Conn. legislators continue to support over-reaching, diluted, version of sentencing enhancement law creating urban penalty, failing to protect children.
by Aleks Kajstura,
April 4, 2014
As I watched the Connecticut Judiciary Committee’s discussion of sentence enhancement zone reform (SB 259) before its successful vote on Wednesday (SB 259 begins at 02:09:35), I was struck by how many Connecticut legislators continue to support an over-reaching, diluted, version of the state’s sentencing enhancement law. It’s frustrating to see that legislators who have had years to study this issue still misunderstand both, the law’s function and the bill to strengthen it.
Senator Kissell explained the long-held support for the law in his region of the state (at 02:12:15):
Former Rep. Bill Kiner, who was in the House of Representatives over 20 years ago, helped champion the underlying law. And, at least in my neck of the woods… when I said, “Well, should the whole state have that enhanced penalty?” They said, “Sure!” …. [R]educing the distance to the schools goes in the wrong direction… They [constituents] don’t want us to weaken the underlying laws.
It may be counter-intuitive, but by shrinking the zones, the bill would actually strengthen the law. The law relies on the protected spaces to have harsher sentences than other areas. But the 1,500-foot distance, creates no such protected spaces, because nearly entire cities are covered – leaving no specially protected area around schools. The effect is in essence no different than what Sen. Kissell’s constituents say they want, everywhere having an “enhanced penalty”. But when everywhere has an enhanced penalty, then that’s just the penalty, there is nothing “enhanced” about it. If the legislature would like to reconsider the penalties for drug offenses that’s a separate question, but the mechanism of this law, meant to protect children from drug activity, relies on additional – enhanced – penalties around specific protected places.
Sen. Kissell concluded (at 12:18:02) that: “there’s not an easy answer to this… because on the one hand, I think that we want to be fair and even handed but on the other hand we don’t want to say that ‘we are ok with people selling drugs’ and ‘let’s cut back the barriers’…. I’m not so sure that enhancing penalties but reducing the distance gets us to where we wanna go”
I disagree, the bill actually does present a simple answer without giving the message that the legislature would be “ok with people selling drugs”. This bill would not legalize any drug offense. The sentences for the underlying offense would remain unchanged, and the bill would in fact concentrate the state’s enforcement resources around schools to actually protect kids from drug activity. As Representative Meyer explained (at 02:28:40):
When you charge a person, an adult selling drugs to another adult, more than a quarter mile from the school and when the law, as this law does, imposes a mandatory a one year extra imprisonment… it doesn’t relate any longer to creating a school safety zone….
…in concept it’s very important to create a school safety zone, but once you make it 1,500 feet and you’re having one adult selling to another and it doesn’t involve school safety in any respect… [T]he Sentencing Commission is bringing us some reality here and actually is making the school safety penalty stronger by its proposal and now by this bill.
Sen. Kissell points to arrests as proof that the law works (at 02:15:57). But in fact, these arrests prove the law doesn’t work, in several ways. First, the law is meant to move drug offenses out of these zones, so if the law worked, we would see few arrests in the zones (and possibly more outside the zones as the law’s deterrent effect takes hold). Arrests inside the zones prove that the law is not working to move those activities elsewhere. Second, to have a better sense of the law’s imact we need to look at the type of arrests made, not just their number. Sen. Kissell stated (at 02:16:47) that “If the argument is that … people are being put behind bars, then it [the law] is having some kind of impact.” Sure, the law has an impact, but the question is: does it have the desired impact?
The goal of the law is to keep drug activity away from children, but as Rep. Meyer hinted at, nearly all of the arrests do not involve students – and those that do, involve only students (in one case a few students sitting outside the school smoking marijuana). Reducing the zones to the 200 feet proposed by the bill would allow the law to have a meaningful impact by setting aside specific uniquely protected spaces. Connecticut would still maintain serious penalties for drug offenses, and the extra mandatory minimum penalty would be reserved for those offenses committed near a school.
