We are fortunate to have strong individuals and organizations working towards change in New Orleans.  The city is “ground zero” for incarceration, and a true tragedy considering the rich history and difficult geographic location at the mouth of the Mississippi.   What we have created is a national model, drawing from the expertise on the ground and in the legal community, to help our people step up and out of the carnage created by two generations of the “War on Drugs.”

The FICPM looks forward to building partnerships with people working on this and other issues across the nation.

Sincerely,

Dorsey Nunn

Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE:

Communities, Evictions, & Criminal Convictions

Executive Summary

This report is broken into five primary pieces, along with an Introduction and conclusion.

Section I: Introduction provides a starting point on the topic of public housing and criminal conviction policies, rooting this issue in one particular city.  New Orleans tangles with the most intense incarceration in America, and thus the world.  Seemingly innocent programs related to criminal convictions, can take on a primary role in a city such as New Orleans, where one in seven Black men is either in prison, on parole or probation.

To fully grasp the community impact of affordable housing barriers in this sphere, one must account for arrest, incarceration, and poverty rates.  Particular to civil rights law, one should factor in the proportionality between recognized ethnic and language groups.  It is no mystery that in New Orleans, policies that affect people impacted by the criminal justice system (both individuals and families) are disproportionately affecting people of Color- especially African-Americans.  The contrasting affect is most glaring when comparing the drug enforcement policies of densely populated, overwhelmingly White, college students.  The excuse of “experimentation” has been reserved for a certain segment of young drug users.

Public housing exclusion standards apply to entire families, thus the impact is far broader than the tens of thousands who are formerly convicted, whether incarcerated or not.  Statistics typically fail to account for those who are no longer serving a punishment, yet they too have a criminal history that impacts their ability to obtain housing or employment.  Hurricane Katrina exasperated the dilemma of a public housing shortage, and rebuilding efforts have intentionally been below previous capacity.  There are now over 27,000 households on the waiting list for affordable housing, putting pressure on other services to deal with homelessness.

In Section II, this report provides a brief overview on housing and policing policies within the context of The War on Drugs.  The primary method of encouraging “drug free” behavior has been punishment, while the primary mode of enforcement has been to focus on densely populated low-income communities of Color.  The exclusions and evictions from public housing has been accelerated along with the escalation of the War on Drugs.  Accordingly, it may make sense for a recession of the punitive policies to span all fronts as widespread de-escalation is afoot in response to the growing sentiment that the War on Drugs has been a failure.

The goal of Forced Sobriety has justified highly-policed communities and a massive construction boom (and employment growth) associated with prison expansion.  The Department of Justice estimates that nearly 7% of all people born after 2001 will serve time in state or federal prison; this is on top of the 65 million people who currently have been convicted of a crime.  If current rates continue, about 1 in 17 White men, 1 in 6 Hispanic men, and 1 in 3 African American men are expected to serve prison time in their lifetime.  It is difficult to imagine anyone in the public sphere being satisfied with these statistics.

The history of public housing, and HUD, includes an acknowledged discrimination over time.  The 1.1 million remaining public housing units, and 2.2 million households assisted by vouchers, must be implemented in a manner consistent with HUD’s mission to support community development.  HUD has long been a partner with local policing efforts.  This partnership deserves scrutiny in the same manner as the police, as overly aggressive tactics have become (in some opinions) more destructive than the harms they purport to reduce.

Section III looks at how government actors are evolving on criminal justice, and new policies are competing with the “Tough on Crime” reactionary rhetoric.  The National Reentry Council is an interagency approach to confront the effects of mass incarceration.  The most active agency among them, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has been dealing with employment issues for decades, and the agency’s 2012 policy change regarding the use of criminal records in hiring is a major breakthrough.

The EEOC provided one of the most significant advances in recent Civil Rights law, and they make specific findings regarding national data.  Specifically, the EEOC finds that the criminal justice system disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people in America.  This is significant when assessing a neutral policy under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and any blanket policy using criminal history alone to exclude people will run afoul of Title VII.  The EEOC provides a framework to guide policies in both the public and private sector.  Courts have held that the various Civil Rights statutes are intended to work as a unified framework, thus developments in employment law can be persuasive regarding similar issues in housing law.

