Flipping through this year’s proposed criminal justice legislation, it is hard to miss Crime Victims United, a seemingly omnipresent victims’ rights group that registers strong support for tough-on-crime legislation and adamant opposition to bills seeking to reform sentencing laws or reduce incarceration. Their stance is in line with the conventional wisdom that victims want vengeance and favor a punitive approach to criminal justice. But despite CVU’s dominance in the media and in Sacramento, a new survey reveals that the group does not represent the majority of crime victims – who they are, what they need, or how they think about public safety.
The California Crime Victims’ Survey, commissioned by Californians for Safety and Justice, sheds light on the realities of victimization, a crucial step for developing policies that prevent future victims and reduce suffering of those victimized in the past.
While groups like CVU are primarily white and middleclass, large victimization studies consistently show that most crime victims are people of color from low-income communities. The CSJ survey underscores the clustering of victimization in these sectors of society: Most crime victims had been victimized multiple times and knew other victims, while most nonvictims were surrounded by fellow non-victims.
The survey also found that most crime victims overwhelmingly favored rehabilitation and treatment over jail and prison. The fi ndings, though incongruent with the actions of CVU, are not surprising, as the communities suffering the greatest victimization are the same communities devastated by tough criminal justice policies. The high rates of incarceration in these communities disrupt families, weaken social ties, and increase unemployment and homelessness – resulting in more crime and thus perpetuating the cycle of victimization.
The experiences of victims in these communities are given little attention, while highprofile advocates like CVU are designated by the media and policymakers as the authoritative voice of victims. The result is legislation based on the needs and circumstances of a small minority of victims, which is of little help to the rest.
For example, take tough-oncrime laws passed in the wake of high-profi le crimes involving young white girls slain by nefarious strangers, such as Jessica’s Law, Marsy’s Law, Megan’s Law, AMBER Alerts, Jenna’s Law, Chelsea’s Law, and California’s Three Strikes Law (spurred by the homicides of Kimber Reynolds and Polly Klaas). These laws are tailored to fi t crimes that are extremely gruesome – and extremely rare. They do nothing to address the societal problems that are the root causes of most crimes; indeed, studies on Megan’s Law , Amber Alert, Jessica’s Law and California’s Three Strikes Law have failed to demonstrate improvements to public safety.
The CSJ survey reveals that most victims do not want to ratchet up our already-harsh criminal penalties – they want to be made whole again. Not only do victims experience anxiety, stress, and fear, but they also have diffi culty accessing services that can help them deal with this psychological aftermath. These are needs best met by the social welfare system, not the criminal justice system. Policymakers who want to be on the side of crime victims must address these true needs.
Reprinted with permission from the website of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
Reconsidering Juvenile Rehabilitative Needs
In the early morning hours of May 11, 2011, while sleeping on his living room sofa, Jeffrey Hall was shot dead from point-blank range. The killer was Hall’s son, who had a long history of violence. He had stabbed several people, choked another with a telephone cord, and committed arson. Yet confining this person behind bars, as many want to do, is misguided, short-sighted, and destined to fail him and society due to one unusual fact: He was only 10 years old.
During his April 15 sentencing, Hall’s lawyers presented evidence about his psychological well-being.
One of Hall’s siblings filed a civil rights complaint against the county mental health and educational services alleging as a result of years of systematic denials of his education and civil rights, he is entitled to placement in a residential education treatment facility instead of juvenile detention.
Punishment
Some argue the only way to deal with such a severely troubled child is to send him to a correctional institution in the state’s Division of Juvenile Facilities (DJF). Although DJF has a sordid history, blighted by litigation over its appalling levels of violence and lack of rehabilitative services, proponents argue it is now safer and more humane than it was in the past. But no matter how much the system improves, DJF’s outmoded and deteriorating facilities will never be fit for children.
The institutions of DJF are prison-like correctional facilities, designed to efficiently confine a large number of people. The youth at O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility, which confines the state’s youngest wards, reside in open dormitories, often with as many as 30 other youth, many of whom struggle with behavioral and mental health issues. Violence is endemic to this kind of housing. Older, stronger youth are known to exploit and victimize those who are weaker and more vulnerable, like this boy, who would be the youngest ward at DJF, and who, when arriving at juvenile hall, “was so little they didn’t have shoes to fit him,” according to the prosecuting attorney. The children at DJF are compelled to join gangs for protection.
Environment
The environment is particularly damaging for those with serious behavioral issues, like this young boy. Highly regimented, prison-like facilities are designed to contain delinquent behavior rather than address needs. Thus, violent or aggressive youth receive restrictions and punishment rather than therapy and support, compounding their problems.
Rehabilitation is difficult, if not impossible, if youth are in a chronic state of fear and defiance. According to 2010 data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, more than 80 percent of the youth who have been confined in DJF are arrested again; many end up in adult prisons. DJF has little incentive to address this problem. Once a youth has completed his time, the division is relieved of any responsibility and returns him to his home county’s jurisdiction.