For more information about the law and proposed solutions, check out our sentencing enhancement issue page, and my recent report.
New report analyzes Connecticut's failed sentencing enhancement zones, reveals law doesn’t work, can’t work, and creates urban penalty.
April 3, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, April 3, 2014
Contact:
Aleks Kajstura, 413-527-0845
Easthampton, Mass. — The Prison Policy Initiative released a report, “Reaching too far: How Connecticut’s large sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark”, that analyzes Connecticut’s failed 1,500-foot sentencing enhancement zones. Connecticut’s law, meant to protect children from drug activity, requires an additional sentence for certain drug offenses committed within 1,500 feet of schools, day care centers, and public housing projects. The resulting sentencing enhancement zones are some of the largest in the country.
“The law’s sheer expanse means it fails to actually set apart any meaningfully protected areas and it arbitrarily increases penalties for urban residents,” explains Aleks Kajstura, Legal Director at the Prison Policy Initiative, and the report’s author.
The report mapped eight of the zones in the state’s cities and towns and demonstrates that the law doesn’t work, and in fact cannot possibly work as written. In addition to failing to achieve its goal of creating protected spaces, the report found, the law creates an “urban penalty” that increases the sentence imposed for a given offense simply because it was committed in a city rather than in a town. For example, 92% of the City of Bridgeport residents live in a sentencing enhancement zone while only 8% of the Town of Bridgewater’s residents do.
The report recommends the sentencing enhancement zones be shrunk to 100 feet. This would allow the law to actually create the specially protected places as intended. Connecticut Senate Bill 259, which just passed out of the Judiciary Committee, takes a similar approach and would decrease that size to 200 feet. At these shorter distances the zones would come much closer to the law’s original intent of protecting children, and significantly reduce the urban penalty effect.
The report “Reaching too far: How Connecticut’s large sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark” is available at http://www.prisonpolicy.org/zones/ct.html
About the Prison Policy Initiative
The Prison Policy Initiative is a national, non-profit, non-partisan research and policy organization, with a focus on how geography impacts criminal justice policy.
About the Author
Aleks Kajstura is the Legal Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. Among other publications, she co-authored two reports on sentencing enhancement zones in Massachusetts: The Geography of Punishment: How Huge Sentencing Enhancement Zones Harm Communities, Fail to Protect Children (2008), and Reaching too far, coming up short: How large sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark (2009). These reports helped lead Massachusetts to roll back their enhancement zone law in August 2012.
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Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown's ban on incoming letters in the county jail is breaking critical family communication.
by Leah Sakala,
April 2, 2014
Youth CineMedia, a non-profit in Santa Barbara, California, just released an excellent short video about how Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown’s ban on incoming letters in the county jail is breaking critical family communication:
For more on why the Santa Barbara jail letter ban trend needs to end and how you can get involved, check out the local campaign Right to Write SB. You’ll also find Prison Policy Initiative reports, news coverage, and multimedia on this issue our resource page.
Ruth Greenwood, Fellow at the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, shares her thoughts on her work and why she joined PPI's board.
by Leah Sakala,
April 1, 2014
Next up in our blog series introducing several accomplished new members of the Prison Policy Initiative board: Ruth Greenwood. Ruth is a voting rights attorney and Fellow at the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. We are so glad to have her on our team here at PPI.
Why did you decide to join the PPI board?
Ruth Greenwood: I am really excited to have joined the PPI Board. I first heard about PPI through its work to end prison based gerrymandering. I saw Peter Wagner explain the concept in Gerrymandering: the movie, and couldn’t believe that a modern democracy with access to all sorts of technical data had not fixed the problem. Once I had discovered the great work of PPI in this area, I started reading about all the other work it does to highlight the problems of mass incarceration. The thing I like most about PPI is that it doesn’t just explain the problems clearly, but sets out workable solutions and then works to implement them.
What does your work focus on? And what’s the connection between that work and PPI?
