“Our Current Investments In Justice System Are Unwise”: Criminal Justice Reform Ignores Victims Of Crime. That Makes No Sense
When policymakers think of the people who comprise the victims’ rights movement, young people of color from low-income communities may not be the first group that leaps to mind. But the facts suggest these survivors should be.
My organization conducted two years of research and found that one in five Californians experience crime – but its impact is concentrated and unequal. The majority of crime victims live in lower-income communities and repeat victimization is even more concentrated (echoing research on victimization in the entire US). When it comes to violent crime, those most likely to be repeatedly victimized are young people of color, especially African-American and Latino males.
Two out of three crime survivors reported being victimized more than once in the last five years. Many repeat victims have long histories of suffering multiple types of crimes, such as sexual exploitation, abuse or community violence. Worse still, only a small number of survivors receive any help, despite often experiencing severe depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress in the aftermath of crime.
Young people of color from low-income communities bear an unconscionably disproportionate burden of violence and crime – and are victimized at staggering rates while also the least likely to get help to recover from trauma. Most frequently victimized, least often supported. There is something terribly wrong with this picture.
Beyond lacking access to recovery support, most crime victims also disagree with the direction criminal justice policymaking has taken over the last few decades of prison expansion. While the traditional approach to victims’ rights has focused on toughening punishments for people convicted of crime and strengthening the rights of victims during criminal proceedings, our research shows that most survivors of crime think that our current investments in justice system are unwise. Two out of three California victims surveyed believe bloated prisons either make inmates better at committing crimes or have no impact on crime at all. Most survivors want greater investments into rehabilitation, mental health treatment and prevention over bigger prisons and jails.
Listening to crime victims can tell us a lot how we should reform our safety and justice systems. We must embrace survivors as unexpected advocates for justice reform. It’s time to stop pretending that building more prisons protects survivors – it doesn’t.
Procedural rights for victims are critical, and accountability for people who commit crime is an essential component of an effective criminal justice system. Yet, many victims never even get to a courtroom. National statistics reveal that over half of violent crime goes unreported, eliminating any possibility of a prosecution. And even when violent crimes are reported, less than half result in an arrest. So focusing only on criminal proceedings leaves out the experiences and needs of the majority of crime survivors.
Packed prisons and extreme sentencing for the fraction of crimes that result in a conviction also depletes the very resources needed to improve victim protection and community safety. We need to rethink what investments can serve and protect as many victims as possible, including the communities most impacted by crime. We should pay special attention to the needs of those at greatest risk of being repeatedly victimized, such as youth of color.
When victims go without trauma recovery support, they risk being victimized again and falling through the cracks in life: dropping out of school, suffering health problems, self-medicating to the point of addiction and even turning to crime themselves.
David Guizar knows this well: growing up in South Central Los Angeles, his older brother – and father figure – was shot and killed when David was 10. He never learned what happened, nor did his family learn about or access any services that exist for survivors of violent crime.
David felt lost after his was family broken, and he filled the void with alcohol and drugs for decades, finally getting sober in 2006. Then, in 2012, another one of David’s brothers was killed when a stranger tried to enter a family wedding.
“After our family’s losses, we never heard about existing supports for survivors of crime, which would have made a big difference in our ability to recover,” said Guizar. “California clearly has the money – the state spends $10 billion per year on a prison system to respond to crime – but I and other survivors want lawmakers to know that we can invest these resources in smarter ways to help survivors both recover from and prevent crime.”
Instead of continuing to create harsh penalties that, in turn, create more prisons as our response to crime, we should invest in mental health care and trauma-informed services for anyone traumatized by violence, as well as safe places to go when crisis erupts, family support programs and economic recovery assistance for victims. We also need to improve the relationship between police, prosecutors and the communities they serve, so that victims trust – and can safely cooperate with – law enforcement to solve more crimes.
Despite the prevalence of pro-victim rhetoric during the prison-building era, few policymakers have asked themselves who experiences crime, who is most vulnerable to repeat crime or what survivors need to recover and avoid future harm. Most crime victims have never been at the center of attention of criminal justice policies, nor have their experiences and needs been considered as penal codes and prison populations mushroomed over the past three decades.
