Justice for all

This Friday, I’d like to feature the Equal Justice Initiative, an important non-profit headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, and which works to reform the criminal justice system and defend those on death row. The organization’s about page states that EJI “provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.” EJI also litigates “on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied effective representation,” and other members of marginalized and disenfranchised communities in the U.S. EJI uses the tools of litigation, policy reform, and advocacy to transform the justice system into a more fair one.

The organization’s mission and vision is clearly inspiring, but perhaps what sets it apart even further is the incredible passion and unwavering dedication of the organization’s founder, Bryan Stevenson. After reading this compelling and well-written profile - “Bryan Stevenson’s Death Defying Acts” - in the NYU Law School Magazine, I was amazed by his deep commitment to serving some of the most abused and impoverished populations within the U.S. - and that too, in the South, where attitudes towards prisoners and criminal defense work can be even more hostile and demoralizing.

Bryan Stevenson graduated from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 1985, and he could have had any job in the world. If he so desired, he could have become partner at any one of the nation’s top corporate law firms and made millions. Instead, he chose to work as a death penalty lawyer for a southern human rights organization, deciding upon a career with long hours and low pay. And maybe even few truly rewarding moments. According to the article,

Stevenson stresses how important near-poverty became to him. “Nobody got paid any money, or at least very little,” he says, “and that struck me as the ultimate measure of something genuine.” In contrast to the fancy corporate law firms that charmed so many of his Harvard classmates, he says, “it became clear to me that these death-penalty folks were real. They were serious.”

Later on, when the board of the Capital Representation Center in Montgomery offered him a salary of $50,000 - he refused it. Instead, he only accepted a salary of $18,000. His commitment was so deep that capital representation was not simply a job for him - it was a calling. What a refreshing viewpoint this is, particularly looking at the materialistic and consumer-driven state of our society and education today.

Since founding the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has become a professor at NYU Law and received numerous awards and honorary degrees celebrating his accomplishments. Still, he doesn’t rest, because he knows that there is much work yet to be done in reforming our racially-biased and unjust criminal “justice” system. I’ll leave you with this quote by Stevenson, which I think epitomizes the underlying belief that drives the work of every public defender and death penalty lawyer:

Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done…if you tell a lie, you’re not just a liar. And if you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you’re not just a thief. Even if you kill somebody, you’re not just a killer. And so I think that there’s an obligation to defend the basic human dignity of every human being.

A recent New York Times article describes the world of comfort - and perhaps even luxury - that war criminals are provided with at The Hague, Netherlands.

I don’t have a gym, a personal trainer, or a spiritual room in my tiny bedroom. On my (soon to be) non-profit salary, I certainly won’t be able to afford a visit to the Netherlands anytime in the near future. However, former warlords and human rights violators are getting all these amenities and more. Here’s a picture from the article of one of the “detention” cells in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It looks to be about the same size as the room I currently live in, and it’s much better furnished.

The dorm and apartment-style living quarters provided to war criminals - such as Thomas Lubanga and Charles Taylor - who are being tried at the ICTY, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are downright luxurious, particularly compared to the poor living conditions suffered by the general population in the countries they come from (Sierra Leone and the DRC, for instance).

Perhaps worse, these individuals, who often own numerous properties and large sums of money hidden away in offshore accounts, are receiving free legal aid from the ICC which costs a minimum of €35,000 per month. And the most unsettling part of the story is that family members from Sierra Leone and the DRC receive travel subsidies to visit their detained relatives in the Hague. While I wholeheartedly believe that even warlords and human rights abusers should have the right to a fair trial and continue to enjoy their basic human rights, I too feel that these perks go too far.

Look at the living conditions in Sierra Leone, literally one of the poorest countries on the planet. Look at the quality of justice in many African countries, where individuals who are imprisoned for crimes like robbery, homosexuality, or even witchcraft are essentially sentenced to death simply because the conditions in prisons are so wretched. Where prisoners live in overcrowded rooms and own only one pair of clothing. Where sanitation is poor and diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are prevalent. Where they receive perhaps one meal a day, a corn mush which completely lacks in any nutritional value. Where individuals can be held on remand - without even going to trial and being convicted - in similarly horrible conditions for years with no hope of ever seeing a lawyer.

