ACLU: Police Divestment Efforts Must Include Universities

Police Divestment Efforts Must Include Universities

Despite their intended role as peacekeepers, private university officers are often responsible for violence against students and local residents alike. In July 2015, a University of Cincinnati police officer fatally shot unarmed 37-year-old Sam DuBose. Tyrone West, a 44-year-old Black man, was killed by Morgan State University police in 2013 during a traffic stop. And in 2018, a University of Chicago police officer shot and killed fourth-year student Charles Thomas. 

Sam DuBrose, Tyrone West, and Charles Thomas are just three names on an ever-growing list of people who have lost their lives at the hands of private police officers. Student dollars go toward the upkeep of these oppressive institutions, which are responsible for the violence and mutilation of bodies.

The presence of these forces on and off campus is not welcome — not by students, and not by the communities at large. 

More than one third of four-year colleges across the country are equipped with their own well-funded, private, and armed police forces that make arrests every day. Yet despite functioning as full-fledged law enforcement, these departments are able to evade public record laws, allowing countless cases of police abuse and force to go unseen and unpunished.

In most states, public record laws apply to private organizations that employ government authority to perform a governmental function. There is no question that campus police fall into this category. But universities continue to argue their private status makes them exempt from such records requests, protecting themselves and displaying a flagrant disregard for accountability. 

The Clery Act, signed in 1990, aimed to create accountability for campus police forces. But the law does not go nearly far enough. For example, while it requires the maintenance of a daily crime log, campus forces often provide little detail and are easily able to withhold information. This statute is the sole measure in place to ensure the accountability of armed campus police officers. 

The majority of these private forces are not just policing their respective campuses, but also have jurisdiction deep in local cities. For example, the University of Chicago is home to one of the largest private police forces in the world. The student body numbers under 15,000, but the UC Police Department puts boots down in surrounding neighborhoods, placing 65,000 city residents under the watch of a force with virtually no accountability. 

This arrangement is not unique to Chicago. In cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and South Bend, Indiana, campus police departments also patrol in the city, often in predominantly Black neighborhoods which already suffer from devastating structural inequalities. People of color, especially Black folks, feel afraid of the people meant to make them feel safe. Educational institutions and the spaces around them can be emancipatory; yet, people of color find themselves in chains.

Young people have started to take notice, and have called for the end to private police on campus. Last year, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore demanded the university reverse its decision to create its own police department. Coalitions of students, faculty members, and neighbors at Harvard University, University of Virginia, Columbia University, and Ohio State University have also called for the removal of private police forces. 

But let’s be clear: Universities without private police forces are not spared from the horrors of police brutality. Partnerships with local police are also bringing unwanted publicly funded officers onto campuses. 

While these forces may not run into the same issues with open-record laws, they come with their own array of atrocities. Public police departments with known patterns of corruption, excessive use of force, and racial profiling are welcomed onto campuses with open arms by university administrators. 

Following demands organized by students, the University of Minnesota recently agreed to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Northwestern University, Columbia University, and New York University students are also calling on their administrators to cut ties with local police. Administrators should follow the lead of student activists and institutions like the University of Minnesota and cut ties with local police departments. Universities are responsible for the safety of their students and the surrounding community  — and police have proven time and time again to pose a threat to safety, rather than promote it.

As calls to defund the police grow, it is imperative that private police forces with no accountability are prioritized. Heavily armed police forces with no transparency are inexcusable, and university administrations must move to defund them. On college campuses, our nation’s playgrounds for research and discovery, we must protect our young minds and the precious communities that surround them at all costs.

Any other choice is a blatant denial of safety and justice to people across the country 一 those who pay to attend these institutions, and those who live in the communities intruded upon by them.

Published August 1, 2020 at 12:11AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/30i49pe

ACLU: Police Divestment Efforts Must Include Universities

Police Divestment Efforts Must Include Universities

Despite their intended role as peacekeepers, private university officers are often responsible for violence against students and local residents alike. In July 2015, a University of Cincinnati police officer fatally shot unarmed 37-year-old Sam DuBose. Tyrone West, a 44-year-old Black man, was killed by Morgan State University police in 2013 during a traffic stop. And in 2018, a University of Chicago police officer shot and killed fourth-year student Charles Thomas. 

Sam DuBrose, Tyrone West, and Charles Thomas are just three names on an ever-growing list of people who have lost their lives at the hands of private police officers. Student dollars go toward the upkeep of these oppressive institutions, which are responsible for the violence and mutilation of bodies.

The presence of these forces on and off campus is not welcome — not by students, and not by the communities at large. 

More than one third of four-year colleges across the country are equipped with their own well-funded, private, and armed police forces that make arrests every day. Yet despite functioning as full-fledged law enforcement, these departments are able to evade public record laws, allowing countless cases of police abuse and force to go unseen and unpunished.

In most states, public record laws apply to private organizations that employ government authority to perform a governmental function. There is no question that campus police fall into this category. But universities continue to argue their private status makes them exempt from such records requests, protecting themselves and displaying a flagrant disregard for accountability. 

The Clery Act, signed in 1990, aimed to create accountability for campus police forces. But the law does not go nearly far enough. For example, while it requires the maintenance of a daily crime log, campus forces often provide little detail and are easily able to withhold information. This statute is the sole measure in place to ensure the accountability of armed campus police officers. 

The majority of these private forces are not just policing their respective campuses, but also have jurisdiction deep in local cities. For example, the University of Chicago is home to one of the largest private police forces in the world. The student body numbers under 15,000, but the UC Police Department puts boots down in surrounding neighborhoods, placing 65,000 city residents under the watch of a force with virtually no accountability. 

This arrangement is not unique to Chicago. In cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and South Bend, Indiana, campus police departments also patrol in the city, often in predominantly Black neighborhoods which already suffer from devastating structural inequalities. People of color, especially Black folks, feel afraid of the people meant to make them feel safe. Educational institutions and the spaces around them can be emancipatory; yet, people of color find themselves in chains.

Young people have started to take notice, and have called for the end to private police on campus. Last year, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore demanded the university reverse its decision to create its own police department. Coalitions of students, faculty members, and neighbors at Harvard University, University of Virginia, Columbia University, and Ohio State University have also called for the removal of private police forces. 

