187 Calories Of Humanity

Yesterday I was sitting at my friend’s commencement ceremony. Were I bored? I could have definitely punched a bird off the tree. Until I heard a keynote speaker mention 3 rules of life. Cell phones cause radiation. But so they cause insomnia. The more I use it, the less I sleep. So I took notes. Even though I was sure he was going to say “Rule #1: Don’t tell people everything you know. Period!” But people don’t get a chance to show off every day, so, of course, he listed all three rules of life:

“1. Experience matters. What we are short off is judgement!

2. Attitude matters; it affects everything.

3. Call your parents frequently!” (TJP)

I was like “How obvious. Like a cock-tail!” 

I am lucky. In a way. I am short of rule #3. So I only have two rules. I break them, but I also use them to judge others. Hence, it looks like I am left with only rule #2. And I think that is why my running is all about. Trust me. I was going to call my last manager a bitch a couple of times. However, my new mantra is “Calm down and Gandhi on! Therefore I went kick ass instead. So the latter wouldn’t have gotten jealous of the s*** that was gonna come out of my mouth.

I always had an urge to give back to the community. Now, as a graduate student of Int’l Public Service, More than ever, I have been wondering what it is I have to offer to the world. I tried to give back to the community by feeding pigeons. But I realized those should have some self-respect. They can fly after all. In the last couple of days, a few people asked me for the recipe of a homemade granola bar I posted on the FB the other day. And I was like, “I may be working for 77 cents for every dollar my male friends make, but people like my nuts!” Yeah, I’ve always been about gender equality! Plus, he was wrong who said “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Obviosly!

So, here it is. The main reason I started writing a blog. A homemade granola bar. 187 hundred calories of humanity.

And because of you, reader, more people may have nuts. But so be surrounded by honey. If not, it must have been too obvious to notice it. Then come find me at the bar. I’ll buy you a cock-tail.

Bon appetite,

~ Simona

7th Circuit Upholds Illinois Campaign Disclosure Laws

On Monday, the 7^th Circuit ruled in favor of Illinois’ campaign finance disclosure law in Center For Individual Freedom v. Madigan. The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF), a Virginia-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit, hoped to run advertisements in Illinois markets during the 2010 election season.  The ads were intended to address “legal reform and other justice-related issues” and were expected to refer to incumbent candidates, note the “positions of candidates or . . . ballot issues and call on the audience to take actions such as contacting candidates.” (quote is from the Sec. I, the Factual and Procedural Background portion of the opinion). CFIF challenged Article 9 of the Illinois Election Code, saying its First Amendment right to speech was impermissibly chilled by the disclosure provisions because “its donors require assurances that their identities will not be disclosed, and this anonymity is a condition of their support.” (quote is from the Factual and Procedural Background portion of the opinion)

As summarized in the opinion, Article 9 requires:

each political committee in Illinois [to]register with the Board of Elections, maintain records of every contribution received and expenditure made “in connection with” an election, 10 ILCS 5/9–7, and file a report of all such transactions each quarter, 10 ILCS 5/9–10(b). This quarterly report must include the total sums of contributions received and expenditures made in the covered period; accountings of the committee’s funds on-hand and investment assets held; and the name and address of each contributor who gave more than $150 that quarter. 10 ILCS 5/9–11(a). In addition to the quarterly report, a political committee must disclose any contribution of $1,000 or more (along with the name and address of the contributor) within five days of its receipt, or within two days if received 30 or fewer days before an election. 10 ILCS 5/9–10(c). For reporting violations, the Board may issue civil fines of no more than $5,000 for any one group (except in the case of “willful and wanton” violations), or seek to enjoin violators’ campaign activities in state court. 10 ILCS 5/9–10.3

The 7^th Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that these provisions are not unconstitionally vague nor overbroad.

Disclosure laws are generally considered a “less-restrictive” regulation of speech and important election law cases, such as Buckley v. Valeo, McConnell v. FEC, and Citizens United v. FECtend to be tolerant of disclosure laws. In fact, disclosure laws are viewed as a “critical tool for maintaining transparency in the political marketplace.” (quote is from Sec. IV, the portion of the opinion analyzing whether the disclosure law is overbroad and void-for-vagueness).

Not only is the voting public served by disclosure laws, but legislators themselves need to be able to properly evaluate the pressures placed upon them, which they cannot do if political ads do not disclose their backers. In its ruling, the 7^th Circuit acknowledged this by citing U.S. v Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 625 (1954), a decision approving disclosure laws in a direct lobbying context.