I’m not saying that warlords don’t deserve fair trials, but that they shouldn’t be living in the lap of luxury when millions of people in the very countries they have terrorized are living in far more devastating poverty and suffering from horrible prison conditions.

It’s a shame that perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity can play foosball, watch television, browse the internet whenever they prefer, and even enjoy conjugal visits with their wives — but that an individual who steals a piece of bread in the DRC might just die alone in prison of tuberculosis.

Where is the justice in this?

In a Legal Studies class I’m currently taking, I recently learned about an important problem relating to juvenile justice: the school-to-prison pipeline. While I was lucky enough to be living in an excellent school district, many other children in the U.S. simply don’t have that luxury. Today, the crisis of educational inequity in the U.S. has resulted in a school-to-prison pipeline that criminalizes, rather than educates, our kids. The school-to-prison pipeline consists of a set of harsh educational and school safety policies that push kids out of school and into the juvenile justice system.

Students are increasingly suspended and sanctioned for disciplinary reasons, and schools are involving the police in even relatively minor incidents that lead to juvenile detention, arrests, and even criminal charges. School rules are often strictly enforced through security measures like metal detectors, pat-downs, and referrals to the juvenile justice system. Students who commit minor infractions like smoking or skipping class are sometimes suspended, expelled, or even arrested. Students have even been expelled for bringing scissors to art class, giving Midol to classmates, or bringing in household items (including a knife) to be donated to Goodwill. Even children in elementary school have been arrested for acting out or displaying anger in class. One-size-fits-all solutions like these zero-tolerance policies completely ignore the individual circumstances of each case and criminalize students who don’t deserve it.

While many of these students could be easily disciplined through detention, warnings, or a visit to the principal’s office, they are unnecessarily ending up in the justice system. The pipeline also operates indirectly; some schools push low-performing students into GED programs and the juvenile justice system in order to artificially improve their graduation and testing numbers. Moreover, the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately targets youth of color and those with disabilities. Black students with learning disabilities are four times more likely to be sent to correctional facilities than white students with learning disabilities. I find this statistic absolutely horrifying.

Once suspended or expelled, youth are more likely to get lower grades, repeat a grade, or drop out of high school. This increases their chance of joining gangs, committing crimes, or becoming incarcerated down the road. Disciplinary and criminal records make it very difficult for students to apply to colleges, scholarships, and jobs. In some cases, criminal records prevent students and their families from accessing public housing. Ultimately, harsh penalties for kids don’t deter crime; instead, they drive kids into becoming career criminals.

What are the solutions? We must invest in education rather than the correctional system. Schools are spending money on security measures when they should be paying for books, libraries, counselors, and well-trained teachers instead. We must also improve non-punitive options such as counseling, mentoring, mediation, and increased teacher and parental support for students. While the recent Supreme Court ruling that outlawed life without parole for minors convicted of non-murder crimes moves in the right direction, we need more than a change in the laws. We must look for rehabilitative solutions that address the roots of the problem – such as socioeconomic disparities and educational inequities. By providing a supportive school atmosphere for at-risk students, it is possible to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and prevent kids from entering the juvenile justice system in the first place.

I recently finished reading an amazing book, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. The book itself has too many statistics and can be quite dry at times, but the strong message that resounds through its pages is truly powerful. It is a damning account of the utter failures of the U.S.’s criminal justice system to properly and fairly punish and prevent crime. The book essentially argues that the criminal justice system does not simply punish the dangerous, but ONLY the dangerous and poor. By punishing the poor disproportionately, the criminal justice system perpetuates poverty and fails to solve the underlying social structures that led to this class divide in the first place. Here’s an excellent quote:

“…the criminal justice system focuses moral condemnation on individuals and deflects it away from the social order that may have either violated the individual’s rights or dignity or literally pushed him or her to the brink of the crime. This not only serves to carry the message that our social institutions are not in need of fundamental questioning, it further suggests that the justice of our institutions is obvious, not to be doubted….Not only does the criminal justice system acquit the social order of any charge of injustice; it specifically cloaks the society’s own crime-producing tendencies….by blaming the individual for a crime, the society is acquitted of the charge of complicity in that crime.”