But let’s be clear: Universities without private police forces are not spared from the horrors of police brutality. Partnerships with local police are also bringing unwanted publicly funded officers onto campuses. 

While these forces may not run into the same issues with open-record laws, they come with their own array of atrocities. Public police departments with known patterns of corruption, excessive use of force, and racial profiling are welcomed onto campuses with open arms by university administrators. 

Following demands organized by students, the University of Minnesota recently agreed to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Northwestern University, Columbia University, and New York University students are also calling on their administrators to cut ties with local police. Administrators should follow the lead of student activists and institutions like the University of Minnesota and cut ties with local police departments. Universities are responsible for the safety of their students and the surrounding community  — and police have proven time and time again to pose a threat to safety, rather than promote it.

As calls to defund the police grow, it is imperative that private police forces with no accountability are prioritized. Heavily armed police forces with no transparency are inexcusable, and university administrations must move to defund them. On college campuses, our nation’s playgrounds for research and discovery, we must protect our young minds and the precious communities that surround them at all costs.

Any other choice is a blatant denial of safety and justice to people across the country 一 those who pay to attend these institutions, and those who live in the communities intruded upon by them.

Published July 31, 2020 at 07:41PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/30i49pe

ACLU: Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic — 3rd Edition

Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic — 3rd Edition

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the third post in the series — you can also read the first and second.

11. Austin, Texas
 
Austin’s Margaret Moore understood the need to respond to the pandemic’s threat to people living and working in local jails. She played a significant role in bringing judges to the table to proactively work to save lives during COVID-19. The judges decided to grant no-cost bonds whenever practical to clear jail space, resulting in a dip in the jail population. As of May 12, Travis County’s adult jail system held about 1,600 people and had no positive test results. But test accessibility is distressingly low — only about 1 percent of the county’s average jail population was tested during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, Moore otherwise had an unclear role in Travis County’s pandemic decarceration efforts — unlike prosecutors across the country declining to prosecute various offenses, identifying people to be released from jail, and fighting back against short-sighted restrictions by the Texas governor’s executive order limiting pretrial releases. By mid-March, her re-election opponent, Jose Garza, publicly called upon her and other city officials to do more to decarcerate jails and prisons, thereby removing hotbeds for the spread of the disease. In mid-July, voters weighed in on her limited action, choosing Garza as the Democratic candidate for November’s prosecutor election. 

12. Jacksonville, Florida 

Jacksonville’s Melissa Nelson took early, swift action to save lives facing the pandemic in local jails. By late March, she made a temporary plan to release a significant number of people, directing her office to offer plea deals that avoid jail time, release some people pre-trial, not filing charges in non-violent “marginal” cases, and determining whether a time-served and/or probationary sentence is appropriate in any nonviolent case where the state is currently offering one year of jail time or less. 

The result of these policies: By late April, the number of people held in the Duval County jails fell by 21 percent. These are positive outcomes, but Nelson’s policies still fall short of helping everyone potentially vulnerable to the virus by unilaterally choosing not to consider those accused or convicted of violent or sexual offenses, rather than reviewing their circumstances before making a decision.

13. Fort Worth, Texas 

Fort Worth’s Sharen Wilson has been extraordinarily silent as the pandemic sweeps across the country, despite the deathly threat it poses to those trapped in jails and prisons. But Tarrant County judges and sheriffs picked up her slack, holding court proceedings to grant bonds or shorten sentence lengths so people could get released sooner. 

Unfortunately, Wilson seems to have continued business as usual — including seeking enhancements against people for low-level offenses, such as trespassing, failing to acknowledge that forcing people to spend more time behind bars during a pandemic could have fatal consequences.
 
14. Columbus, Ohio 

In Columbus, Ohio, two prosecutors share responsibility for the city’s criminal system — Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien handles felony cases, while Columbus City Prosecutor Zach Klein has jurisdiction over misdemeanors. Both made small steps towards helping people behind bars as the coronavirus spread throughout the country, but fell short of making the deep changes necessary to save lives.

In late March, Klein announced that his office was already working on criminal justice reform that would “jail only those that need to be locked up,” without providing any details on who that would include. He also expressed concern about crafting blanket policies for release. Instead, jail drops between the start of the pandemic and March 24 largely flowed from sheriffs using alternatives to arrest more often to avoid bringing people to jail.

O’Brien has taken a few steps in the right direction, including limited court proceedings and only pursuing new, serious felonies. However, he did not proactively review cases involving people serving their sentences. Moreover, O’Brien expressed concern about not being more involved in court decisions to release eight youths from a juvenile detention center where the outbreak struck nearly half of the incarcerated youth and about a quarter of the staff. 

These small gestures toward release simply do not go far enough.

15. Charlotte, North Carolina 

Charlotte’s Spencer Merriweather quickly worked to change his pretrial policies in response to COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, his office released a statement saying they have and will continue to work diligently to ensure that the only people in pretrial custody during this crisis are the people he believes pose a risk to public safety. Merriweather claims the initiatives launched by his office to limit pretrial custody of people accused of nonviolent offenses have reduced incarceration by 14 percent since the start of the pandemic. 

Although he has shown flexibility on pretrial policies, Merriweather has not focused at all on those already serving sentences, even as nearby prosecutors do. Decarcerate Mecklenburg, a coalition of community activists, attorneys, and religious leaders, held rolling protests in vehicles circling Mecklenburg County Detention Center, the District Attorney’s Office, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police headquarters, demanding in part that Merriweather release people held on bond along with those with six months or less on their sentence, pregnant women, and everyone over 50 years of age. 

Without action for those vulnerable but already serving time, Merriweather is leaving hundreds if not thousands of people behind bars to face a deadly virus. In fact, in late July, more than 40 people at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center have tested positive for Coronavirus.

Published July 31, 2020 at 03:52PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3gm5aCs

ACLU: Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic — 3rd Edition

Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic — 3rd Edition

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the third post in the series — you can also read the first and second.

