Adovcacy

NAACP

VENTURA COUNTY CHAPTER

ADVOCACY

HATE CRIMES PREVENTION ACT

During the 106th Congress, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed the U.S. Senate on June 20, 2000 with strong bi-partisan support by a margin of

57 to 42. On September 13, 2000, the House voted in strong, bi-partisan support of the Senate-passed measure, 232-192. Thus the members of both

Houses of Congress voted in support of signing the Hate Crimes prevention Act into law in the 106th Congress!

Unfortunately, the leadership of the House and the Senate, both of which are opposed to strengthening Hate Crimes Prevention legislation, saw to it

that the legislation never got to President Clinton’s desk for his signature. Thus, despite the overwhelming support it received from members of both

bodies, as well as our best efforts, and heavy pressure from the Administration, the legislation died.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would strengthen existing laws in two ways. First, it would make it easier for the federal government to get involved in

investigating; prosecuting and preventing hate crimes across the country. Secondly, the proposed Hate Crimes Prevention Act would expand the

definition of hate crime as one that is perpetrated against a person because of the victim’s gender, disability or sexual orientation. Hate Crimes are

currently defined as ones in which the victim’s race, ethnicity or religion is the motivating factor.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) over the past

several years; Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has been the lead Senate champion. Both Congressman Conyers and Senator Kennedy have

indicated that they intend to reintroduce this legislation in the 107th Congress.

DRIVING WHILE BLACK

We need this important legislation to provide us with the data necessary to support what is currently largely anecdotal evidence regarding the

disproportionate number of racial and ethnic minorities who are pulled over.

Limited studies done in the past indicate that approximately 72% of all routine traffic stops occur with African American drivers despite the fact that

African American drivers despite the fact that African Americans make up only about 17% of the driving population.

This legislation passed the house on March 24, 1988, by a voice vote and with strong bipartisan support and must pass again- it is non-controversial.

It is difficult for our faith in the American judicial system not to be challenged when we cannot even drive down an interstate without being stopped

merely because of the color of our skin.

Several states, with both Democratic and Republican governors, have already signed Legislation similar to the House and Senate “Driving While

Black” bills into law. We need this legislation on a national level, as well, so that we can ascertain the full extent of the problem.

THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC SAFETY

For 100 years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP) has played a pivotal role in shaping a national agenda to ensure the political,

educational, social, and economic equality of African Americans and other people who

have faced historical discrimination in the United States. To support and leverage the

work of our local units, who work tirelessly on behalf of many communities in crisis, the NAACP has developed a "smart and safe" framework in which to implement an advocacy agenda to ensure equal justice and safer communities. Our goal is to ensure public safety as a civil and human right. We believe this can be accomplished when we focus on what matters and what works.

When police officers focus on behavior rather than physical appearances, they catch more people who have broken

the law...

CITIZENS REDISTRICTING COMMISSION

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission is in the final stages of drawing the first set of draft maps establishing

the 2012 district boundaries for the State Assembly, State Senate, Congress and the State Board of Equalization. The

Commission is scheduled to release the first set of maps on Friday, June 10, 2011. Once the first draft is released, the

public will have five days to review the maps; after which the Commission will start to conduct a series on public input

hearing around the state. This will give the public an opportunity to express their opposition or support. Upon the

completion of the input hearings, the Commission will issue a second set of draft maps on July 7, 2011. The public will

once again have a five-day review period and an eight-day period to provide input to the Commission. The final maps

scheduled to be released on July 28, 2011 and certified to the Secretary of State on August 15, 2011.

YOUTH PROMISE ACT

We all remember how important self-perception was when we were young. As we worked to shape our identity and learn from new experiences, our

self-esteem could rise and fall faster than a 13-year old’s voice. Most of us wanted to be thought of as a “good kid” and avoid being categorized as a

“bad kid”. For we all know that once a child is marked as a troublemaker, it is very hard for others to shake that perception of him, or for him to shake

that perception of himself.

That’s why the Youth PROMISE Act is such an important piece of legislation that deserves all our support, while a competing bill, the Gang

Abatement and Prevention Act, needs to be defeated. Both serve presumably the same purpose – lowering crime rates and youth gang involvement –

but the bills’ implementation could not be further apart. The Youth PROMISE Act would fund prevention and intervention programs like mentoring

and job training to curb youth and gang violence. Meanwhile, the Gang Abatement Act would ineffectively focus on punishment and incarceration of

juvenile offenders.

INVESTING IN PRISONS OVER EDUCATION is not Being Smart on Crime. What does it mean to be "tough on crime"? Does "toughness" depend

on how many people we imprison? Or should the indicator be whether our society combats crime at its root? Current policies point directly at the

former option, but we need to be smarter on crime.

