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Criminal Justice System
Howie Hawkins on Criminal Justice |
Our criminal justice system is inhumane, ineffective and prohibitively expensive. The breaking of the bonds of community and the economic and social root causes of crime must be addressed. Retribution has replaced rehabilitation. Prison terms are becoming increasingly longer, and we are building more prisons. The majority of prisoners are serving terms for minor property and drug crimes or violations of their conditions of parole or probation. Poor and undereducated minorities are over-represented in the prison population.
We need to increase investment in crime prevention while doing a lot more to help the transition of the hundreds of individuals who are annually released back into our communities by the criminal justice system. The level of crime often reflects the basic social and economic health of a community and is an important element in determining the quality of life in a city. The reality is that the criminal justice system overwhelmingly targets black males. Compared to so-called ‘street crime,” white collar crime kills far more people and steals far more money but yet is generally ignored by the criminal justice system. And while the war on drugs has overwhelmingly imprisoned people of color, the vast majority of both drug sellers and users are white.
The effects of imprisonment are largely negative. Prisoners are increasingly isolated from the communities they came from and are often denied contact with the outside world or the media. Access to educational and legal materials is disappearing. Boredom and hopelessness prevail. The United States has the highest recidivism rate of any industrialized country. Rape is a serious problem in prison. The increasingly widespread privatization of prisons renders some prisoners virtual corporate slaves.
Law enforcement is placing too much emphasis on drug-related and petty street crimes, and not enough on prosecution of corporate, white collar, and environmental crimes. Defrauding someone of their life savings is the same as robbery. Spraying pesticides while workers are in the fields, negligently maintaining dangerous workplaces that result in death or maiming or dumping toxic substances, should be treated the same as other crimes.
At the same time, we must develop a firm approach to law enforcement that directly addresses violent crime, including trafficking in hard drugs. Violence that creates a climate of further violence must be stopped.
Police brutality has reached epidemic levels in the United States and we call for effective monitoring of police agencies to eliminate police brutality.
Howie Hawkins and the Green Party support a citizen's right of access to justice. Our system of justice must be made convenient to rich and poor alike, guarding it against big business' attempts to regulate and, in effect, control our civil justice/civil jury system.
Prosecute Corporate Criminals
Corporate criminals kill and injure far more people and steal much more money, than “street” crimes. Corporate executives are seldom held criminally accountable for deliberately making decisions that kill many people – such as not spending a few dollars to fix the gas tanks in Pinto cars.
Little has been done after the Enron, Arthur Anderson, Cendant and Aldephia scandals. Millions of Americans –– workers, investors and pension recipients –– have lost six trillion dollars so far. Many have watched their retirement funds and children’s college education disappear as corporate executives, stockbrokers and auditors conspired to defraud investors. At a minimum, those who profited from such fraud should be required to return their ill-gotten gains and serve time in jail.
Howie Hawkins supports comprehensive corporate reform including greater timely disclosures; a variety of serious criminal and civil sanctions; debarment from bidding for government procurement of goods and services; and flat out prohibitions of conflicts of interests, corporate loans to insiders and the growing vogue of renouncing U.S. corporate citizenship as a device for avoiding U.S. taxes while retaining all the benefits.
Hawkins supports changing state law so instead of having the sole legal purpose of a business to be to make a profit for its owners, there would be a restriction that such profits can not be “at the expense of the environment, human rights, public safety, the communities in which the corporation operates or the dignity of its employees." We should use existing law to revoke the corporate charters (i.e., permits to do business) for companies that routinely violate the law (i.e., three strikes and you are out).
Increase Corporate Crime Prosecution Budgets: The Department of Justice’s corporate crime division and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been chronically underfunded and therefore do not have sufficient resources to combat the corporate crime wave in the United States. This results in inadequate investigation, settlement of cases for weak fines and ignoring many corporate crime violators completely. There needs to be a strong corporate law and order will in the White House.
Track the Extent and Cost of Corporate Crime: The Department of Justice should establish an online corporate crime database. Also, just as the FBI issues an annual street crime report, "Crime in the United States," it should also publish an annual report on corporate and white collar crime with recommendations.
End the Prison Industrial Complex
Over 2 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. This represents the highest per capita incarceration rate in the history of the world.
Prisons are big business. Like the military/industrial complex, the prison industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control.
Private prisons should be illegal. Corrections Corporation of America ranks among the top five performing companies on the New York Stock Exchange during the late 1990's and operates the sixth largest prison system in the country. These prisons treat people as their product, and provide far worse service than government-run prisons. Profits are derived from understaffing, which severely reduces the quality of care of inmates.