11. Austin, Texas
 
Austin’s Margaret Moore understood the need to respond to the pandemic’s threat to people living and working in local jails. She played a significant role in bringing judges to the table to proactively work to save lives during COVID-19. The judges decided to grant no-cost bonds whenever practical to clear jail space, resulting in a dip in the jail population. As of May 12, Travis County’s adult jail system held about 1,600 people and had no positive test results. But test accessibility is distressingly low — only about 1 percent of the county’s average jail population was tested during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, Moore otherwise had an unclear role in Travis County’s pandemic decarceration efforts — unlike prosecutors across the country declining to prosecute various offenses, identifying people to be released from jail, and fighting back against short-sighted restrictions by the Texas governor’s executive order limiting pretrial releases. By mid-March, her re-election opponent, Jose Garza, publicly called upon her and other city officials to do more to decarcerate jails and prisons, thereby removing hotbeds for the spread of the disease. In mid-July, voters weighed in on her limited action, choosing Garza as the Democratic candidate for November’s prosecutor election. 

12. Jacksonville, Florida 

Jacksonville’s Melissa Nelson took early, swift action to save lives facing the pandemic in local jails. By late March, she made a temporary plan to release a significant number of people, directing her office to offer plea deals that avoid jail time, release some people pre-trial, not filing charges in non-violent “marginal” cases, and determining whether a time-served and/or probationary sentence is appropriate in any nonviolent case where the state is currently offering one year of jail time or less. 

The result of these policies: By late April, the number of people held in the Duval County jails fell by 21 percent. These are positive outcomes, but Nelson’s policies still fall short of helping everyone potentially vulnerable to the virus by unilaterally choosing not to consider those accused or convicted of violent or sexual offenses, rather than reviewing their circumstances before making a decision.

13. Fort Worth, Texas 

Fort Worth’s Sharen Wilson has been extraordinarily silent as the pandemic sweeps across the country, despite the deathly threat it poses to those trapped in jails and prisons. But Tarrant County judges and sheriffs picked up her slack, holding court proceedings to grant bonds or shorten sentence lengths so people could get released sooner. 

Unfortunately, Wilson seems to have continued business as usual — including seeking enhancements against people for low-level offenses, such as trespassing, failing to acknowledge that forcing people to spend more time behind bars during a pandemic could have fatal consequences.
 
14. Columbus, Ohio 

In Columbus, Ohio, two prosecutors share responsibility for the city’s criminal system — Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien handles felony cases, while Columbus City Prosecutor Zach Klein has jurisdiction over misdemeanors. Both made small steps towards helping people behind bars as the coronavirus spread throughout the country, but fell short of making the deep changes necessary to save lives.

In late March, Klein announced that his office was already working on criminal justice reform that would “jail only those that need to be locked up,” without providing any details on who that would include. He also expressed concern about crafting blanket policies for release. Instead, jail drops between the start of the pandemic and March 24 largely flowed from sheriffs using alternatives to arrest more often to avoid bringing people to jail.

O’Brien has taken a few steps in the right direction, including limited court proceedings and only pursuing new, serious felonies. However, he did not proactively review cases involving people serving their sentences. Moreover, O’Brien expressed concern about not being more involved in court decisions to release eight youths from a juvenile detention center where the outbreak struck nearly half of the incarcerated youth and about a quarter of the staff. 

These small gestures toward release simply do not go far enough.

15. Charlotte, North Carolina 

Charlotte’s Spencer Merriweather quickly worked to change his pretrial policies in response to COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, his office released a statement saying they have and will continue to work diligently to ensure that the only people in pretrial custody during this crisis are the people he believes pose a risk to public safety. Merriweather claims the initiatives launched by his office to limit pretrial custody of people accused of nonviolent offenses have reduced incarceration by 14 percent since the start of the pandemic. 

Although he has shown flexibility on pretrial policies, Merriweather has not focused at all on those already serving sentences, even as nearby prosecutors do. Decarcerate Mecklenburg, a coalition of community activists, attorneys, and religious leaders, held rolling protests in vehicles circling Mecklenburg County Detention Center, the District Attorney’s Office, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police headquarters, demanding in part that Merriweather release people held on bond along with those with six months or less on their sentence, pregnant women, and everyone over 50 years of age. 

Without action for those vulnerable but already serving time, Merriweather is leaving hundreds if not thousands of people behind bars to face a deadly virus. In fact, in late July, more than 40 people at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center have tested positive for Coronavirus.

Published July 31, 2020 at 08:22PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3gm5aCs

ACLU: Prosecutors Disappoint During Pandemic — 2nd Edition

Prosecutors Disappoint During Pandemic — 2nd Edition

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the second post in the series. You can read the first here.

6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner’s response during this pandemic has been both frustratingly slow and limited. After COVID-19 had already reached the city, his office was still considering ways to alleviate the local jail population. In March, Krasner signed onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail, when they pose no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. Then, when turning to action in his own office, he ultimately instructed his office to limit bail requests to serious cases, asked his prosecutors to consider the virus in making charging decisions, and agreed to work with public defenders to identify who could be released from jail. 

But results came slowly. By April 3, only about 7 percent of the city’s approximately 5,000-person jail population had been released — a smaller percentage than virtually every other major city in America. Krasner has pointed to judicial inaction as a barrier to success, but judges point back to his office, citing that he took several weeks to approve lists of incarcerated people for release. Moreover, Krasner ran for office campaigning for and has already implemented bail reform policies requiring recommendations of the minimal necessary terms of release for people awaiting trial, but court watchers found in 2019 that Philadelphia prosecutors consistently recommend more than what the court deems necessary. Even through the coronavirus peak, where each bail set could be a death sentence, court watchers have found that the rate of cash bail stayed consistently between 40 to 50 percent of all cases. 

7. San Antonio, Texas 

Early on, San Antonio’s Joe Gonzales embraced the need for decarceration in response to the coronavirus. In March, Gonzales signed onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail, where there’s no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. He also challenged Governor Abbott’s jail order, which limited the release of individuals who are incarcerated to those who can pay bail, as a threat that would overcrowd local jails at a dangerous time. Moreover, he asked his office’s prosecutors to lower bail requests for people accused of nonviolent offenses. 

But Gonzales could have done more. As a prosecutor, he could have focused less on getting through as many cases as possible, and more on lowering the amount of cases there are to begin with. Unfortunately, Gonzales continued to insist that grand juries should meet to allow charges to proceed rather than dismiss them. A more decarceration-oriented approach would have been for Gonzales to dismiss a larger swath of cases, especially where individuals are at high risk of contracting the virus, or don’t pose a safety risk to the general public. 