Section IV lays out the complex web of laws that serve as Congressional guidance to local public housing authorities (PHA), regarding the exclusions and evictions from subsidized programs.  Ultimately, HUD allows broad discretion to the local PHA.  By comparing policies to the HUD requirements, and comparing them to each other, it is clear that overly restrictive, and extremely vague, policies are guiding decisions that have a far-reaching affect on community housing.  When HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan put out a clear statement, that only two types of crimes are barred from HUD, few local agencies took any action.

Only people convicted of sex offenses, and on a Registry for life, along with those who manufactured methamphetamines on federal property, are barred from public housing.  Congress makes particular exclusions optional beyond that, generally related to drug use.  If someone was previously evicted for a drug related crime, they are faced with a three-year ban unless the offending family member is in prison, dead, or completed a drug rehabilitation program.  However, community members around the country have been dealing with policies that don’t provide for those nuances.

A model admission and eviction policy is included.  This policy is currently being used as a starting point for changes in New Orleans, and has gotten past a public hearing stage.  It addresses the need for the PHA to be part of a system where mentally ill and addicted people are directed towards help rather than prisons and homelessness.  The phrase “Reasonable Time” is reasonably defined, eliminating the extreme lengths of time people are facing around the country before eligibility for affordable housing.  The Housing Authority of New Orleans is currently working to develop and finalize a policy in accordance with these principals.

Section V is a detailed assessment of housing discrimination under federal law.  It also includes a proposed change (as of this writing) of HUD’s policy, by finally providing a federal code regarding disparate impact in housing.  Disparate impact is when a neutral policy becomes discriminatory- such as using drug convictions to exclude people from public housing.  Whereas studies indicate drug use is similar across all identified races, the chosen policing patterns result in an overwhelming percentage of drug convictions concentrated in Black and Latino communities.  All additional penalties attached, based on those convictions, will disproportionately impact Black and Latino people.  Thus, “Disparate Impact.”

Courts have long transferred disparate impact theory between employment and housing, but at times differed on the proper standards and process.  It is important for advocates to gain a full understanding of disparate impact theory.  This is likely to serve as a legal framework for pushing back against a myriad of criminal justice policies that have resulted in the systemic loss of economic and political power among Black and Latino communities.

The EEOC has found four key factors so that employers may design an acceptable “targeted screen,” rather than a blanket policy subject to civil rights lawsuits.  These factors are (1) Nature of the crime; (2) Time elapsed; (3) Nature of the job; and (4) Individual assessment.  Housing providers, particularly where there is a documented shortage of affordable housing (i.e. New Orleans), should develop a similar screen suitable to residential life.

Section VI focuses on the key elements to make a legal case for dispirate impact in the courts.  Those who are not interested in litigating a claim will nonetheless want to appropriate some of the standards and justifications that the courts have developed as consistent with the constitution.  One complication in presenting “impact” data is that many people with criminal records (and their families) do not apply for public housing.  Most people have “heard” you can’t get in with a felony, to some degree of accuracy or another.  Even if they were fully knowledgeable about the waiting periods, it is impossible to know how many are foreclosed because they would need to not know the policy, apply anyway, and be denied.   Thus, data of this sort may require a study of the potential (rather than actual) applicants who are deemed ineligible solely due to criminal convictions.  If Black residents have a rate below 80% of the White residents’ rate, it is likely to be deemed sufficiently “disparate.”

Under disparate impact litigation, housing providers would need to present the court with their substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interests being served by the exclusion policies.  Furthermore, they will be tasked to show that the exclusions actually serve the goal: Resident safety.  This cannot merely be speculation.  Finally, reformers can still prove victorious by showing that the interests (i.e. resident safety) can be achieved in a less discriminatory manner.  PHA’s who understand this civil rights litigation framework are more likely to recognize that a court may ultimately order them to a negotiating position exactly like the one being offered at the outset.  Delaying the adoption of a new policy by requiring the court order is the least cost-efficient way forward.