The United States leads the world in incarceration with 2.3 million people behind bars; while we are home to five percent of the world's population, we

house 25 percent of its prisoners. That means that one in 31 adults in the United States is currently in prison, jail, or on probation or parole (1). Is this

because we have a larger population than most countries and logically imprison more people? Nope. China's population is four times greater than ours,

yet China imprisons one million less people, even with its draconian criminal laws. Are Americans inherently more violent than citizens in other

countries? The fact that over half our inmates were convicted of non-violent drug offenses suggests that it has more to do with our criminal laws than

our nature. Has the incarceration rate risen proportionally with our country's population growth? Well, between 1970 and 2000 the general population

rose by less than 40 percent, yet our incarceration rate skyrocketed by 500 percent (2). So how did the world's greatest defender of freedom snatch

freedom away from more of its citizens than the harshest of totalitarian states?

American lawmakers have criminalized a vast array of non-violent, victimless behavior involving narcotics. Drug arrests have more than tripled in the

last 25 years, reaching a record high of 1.8 million in 2005 (3). These aren't the violent drug kingpins in Miami Vice or Bad Boys. In 2005, nearly 43

percent of all drug arrests were for marijuana offenses, the mere possession of which accounted for 79 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the

1990's (1). Today, over half of the 2.3 million people behind bars were convicted of non-violent drug offenses. More than half of federal offenders

sentenced in 2002 were in the lowest criminal history category, and nearly 9 out of ten had no weapon involvement (2). Put simply, our elected officials

have become obsessed with imprisoning low-level drug users. It has gotten so bad that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Brown v. Plata that

the California prison system was so overcrowded that it violated the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

So what does this matter for higher education? Our unprecedentedly high inmate population is very expensive to maintain. The United States spends

$70 billion a year on incarceration, $50 billion of which comes from state governments. This matters because $9 out of every $10 in state prison

funding comes out of state general funds, the same accounts that fund higher education. So it should be of no surprise that in the last two decades,

state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of spending on higher education.

The Great Recession has done little to curb this trend. In 2009, despite the worst national economy in 30 years, 33 states spent a larger proportion

of their general funds on prisons than in 2008. In fact, in fiscal year 2008, prisons' share of state general funds grew more than other category of

state spending. At the same time, 2009 saw tuition hikes at public four-year colleges average over 6 percent, some reaching into the double-digits.

Having to pay more for their college education than ever before, student borrowers now owe an average of $25,000 in loan debt. Today, Americans

owe more in student loan debt than credit card debt, and the number is closing in fast on $1 trillion. Meanwhile, state legislators claim we have a

"spending problem" while they cut higher education budgets and infuse prisons with ever more money.

We do not have a spending problem. Elected officials choose to terrify the electorate into supporting laws that lead to mass incarceration. There are

compassionate and effective ways to wage the war on crime; politicians simply chose to ignore them. While we've outlined many of the problems,

below are a few possible solutions to remedy our justice system -- making it "smart on crime" rather than "tough on crime".

More than fifty percent of all prison and jail inmates have mental health or drug problems. Over half of female inmates have been physically or sexually

abused. Half of all inmates in state and federal prisons were abused or dependent on drugs before they were imprisoned. One would expect

policymakers to invest in rehabilitation efforts that address the root causes of why criminals initially turned to crime or drugs. Also, drug rehabilitation

is seven times more effective for dealing with nonviolent drug offenders than prison. Yet today, only one in seven prison inmates are receiving

treatment, down from one in three inmates in 1991.

Despite their proven ability to reduce recidivism, inmate educational and vocational training is severely restrictive and arbitrarily administered. A

recent study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) found that, of 43 states surveyed, 13 states accounted for 86 percent of all inmates

enrolled in post-secondary education programs. In total, just six percent of all U.S. prison inmates were enrolled in a program during the 2009-10

academic year. Of that, less than a quarter obtained an associates or bachelor's degree.

Online courses would expand educational access to a large number of inmates, yet public officials don't like the idea of giving inmates access to the

internet, and no state has yet demonstrated the courage to implement a pilot program. Yet IHEP research analyst Brian Sponsler believes "the

technology exists to provide online educational opportunities in an environment that doesn't sacrifice safety." Denying programs that would better

the lives of countless flies in the face of every value our criminal justice system purports to uphold.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his famous Democracy in America that, "in no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the

United States." How far we've come since 1831. Today, we are the world leader in locking people up -- not because we have the world's largest supply

of violent criminals, but because we have allowed our elected officials to criminalize the most trivial of actions. The ramifications of these eerily

Orwellian laws have been dire for higher education, which has suffered immensely from depleted state coffers. Unless we drastically reform our

spending priorities, and move toward "smart on crime" policies, our City on the Hill will continue to resemble Rikers Island instead of the Library of

Alexandria.

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