The decision notes much vital information is lost when disclosure laws are not applied to political speech, recognizing that the credibility and persuasiveness of the speaker are tied to the identity of the speaker and that listeners cannot properly evaluate a message whose speaker is cloaked in secrecy. The 7^th Circuit, again referring to Citizens United, found the burdens of Illinois’ disclosure laws to be modest and found that Illinois has a substantial interest in providing this type of information to its citizens.

The Chicago Law Bulletin (not available online) reports that attorney general’s office is “pleased that the 7^th Circuit upheld the disclosure provisions.”

At Chicago Appleseed, we are also pleased with the ruling. We believe that strong disclosure rules protect the public and have advocated for robust disclosure, particularly in the context of judicial elections. The integrity of our electoral process begins with the integrity of the information voters use in making their decisions about which votes to cast. The most basic information necessary for assessing the value of information is the source of that information.

Links of Interest: August 27-31, 2012

Elections and Judicial Performance

• Election Law Blog analyzes the decision holding that Texas’ Voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act.

• Gavel To Gavel provides a comprehensive overview of Florida’s proposed merit selection amendment.

Criminal Justice

• Sentencing Law and Policy drew our attention to “Drugs, Dignity and Danger: Human Dignity as a Constitutional Constraint to Limit Overcriminalization”, a new paper by Professor Michal Buchhandler-Raphael.

Immigration

• ImmigrationProfBlog has this abstract of a symposium article analyzing the failure of the U.S. government on remand to seek to remove the asylum-seeker from the United States, in the context of the leading Supreme Court decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca.

• The American Constitution Society writes “A Bad Day at the Office for Immigration Restrictionists“, analyzing a trio of Eleventh Circuit cases reading Arizona v. United States as severely limiting state authority to legislate in the area of immigration.

SCOTUSblog has excellent coverage of the Arizona case. In other post-Arizona news, FAIR also reports that Alabama has been enjoined from collecting immigration status information in K-12 classrooms.

Other Links

• David Bernstein reacts to Judge Posner’s review of Justice Scalia’s book (written with Bryan Garner), which appeared in the New Republic.

Other reviews of the book: Slate, Above the Law, and the Wall Street Journal.

• Feministing highlights an ACLU report prepared for the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, finding that single-sex education programs within coeducational schools are “widely out of compliance with Title IX”.

“A Thousand Small Sanities” and Why Judges Matter

“A Thousand Small Sanities” is worth a look for anyone interested in learning about rational, incremental criminal justice system reform. It’s a succinct, straightforward history of criminal justice reform in New York City. In Small Sanities, the Center for Court Innovation Director Greg Berman writes from the Center’s London-based project, the Centre for Justice Innovation, and shares research and his own experiences with how humanizing the justice system can lower crimes and costs. One recent study comparing defendant outcomes in drug courts to those in traditional courts shows that judges are at the heart of humanizing the system.

The study showed that the strongest predictor of reduced future criminality was a defendant’s attitude towards the judge. Having positive perceptions of the judge was also the greatest predictor of reduced drug use and reduced violations of supervision. This impact was seen across all demographics, regardless of race, gender, or criminal history. Even defendants with extensive prior involvement in the system or those who had received unfavourable sentences reported reduced criminality when they perceived the judge to have treated them fairly and respectfully.

The drug court study evaluated judicial interaction in two ways. First, researchers surveyed defendants about their perceptions of the judge. Defendants rated the judge on indicators such as approachability, respectful treatment, knowledge of the defendant’s case, efforts to help the defendant succeed, and allowing the defendant to tell his/her side of the story. Second, researchers used structured court observations to document each judge’s use of certain interactive behaviours, such as making regular eye contact, addressing the defendant directly and allowing him/her to ask questions, and providing explanations of court orders.

Judges matter–and so does a defendant’s perception of that judge. That’s why, through the Judicial Performance Commission of Cook County project, we conduct nonpartisan evaluations with laypeople as well as lawyers, and provide performance improvement plans to judges.

Add-on: An Illinois State Bar Association Committee is examining the harm of perceived judicial impartiality that may follow from unbridled campaign fundraising. The above impact on drug court defendants is just one example of how perceived judicial fairness can dramatically alter our court systems.