This report recognizes that there is a movement to repeal Civil Rights protections for people of Color in America.  Although Justice Antonin Scalia famously referred to the protection of voting rights as “just another racial entitlement,” the sentiments of state and federal policymakers suggest that Civil Rights are not going to be eroded.  Racial disproportion is one manner of addressing the problems of discrimination, and is the primary path outlined in this report.  As criminal records impact a larger swath of America, however, new legal arguments will emerge regarding the rationale to continue, or repeal, this framework that supports two separate citizenships.

The Appendix provides the complete proposed policy for the Housing Authority of New Orleans, and a nationwide sample snapshot of six other cities.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE:

Communities, Evictions, & Criminal Convictions

Voting Is A Right, Not A Privilege by DORSEY NUNN

Prison Policy Initiative graphic shows how the criminal justice system is used to reinforce political power.

‘Get out the vote’ efforts go behind bars into LA’s jails

By Rina Palta | From 89.3 KPCC

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

The iconic Twin Towers Correctional Facility stands just northeast of L.A.’s skyline.

In the last few weeks before the Presidential election, “get out the vote” drives are in full gear nationwide. In L.A. County, there’s even an effort to go behind bars to register jail inmates to vote.

On a recent Wednesday, Lt. Edward Ramirez joined a group of volunteers and L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies heading into Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles to register inmates in a pod on the second floor of the eastern tower. 

Twin Towers is across the street from another famous L.A. lockup: the Men’s Central Jail. The skyscrapers sit just northeast of LA’s classic skyline and have the look of a late century office complex. But their thin slats of window distinguish the buildings as what they are— home to L.A.’s maximum security inmates and those inmates needing psychiatric care.

Ramirez points out that Twin Towers have a podular, panoptic design that make the facility a geometric puzzle for those who don’t work there every day.

Three sets of pods feed into a common day room, which sits in front of the observation booth’s windows.  

“You have officers in the booth who are able to see all the way around,” Ramirez says. But as much as Twins Towers is a fortress, he says, it’s a porous one.

“The bottom line is the majority of our inmates and the majority of prisoners in the state of California will be getting out at some time,” Ramirez says. 

People pass in and out of L.A.’s county jails every day. The average stay is about two years. Before the state prison system began sending non-violent prison inmates back to Caliornia’s 58 counties under realignment, the average stay was 30 to 40 days.

Everybody locked up in the Twin Towers jail is a part of Los Angeles, Ramirez says. And the more they realize that fact, the better.

“They need to be involved in the social activities that most people who aren’t incarcerated are involved with,” he says. “And that includes casting a ballot and having your voice heard.”

For the past few years Ramirez and other members of the Community Transition Unit have been going to every jail in L.A. County, registering those eligible to vote. Unlike in many states, a felony conviction in California doesn’t disqualify a person from voting, except while they’re serving their prison time.

Those serving jail time for a misdemeanor or who are on trial or awaiting trial can cast a ballot. 

This year for the first time, the Sheriff’s Department recruited volunteers to help register inmate voters and get them ballots.

Volunteer Fanya Baruti helped inmates who trickled in from the glassed-in cell blocks to fill out their paperwork.

“I’m one of those guys who didn’t vote until I was 50 years old,” Baruti says. 

He says it’s important for these inmates to vote because there are many issues on the ballot that affect them, from a proposition that would change three strikes, to school funding, to who’ll be the next district attorney.

“People have shed blood and died for just being able to vote,” Baruti says. “And so when we look at it historically, I think that should be empowerment enough to dispel the apathy that people have.”

The biggest surprise in registering voters behind bars?

“A lot of Republicans,” Baruti says. 

The two-week registration drive garnered 1,269 new voters. Those who’re in jail for the election will fill out their ballots absentee. 