8. San Diego, California 

As the coronavirus spread through the country, San Diego’s Summer Stephan announced in late March that her office was working closely with the local sheriff’s department to identify people in jail to approve for release. Stephan said the offices would focus particularly on those who are medically fragile and vulnerable, whether pretrial or already serving their sentence. 

However, public defenders believe Stephan’s office is not doing enough. For example, in April, California’s Judicial Council set bail at zero statewide for most misdemeanor and lower-level felonies in an attempt to limit the further spread of the virus. Despite these efforts aiming to reduce the number of people who enter jails, Stephan tried to circumvent this rule, arguing in a letter to the Chief Justice that the rule needed a carveout that would allow for prosecutors to argue that a person’s criminal history should prevent release more often, and add conditions for those who are able to avoid jail during the pandemic.

9. Dallas, Texas 

Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot swiftly decided that decarceration was the best route to slow the coronavirus in jails. In March, he signed onto a national joint statement, urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail so long as public safety is unlikely to be harmed. The following month, he joined three other Texas prosecutors in challenging Gov. Abbott’s jail order, which limits the release of people to those who can pay bail. Creuzot, for his part, announced that his office has worked with defense attorneys to identify who could be released pretrial and criticized police officers for continuing to arrest people for minor charges such as drug possession.

Unfortunately, releases from the county jail have been slow, to Creuzot’s frustration. In fact, in March, the jail held almost 1,000 people over its usual average — at the height of the pandemic. Unfortunately, by April 26, the jail’s population had only dropped by 500, from 5,879 to 5,309, and had one of the highest numbers of incarcerated people in the state who tested positive for the virus. 

Despite his expressed frustrations and advocates demanding reform to help people trapped in jail, Creuzot did not publish changes to his office’s COVID-19 decarceration policies that would leverage his authority to support declining charges, releasing people pretrial or post-conviction, or recommending non-incarceration sentences. 

10. San Jose, California 

Santa Clara County, which encompasses San Jose, was among the first places to report cases of the coronavirus. Yet San Jose’s Jeff Rosen has not taken much action during the pandemic. Certainly, his office has embraced some change — prosecutors there report they are no longer considering risk of future property crimes worth keeping someone in jail pretrial, reviewed and agreed to 150 people getting released whom they had already argued should await trial behind bars, and were identifying people serving short sentences who should leave early to alleviate jail populations. While steps in the right direction, each of these actions is quite limited. 

Moreover, Rosen was far more vocal about policies others were passing to help slow the virus’ spread in jails than his own efforts. For example, he publicly expressed reservations about pretrial releases in April, when he admitted concerns about a recent court order that would allow people accused of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies to be released before their trials without bail. 

Not taking enough initiative may be par for the course for Rosen. Even before the pandemic, public defenders have thrown mud at Rosen for maintaining stark racial disparities in his office’s decisions and influences over who goes to jail and who doesn’t. While Rosen has discussed the issue at length, his inaction — much like his limited action during COVID-19 — speaks volumes. 

Published July 30, 2020 at 10:11PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3jVeTSt

ACLU: Prosecutors Disappoint During Pandemic — 2nd Edition

Prosecutors Disappoint During Pandemic — 2nd Edition

As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to become a death sentence for people trapped in prisons and jails across the U.S., the actions — or inaction — of prosecutors to decarcerate have had a tangible life or death impact. We examined the responses from prosecutors in the 20 biggest cities in this country. This is the second post in the series. You can read the first here.

6. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner’s response during this pandemic has been both frustratingly slow and limited. After COVID-19 had already reached the city, his office was still considering ways to alleviate the local jail population. In March, Krasner signed onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail, when they pose no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. Then, when turning to action in his own office, he ultimately instructed his office to limit bail requests to serious cases, asked his prosecutors to consider the virus in making charging decisions, and agreed to work with public defenders to identify who could be released from jail. 

But results came slowly. By April 3, only about 7 percent of the city’s approximately 5,000-person jail population had been released — a smaller percentage than virtually every other major city in America. Krasner has pointed to judicial inaction as a barrier to success, but judges point back to his office, citing that he took several weeks to approve lists of incarcerated people for release. Moreover, Krasner ran for office campaigning for and has already implemented bail reform policies requiring recommendations of the minimal necessary terms of release for people awaiting trial, but court watchers found in 2019 that Philadelphia prosecutors consistently recommend more than what the court deems necessary. Even through the coronavirus peak, where each bail set could be a death sentence, court watchers have found that the rate of cash bail stayed consistently between 40 to 50 percent of all cases. 

7. San Antonio, Texas 

Early on, San Antonio’s Joe Gonzales embraced the need for decarceration in response to the coronavirus. In March, Gonzales signed onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail, where there’s no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. He also challenged Governor Abbott’s jail order, which limited the release of individuals who are incarcerated to those who can pay bail, as a threat that would overcrowd local jails at a dangerous time. Moreover, he asked his office’s prosecutors to lower bail requests for people accused of nonviolent offenses. 

But Gonzales could have done more. As a prosecutor, he could have focused less on getting through as many cases as possible, and more on lowering the amount of cases there are to begin with. Unfortunately, Gonzales continued to insist that grand juries should meet to allow charges to proceed rather than dismiss them. A more decarceration-oriented approach would have been for Gonzales to dismiss a larger swath of cases, especially where individuals are at high risk of contracting the virus, or don’t pose a safety risk to the general public. 

8. San Diego, California 

As the coronavirus spread through the country, San Diego’s Summer Stephan announced in late March that her office was working closely with the local sheriff’s department to identify people in jail to approve for release. Stephan said the offices would focus particularly on those who are medically fragile and vulnerable, whether pretrial or already serving their sentence. 

However, public defenders believe Stephan’s office is not doing enough. For example, in April, California’s Judicial Council set bail at zero statewide for most misdemeanor and lower-level felonies in an attempt to limit the further spread of the virus. Despite these efforts aiming to reduce the number of people who enter jails, Stephan tried to circumvent this rule, arguing in a letter to the Chief Justice that the rule needed a carveout that would allow for prosecutors to argue that a person’s criminal history should prevent release more often, and add conditions for those who are able to avoid jail during the pandemic.