This boy suffered through a turbulent childhood, resulting in serious needs that will not be met by DJF. He suffered daily abuse from his father, who often punched and kicked him. He has psychological problems, including violent behaviors that began at 18 months of age, likely resulting from his mother’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The boy regularly attended white supremacy rallies with his father, who was the regional leader for a national neo-Nazi organization. His parents were generally negligent, When the police arrived at his home after the murder, they noted the residence was “filthy and not sanitary,” “the bedrooms smelled like urine” and the “mattresses, pillows and blankets were stained and soiled.” According to the boy’s defense attorney, Child Protective Services had been called to the house 20 times.
What this boy needs is a safe and therapeutic environment focused on rehabilitation. Moreover, he needs a continuity of care and support that begins when he is in confinement, follows him through his treatment and custody, and remains with him when he reenters the community.
Solution
The judge can meet these needs by sending the boy to a secure residential treatment facility, or group home. Such facilities are located in the community, secured 24 hours per day, and offer intensive and individualized treatment from a broad assortment of community resources, including psychiatrists, social workers and counselors.
Group homes do not have the extreme violence and gang subculture of DJF, and offer a range of security levels, allowing youth to gradually step down to less restrictive settings as they improve. Staying in the community also allows youth to maintain contact with their families and develop other support systems, which will ease their eventual transitions back to the community.
This young boy has been traumatized his entire life. Placing him in DJF, where his mental and emotional health will continue to decline, and where he will live in constant fear of assault, will only traumatize him further. Wherever the judge decides to send this child, he will return to his community by the time he is 23 years old. Eleven years from now, what sort of man do we want to come home?
Is California Ready for a Sentencing Commission?
In January, while defiantly declaring the end of California’s prison crisis, Gov. Jerry Brown insisted further reductions in prison overcrowding “cannot be achieved without the early release of prisoners serving time for serious or violent felonies,” a move he said would “jeopardize public safety.”
In other words, now that Realignment is sending low-level offenders to local custody instead of state prison, those who remain in prison must remain there to protect the public.
This sentiment reflects the state’s myopic reliance on incarceration for controlling crime and treating society’s problems.
Brown’s Realignment plan addresses one major source of the state’s unnecessary incarceration: Most people who commit low-level offenses should not go to prison. But he rejects one that is just as important: Many people who committed serious or violent offenses do need to serve some time in prison to protect the public, but we keep them there for far too long. And the terms are getting longer.
If California wants a sustainable solution to its prison crisis, it needs to rethink its increasingly harsh sentencing policies across the gamut of offenses — not just the low-level targets of Realignment and Proposition 36.
A recent study by the Pew Center on the States found that Californians who committed violent crimes can expect to serve an average of seven years in prison; in 1990 they would have served less than three.
Looking at people who committed murder, those who were released in 2009 served an average of 16 years; now they can expect to serve more than 50. This lengthening of sentences for violent crimes is a major reason California’s prisons are overflowing and will continue to do so.
In 2009, nearly 100,000 of the state’s prisoners were doing time for violent crimes, a number that will only grow as the exit door continues to recede.
A significant driver of these long sentences is sentencing enhancements — additional prison time for circumstances such as using a gun, gang involvement, and repeat offending. Although Three Strikes has received the most notoriety, an equally draconian California sentencing enhancement is 10-20-Life — “Use a Gun and You’re Done.”
Under 10-20-Life, anyone older than 13 who uses a gun while committing a serious felony (including robbery, homicide, kidnapping, and many sex crimes) will serve harsh sentences on top of the “base” sentence for the crime: 10 extra years for brandishing a gun, 20 for firing the gun, and 25-to-Life if firing the gun results in serious injury or death. These enhancements are often longer than the time served for the crime itself.
For example, a person who commits or attempts second-degree robbery would serve, at most, five years if no gun was present. If the person fires a gun during the robbery, he will serve 25 years, an enhancement four times longer than the base sentence.
A person convicted of first-degree murder with a gun will be sentenced to at least 50 years to life, twice the sentence of one who killed using another method, like strangulation, poison or an ax.
The enhancements are mandatory and cannot be struck by a judge; the only way to avoid them is to waive your right to a trial and plea bargain. The law is one of the most punitive gun enhancement policies in the nation. Fresno photographer Mike Reynolds, who drafted both Three Strikes and 10-20-Life, has said the latter “makes Three Strikes look like a piker.”
Gun enhancements are appealing alternatives to gun control because they purportedly take out only the “bad guys” who use guns – not the “good guys” who merely shoot guns for healthy fun and games. Extremely harsh enhancements are thought to enhance public safety by: 1) deterring people from committing crimes with guns, which are much more likely to result in serious injury or death, and 2) incapacitating criminals who use guns, who are purportedly more violent individuals.