But the evidence suggests that when you ask the people most affected, survivors are less interested in spending tax dollars to fill more prisons and instead want to prioritize investments that will actually prevent crime in the first place. It is time for policymakers to finally listen – and put the perspectives of those most vulnerable to harm at the center of policies.
By: Lenore Anderson, The Guardian, May 21, 2015
“Maintaining Its Sad Tradition Of Disenfranchisement”: Texas Lawmakers Are Busy Making It Harder To Vote
Another legislative session, another unfortunate attempt by Texas politicians to make it harder to vote. While other states move their registration systems into the 21st century — by putting the onus on the government to add eligible voters to the rolls, or letting citizens sign up online, for example — Texas maintains its sad tradition of disenfranchisement.
One measure (HB 1096) that would make it more difficult for voters to confirm their residency recently cleared the House. Another bill approved by the Senate (SB 1934) would eliminate nonexpiring photo identification cards for the state’s senior citizens. Because unexpired photo IDs or IDs that have been expired no more than 60 days are required to vote, this change would make it even harder for Texas seniors to get their ballots counted. Do we really need to wonder why lawmakers are making these changes?
While some legislators have introduced bills this session to help voters, these bills have largely gone nowhere. A bill that would issue no-charge birth certificate copies to some Texans under a limited set of circumstances passed the Senate, but the law, if passed, would help only a fraction of disenfranchised voters. This is not enough. Texas deserves a Legislature that will take action to ensure that the voices of all eligible voters are heard, rather than putting up more obstacles to the ballot box.
In 2011, Texas enacted the nation’s strictest voter ID law. It permits use of limited types of photo IDs to vote, and the ID must be current or recently expired. To obtain nearly every form of acceptable ID, an original or certified copy of a voter’s birth certificate is required. Hundreds of thousands of registered Texas voters lack the ID or supporting documents needed to meet these stringent requirements.
While Texans of all ages have felt the negative impact of the photo ID law, the burden on the state’s seniors is particularly acute. Older voters are less likely to have a current driver’s license — because many no longer drive — and are more likely to find it difficult or downright impossible to obtain a birth certificate. Many live in long-term care facilities and, because of health or liability issues, are unable to travel to renew their IDs, or are understandably overwhelmed by the required paperwork. Cutting nonexpiring state IDs for seniors would only exacerbate these burdens.
So far, two federal courts have stepped in to block the Texas ID law because it disenfranchises Latino and African-American voters. Last year, a federal court in Texas found the law not only had the effect of discriminating against minority voters but also that the Legislature passed the law with the intent of making it harder for voters of color to cast a ballot. The case is now before a federal appellate court. During oral arguments, a Republican-appointed judge pointedly asked Texas’ attorney why the Legislature hasn’t taken the opportunity to fix the problems with the photo ID law. The lawyer had no response when the judge asked why it should fall to the court to fix the law, when legislators have had years to do so.
The numbers show that some legislators have had ample opportunity to help voters. This legislative session alone, there have been at least 17 bills introduced to ameliorate the strict voter ID law. Bills that would allow expired government-issued IDs to be accepted for voting and others that would expand the list of acceptable IDs have not gotten so much as a public hearing. The Legislature has instead chosen to expend more energy on changes that would make voting even more difficult.
Bills to soften the draconian photo ID law are not the only voter-friendly measures Texas legislators have left on the table. At least 28 other bills have been introduced that would expand access to the ballot. These efforts range from proposals that would make it easier for voters to update their registration to legislation that would increase language access for voters whose primary language is not English. Nearly all of these bills have received no legislative attention.
While a proposal that would have allowed Texans to register through a secure online portal did manage to at least get a public hearing, legislators expressed skepticism that the modernizing reform — which has been successfully adopted by nearly 30 other states — could be done in Texas. They promptly killed the bill.
Given Texas’ sordid history of manipulating the right to vote, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the Legislature is making voting harder. Texans should demand better.
By: Jennifer L. Clark and Gary Bledsoe, Cross-Posted from The Dallas Morning News; Brennan Center for Justice, May 19, 2015
“Hillary Clinton Has Already Crushed Republicans On Immigration”: It’s Heads She Wins And Tails They Lose, Regardless Of What They Do
You can question Hillary Clinton’s political scruples. But don’t doubt her political smarts.
There is no better proof of either quality than her U-turn decision last week to go all out in embracing amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Clinton’s gambit is a major flip-flop — one that will put Republicans in a bind that they’ll have a hard time extricating themselves from. It’s heads she wins and tails they lose, regardless of what they do.