RG: The work of PPI directly intersects with my work. I am a voting rights attorney and I focus on redistricting. In particular, I look at ways to improve minority representation in the United States. Ending prison gerrymandering would improve minority representation in my state of Illinois because pre-trial detainees can vote in the districts from which they come, yet are counted in the district where they are awaiting trial (sadly, there are tens of thousands of pre-trial detainees in Illinois and many await trial for years). I really hope PPI can end prison gerrymandering by 2020, so in 2021 when state and congressional districts are drawn again, we will have removed at least one of the distortions to our democracy.
What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?
RG: I like that PPI chooses “bite size” pieces of problems to expose and solve. There is a clear overall goal (reducing the negative effects of mass incarceration on public welfare), and fixing each issue PPI focuses on takes us a step towards that goal. I love that PPI is so good at clearly explaining complex issues and is always ready to provide additional research and advice to help out state advocates like me.
What’s something that you wish more people knew about the Prison Policy Initiative?
RG: I was shocked to find out that PPI does all that it does with so few staff members and such a small budget. It really made me realize that even though I’m a public interest lawyer and don’t have a big budget for charitable donations, my donations go a long way with PPI. I like knowing that I am helping a small organization do big things.
Published a new report on Conn.'s sentencing enhancement zones, presented findings at legislative breakfast.
by Aleks Kajstura,
March 28, 2014
This morning I presented our new research on Connecticut’s sentencing enhancement zones at an informational Legislative Breakfast hosted by A Better Way Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Society: East Manchester, and Senator Gary Holder-Winfield.
I discuss Hartford’s zones with Representative Brandon McGee
The report, released today, analyzes Connecticut’s 1,500-foot sentencing enhancement zones, mapping the zones in the state’s cities and towns and demonstrates that the law doesn’t work, it cannot possibly work as written, and that it creates an unfair two-tiered system of justice based on a haphazard distinction between urban and rural areas of the state.
Connecticut’s 1,500-foot sentencing enhancement zones, meant to protect children from drug activity, are some of the largest in the country. I described how the law’s sheer expanse means it fails to actually set apart protected areas and that it arbitrarily increases penalties for urban residents.
Senator Gary Holder-Winfield speaking at the breakfast
SB 259, currently pending before the Judiciary Committee, would decrease that size to a more effective 200 feet. This would allow the law to actually create the specially protected places it was intended to in the first place. Making the zone smaller would come much closer to the law’s original intent, and largely get rid of the urban penalty effect. For more details on the bill, check out my written testimony (with maps).
Sadie Gold-Shapiro reports back on a big milestone in PPI’s very own Research Clearinghouse.
by Sadie Gold-Shapiro,
March 25, 2014
This February marked my one year anniversary of working at Prison Policy Initiative as a work study student from Smith College. While here, I have worked on a variety of projects including cross-checking annotations in 2010 Locator, finding citations for Please Deposit All of Your Money: Kickbacks, Rates and Hidden Fees in the Jail Phone Industry, and sorting through the petition to the FCC that called for federal regulation of exploitive prison telephone rates.
Since September of 2013, one of my main projects has been curating PPI’s very own Research Clearinghouse, home to one of the largest collections of empirical research about prisons on the internet with topics ranging from the Death Penalty to Families to Prison and the Economy. My job is to read through all of the latest reports from myriad organizations and sort them into the Clearinghouse so that they are accessible and easy to locate. This past week, the database reached a large milestone; on Wednesday, we broke 1800 reports!
The Research Clearinghouse is great because of the span and magnitude of the research that it holds. As a history major, I love exploring patterns and trends over time; with articles ranging in publication from 1982-today, the Clearinghouse offers a unique way to understand some of the changes the United States criminal justice system has undergone in the last thirty years. The Clearinghouse is also a great place to look if you are interested in researching a topic, but don’t know where to start. Best of all, the Clearinghouse is free and easy to use; all of the reports have been sorted into categories and there is a search function as well.