This logic is not supported by evidence, and comes at a high cost to California citizens.
Research shows that the deterrent effect of punishment is linked to the certainty, not the severity, of punishment. Incapacitation is less theoretical — a person is not likely to commit additional crimes against the community while incarcerated — but the number of crimes prevented by confining such a diverse group of people is difficult to estimate.
Incapacitation also offers diminishing returns as the prisoner ages, as criminal behavior rises throughout the teenage years, peaks in the mid-20s, and then drops precipitously after 30. Recidivism rates also drop steadily throughout life.
Moreover, a report by the National Research Council found no clear evidence that gun enhancements affect gun-related crimes, and concluded that those that had found any crime reductions were “difficult to interpret.” Other studies have come to similar conclusions.
For the prisoner, longer is certainly not better: As the years go by, prisoners often become more distant from their families and communities, less employable, and more deeply ingrained in prison culture (becoming “institutionalized”), all factors that hamper reentry.
Though the public is not likely to see less crime due to 10-20-Life, they are footing what will soon be an enormous bill as the enhancements keep people confined well into old age.
California already spends an average of $52,000 per year to house each state prisoner, and that figure doubles for those aged 50 and older. A 2003 estimate (which assumed prisoners would cost a quaint $35,000 per year) predicted that by 2025 the CDCR would pay at least $4 billion per year for elderly prisoners alone. That’s money that could be better spent on rehabilitation, addiction treatment, and community-based programs, with a far greater payoff in public safety.
The striking irrationality of these laws demonstrates the need for a sentencing commission that can help California ground its sentencing laws in solid research. San Francisco is leading the way with its own Sentencing Commission, which is developing evidence-based sentencing policies founded on principles of justice, proportionality, and a commitment to public safety.
If the state does not follow suit, we will be stuck with unjustifiable and costly enhancements that result in, as criminologist Peter Greenwood writes, “thousands of defendants serving unusually long terms because somebody came up with a theory and a good bumper sticker title that captured the public’s fancy.”
Lizzie Buchen is an adviser to the San Quentin News
Alcatraz Becomes a Site for Healing Process
VICTIM SURVIVORS UNITE WITH AUTHOR AND PRISONER GROUP TO PROMOTE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
On a warm October day on Alcatraz Island, families and vacationers touring the infamous prison came upon an unexpected scene in the cellhouse dining hall: A tearful woman holding a microphone, detailing the brutal murder of her 17-year-old son.
“I’m still grieving, I’m still hurting, I’m still mourning,” said Paulette Brown, who spoke as a supporter of the Insight Prison Project. Brown grasped a large photograph of her son and held it before the crowd. “But I decided to turn my sorrow into action.”
IPP staff and supporters made the trip to the Rock as part of the weekly speaker series accompanying a special exhibition of author Nancy Mullane’s book, Life After Murder: Five Men in Search of Redemption.
IPP, grounded in the principles of restorative justice, seeks to transform incarcerated people by helping them develop insight, accountability, and compassion through programs like the Victim Offender Education Group.
“I thought criminals were scum,” Brown told the crowd. But then she attended a restorative justice “healing circle” at San Quentin, where she met Jesse Reed, one of the five men profiled in Mullane’s book. “After I went to San Quentin, I started realizing, they’re human beings. They’ve been hurt, too. Their family members have died, too. That’s when I found out, hurt people hurt people. Their hurt is why they’re here.”
‘I’m still grieving’
Ellen Barry, the executive director of IPP, and Jaimee Karroll, IPP’s training, educational and curricula director, kicked off the event by discussing the VOEG program and its hopes for expansion throughout the California criminal justice system.
Brown was followed by another survivor of a murdered son, Radha Stern. Stern has been going to San Quentin to participate in restorative justice groups for eight years.
“You hear in the media that victims want the death penalty, that victims want prisoners to suffer,” said Stern. “In reality, many are seeking compassionate solutions.”
Before and after the IPP presentation, visitors viewed the rest of the exhibit, which featured larger-than-life-size photos of the five men profiled by Mullane: Jesse Reed, Donald Cronk, Ed Ramirez, Phillip Seiler and Rich Rael. The exhibit also lists each man’s conviction, sentence, incarceration time, and parole date.
One of the more provocative parts of the exhibit was a “Thought Wall.” Visitors were encouraged to write their thoughts about redemption on a 3 x 5 Post-It and stick the note to the wall. While some wished the men luck, most were unforgiving; many pointed out something along the lines of, “Their victims never got a second chance.”
Several said simply, “An eye for an eye”. But directly below one such Post-It, another visitor had stuck a different note in response: “Leaves the whole world blind.”
The Life After Murder speaker series runs every Saturday at 1 pm until Nov 17, and features Mullane, each of the five men, CDCR Spokesperson Bill Sessa, and Jody Lewen, Executive Director of San Quentin’s Prison University Project.