Clinton stunned everyone — even Latino activists — when she boldly called for a “path to full and equal citizenship” for all of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. Speaking at a gathering of handpicked young immigrants in a high school in Nevada, a Latino-heavy swing state, she rejected the notion of a mere path to legalization — like the sort Jeb Bush and some of the more immigrant-friendly Republicans have skittishly backed. “That’s code for second-class status,” Clinton declared. She promised to go much further than even President Obama’s recent executive action and “defer” deportation proceedings not only against some illegal immigrants, but virtually all of them, while working toward comprehensive immigration reform that included citizenship.
This was a remarkable shift for someone who has not only maintained a studious silence for months about Obama’s executive action, but also previously opposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants. Indeed, her flip is so dramatic that instead of raising questions about her credibility, it has changed the conversation so much that we’re immediately asking what Republicans need to do to catch up.
No doubt her proposal, which she offered no realistic plan for pushing through an unfriendly Congress, is designed to deflect attention from “Emailgate” and any number of other scandals that might yet derail her candidacy. But that’s not all its aimed at doing.
Its chief purpose is to compound what pollster Whit Ayres calls the GOP’s “daunting demographic challenge” in 2016.
Ayers points out that Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote in 2012, the highest percentage of any Republican challenging an incumbent president, and still lost because he got only 18 percent of the overall minority vote and 27 percent of the Latino vote. However, the white share of the national electorate is on track to drop by three percentage points (from 72 percent in 2012 to 69 percent in 2016) — and the minority share, likewise, to rise by the same amount.
This means that the GOP candidate has to do one of two things to win against Clinton: Improve his or her performance with whites to about 65 percent, a feat only Ronald Reagan has accomplished in the last 50 years, or boost his or her minority vote to 30 percent, which would require drawing about 45 percent of the Latino vote — as George W. Bush did.
But here’s the thing: While Democrats’ white and minority supporters are united on the issue of immigration (or at least not hopelessly divided), the GOP’s are not. This means that the more Republicans question and condemn Clinton’s support for “amnesty,” the more they’ll dig themselves in a hole with Latinos and make her more popular. On the other hand, it they stay mute — which is what most of them have done (with the exception of Lindsey Graham) — they’ll risk alienating the anti-amnesty white base that they have spent the last decade riling up.
In other words, if Republicans fight Hillary’s call for amnesty, they’ll lose Latinos, which will benefit Hillary. But if they don’t, they’ll lose whites, which will also benefit Hillary.
The dilemma is particularly acute for Jeb Bush, whose broad support for immigration (along with his Mexican-American wife and Spanish fluency) has made him perhaps the best-placed Republican to do well among Latinos. Yet even he doesn’t come anywhere close to the 45 percent mark yet. He has been rather equivocal in his support for a path to citizenship and has been assuring GOP voters that whatever course he charts for the undocumented, it will require them to jump through all kinds of hoops, such as paying fines and passing English tests and possibly “touching back” to their home country. Still, a recent Bloomberg poll found that 41 percent of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, far from the most restrictionist state in the country, considered his immigration views a “deal-killer.”
By positioning herself as even more pro-immigration than the most pro-immigration GOP candidate — and potentially picking as her running mate Julian Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the former mayor of San Antonio who is wildly popular with Latinos — she will basically lock up the Latino vote. This will mean that the Republican nominee, even Jeb Bush, would have to go whole-hog for the white vote by hardening his or her opposition to amnesty and immigration, further cementing the GOP’s reputation as the anti-minority, white man’s party.
Some pundits pooh-pooh this problem, noting that like all voters, Latinos list jobs and the economy as their top concerns, not immigration. That’s true. But, also like all voters, Latinos won’t put their economic faith in someone they don’t trust politically. They will have much more confidence in Clinton solving those problems, not because they necessarily buy into her liberal tax-and-spend plans, but because they have more confidence in her personally, thanks to her appeal for them on immigration issues.
What’s more, life will get only more miserable for Republicans once Clinton enters the White House and makes comprehensive immigration reform her signature issue. That’s because if Republicans go along with her plans to extend full-fledged amnesty, they will basically be handing her a whole new block of Democratic voters. But if they don’t, Democrats will be able to milk this issue in subsequent elections, when the electorate is even more Latino.