9. Dallas, Texas 

Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot swiftly decided that decarceration was the best route to slow the coronavirus in jails. In March, he signed onto a national joint statement, urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail so long as public safety is unlikely to be harmed. The following month, he joined three other Texas prosecutors in challenging Gov. Abbott’s jail order, which limits the release of people to those who can pay bail. Creuzot, for his part, announced that his office has worked with defense attorneys to identify who could be released pretrial and criticized police officers for continuing to arrest people for minor charges such as drug possession.

Unfortunately, releases from the county jail have been slow, to Creuzot’s frustration. In fact, in March, the jail held almost 1,000 people over its usual average — at the height of the pandemic. Unfortunately, by April 26, the jail’s population had only dropped by 500, from 5,879 to 5,309, and had one of the highest numbers of incarcerated people in the state who tested positive for the virus. 

Despite his expressed frustrations and advocates demanding reform to help people trapped in jail, Creuzot did not publish changes to his office’s COVID-19 decarceration policies that would leverage his authority to support declining charges, releasing people pretrial or post-conviction, or recommending non-incarceration sentences. 

10. San Jose, California 

Santa Clara County, which encompasses San Jose, was among the first places to report cases of the coronavirus. Yet San Jose’s Jeff Rosen has not taken much action during the pandemic. Certainly, his office has embraced some change — prosecutors there report they are no longer considering risk of future property crimes worth keeping someone in jail pretrial, reviewed and agreed to 150 people getting released whom they had already argued should await trial behind bars, and were identifying people serving short sentences who should leave early to alleviate jail populations. While steps in the right direction, each of these actions is quite limited. 

Moreover, Rosen was far more vocal about policies others were passing to help slow the virus’ spread in jails than his own efforts. For example, he publicly expressed reservations about pretrial releases in April, when he admitted concerns about a recent court order that would allow people accused of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies to be released before their trials without bail. 

Not taking enough initiative may be par for the course for Rosen. Even before the pandemic, public defenders have thrown mud at Rosen for maintaining stark racial disparities in his office’s decisions and influences over who goes to jail and who doesn’t. While Rosen has discussed the issue at length, his inaction — much like his limited action during COVID-19 — speaks volumes. 

Published July 30, 2020 at 05:41PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3jVeTSt

Kingdom of Lesotho : Requests for Disbursement Under the Rapid Credit Facility and Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Kingdom of Lesotho

Kingdom of Lesotho : Requests for Disbursement Under the Rapid Credit Facility and Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Kingdom of Lesotho
Published July 30, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Kingdom of Eswatini : Requests for Disbursement Under the Rapid Credit Facility and Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Kingdom of Eswatini

Kingdom of Eswatini : Requests for Disbursement Under the Rapid Credit Facility and Purchase Under the Rapid Financing Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Kingdom of Eswatini
Published July 30, 2020 at 07:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: Communities Deserve Better Than Bayonets and Grenade Launchers: The Defense 1033 Program Must End Now

Communities Deserve Better Than Bayonets and Grenade Launchers: The Defense 1033 Program Must End Now

Police do not need an 18th Century infantry sword to “protect and serve” communities. Nor do they need Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs), grenade launchers, or other weapons of war. Despite the dangerous nature of these weapons, local police departments continue to have access to them, free of charge, through the Department of Defense 1033 program. As we face a past due reckoning over our nation’s policing practices, it is time our leaders take the steps necessary to prevent these weapons of war from being used on the nation’s people, protestors, and Black and Brown communities.
 
Last week, the Senate decided to limit reforms to the 1033 program to just bayonets, tanks, weaponized drones, and some grenades. “Modest” would be a charitable way to describe the amendment to the defense authorization bill offered by Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe. Weaponized vehicles and armed drones were never transferred under 1033, and most grenades can still be secured through the program, so that leaves bayonets as the most significant reform in this package.
 
The House could have taken up amendments to end or rein in 1033 last week with proposals from Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Hank Johnson. Instead they skipped the opportunity for real reform by passing on those amendments. The Senate voted down a more meaningful 1033 amendment from Sen. Brian Schatz. Despite passing Rep. Johnson’s Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act last month with the Justice in Policing Act, it seems Congress caved to pressure from the law enforcement lobby to leave 1033 reforms out of the must-pass defense bill.
 
With the administration maintaining militarized federal agents in Portland, and following their violent attack on protesters in Lafayette Square, Congress should take every oversight and legislative action available to stop the Trump-Barr “law and order” roadshow. This administration has followed those vile attacks with promises to “surge” federal law enforcement in Kansas City, Chicago, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Oakland. We can also expect to see the administration’s response in Portland replicated in Seattle.
 
If this dispatch of federal agents throughout the country looks anything like Portland, this means more unidentifiable federal agents in camouflage, using tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper balls in their war against protestors. As federal agents bring their warrior mentality to tackle “violent crime” through Operation Legend and Operation Relentless Pursuit, it is essentially old fashioned over-policing, with its trademark profiling and excessive force.
 
The federal government has opened up its war chest to federal, state, and local law enforcement since 1990, transferring $7.4 billion dollars of military weapons and equipment to date. While some limited reforms that provided transparency were achieved under the Obama administration and through defense authorization bills in more recent years, 1033 has continued to put military weapons in the hands of law enforcement since the program first came under scrutiny during the protests that followed Michael Brown’s death in 2014, to the present day protests that followed George Floyd’s death.
 
The 1033 program is the vehicle that enables militarized responses against protestors, at the Southern border, and to advance the failed drug war. The program instigates the “surge” of various federal law enforcement that have been deputized to “lay down the law” in Portland and cities throughout the country. It is beyond time to end the 1033 program and the wave of brutality, racialized policing, and curtailing of civil liberties that it leaves in its wake.

Published July 29, 2020 at 10:27PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3hKqFNy

ACLU: Communities Deserve Better Than Bayonets and Grenade Launchers: The Defense 1033 Program Must End Now

Communities Deserve Better Than Bayonets and Grenade Launchers: The Defense 1033 Program Must End Now

Police do not need an 18th Century infantry sword to “protect and serve” communities. Nor do they need Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs), grenade launchers, or other weapons of war. Despite the dangerous nature of these weapons, local police departments continue to have access to them, free of charge, through the Department of Defense 1033 program. As we face a past due reckoning over our nation’s policing practices, it is time our leaders take the steps necessary to prevent these weapons of war from being used on the nation’s people, protestors, and Black and Brown communities.
 