Welcome to the Struggle: 

To formerly-incarcerated and formerly-convicted people and our organizations:

As civil rights organizations participating in the Returning Citizen Voter Movement in Philadelphia, we call on our brothers and sisters across the United States to join us in the struggle for voting rights in Pennsylvania.  Today, Pennsylvania is on the frontline of Republican efforts to steal the vote from poor people, people of color, the elderly, and new citizens.  The requirement to present photo ID in order to vote denies this fundamental right to thousands of people without acceptable forms of identification, many of us people of color who have past convictions.  We are asking formerly-incarcerated and formerly-convicted people everywhere to JOIN US in assisting people in Pennsylvania to access their right to vote.

Voting rights for people with conviction histories vary widely state to state.  In Pennsylvania, we have the right to register to vote when we’re released from prison or jail, but past convictions or incarceration will result in lifelong disenfranchisement in many other states.  We are passionate about the right to vote because we are fighting for full restoration of our rights everywhere. We can never guarantee our civil or human rights without the right to vote, including the right to vote in prison or jail.  If we don’t participate, our voice will be silenced.

People of color were enslaved and excluded from voting until the Fifteenth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, prohibiting denial of the vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.  Women of all races were denied the vote until 1920. Poll taxes, literacy tests, physical violence were the precursors of today’s photo ID laws – all used to stop poor people and people of color from voting. We have never been welcomed into the electoral process – we have always fought and died for the right to vote and to hold office.

Now the voting rights of students, elderly people, new immigrants, and poor people generally are also under attack.  In Pennsylvania, formerly-incarcerated and formerly-convicted people are joining other civil rights organizations in a unified effort to guarantee voting rights for all.  The Returning Citizen Voter Movement will host a National Rally to welcome people with conviction or incarceration histories to the struggle for voting rights in Pennsylvania.

Join Us!!

Related articles

• Voter ID’s evil twin (salon.com)
• Voter ID Laws Could Disenfranchise 1 Million Young Minority Voters (huffingtonpost.com)

Welcome to the Struggle:

To formerly-incarcerated and formerly-convicted people, their families, communities and all social justice organizations:

As  part of a growing crescendo of civil  and human rights organizations monitoring and participating in the historic voter mobilization effort throughout Pennsylvania, we call on our brothers and sisters across the United States to join us in the struggle for voting rights in the ‘keystone state’.

Today, Pennsylvania is on the frontline of Republican efforts to steal the vote from poor people, people of color, the elderly and new citizens.  The requirement to present photo ID in order to vote denies this fundamental right to thousands of people without acceptable forms of identification, many of us people of color who have past convictions.  We are asking formerly-incarcerated and formerly-convicted people everywhere to JOIN US in assisting people in Pennsylvania to access their right to vote.

Voting rights for people with conviction histories vary widely state to state.  In Pennsylvania, we have the right to register to vote when we’re released from prison or jail, but past convictions or incarceration will result in lifelong disenfranchisement in many other states.  We are passionate about the right to vote because we are fighting for full restoration of our rights everywhere. We can never guarantee our civil or human rights without the right to vote, including the right to vote in prison or jail.  If we don’t participate, our voice will be silenced.

People of color were enslaved and excluded from voting until the Fifteenth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, prohibiting denial of the vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.  Women of all races were denied the vote until 1920. Poll taxes, literacy tests, physical violence were the precursors of today’s photo ID laws – all used to stop poor people and people of color from voting. We have never been welcomed into the electoral process – we have always fought and died for the right to vote and to hold office.

Now the voting rights of students, elderly people, new immigrants, and poor people generally are also under attack.  In Pennsylvania, formerly-incarcerated and formerly-convicted people are joining other civil rights organizations in a unified effort to guarantee voting rights for all.

‘Breaking the Chains’: The F.I.C.P. Voting Rights Initiative, a project of the National Council for Urban Peace and Justice, will host a series of events in the Pittsburgh region to welcome people with conviction or incarceration histories to the struggle for voting rights in Pennsylvania.