Regardless of where one stands on the merits of the issue, the political reality is this: Republicans’ harsh anti-immigration rhetoric has left them no good options. They have created their own vulnerability. And Hillary Clinton has just zeroed in on it.
By: Shikha Dalmia, The Week, May 22, 2015
“The Great Wall Of China On The Rio Grande”: The Real Costs Of Foolish Plans To ‘Secure’ The Border
Sen. Ted Cruz launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination this week by promising to “finally, finally, finally secure the borders” and put an end to unauthorized immigration. This will warm the hearts of restrictionists, no doubt. But it should scare Americans who love their pocketbooks and liberties more than they hate undocumented Latino immigrants.
Restrictionists accuse many of these immigrants of being welfare queens who come to America illegally and live off taxpayers. Cruz has contributed to the hysteria by proposing bills barring undocumented workers from ever receiving any means-tested benefits, presumably even after they become legal.
Accusations that undocumented Latinos strain the welfare system are a red herring. If anything, immigrants, legal and illegal, constitute something of a welfare windfall. How? By coming to this country during their peak working years, after another society has borne the cost of raising and educating them, they save our system a ton of money. Studies generally don’t take this windfall effect into account, and still find that the economic contributions of low-skilled Latinos far outpace their welfare use. For example, a Texas comptroller study found that although unauthorized workers consumed about $504 million more in public services than they paid in taxes, without them, the Texas economy would shrink by 2.1 percent, or $17.7 billion. A full accounting of these folks would likely show them to be an even bigger economic boon (especially since the employment participation rate of Latino men is higher than the native born, and their overall welfare use is lower).
Meanwhile, as Cruz and his ilk whine about the (exaggerated) welfare costs of immigrants, they act as if their own plans to erect the Great Wall of China on the Rio Grande would be costless. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Cruz wants to establish “100 percent operational control” of America’s southern border by completing a double-layer fence on the entire 2,000 miles, tripling the size of the border patrol, and quadrupling the number of helicopters and cameras.
This is beyond ill conceived. First of all, 45 percent of all illegal immigrants are visa over-stayers. So Cruz’s efforts are totally irrelevant for nearly half of America’s illegal immigrants. What’s more, even the Berlin Wall, the most fortified border in modern history, was successfully breached 1,000 times every year. That rate will be a gazillion times greater on America’s southern border, which is not a barren, open expanse of land. In fact, it has a varied and rugged terrain with mountains and valleys and national parks (one the size of Rhode Island) and rivers that the wall will have to hop, skip, and jump around.
The Rio Grande has myriad tributaries that feed millions of people on both sides of the border. If Cruz’s wall is anything like the current 18-foot-high structure with rust-red hollow posts sunk six inches apart in a concrete base, it will have to stop several miles short on each side to avoid damming the watershed, leaving major openings for people to walk through.
And what would a double-wall cost taxpayers?
It is very difficult to get a full grip, but the construction cost alone of a single-layer fence on the 1,300 or so unfenced miles would likely be upwards of $6 billion (assuming, as per a CBO study, pedestrian fencing costs of $6.5 million per mile and vehicle fencing costs of $1.7 million per mile). Annual maintenance costs would be hundreds of millions more.
Tripling the number of boots on the ground wouldn’t be cheap either. President Obama has already deployed 20,000 border patrol agents, over twice more than he inherited. Tripling this number would cost a whopping $7 billion or so more a year since, according to the CBO, the annual cost of an agent is about $171,400.
And the bill in dollars pales in comparison to the price Americans will have to pay in lost liberties.
Conservatives are outraged when the government confiscates private property for environmental or other ends. Indeed, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, a vile man with retrograde views on race, became an instant conservative hero when he stood up to Uncle Sam and let his cattle graze on land that the federal government had, in his view, illicitly obtained. Yet Cruz and his ilk have no qualms about authorizing Uncle Sam to perpetrate an even bigger property grab in the name of their Swiss-cheese wall.