Not so long ago, communism was "the enemy" and communists were demonized as a way of justifying gargantuan military expenditures. Now, fear of crime and the demonization of criminals serve a similar ideological purpose: to justify the use of tax dollars for the repression and incarceration of a growing percentage of our population. The omnipresent media blitz about serial killers, missing children and "random violence" feeds our fear. In reality, however, most of the "criminals" we lock up are poor people who commit nonviolent crimes out of economic need. Violence occurs in less than 14% of all reported crime and injuries occur in just 3%.
As with the building and maintenance of weapons and armies, the building and maintenance of prisons are big business. Investment houses, construction companies, architects, and support services such as food, medical, transportation and furniture, all stand to profit by prison expansion. A burgeoning "specialty item" industry sells fencing, handcuffs, drug detectors, protective vests, and other security devices to prisons.
As the Cold War winds down and the Crime War heats up, defense industry giants like Westinghouse are re-tooling and lobbying Washington for their share of the domestic law enforcement market. "Night Enforcer" goggles used in the Gulf War, electronic "Hot Wire" fencing ("so hot NATO chose it for high-risk installations"), and other equipment once used by the military, are now being marketed to the criminal justice system.
Prisons are also a leading rural growth industry. With traditional agriculture being pushed aside by agribusiness, many rural American communities are facing hard times. Economically depressed areas are falling over each other to secure a prison facility of their own. Prisons are seen as a source of jobs‹in construction, local vendors and prison staff‹as well as a source of tax revenues. An average prison has a staff of several hundred employees and an annual payroll of several million dollars.
Like any industry, the prison economy needs raw materials. In this case the raw materials are prisoners. The prison industrial complex can grow only if more and more people are incarcerated‹even if crime rates drop. "Three Strikes" and mandatory minimums (harsh, fixed sentences without parole) are two examples of the legal superstructure quickly being put in place to guarantee that the prison population will grow and grow and grow.
End the War on Drugs
Hawkins supports an end to the "war on drugs." Drug use should be treated as a public health problem rather than a crime. We should invest in expanding expand drug counseling and treatment.
The War of Drugs has been a failure. It has not reduced drug use. New York has led the way in making the United States the world leader in the number of inmates, with more than 2 million people in jail. Under Pataki, New York now spends more state dollars on prisons than it does on the State University. The Rockefeller Drug Laws have been enforced in a racist manner. Studies by the FBI and the National Institute for Drug Abuse show that whites make up the vast majority of people who use drugs; studies also show that more than half of the drug dealers are white. Yet more than 90% of the people in prisons in NYS for drug offenses are people of color.
Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war does not promote family values. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.
U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America “drug-free.” Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million people are behind bars on drug charges - more than all of western Europe (with a bigger population) incarcerates for all offenses. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.
Howie Hawkins supports the concept known as harm reduction. Harm reduction began in the 1980s as a public health strategy to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS among people who inject drugs. From its clinical successes, most notably with needle exchange, and from its pragmatic and compassionate values, emerged an alternative vision for drug policy as a whole. Harm reduction is grounded in the conviction that people should not be punished for what they put into their bodies, but only for crimes committed against others. It acknowledges that no society will ever be free of drugs. It holds that drug policies should seek to reduce the negative consequences (principally death, disease, crime and suffering) of both drug use and the policies themselves.
Under a harm reduction approach, marijuana will be legal, with regulatory models varying from state to state, as is true with alcohol today. Drug control efforts with respect to heroin, cocaine and other drugs will seek to reduce the negative consequences of both drug use and prohibition through strictly controlled availability as well as quality treatment and other viable alternatives to drug abuse and criminality. Drug education for young people will be honest and well informed by science and scholarship. Government resources currently devoted to punitive approaches will focus instead on education and affirmative alternatives to drug abuse and incarceration
Alternatives to Incarceration
Any attempt to combat crime must begin with restoration of community. Hawkins supports positive approaches that build hope, responsibility and a sense of belonging. Prisons should be the sentence of last resort, reserved for violent criminals. Those convicted of non-violent offenses should be handled by other programs including halfway houses, electronic monitoring, work-furlough, community service and restitution programs. Substance abuse should be addressed as a medical problem requiring treatment, not imprisonment, and a failed drug test should not result in revocation of parole. Incarcerated prisoners of the drug war should be release to the above programs.