The National Council for Urban Peace and Justice/NCUPJ (www.ncupj.net) is an organizational member of the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples Movement/FICPM http://ficpmovement.wordpress.com

Contact Khalid Raheem @ (412) 606-0059 or kraheem322@yahoo.com for additional information

JOIN US!!!

June 17^th 2012 Silent March against Racial Profiling

Letter in Solidarity

There comes a time when the American people must recognize that we lead the world in prison cells.  The American people must also recognize that these cells do not fill themselves, as mass incarceration is the result of policy decisions.  The American people must finally recognize that all of us are not created equal in the dark shadows of the prisons, the courthouses, the legislatures, or the New York City Police Department.  The Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement stands together with those who believe the “Stop and Frisk” policy belongs in fascist countries with brutal rulers, not in the United States of America.

On Ellis Island there is a plaque reading “Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  A torch is held aloft to the Atlantic Ocean, while Lady Liberty’s back is turned away from us.  What has been going on behind her back has been police tactics that have no connection to crime rates.  We can look at the data, compare the rates among different neighborhoods, compare New York City to other large cities, and we can see the one clearest fact:  People of Color are the ones being stopped.  Young Black and Latino men living in the communities targeted for high rates of crime are being hassled by the police in this city; they are being  targeted and dehumanized by tactics that demean and oppress them as young people, they are being put up against the wall and frisked, only to find nothing, and then released to go about their business.  These hassles, these frisks and uses of force do not make our communities safer, and do not make our children safer.

Three officers question a young New Yorker for 15 minutes…

The NYPD are stopping more Black and Latino people than actually live in the city, harassing nearly 700,000 people last year alone.  They say that this is because crime victims are predominantly Black and Latino, yet in most crimes the race of the perpetrator is not even reported.  They say crime is going down, but they don’t say crime is going down at a similar pace in all major cities.  When we look at the statistics, we see that the ten whitest areas, like the Upper East Side and Bensonhurst have crime dropping at double the rate as the ten most Black and Latino, such as BedStuy, Central Harlem and Hunts Point.  Coincidentally, people in these ten precincts, all of which are over 90% Black and Latino, are stopped by the police four times more than those in the ten whitest precincts.  The NYPD’s own statistics show that the more you Stop and Frisk, the less crime goes down.  The people ask Bloomberg for books, teachers, and classrooms, yet to the Black and Brown people of this city: he sends guns, police, and jails.

while three more stand by.

Those who have heard the phrase “Crash the System” can recognize when the criminal justice system is creating policies to crash itself.  Consider all the 90% of Stop and Frisks last year that resulted in no arrest nor ticket; stops where people were just told to then “move along.”  Stops where people were sometimes frisked, sometimes thrown to the ground, and then expected to “go about their business….”  There were twice as many of these harassment stops than there were arraignments in all of New York City.  Harassment Stops were double the actual arraignments.  Consider also that a quarter of all summons handed out by the NYPD are thrown out as being invalid.  If all of these wronged people were to take their claims to the courts, where the System expects people to handle their wrongs, the System would be hit with a tidal wave the same way that the NYPD is hitting certain communities in New York.

Fathers need to pass on an example, to tell stories about life that inspire their children to strive and succeed.  Black and Latino fathers in New York City however, have to tell their children to stay away from the police, to fear them, lest they be a statistic of someone being manhandled for just walking down the street in a “High Crime Area” (otherwise known as a place where People of Color are trying to build their communities) and making “furtive movements” like texting on their cell phone.

When the police overwhelmingly target Black and Latino men as suspects, they will be the ones who fill the court houses.  The courts create prisoners, and the prisons (when we are fortunate) return men to us with criminal records.  The discrimination against people with criminal records has replaced racism in education, housing, and employment.  And the next time the police come in contact with that father, son, sister, or mother with a criminal record: the vise is already so tight there is hardly room for any innocent person to escape.

From throughout the country, the Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement calls on police departments to rejoin their communities rather than occupying them.

For More Information:  www.silentmarchnyc.org

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