Over half of the recently constructed 700 miles of fence was on private property that Uncle Sam deployed blatant strong-arm tactics to obtain. It confiscated ancestral land that had been in families for over 200 years and offered virtually peanuts to Texas landowners who couldn’t afford to hire expensive lawyers to duke it out with Uncle Sam in court. Oscar Ceballos, a part-owner of a small trucking business, recounts how a government lawyer went so far as to figure out how much his assets were worth to dissuade a free legal clinic from representing him in his fight against the government’s ridiculously low-ball initial offer. Cruz’s even grander wall ambitions will only compound such abuse.
Nor would Americans on the border be the only ones affected. The vast majority of undocumented workers are here because there are Americans, especially employers, who benefit from their presence. Hence, Cruz and his fellow anti-immigration fighters want to force all American employers to verify the work eligibility of potential hires — American or foreign, legal or illegal — against a federal database through E-verify. Should this program become mandatory, all Americans will be effectively required to obtain a government permission slip to work.
What’s ironic about Cruz’s crusade to build a wall between two free — and friendly — people, divert billions of taxpayer dollars to militarize the border, and abrogate the civil rights of Americans is that he is doing so while vowing to “stand for liberty.”
If this is his idea of liberty, what would tyranny look like under President Cruz? (Don’t answer that — I hope to never find out!)
By: Shikha Dalmia, The Week, March 27, 2015
“He’s Really Running For Vice-President”: Why Haven’t Republicans Caught On To Marco Rubio?
When you try to assess candidates from the other party, even the most unsentimental among us can have a hard time separating our emotional reactions from our level-headed assessment of who’s a strong contender and who isn’t. For instance, to me, Scott Walker radiates a kind of unpleasant meanness that I suspect wouldn’t wear very well among the general electorate. But that’s hard to quantify, and I can’t be sure that I don’t feel that way only because I disagree with his policy positions and with what he has done in Wisconsin.
As a liberal, Walker scares me, because among the serious Republican presidential candidates, I suspect he’s the one who would govern with the most intense combination of recklessness and malice. But he doesn’t strike me as the most formidable general-election candidate. That would probably be Marco Rubio. Although that judgment is subject to change (we’ll have to see how they all perform in the rigors of the primary campaign), Rubio’s appeal is undeniable. He’s extremely conservative, but wears his ideology lightly—unlike someone like Ted Cruz, he doesn’t seem eager to smack voters in the face with how much of a right-winger he is. He’s obviously smart, and of course the fact that he’s Latino means he could cut in to the Democrats’ advantage among that increasingly important group (though by how much, we really have no idea). If I were a Republican, I’d be amazed that more of my compatriots weren’t flocking to him.
Amy Walter points out that according to some recent poll results, Walker and Rubio are the only candidates whom every sector of the Republican electorate finds appealing. Yet at the moment, he seems to be barely anyone’s first choice, and she doesn’t have much of an explanation as to why:
Yet, if Rubio’s got such obvious advantages, why is he stuck in the low single digits while Walker has become a “co-frontrunner” with Bush? First, don’t underestimate the power of Walker’s profile as a conservative governor of a blue state. Furthermore, for a party that’s ambivalent at best about the idea of the idea of a “legacy” candidate like Bush, Walker’s understated Midwestern-ism is appealing.
Rubio backers, however, aren’t worried about his low standing in the polls. If anything, they like where he sits today. Rubio gets to go about his work without the same level of scrutiny that Walker and Bush get. They also see Rubio as a candidate who can endure for the long-haul thanks to his natural political talent. Where Bush struggles on the stump, Rubio shines. Where Walker fails to engage, Rubio connects emotionally.
So, when can we expect to see Rubio’s poll numbers catch up with his potential? A high-profile stumble by Bush or Walker could give the Florida senator an opening. The debates could be another place for Rubio to break out. His allies, meanwhile, aren’t convinced they need those things to happen for him to succeed. Instead, they say, he just needs to keep doing what he’s doing and the voters will catch on to his appeal.
That could be true. It’s still very early, and now that we’ve gone through the “Hey, check out this Scott Walker guy” stage of the campaign, there could be a Rubio boomlet on its way. If there’s anything that will hold Rubio back, it may be his youth. Not only is he young, he seems young. In November 2016, he will only be two years younger than Barack Obama was in November 2008 (45 versus 47), but Obama looked like a grown-up while Rubio has a baby face that makes it hard to imagine him at the top of the ticket. That’s why I still think he’s really running for vice-president, which would set up a second try for the presidency in 2020 or 2024. It isn’t such a bad idea.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 20, 2015
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