Last week, the Senate decided to limit reforms to the 1033 program to just bayonets, tanks, weaponized drones, and some grenades. “Modest” would be a charitable way to describe the amendment to the defense authorization bill offered by Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe. Weaponized vehicles and armed drones were never transferred under 1033, and most grenades can still be secured through the program, so that leaves bayonets as the most significant reform in this package.
 
The House could have taken up amendments to end or rein in 1033 last week with proposals from Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Hank Johnson. Instead they skipped the opportunity for real reform by passing on those amendments. The Senate voted down a more meaningful 1033 amendment from Sen. Brian Schatz. Despite passing Rep. Johnson’s Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act last month with the Justice in Policing Act, it seems Congress caved to pressure from the law enforcement lobby to leave 1033 reforms out of the must-pass defense bill.
 
With the administration maintaining militarized federal agents in Portland, and following their violent attack on protesters in Lafayette Square, Congress should take every oversight and legislative action available to stop the Trump-Barr “law and order” roadshow. This administration has followed those vile attacks with promises to “surge” federal law enforcement in Kansas City, Chicago, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Oakland. We can also expect to see the administration’s response in Portland replicated in Seattle.
 
If this dispatch of federal agents throughout the country looks anything like Portland, this means more unidentifiable federal agents in camouflage, using tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper balls in their war against protestors. As federal agents bring their warrior mentality to tackle “violent crime” through Operation Legend and Operation Relentless Pursuit, it is essentially old fashioned over-policing, with its trademark profiling and excessive force.
 
The federal government has opened up its war chest to federal, state, and local law enforcement since 1990, transferring $7.4 billion dollars of military weapons and equipment to date. While some limited reforms that provided transparency were achieved under the Obama administration and through defense authorization bills in more recent years, 1033 has continued to put military weapons in the hands of law enforcement since the program first came under scrutiny during the protests that followed Michael Brown’s death in 2014, to the present day protests that followed George Floyd’s death.
 
The 1033 program is the vehicle that enables militarized responses against protestors, at the Southern border, and to advance the failed drug war. The program instigates the “surge” of various federal law enforcement that have been deputized to “lay down the law” in Portland and cities throughout the country. It is beyond time to end the 1033 program and the wave of brutality, racialized policing, and curtailing of civil liberties that it leaves in its wake.

Published July 29, 2020 at 05:57PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3hKqFNy

ACLU: Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic

Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic

From the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, it was clear that the impact on people living and working in jails and prisons was potentially catastrophic. Advocates, including the ACLU, were sounding the alarm by early March in the United States. Five million people cycle through jails every year — where people live in close quarters and lack basic sanitary supplies — creating a petri dish for the transmission of COVID-19. Of course, prison walls can’t contain the virus — which can just as easily leave those facilities and spread into surrounding communities and beyond.

Swift action from every criminal system stakeholder — from police and public defenders to judges and corrections officials — was necessary to prevent a health crisis behind bars. The person with the most power to increase or decrease incarceration rates, the prosecutor, had the most opportunity to spur action by protecting people from unnecessary contact with the criminal legal system.

Once COVID-19 reached the United States, prosecutors should have swiftly used their immense discretion to reduce the number of people who are held pretrial or were sentenced to a confined facility, especially those most vulnerable. This includes outright dismissing low-level cases, recommending release without bail before trial, making full use of available diversion programs or alternatives that don’t involve confinement, offering non-confinement sentences in plea bargaining and sentencing recommendations, and supporting the release of particularly vulnerable people from jails and prisons.

Yet, despite early warnings, COVID-19 has raged throughout U.S. jails and prisons. Tens of thousands of people behind bars have tested positive for the virus, and hundreds have died — the result of sluggish and insufficient efforts from all criminal legal actors across the country.

As COVID-19 levels continue to spike around the country, prosecutors remain best poised to coordinate with all system stakeholders to slow the spread inside jails and prisons. In order to do so effectively, they must reflect on the policies they’ve incorporated so far, analyze their results, and identify new ways they can better protect people in jails and prisons to ensure contact with the system does not result in death.

This analysis series focuses on the 20 largest cities in the United States, and the policies local prosecutors implemented there to slow the spread of the virus into jails and prisons. This is the first post in the series.

1. New York, New York

New York City is home to five district attorneys — one in each borough. After hearing alarms from advocates as COVID-19 reached the city, many of the NYC prosecutors agreed to support decarceration to fight its spread in jails. In March, Manhattan’s Cy Vance and Brooklyn’s Eric Gonzalezsigned onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail when there was no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. The same month, Gonzalez took individual action to save lives, announcing his office would stop prosecuting low-level offenses that don’t jeopardize public safety. By May, three other borough prosecutors joined him and vowed to no longer prosecute social distancing arrests, though a recent article uncovered thousands of protest-related summons that they have not intervened to dismiss despite having the authority to do so.

While it remains unclear the extent to which these initiatives actually slowed jail intakes, the city reported that over 1,500 people were released from the city jails between the start of the pandemic and April 10. City prosecutors played a role, proactively reviewing the circumstances of each person in jail related to a case from their office and responding to both city and defender requests for review to determine whether to consent to release. Almost all of these offices regularly reported their consent numbers publicly — though the Staten Island DA’s office did not respond to repeated requests for their consent data, preferring to keep its COVID-19 policy actions behind closed doors.

Despite these efforts, many people who were vulnerable to the virus were left behind. On April 17, the Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit against Vance’s office, calling for the release of 76 incarcerated New Yorkers that the office had been unwilling to consent to release previously. A few days earlier, Queens’ Melinda Katz drew criticism when Walter Ance — a man who had been serving time while awaiting his trial for over a year — died handcuffed to a bed after Katz’s office refused to consent to his release, despite his high risk of contracting the virus due to his ongoing health issues. In May, Staten Island’s McMahon penned an op-ed urging advocates to stop demanding drastic declines in jails, claiming that doing so would harm public safety.

Unfortunately, these jail declines did not stop COVID-19: As of April 13, Legal Aid reported that 7.8 percent of incarcerated New Yorkers tested positive for COVID-19 — a percentage almost six times higher than the city’s population.

2. Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey leads the largest local prosecutorial office in the nation. In mid-March, Lacey directed her office to consider individual health risks, delay filing new cases, consider recommending release for people awaiting trial for nonviolent crimes, and expand the use of pre-filing diversion.

By the end of March, LA County had already released over 1,700 people. But Lacey’s policies may only tell part of the story — local sheriffs and public defenders also actively identified and released people from jail in reaction to the pandemic. In April, California’s Judicial Council set bail at zero statewide, temporarily ending wealth-based, pretrial incarceration for most misdemeanor and lower-level felonies in an attempt to limit the further spread of the virus.

Lacey’s office directives leave wiggle room for significant, life-endangering exceptions. For example, despite the office’s directive to avoid pretrial detention during this pandemic, LA County prosecutors have carved out an exception to pursue bail for people accused of looting. Moreover, in an April email obtained by HuffPost, a deputy district attorney noted that the office would consider an overly broad definition of “looting” so that it includes thefts involving property valued at $950 or more — a value that an iPhone 11 Pro alone surpasses. George Gascón, who is running to replace Lacey, accused her office of continuing to pursue low-level cases despite the pandemic, including panhandling, drinking in public, driving with a suspended license, drug possession, and loitering. Rather than addressing these critiques head-on, Lacey declined an invitation to a town hall hosted by justice organizations, including the ACLU of Southern California, on May 12 to discuss LA district attorney policies during COVID-19 with the public.

3. Chicago, Illinois

Early on in the outbreak, the State’s Attorney for Cook County, Illinois Kim Foxx committed to working with local sheriffs and public defenders to identify paths toward decarceration to slow the spread of the coronavirus. For her contribution, on March 20, her office announced it would not be prosecuting new low-level drug offenses during the pandemic. Her office was also reviewing thousands of cases to identify people to recommend release from jail when they would not pose a threat to public safety in emergency bail hearings. She later crafted a policy not to prosecute individuals charged with minor offenses related to peaceful protests, a move that kept people out of harm’s way in jails.

Unfortunately, these changes did not always reach the courtroom. The public defender’s office has publicly called out that local prosecutors have not agreed to a majority of motions to reduce bond or release defendants from the Cook County Jail during the outbreak. Foxx has been clear that her office will not support mass release, but is working hard to find people who are ideal for immediate release, and hopeful that this effort will clear the path to broader and long overdue bail reform in the future.

4. Houston, Texas

In the early days of COVID-19, defenders criticized Harris County, Texas District Attorney Kim Ogg’s slow response to the pandemic, including her delayed remote working office policy. While local officials across the state began to release people awaiting trial to slow the spread of the virus, Ogg overtly fought judicial efforts by filing an emergency motion to block judges from considering “public health matters” when deciding bail. In April, a lawyer representing misdemeanor judges in a cash bail suit sent a letter to DA Ogg, accusing her of also misrepresenting Gov. Abbot’s executive order on limitations of release during the pandemic to deny the release of people on low-level offenses.

Ogg’s efforts to prevent decarceration have led to drastic consequences. The state’s system is now at a crisis point as a backlog of people crammed in local Texas jails builds up — both those held pretrial and those waiting to transfer to prison are trapped together despite the pandemic’s threat.

5. Phoenix, Arizona

Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth most populous county in the nation and home to Phoenix, has successfully cut down the number of people going to jail while awaiting trial to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Many of these reduced filings have been credited to the Maricopa County sheriff and the Phoenix police chief, who have developed policies to issue summons and citations for many offenses on the front end of the system. While Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel agreed to pause the filings of some cases, she made clear that these cases would not be dismissed at any point, leading advocates to fear a flood of backlogged cases could inundate the system in the near future. Further, vowing to prosecute low-level cases related directly to the pandemic’s impact on the economy, such as theft or trespassing, does more harm than good for the community.

Adel certainly understood some need to alleviate the number of people behind bars during the pandemic. She directed her office to consider this broader public health needs when making charging decisions and to respond appropriately to defense attorneys’ requests for release. But advocates, including the ACLU of Arizona, asked her early on to implement a variety of more specific proposals, which Adel declined to even meet to discuss. Instead, she authored an op-ed vilifying advocates’ intentions and arguing that people in prison should not be released — a sign that she does not grasp how this virus can turn jail stints into death sentences.

Published July 29, 2020 at 08:25PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2P86Ljq

ACLU: Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic

Prosecutors Disappoint During the Pandemic

From the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, it was clear that the impact on people living and working in jails and prisons was potentially catastrophic. Advocates, including the ACLU, were sounding the alarm by early March in the United States. Five million people cycle through jails every year — where people live in close quarters and lack basic sanitary supplies — creating a petri dish for the transmission of COVID-19. Of course, prison walls can’t contain the virus — which can just as easily leave those facilities and spread into surrounding communities and beyond.

Swift action from every criminal system stakeholder — from police and public defenders to judges and corrections officials — was necessary to prevent a health crisis behind bars. The person with the most power to increase or decrease incarceration rates, the prosecutor, had the most opportunity to spur action by protecting people from unnecessary contact with the criminal legal system.

Once COVID-19 reached the United States, prosecutors should have swiftly used their immense discretion to reduce the number of people who are held pretrial or were sentenced to a confined facility, especially those most vulnerable. This includes outright dismissing low-level cases, recommending release without bail before trial, making full use of available diversion programs or alternatives that don’t involve confinement, offering non-confinement sentences in plea bargaining and sentencing recommendations, and supporting the release of particularly vulnerable people from jails and prisons.

Yet, despite early warnings, COVID-19 has raged throughout U.S. jails and prisons. Tens of thousands of people behind bars have tested positive for the virus, and hundreds have died — the result of sluggish and insufficient efforts from all criminal legal actors across the country.

As COVID-19 levels continue to spike around the country, prosecutors remain best poised to coordinate with all system stakeholders to slow the spread inside jails and prisons. In order to do so effectively, they must reflect on the policies they’ve incorporated so far, analyze their results, and identify new ways they can better protect people in jails and prisons to ensure contact with the system does not result in death.

This analysis series focuses on the 20 largest cities in the United States, and the policies local prosecutors implemented there to slow the spread of the virus into jails and prisons. This is the first post in the series.

