Ivy, Andrew and I are the Online Editors for the important new book, The Justice Imperative: How Hyper-Incarceration Has Hijacked The American Dream. We met up with Connecticut criminal justice leaders, Vivien Blackford and Kumar Viswanathan, who are the Chair & Exec. Director, respectively, of the Phoenix Association. The Summit was glorious – it was not only led by of some of the most notable and influential voices in criminal justice today, it was a gathering of the tribe; a place where our community came together to breathe the same air and know that we are not alone in our noble cause.  You can watch the entire Summit on YouTube here.

JustLeadershipUSA’s benefit and launch was held on Weds. evening, Nov. 12th at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York City. Lynn and I had a blast – lots of photos below! It was hosted by its Founder/President Glenn E. Martin (who did an outstanding job speaking at the American Justice Summit), and was chaired by Piper Kerman of Orange is the New Black. Our ministry, the Progressive Prison Project/Innocent Spouse & Children Project was selected to have its work highlighted among fifteen Leaders in Criminal Justice at the JustLeadershipUSA event.  We are humbled and honored.

“I believe that the launching of JustLeadershipUSA will be viewed, one day, by historians and advocates alike as a true game changer: the moment in the emerging movement when formerly incarcerated people finally had a chance to be heard, to organize, and to influence policy in major ways — even though many of them still lacked the right to vote.” – Michelle Alexander, Author, The New Jim Crow .

TEDx SingSing will be a landmark in New York and American criminal justice history.  Dec. 3, 2014. We are grateful to Sean Pica, Exec. Director of Hudson Link, for inviting us to attend TEDx SingSing and bear witness to this groundbreaking event.  Check out the speakers here.  Counting days till this one.

Here are some photos from our big time this past week. – Jeff

by Will Dupree

CLAREMORE, Okla. – The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that two-thirds of released prisoners will end up back behind bars within three years of their release.

Because of that alarming rate of recidivism, a Claremore nonprofit organization is trying to help formerly incarcerated women straighten out their lives and start fresh.

Outside the She Brews Coffee House, located at 414 W. Will Rogers Boulevard, the window reads, “This isn’t any ordinary coffee house.” What makes this place so unusual is the employees who whip up the coffee, serve the food, clean the tables and ring up the tickets.

“When you come in here, you come in for an experience and not so much just the coffee,” says Rhonda Bear.

Bear founded She Brews two years ago after first opening housing for women recently released from jail or prison. She says they often had a tough time finding jobs, so she decided to create some for them.

“I kind of thought coffee might be an expensive way to begin,” she says. “I had $300 and faith.”

The risk paid off because Bear says the coffee shop has so far helped 15 women move onto new jobs, and now four more women are hoping to do the same thing.

“If you give them a platform where they can feel secure, they can move forward,” said She Brews board member Linda Biles. “Then you watch them begin to make that forward move, and it’s exciting.”

Bear says a steady job helps these women get their lives back on track and stay out of prison.

“In order to stay out of prison,” she says, “you have to have safe housing. You have to have a job. You have to have community support.”

Seeing the women succeed motivates Bear, who previously served time as well, to keep She Brews open for many years to come.

“I’m an uneducated drug addict who somebody invested in me and gave me hope and helped change my life and my children, and now I pay it forward,” Bear says.

The nonprofit running She Brews is now trying to raise enough money to install a commercial kitchen in the space so that the food can be prepared on site instead of at a church nearby.

The coffee shop is open Monday through Saturday and can now deliver lunch orders.

To find out more information, visit the She Brews Coffee House website here .

The Justice Imperative: Avoiding Incarceration Through “No-Entry” Diversion Programs

Robert returned home to Hartford after serving three tours of military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was honorably discharged. He was awarded the Purple Heart for severe head injuries he suffered during a roadside mine explosion in which some of his comrades died. Following his return, Robert had significant difficulty adjusting to civilian life. He experienced severe depression and unpredictable episodes of explosive anger. As a military veteran, he was too ashamed to seek counseling. Robert attempted to alleviate his symptoms through the use of alcohol and drugs. He was arrested for driving erratically at a high rate of speed at 2 a.m. in the morning. A search conducted incident to the arrest found empty bottles of vodka in the back seat and a small amount of cocaine in Robert’s pocket. He is concerned that his arrest and a conviction will cause him to lose his veterans’ benefits.

* * *

Jocelyn is the single parent of three children under the age of 10 years. She lives in New Haven. She is a licensed health care worker. Jocelyn has no prior criminal record. She divorced her first husband after their youngest child was born. Since that time, her boyfriend Jordan has been living with Jocelyn and the children in her home as a fully engaged father figure to her children. Things were going extremely well in her life. However, three months prior to the incident that would cause Jocelyn’s arrest, Jordan was shot and killed in the crossfire of a gang dispute. He was an innocent bystander. Since his death, Jocelyn battled depression and insomnia. She started smoking marijuana at night to help numb the pain of her loss and to sleep. One particular evening, she caused a car accident resulting in injuries to the driver of another car. When police searched her car, she was found to be in possession of marijuana. She was released on bond, but the prosecutor is insisting that any plea bargain must involve jail time. Jocelyn will lose both her stable housing and employment. She is worried that if she is incarcerated, her children will be placed in DCF custody, causing them further emotional trauma after Jordan’s recent death.

* * *

Eduardo is a 49 years old citizen of Guatemalan living in Hartford. He has a green card. He and his family, including his children, have been living in the U.S. for 15 years. His children were born in the United States and therefore are U.S. citizens. Eduardo is arrested for public intoxication, providing liquor to a minor and breach of peace. He is referred to the Hartford Community Court docket. He is told that if he enters a guilty plea and completes the community service as required by the court, his guilty plea will then be vacated in 30 days and he will not have a record. He is concerned that this court process will cause him to be deported to Guatemala without his family.

See More: Please go to Chapter Ten in “The Justice Imperative”

www.TheJusticeImperative.org