Links of Interest: August 20-24, 2012

Judicial Performance and Elections

• The Election Law Blog has copies of the amicus brief filed in support of cert filed jointly by six states and a separate brief filed by Alaska in the Voting Rights Act case. Petitioners Shelby County and John Nix filed the initial petition in July seeking Supreme Court review of a D.C. Circuit decision upholding the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law has an excellent resource page on the underlying Shelby County case.

• The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has a guest editorial on the rise of corporate donations in state supreme court election campaigns.

• Judge Loretta Rush is among three final candidates for a state Supreme Court vacancy in Indiana. If she is appointed, she would be the first woman on the Indiana Supreme Court since 1999 and only the second to serve on Indiana’s highest court.  Governor Mitch Daniels has until October to make the appointment. The political pressure surrounding the appointment is of interest.

Immigration

• Last Friday, the Department of Homeland Security began accepting applications to a new program of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, persons between under the age of 30, who arrived in the US illegally before the age of 16 and have no criminal record. The program is discretionary, not mandated by law, and does not grant legal status and is considered risky by some.

Here is great time-collapsed video of the line at Chicago’s Navy Pier to access a clinic for information about the program. You can read about the DREAM Act here.

Social Justice

• The RedEyeChicago reported that Saturday was one of the “deadliest days of the year in Chicago” and the national media called Chicago the “Deadliest Global City“, both referencing homicide rates in the city. Last month the Chicago Reader looked at the role of concentrated poverty in the homicide rate and this week presented this thoughtful piece, about how the concentration of poverty affects mortality from more common causes of death.

Donor Diversity through Public Matching Funds

In May, the Brennan Center for Justice and the Campaign Finance Institute released a report on how public financing improves diversity of small donors and changes how candidates view potential donors and potential constituents. The report’s authors note that the data set is rather small, but the trends identified in the study show how robust public financing systems can shift candidate focus from corporate donors back to individual constituents. The report’s authors conclude that “[New York city’s] public financing system appears to have achieved one of its key goals — strengthening the connections between public officials and their constituents.”

New York City uses a public financing system for municipal election campaigns, which provides matching funds to candidates who qualify and agree to strictly adhere to campaign spending limits. The voluntary system has been in place since 1988 and is overseen by the non-partisan City Campaign Finance Board. The program started with a one-to-one match on $1,000 donations which was changed to a four-to-one match on $250 donations in 2001. For the 2009 election cycle, the ratio became a six-to-one match on $175 donations. Various proposals to adopt a statewide system of public financing for election campaigns in New York state have found advocates over the years, but, as yet, none has been adopted.

Cover of the Brennan Center/Campaign Finance Institute Donor Diversity Report

For the report, the Brennan Center and CFI looked at small donors to the campaigns of the 2009 City Council candidates, who participated in the public campaign financing system and compared them to the small donors for the campaigns of the 2010 State Assembly candidates, who did not have access to the public financing system. In the City Council race, small donors (those who gave less that $175) made up about 30% of the candidate’s fundraising, and in the State Assembly race, small donors contributed less than 6%. According to the CFI in another report,  municipal candidates using the public financing system raised 37% of their private money from donors giving less than $250, whereas candidates who did not use public financing raised a mere 15% of their private donor funds from donors giving less than $250.

Drawing on the differences in the donor data for the 2009 City Council election and the 2010 State Assembly elections, the Brennan Center and CFI make some exciting inferences about how public financing engages a broader expanse of the community in elections and better connects candidates with a more diverse populace. The report maps the data for small donors across “census block groups” to discover where the small donors come from, looking specifically at demographics such as household income, education levels, and racial distribution. Taking, for example, a predominately African-American and low income area in Brooklyn, the data shows that twenty-four times as many residents of these communities contributed to the City Council election candidates than to the State Assembly candidates (adjusted for overall contribution rates to campaigns, the figure may be closer to 17 times).

The figures confirm what the Brennan Center has learned in interviews with candidates: “the City’s matching funds led them to look to a more diverse set of donors.” While acknowledging the limitations of the data set, the authors of the report conclude there is support for the claim that small donor matching funds bring people into the political process who are traditionally less engaged in it and for the claim that public financing systems improve connections between public officials and their constituents by giving candidates an incentive to connect with a more diverse and broader array of constituents during their campaigns.

