December roundup of criminal justice news and commentary

Hello and welcome to the end of 2022! There have been a lot of ups and downs this year. I’m grateful for my supportive family, my strong and excellent Just Impact team, and the fellowship of brilliant friends working together to end mass incarceration and make the world a more equitable and flourishing place.  The essay at the top of my mind as I reflect on ending 2022 and starting a new year is this one by the Engler brothers exploring the struggle to make ‘the world as it is’ into the ‘world as it should be.’ It’s a deep reflection on the tensions between ideation and practical politics, and worth reflecting on as we set our sights on the new year. 

Below is my last roundup of the year. I hope you enjoy, and welcome any comments and feedback.

Top reads:   Laura Flanders interviewed Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner about crime in the city and the PA legislature’s attack on him and what is means for democracy; Reuters covered the dangers of criminalization of pregnancy in a post-Roe world; A recent study found that even low level traffic stops reduce political participation, and that Black people are especially impacted when stopped soon before an election. 

Media

• “Finding the Words,” a documentary about a creative writing program for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, will premiere on January 28 in Northampton. Trailer here. 

• Watch this fascinating discussion with Norris Henderson about a play that was forced to shut down at Angola prison in Louisiana. 

• The Promise of Justice Initiative, a leading litigation and advocacy shop in Louisiana, is 10 years old! Check out their short video reflecting on what’s happened and how much is left to fight. 

• While on the subject of anniversaries, check out this beautiful report from the Detroit Justice Center on their first five years.  

• Paul and Mark Engler wrote a deep dive article on the importance of singing and song culture to the success of movements. I once participated in a workshop where groups had 5 minutes to write new movement songs based on popular songs of the day. It’s very doable! 

Research

• A major study, Freedom Denied has found that federal judges and magistrates are routinely misapplying federal bail laws to illegally detain people before trial, leading to astronomical pretrial detention rates. The study found a “culture of detention” that had led to a tripling in the rate of detention since the passage of a Regan-era bail law. The study was carried out by the University of Chicago Law School’s Federal Criminal Justice Clinic. USA today covered the story.

• A recent study found that even low level traffic stops reduce political participation, and that Black people are especially impacted when stopped soon before an election. 

Solutions and Wins

• The Des Moines school system has removed police from their schools and implemented a restorative practices program to address conflicts and harms at school. The students report much higher feelings of safety and relationships with peers than before the pandemic. 

• In her final weeks in office, Oregon Governor Kate Brown is commuting every death sentence in the state (17) to a sentence of life without parole, and dismantling the death chamber.  The state has executed only 2 people in the last 50 years. What this change will do is allow the state and lawyers to stop spending enormous resources on appeals, and make a clear statement about the immorality of the death penalty.  

• The Safer Cities newsletter is a great place to learn about both solutions and the levels of public support for those solutions every week. In a recent post, they profiled Houston’s successful campaign to reduce homelessness by over 60% in the past 10 years. 

• Eugenia South led a study finding that modest cash disbursements for home repairs were associated with a significant drop in gun violence on affected blocks in Philadelphia. She works with the Urban Health Lab, and did an illuminating thread on her findings. 

• Politico has some great coverage on the White House’s community violence interruption initiative. Recognizing that community-based programs can effectively prevent violence was a breakthrough in federal policy. 

Commentary and Analysis

• Don’t miss Maurice Mitchell’s essay analyzing what ails nonprofits in America today and what to do about it. 

• Rolling Stone celebrated Brittney Griner’s freedom from a Russian gulag and observed that prisoners in the United States suffer under similarly brutal conditions in our unjust system.  

• I read this 2013 essay by Peter Murray, The Secret of Scale, with interest. It lays out a concept of ‘functional organizing,’ wherein an organization builds a civic base by meeting people where they are in their daily lives, and offering them things of value, allowing them to grow much larger than issue-based activist organizations. 

• This lengthy article on Pittsburgh starts out with an ominous ‘crime has people on edge’ lede but then reveals many paragraphs in that business is booming, crime is down to pre-pandemic levels, and many of the people interviewed feel perfectly safe. The crime conversation is a vessel for a lot of unrelated things, all of which are on display in the article. 

• Mark and Paul Engler continue their series of insightful articles analyzing movements with this recent reflection on the conditions under which organizers should attempt to take state power.  

• Stephen Menendian from the Institute for Othering and Belonging at Berkeley wrote this primer on the housing crisis, explaining how it’s really numerous interrelated crises, and arguing that devising solutions for some may worsen others. 

Politics and policy

• Illinois organizers successfully fended off partisan challenges and a huge misinformation campaign in the runup to the midterms, defending key legislative champions and ultimately protecting the implementation of the new Illinois bail law. 

• Florida DA Andrew Warren is fighting for his office in court, after Governor DeSantis removed him from office (for stating he would not prosecute people for abortions). Some of the statements by DeSantis’s council are jaw dropping, and show why everyone should be paying attention to this trial, not just criminal justice nerds. When asked by the Court to define ‘woke’, he replied: “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Warren, being a ‘woke’ prosecutor, had to be removed, apparently. Updates here.  

• Rhode Island has elected its second formerly incarcerated lawmaker. Bolts interviewed the two lawmakers about their paths to office and how their presence will change the statehouse. 

• NY candidates claiming that bail reform drove losses would need to explain how state legislators who stood firmly behind the law won their elections. The scapegoat story doesn’t hold water, and the stakes are pretty high. Here’s a rundown from Dyjuan Tatro and Scott Hechinger. 

Wall of Shame

• The New York Times covered the shocking number of people dying in jails around the country, often as a result of shockingly inhumane conditions, like being put in a freezing cell in a thin shirt (the man died). The best solution to this is to send fewer people to jail. 

• People are living in terrible, inhumane conditions in San Francisco jails, many locked up for 23 hours a day with no human contact and no sunlight. The court system is so backed up that people are spending hundreds of days in jail before being acquitted. Defenders testified on this recently before the judicial council. 

• An Alabama woman was arrested for "chemical endangerment,” accused of using drugs while pregnant. In fact, she wasn’t pregnant. So they released her with a warning that they will rearrest her if she does become pregnant. A reminder that reproductive rights and criminal justice are deeply overlapping!

• Over 50 CA Highway Patrol officers were charged with fraud and wage theft after an audit found they padded their overtime hours and reported full shifts when they didn't work at all. Then the judge dismissed the charges because it's “standard police practice.” How often have these officers called for more jailing for petty theft, I wonder, while they were defrauding the government? And how much of this overtime is inflating budgets that continually grow as social services budgets shrink? States and localities currently spend $123 billion/year on police. 

• The systematic sexual assaults of women prisoners in the federal system are pushing the Justice Department to seek to expand compassionate release for these women. It’s not enough.  

• A guard raped a woman who was detained on Rikers island; she presented solid evidence. It took seven years to fire him. Keri Blakinger has the story. 

• Hertz admitted to falsely reporting thousands of vehicles stolen every year, in cases where the company had misplaced the car or made similar mistakes, leading to dozens of people being arrested and jailed, sometimes for months. Hertz agreed to settle for $168million (against an annual revenue of $8.6 billion), and won’t suffer other legal penalties. 

• Rikers Island guards bragged about abusing their sick leave policy.