San Quentin Alumnus On Life After Prison
Kevin “Big Sticks” Hagan paroled to Los Angeles on April 14, 2011 after spending 28 years in prison, the last 16 of which were at San Quentin. Now he divides his time between the California Youth Authority, where he’s a teacher and mentor for incarcerated youth, and the security team at GBK productions, where he has worked at events like the Academy Awards, the American Music awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the NAACP Image Awards, and the Kids Choice Awards.
How are you staying on the right track?
By remembering where I came from, and in knowing that those I left behind are counting on me to represent to the fullest. I hope to pave a way for them by leading by example.
My family has been so supportive and loving. My job is to help raise the little ones coming up. I love doing it and sharing quality time with them. I have a very special lady in my life, Lesia, and she’s just everything I was looking for in a woman. I am blessed to have a 5 year old grandson that keeps me on my toes and has become a very big force in my life, as I have his.
What are the most difficult aspects of life on the outside? How do you work through them?
The most difficult aspect of life is how rude and inconsiderate people are out here, and how everyone is so impersonal. I also had to learn not to take it personally. I had to take a good look at myself and reevaluate the way I viewed things and shed that prison mentality. I work through these times by using many of the philosophies that I learned in the self-help groups that I was able to utilize at “The Q”. I don’t let much get me down, because the big picture is freedom and being out here with family.
“Don’t let your situation take
your spirit, nor change the unique
individuals that you are”
What were some of the most valuable programs you participated in at San Quentin?
The programs that really made an impact on me were the SQUIRES program, The Catholic Church, IMPACT, VOEG, The VVGSQ, Brothers Keeper’s, The Arts In Corrections. I gained a lot of insight about the triggers that made me think the way I did before I committed my offense. And of course putting myself in the shoes of those whom I have hurt — empathy is the word I am looking for.
Were there any turning points during your time at San Quentin?
One turning point for me was watching several of my friends pass away in there, and saying to myself that when my time comes, I would like to pass at home with my family. The other turning point for me was returning to Jesus Christ.
Any messages for the men still inside?
I love all of you guys. Don’t think for one minute that I have forgotten you. I keep you in my prayers and in my heart as I walk this walk and not just talk. You guys are with me every step of the way. As we say, before you can help anyone else, you have to have yourself straight. The only thing that stops us is ourselves, and every one of you has the ability and know how to make things work for you. I am very proud of all of you, and waiting for the day when we can go have lunch. Don’t let your situation take your spirit, nor change the unique individuals that you are. Always see yourselves outside of those walls, and keep it one hundred percent with you.
Hammer Drops in On The Last Mile Group
Rapper MC Hammer is proof that anyone can become master of his own message. Last month, during a visit with San Quentin’s “Last Mile” group, Hammer explained how he transformed himself from ‘90s punchline to social media mogul and savvy businessman.
“Every man has made mistakes,” Hammer told the men. “Social media is a platform that gives you the opportunity to tell your own story.”
Hammer was speaking from personal experience. He rocketed to fame in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with hits “U Can’t Touch This” and “2 Legit 2 Quit,” but his reputation quickly imploded when he filed for bankruptcy in 1996. Now, Hammer is a respectable entrepreneur. He’s used social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, to take control of his story and reinvent himself in the eyes of the public. As of mid-May, Hammer (@MCHammer) had 2.7 million followers on Twitter.
Hammer’s journey was of interest to the men of the Last Mile, who learn to develop business ideas that utilize new technologies, particularly social media. The men are active on sites like Twitter (@thelastmilesq) and Quora, which they use via free volunteers.
The April meeting kicked off with four powerful pieces of spoken word performed by James “JC” Cavitt. The men then each presented their business ideas, which they have been developing over the past nine months. Hammer listened with interest and offered both advice and business connections – he is involved with dozens of companies as an adviser or an investor. “If I’m in a room,” he explained, “I should be doing business with one out of every four people in the room.”
Hammer’s latest venture is a mixed martial arts (MMA) management company. He also has his hands in dozens of companies as an adviser or investor, including the health and clean energy sectors. “I want to make sure I’m in those spaces,” he said. “They’re not the sexiest of plays, but in the long term, they’re good plays.”
Hammer has always been on the cutting edge. When he was at his rapping peak, monopolies ran the music industry, he said. “I didn’t want BET and MTV deciding who sees my music.” As early as 1992 he was using AOL as a platform for delivering his music.
“By the time we got to Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, I had already thought about how to maximize them.” Hammer encouraged the men to continue to use social media to build their brands, not only with the start-ups they hope to create, but also their personal brands. The men will be up against those who will label them as criminals long after they have earned their freedom.
“Don’t relinquish control of your story,” he said. “Tell it how you want it told.”