Even worse, by punishing primarily the dangerous and poor, we ignore the crimes of the rich. White collar criminals who steal millions of dollars are routinely let go after very short prison terms of a few months or a few years at most, while the poor are put away for years at a time for nonviolent drug offenses and property crimes. Look at this data:

• The average prison term for savings and loan offenders 1988-1992 was 36 months; the average sentence for burglary is 56 months, and 38 months for motor vehicle theft
• The average loss in an savings and loan case is $500,000. The average loss per property offense (in 1995) was $1,251!
• In 2000, the total cost of white collar crime was $404 BILLION. The total amount stolen in all property crimes reported in 2000? $16 billion. Yet, corporate executives rarely end up in jail.

By failing to punish all criminals equally, we are failing to protect OURSELVES from the crimes of the rich. Our system does not work for either the poor or for the rich. This is reason enough to want to change it.

Finally, by punishing the poor, we are perpetuating the myth of “dangerousness” of the poor. By convicting the poor at a greater rate, we are not only plunging them into further poverty, but we are also making pushing forth prejudices and stereotypes. We stereotype the typical criminal as black and poor, and so we begin thinking of those who fit this description as criminal. We start suspecting that the poor are also dangerous. By doing so, we start thinking of the poor, the destitute, the homeless as not worth our time, and as something less than human. This type of prejudice and racism is unacceptable in the U.S., or indeed, any society.

The criminal justice system has the effect of dehumanizing the poor and separating them from society, as if they were different from the rest of us. They are not different - we, the rich and privileged, commit many crimes, but are simply protected by the unjust system we live in. The poor are the ones who are disproportionately caught up in the system because they lack the protection we have: competent legal counsel, and the sympathy of the general public. But they are not more dangerous, they are not more culpable. We fail to recognize their common humanity when we take on the views that the criminal justice system propounds. After all:

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

And so, due to our personal assumptions of the “dangerousness” of the poor, we ourselves are deeply complicit in the failure of the criminal justice system to act fairly. By ignoring the problem, we partake in it. The first step is for us to confront our own inner prejudices; only then will change become a possibility.

From Jurist:

Indonesia’s justice minister announced Tuesday the opening of a prison wing intended to confine individuals convicted of corruption….The wing was added to alleviate overcrowding in the Indonesian prison system and was also in response to criticism that wealthy prisoners are permitted to live in luxury. Anti-corruption reform has been one of the primary concerns of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and the opening of the prison wing highlights corruption concerns in the civilian and military branches of the government.

I think this is a great example of how the law can be used to fight corruption and white-collar crime. In a book I’ve been reading, called “The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Prison,” the author, Jeffrey Reiman, argues fervently that poor people are disproportionately locked up for crimes like nonviolent drug offenses, while the rich who engage in corruption and white collar crime - which often costs individuals, companies, and governments millions if not billions of dollars - often get off with far less severe sentences because they have access to high-quality counsel. Even if you compare a violent crime against one individual to a corporate crime such as corruption or embezzlement, the corporate crime often causes far more widespread economic damage.

White-collar criminals should be subject to the same laws and penalties because corruption is a serious crime that adversely affects individuals and economies. Yet, we as a society tend to consider violent crime by poor people to be far more threatening than economic crimes. White-collar crimes committed by the wealthy are often looked upon as far less severe. These conceptions have to change if the criminal justice system is to be more fair and equitable around the world.

That’s why I think Indonesia’s focus on treating white-collar and wealthy offenders the same as poorer individuals who commit crimes is commendable. Disparities in sentencing due to socioeconomic status are not only unjust and unfair, but also fail to deter crimes in an effective manner; such disparities need to be seriously addressed, and reforms like this are a good step towards justice sector reform.