Chicago Appleseed believes that greater engagement of diverse populations in elections strengthens our government structures. We’re glad to see research demonstrating positive connections between public finance systems and candidate engagement with a diversity of constituents. The role of money in elections poses an ever more complicated landscape for candidates, our courts, and the public at large.

Although it has been argued that public financing of elections may act as an antidote to Citizens United, public financing for presidential elections has not had much traction. Furthermore, the Supreme Court  found problems with an Arizona public financing law that attempted to level the playing field between a publicly funded candidate and one who has opted out of public financing because of big money donors. Nonetheless, there is serious need for campaign finance reform.

Policy Brief: Early Case Assessment in Urban Jurisdictions

The twin goals of early case assessment are to devote more resources to those cases for which a conviction can confidently be obtained, and also to decline to prosecute, reduce charges, or divert other cases.

Our Early Case Assessment Policy Brief takes a look at how the District Attorney’s Offices in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee are implementing early case assessment for the betterment of their cities.

It’s Time to Coordinate on Diversion

This piece originally appeared at the Huffington Post. 

In response to growing concern about violent crime and shrinking budgets, public officials have adopted a number of initiatives to prioritize use of scarce resources. And despite an ordinance requiring a cooperative approach to diversion of offenders from jail, these efforts remain isolated. Chicago lacks a comprehensive criminal justice strategy. Instead we perpetuate a system that incarcerates too many people and rehabilitates too few, thus foregoing financial and justice benefits.

Many jurisdictions and departments within Cook County have turned to diversion as an alternative to incarceration. “Diversion” is a broad term for a pragmatic approach to criminal justice resource allocation that prioritizes quality enforcement over quantity. The basic strategy is to tailor the system to two very different types of defendants. Those charged with the least serious offenses are diverted from jail in a safe but cost-effective way. This frees resources to be used for prosecution, incarceration, or intensive treatment of the most serious offenders.

Recognizing that diversion is not only fair but also economical, Cook County Commissioners Earlene Collins and Larry Suffredin sponsored an ordinance creating the “Jail Diversion Program,” which the Board passed in March, 2010. The ordinance orders a diversion “Advisory Panel” to establish “a collaborative relationship between the State, the County, local municipalities and local community based mental health and substance abuse disorder service providers with emphasis on mutual goals, shared responsibilities and benefits.” With representatives from public safety agencies, mental health providers, and researchers, the panel would be similar to successful groups guiding crime strategy for many major American cities. But to date, the panel has not been convened.

Though no comprehensive diversion advisory panel now exists, public officials do, of course, work together. And recently they have begun to embrace diversion through promising programs described below. However, the promise of diversion will only be realized through a coherent strategy that bridges departmental divisions.

•  Last month, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s office announced several strategies for increasing diversion through Bond Court. Bond amounts directly affect who will await trial in Cook County Jail, and who will be released pending trial. Recognizing Bond Court’s pivotal role as in the criminal process, President Preckwinkle commissioned a study of it by the Justice Advisory Council, chaired by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ann Burke. The report promises to instate a bond review for those defendants who remain in jail solely because they cannot afford low bond or cannot verify a home address.

• In 2010, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office introduced a deferred prosecution program that has since diverted thousands of defendants arrested for nonviolent crimes. At a public forum to discuss diversion, First Assistant State’s Attorney Shauna Boliker recently noted that these diversion programs save the County approximately $12 million each year.

• Recognizing that jail neither rehabilitates nor deters many offenders, the Cook County Criminal Court has developed four types of problem-solving court calls aimed at offering treatment alternatives. And while specialty courts heard just 902 of approximately 30,000 felony cases filed last year, judges take on these intensive calls without reducing their regular caseloads. Judges also sentenced 1,227 defendants to TASC-supervised drug or mental health treatment in lieu of imprisonment.

• Finally, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance permitting fines in lieu of arrest for possession of less than 15 grams of marijuana. Chicago Police Superintendent McCarthy, who joined Mayor Emanuel backing the ordinance, explained that each of Chicago’s 20,000 marijuana arrests takes a total of eight police hours to process. “That’s 2,500 police hours a day that can be diverted back into the neighborhoods,” McCarthy said, according to a recent Chicago Reader articleon the marijuana ordinance.

These impressive efforts indicate that many key players want to use diversion to improve Cook County’s criminal justice system. But major problems persist that cannot be solved through uncoordinated action. One such problem is that in 2010 and 2011 combined, over 20,000 defendants were jailed for an average of 25 days, only to have their cases dropped or dismissed. At an estimated $143 per inmate per day, taxpayers spent over 70 million dollars on cases that went nowhere.