Interest piqued? If you want to learn more about the Research Clearinghouse and stay up-to-date on the latest research, you can explore it online or sign up for the Clearinghouse newsletter, delivered right to your email.
The Senate unanimously approved a bill to protect Massachusetts moms from being shackled during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.
by Leah Sakala,
March 21, 2014
Yesterday Massachusetts took a huge step towards becoming the 19th state to reject the dangerous and inhumane practice of shackling mothers who are pregnant, in labor, or in the postpartum period while they are incarcerated.
The Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed Bill S.1171, which would ban the routine use of physical restraints on incarcerated pregnant women after the first trimester, including during labor and delivery. The bill also establishes common-sense basic standards for the maternity and childbirth care and information afforded to women who are incarcerated in Massachusetts.
The Prison Policy Initiative is a proud member of the Massachusetts Anti-Shackling Coalition (press release on the bill passage here), and we submitted testimony in support of S.1171 for the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security’s public hearing in December.
Now the bill moves on to the House. Stay tuned!
Arielle Sharma reports back on her week working on prison gerrymandering research and sentencing enhancement zone messaging development.
by Arielle Sharma,
March 19, 2014
I spent the last week here at PPI for an Alternative Spring Break. I am from Connecticut, went to Boston University and am now at University of Connecticut Law School. I was excited to spend my week at PPI because of the excellent work they do to document the effects of mass incarceration with real numbers. I think my interest in prison began at a young age. I am of mixed race, half Indian and half Israeli. I had family who had been put in “prisons” during the Holocaust in Europe, and on my father’s side, I had family put in prison for marching with Gandhi. When I was young, the people I knew who had been in prison were not bad people. Too often, we dismiss incarcerated people because they are or have been deemed ‘criminals’ by society. Whether or not they have broken a law, they are still people who must be treated with respect.
2014 Alternative Spring Break Law Interns Arielle Sharma (right) and Corey Frost (left) at the Connecticut State House.
This week, I was able to work on a project explaining one way in which exploitation of incarcerated people undermines the democratic rights of those of us not in prisons- Prison gerrymandering. Prison gerrymandering lessens the voice we have in our government. When the area each elected official represents is distributed based on population, people in prisons are sometimes used to boost numbers in certain areas even though the prisoners have no vote in government. This means that people who live near a prison get more of a say because the representative they elect is not serving the prison population and so each vote cast by the actual residents of the district is counted more.
This week, I continued the research on how/if this gerrymandering is happening on one of the most local scales: school board elections. (Fun fact I wish my school board had taught me in high school: School boards have A LOT of power. In many places, they have a say in curriculum, extra-curriculars, budgets, and some hiring and firing decisions) Even though school boards may seem too small to matter, the effects of prison gerrymandering actually become greater as the total population gets smaller. In my research, I found a majority of school boards don’t have problems with prison gerrymandering because they have at-large elections, which means everyone gets to vote for every school board member in their area, regardless of where they live. They are all sharing their voting power with each other, so everyone’s vote weighs the same.
I learned Bureaucracy is no joke. We all know the outcome of policy decisions, but few know how we’ve gotten to the system we have. Luckily, 99% of the people talked in the schools and town halls were super nice. Unluckily, these fine folks generally haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about prison gerrymandering. I called school boards in New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Michigan, Alabama and Colorado. After many questions, many gentle rephrasings and many call transfers, I found two schools districts that allocate voting power based on population:
- The people lines in RE-1 Valley School District in Sterling, CO were super on top of things, and were savvy enough to take out their prison population.
- Despite a lot of help from a lot of people in Hunterdon County, NJ, it is still unclear if prison populations are kept in when North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional board member districts.
Either way, the Supreme Court has supported ending prison gerrymandering and more than 200 local governments have already ended it on their own so hopefully this will soon be moot on every level.