1. New York, New York

New York City is home to five district attorneys — one in each borough. After hearing alarms from advocates as COVID-19 reached the city, many of the NYC prosecutors agreed to support decarceration to fight its spread in jails. In March, Manhattan’s Cy Vance and Brooklyn’s Eric Gonzalezsigned onto a national joint statement urging local officials across the country to stop admitting people to jail when there was no serious risk to the physical safety of the community. The same month, Gonzalez took individual action to save lives, announcing his office would stop prosecuting low-level offenses that don’t jeopardize public safety. By May, three other borough prosecutors joined him and vowed to no longer prosecute social distancing arrests, though a recent article uncovered thousands of protest-related summons that they have not intervened to dismiss despite having the authority to do so.

While it remains unclear the extent to which these initiatives actually slowed jail intakes, the city reported that over 1,500 people were released from the city jails between the start of the pandemic and April 10. City prosecutors played a role, proactively reviewing the circumstances of each person in jail related to a case from their office and responding to both city and defender requests for review to determine whether to consent to release. Almost all of these offices regularly reported their consent numbers publicly — though the Staten Island DA’s office did not respond to repeated requests for their consent data, preferring to keep its COVID-19 policy actions behind closed doors.

Despite these efforts, many people who were vulnerable to the virus were left behind. On April 17, the Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit against Vance’s office, calling for the release of 76 incarcerated New Yorkers that the office had been unwilling to consent to release previously. A few days earlier, Queens’ Melinda Katz drew criticism when Walter Ance — a man who had been serving time while awaiting his trial for over a year — died handcuffed to a bed after Katz’s office refused to consent to his release, despite his high risk of contracting the virus due to his ongoing health issues. In May, Staten Island’s McMahon penned an op-ed urging advocates to stop demanding drastic declines in jails, claiming that doing so would harm public safety.

Unfortunately, these jail declines did not stop COVID-19: As of April 13, Legal Aid reported that 7.8 percent of incarcerated New Yorkers tested positive for COVID-19 — a percentage almost six times higher than the city’s population.

2. Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey leads the largest local prosecutorial office in the nation. In mid-March, Lacey directed her office to consider individual health risks, delay filing new cases, consider recommending release for people awaiting trial for nonviolent crimes, and expand the use of pre-filing diversion.

By the end of March, LA County had already released over 1,700 people. But Lacey’s policies may only tell part of the story — local sheriffs and public defenders also actively identified and released people from jail in reaction to the pandemic. In April, California’s Judicial Council set bail at zero statewide, temporarily ending wealth-based, pretrial incarceration for most misdemeanor and lower-level felonies in an attempt to limit the further spread of the virus.

Lacey’s office directives leave wiggle room for significant, life-endangering exceptions. For example, despite the office’s directive to avoid pretrial detention during this pandemic, LA County prosecutors have carved out an exception to pursue bail for people accused of looting. Moreover, in an April email obtained by HuffPost, a deputy district attorney noted that the office would consider an overly broad definition of “looting” so that it includes thefts involving property valued at $950 or more — a value that an iPhone 11 Pro alone surpasses. George Gascón, who is running to replace Lacey, accused her office of continuing to pursue low-level cases despite the pandemic, including panhandling, drinking in public, driving with a suspended license, drug possession, and loitering. Rather than addressing these critiques head-on, Lacey declined an invitation to a town hall hosted by justice organizations, including the ACLU of Southern California, on May 12 to discuss LA district attorney policies during COVID-19 with the public.

3. Chicago, Illinois

Early on in the outbreak, the State’s Attorney for Cook County, Illinois Kim Foxx committed to working with local sheriffs and public defenders to identify paths toward decarceration to slow the spread of the coronavirus. For her contribution, on March 20, her office announced it would not be prosecuting new low-level drug offenses during the pandemic. Her office was also reviewing thousands of cases to identify people to recommend release from jail when they would not pose a threat to public safety in emergency bail hearings. She later crafted a policy not to prosecute individuals charged with minor offenses related to peaceful protests, a move that kept people out of harm’s way in jails.

Unfortunately, these changes did not always reach the courtroom. The public defender’s office has publicly called out that local prosecutors have not agreed to a majority of motions to reduce bond or release defendants from the Cook County Jail during the outbreak. Foxx has been clear that her office will not support mass release, but is working hard to find people who are ideal for immediate release, and hopeful that this effort will clear the path to broader and long overdue bail reform in the future.

4. Houston, Texas

In the early days of COVID-19, defenders criticized Harris County, Texas District Attorney Kim Ogg’s slow response to the pandemic, including her delayed remote working office policy. While local officials across the state began to release people awaiting trial to slow the spread of the virus, Ogg overtly fought judicial efforts by filing an emergency motion to block judges from considering “public health matters” when deciding bail. In April, a lawyer representing misdemeanor judges in a cash bail suit sent a letter to DA Ogg, accusing her of also misrepresenting Gov. Abbot’s executive order on limitations of release during the pandemic to deny the release of people on low-level offenses.

Ogg’s efforts to prevent decarceration have led to drastic consequences. The state’s system is now at a crisis point as a backlog of people crammed in local Texas jails builds up — both those held pretrial and those waiting to transfer to prison are trapped together despite the pandemic’s threat.

5. Phoenix, Arizona

Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth most populous county in the nation and home to Phoenix, has successfully cut down the number of people going to jail while awaiting trial to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Many of these reduced filings have been credited to the Maricopa County sheriff and the Phoenix police chief, who have developed policies to issue summons and citations for many offenses on the front end of the system. While Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel agreed to pause the filings of some cases, she made clear that these cases would not be dismissed at any point, leading advocates to fear a flood of backlogged cases could inundate the system in the near future. Further, vowing to prosecute low-level cases related directly to the pandemic’s impact on the economy, such as theft or trespassing, does more harm than good for the community.

Adel certainly understood some need to alleviate the number of people behind bars during the pandemic. She directed her office to consider this broader public health needs when making charging decisions and to respond appropriately to defense attorneys’ requests for release. But advocates, including the ACLU of Arizona, asked her early on to implement a variety of more specific proposals, which Adel declined to even meet to discuss. Instead, she authored an op-ed vilifying advocates’ intentions and arguing that people in prison should not be released — a sign that she does not grasp how this virus can turn jail stints into death sentences.

Published July 29, 2020 at 03:55PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2P86Ljq