Had it been meeting regularly, an advisory panel like the one mandated by the “Jail Diversion Program” ordinance might have identified and solved this problem and avoided jailing thousands of people. Solving this problem requires cooperation among all stakeholders: police must make arrests of the kind and quality that state’s attorneys can prosecute, prosecutors must assess arrests earlier and toss weak cases so that they can focus their efforts on serious crime, bond court judges must detain only defendants who pose a specific threat or flight risk, and criminal court judges must shepherd a speedy case process.

Systemic reform through co-ordination has been effective in other cities. Philadelphia, which shares Chicago’s violent crime and budget problems, took on a legacy of an ineffective and unfair justice system. Led by prosecutors and the courts, including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, public safety leaders have worked together since 2010 to expand and enhance their diversion programs. They’ve already seen results. A recent Pew Charitable Trusts report found that Philadelphia’s coordinated effort has produced a 12 percent decrease in the daily jail population, a 10 percent drop in jail and police costs, faster case processing times, and a dramatic increase in court appearance rates.

In our latest report, Strategies to Enhance and Coordinate Cook County Diversion Programs, we draw on research, data, and interviews to recommend ways to improve diversion in Cook County.

Limited resources and serious crime require us to police, prosecute, and incarcerate selectively and strategically. We have the concepts, we have a capable group of public officials, and we have public and political support. Now it’s time to get on the same page.

Links of Interest: August 5-10, 2012

Judicial Performance and Elections

• Senator Lindsey Graham, speaking at the ABA Annual Meeting this week, said that judicial qualifications should count more than politics.

Information and statistics on federal judicial vacancies is available from the American Constitution Society and the Brookings Institution.

• Keesha Gaskins and Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice spoke with Bill Moyers about new voter ID and other election laws and the adverse impace on the young, elderly, minorities and the poor. View the video here.

• The Wall Street Journal reports that judges are becoming more comfortable with social media and possible conflicts arising from its use.

Criminal Justice

• The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 is suing to block is suing to block Gov. Quinn’s plans to shut down several correctional facilities on the grounds that the closures would create unsafe working environments for its members

Thursday morning, WBEZ reported that Gov. Quinn has blocked access to Vienna prison in southern Illinois, which is said to have unsafe conditions for prisoners.

Community Justice

• Next Thursday, the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law is hosting a webinar: Mobile Banking: Can the Unbanked Bank on It?

Other Links

• The University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center on Applied Feminism seeks submissions for its Sixth Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference.  The topic is “Applied Feminism and Families”; abstracts are due by October 26, 2012, and the conference is scheduled for March 7 and 8, 2013.

Center for Civil Rights Remedies Report on Disparities in School Discipline

The National Appleseed network works to reduce social injustice by analyzing inequities in public systems and suggesting reforms to balance the systems. Many Appleseed affiliates, Chicago among them, are engaged in research and advocacy to ensure that educational opportunities are equally available to all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, disability or immigrant status—particularly through our work in advocating for parental involvement. Successful students, as National Appleseed notes, are the products of not only solid schools and good teachers but engaged parents who take an interest in their child’s success and assist teachers.

It was, therefore, with great interest that we noted two stories in the news today, based upon a new report of school suspension data released by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. The Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois and Chicago Public Schools have the highest suspension rates of students of color among the 47 states studied in the report. The racial disparity in suspensions, which is documented in the report, “underscor[es] concerns by many educators that African-Americans face harsher discipline than their classmates. “ The Sun-Times wrote about discipline inequities in CPS back in April.

The New York Times also covered the Center for Civil Rights report, focusing on how “students with disabilities are almost twice as likely to be suspended from school as nondisabled students, with the highest rates among black children with disabilities.”

Parental engagement in their children’s schools is a vital path to ensuring equality in school discipline systems because involved parents provide schools alternatives to harsh discipline. As noted in a June WBEZ story on suspension policies in CPS, where students receive support during periods of suspension, they are better able to recover academically and avoid future suspension. The parental engagement policies which Appleseed advocates improve communication networks between schools and the student’s home, which helps teachers better understand and meet the student’s needs. Additionally, as a 2010 Chicago Appleseed report (.pdf) has shown, improved parental involvement increases parental support of the student’s academic efforts and makes children more positive about their schooling.