PPI works on a lot of issues, so I had the luck to help on some other problems, too. I went with Aleks who was testifying in Connecticut on a bill trying to at least lessen the enhanced penalty zones (currently a 1500ft radius) for selling or possessing drugs around a school, public housing, or day care. Of course, research shows that kids are far more likely to get drugs from each other than random adults.
But in addition to that, the zones are way too big to make a difference in deterring drug activity away from schools. In Connecticut, school zones are 1500 feet. Do you know how far that is? You could lay the empire state building on its side, and still have a few hundred feet to spare! That’s way too long (Watch this guy free climb 1500ft mountain and then tell me that’s not a crazy distance- the video doesn’t even get all the way to the top!).
When whole cities are turned into enhanced penalty zones, where is the incentive to specifically stay away from schools? Instead, zone policies end up giving extra penalties to people who are often doing things in their own homes (over 90% of some Connecticut cities’ residences are in these zones). Plus, the areas aren’t marked so there is no way to tell if you’re on the bad side of the line (assuming the other side hasn’t put you into another school zone).
Prison gerrymandering and enhanced penalty school zones are just two of the MANY things going on at PPI, make sure to check out the rest of the site for more!
-Arielle
Conn. Judicial Committee hears testimony in favor of sentencing enhancement zone reform.
by Aleks Kajstura,
March 13, 2014
Yesterday, I testified before Connecticut’s Judiciary Committee in support of reforming Connecticut’s sentencing enhancement laws (my testimony starts at 3:34:03).
Connecticut’s 1,500-foot sentencing enhancement zones, meant to protect children from drug activity, are some of the largest in the country. I described how the law’s sheer expanse means it fails to actually set apart protected areas and that it arbitrarily increases penalties for urban residents. As Senator Holder-Winfield concisely explains, Senate Bill 259 would decrease that size to a more effective 200 feet.
For more details, check out the video above and my written testimony (with maps).
And check back in soon, I’m releasing a report examining Connecticut’s sentencing enhancement zones on the 28th.
Professor Owens teaches in the Political Science department of Emory University, and joined our board in January.
by Leah Sakala,
March 13, 2014
We are thrilled that Professor Michael Leo Owens has joined our Board of Directors this year. Professor Owens teaches in the Political Science department of Emory University, and specializes in urban, state and local politics, political penology, governance and public policy processes, religion and politics, and African American politics. We asked him a few questions about his work and involvement with PPI:
Why did you decide to join the PPI board?
Michael Leo Owens: As the piece of political science wisdom goes, “People participate when they can, when they want to, or when they’re asked.” My participation with PPI’s board covers all three bases! And I made a deliberate decision to leave another board of directors for PPI’s board. The switch is a better fit of interests, passions, and concerns.
What does your work focus on?
MLO: I’m a scholar of American politics and pubic policy. The politics of punishment and the civic effects of mass incarceration fill a big portion of my research, teaching, and service portfolio. In particular, I’m writing a book, Prisoners of Democracy, about the ways in which punitive public policies and ambivalent public opinion diminish the citizenship of people with felony convictions and undermine the positive reintegration of formerly incarcerated people. Additionally, I serve on the advisory boards of two other organizations that confront the challenges and consequences of “penal harm” – the Georgia Justice Project and Foreverfamily. The former provides defense counsel, social services, and advocacy for indigent persons. The latter, formerly known as Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers, is an Atlanta-based but national youth development organization, one that among other activities provides children with monthly visitations with their incarcerated parents.
What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?
MLO: What makes PPI unique is its moxie. It takes on BIG issues for a small organization and it’s successful in tackling them. Plus, by using data in a democratic way it increases the likelihood of community-based groups getting involved and taking the lead on their own behalf. Few data-driven organizations truly empower other groups. I’m glad PPI is one of them.
What’s something that you wish more people knew about the Prison Policy Initiative?
MLO: I wish more people knew that PPI is about more than prison gerrymandering. I also wish that more policymakers, especially in the South, knew of its existence and successes at making criminal justice more just and effective.