Prisons are presently serving some of the population formerly held in the mental health system. Rikers Island is now the largest mental health facility in New York. Ninety-five percent of those who commit suicide in jail or prison have a diagnosed mental disorder. Mentally ill prisoners need separate psychiatric facilities providing psychological and medical care, rehabilitation, and release to appropriate community mental health facilities.
The aging of our prison population will lead to huge needless expenditures in the next decade. Prisoners too old and those too infirm to be a threat to society should be released to less expensive, community-based facilities.
Juvenile offenders must not be housed in needlessly restrictive settings. They must never be housed with adults. Their education must continue while in custody. A single judge and a single caseworker should be assigned to oversee each juvenile's placement and progress in the juvenile justice system.
One important aspect of creating safe communities is to create and support with adequate funding programs that prevent kids from becoming involved in crime. There's a direct relationship between young people being in prison and not having a diploma or a job.
Across the country researchers are reporting great success with programs that use the arts to reduce youth truancy, delinquent behavior, violence, and involvement in gangs. Youth are drawn to and retained in these programs by the opportunity for creative and artistic expression and the community recognition of their work. They learn new skills, including how to use the arts to communicate difficult thoughts and emotions. The most innovative programs also provide an opportunity for the youth involved to become entrepreneurs who have the experience of earning money through creative endeavors. These programs demonstrate clearly what can be accomplished in terms of keeping kids out of trouble by providing them with opportunities to express their feeling and concerns in positive ways.
Our parole system is a failure. Reduction of recidivism should be a goal of parole. Parole should be treated as a time of reintegration into the community, not as a continuation of a person's sentence. Parolees need community reentry programs before release. Paroled prisoners should have access to education, drug treatment, psychological treatment, job training, work and housing. Their persons and homes should not be subject to search without reasonable cause. Appropriate services should also be available to the members of a parolee's family, to help them with the changes caused by the parolee's return.
We call for more funding for rape and domestic violence prevention and education programs, and stiffer sentences for people convicted of domestic violence.
Prison Conditions
Prison conditions must be humane and sanitary and should include heat, light, exercise, clothing, nutrition, libraries, possessions, and personal safety. Prisoners are entitled to psychological, drug, and medical treatment, including access to condoms and uninterrupted access to all prescribed medication. Isolation of prisoners from staff and one another should be minimal and only as needed for safety.
Prison officials must institute and enforce policies that discourage racism, sexism, and homophobia in prison. End racially segregated housing.
The First Amendment rights of prisoners must not be revoked. Prisoners have the right to talk to journalists, write letters, publish their own writings, and become legal experts on their own cases.
Encourage all prisoners to have the opportunity to obtain a G.E.D. (high school equivalency diploma) and higher education. Inmates who earn a diploma have a recidivism rate of 10%, compared with 60% for other inmates.
Prisons should be community-based where possible. Where they are not, transportation for visits should be made available and subsidized. Unless the reason for imprisonment indicates otherwise, parents should have access to their children if it is in the interest of the child.
Incarcerated individuals should retain the right to vote by absentee ballot in the district of their domicile, and should retain the right to vote during parole. They should be counted in the district of domicile for all census related purposes. We support the reinstatement of voting rights and the right to hold public office to ex-felons who have completed their prison sentence.
Support Community Control and Participation
Establish programs to strengthen self-help and community action through neighborhood centers that provide well-funded legal aid, alternative dispute-resolution practices, mediated restitution, community team policing, and local crisis/assault care shelters.
Establish elected or appointed independent civilian review boards with subpoena power to investigate complaints about prison guard and community police behavior.
Maximize restrictions on police use of weapons and restraining techniques such as pepper spray, stun belts, and choke holds.
Abolish the death penalty (see separate section).
Repeal state "Three Strikes" laws. Restore judicial discretion in sentencing, as opposed to mandatory sentencing.
Freedom on bail must be the right of all defendants charged with non-violent crimes. Mental health and social services should be incorporated in the bail agreement. Laws giving prosecutors the power to deny defendants the right to remain free on bail must be repealed.
Stop forfeiture of the property of unconvicted suspects. It is state piracy and denial of due process.
Implement a moratorium on prison construction. The funds saved should be used for alternatives to incarceration.
Compensation for jurors should be increased and child care provided for those serving on a jury. Employers should be encouraged to continue paying an employees' wages while they serve.
Enact tough DWI (driving while intoxicated) laws.
A consistent policy of protection against violence in schools should be developed and enforced.
Victims' rights must be guarded and protected. Victim-impact statements are a method for achieving full justice, and restitution should be considered in many cases.
Hawkins supports the legalization of industrial hemp.
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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