DALLAS — The United States may soon see its prison population drop for the first time in almost four decades, a milestone in a nation that locks up more people than any other.
The inmate population has risen steadily since the early 1970s as states adopted get-tough policies that sent more people to prison and kept them there longer. But tight budgets now have states rethinking these policies and the costs that come with them.
"It's a reversal of a trend that's been going on for more than a generation," said David Greenberg, a sociology professor at New York University. "In some ways, it's overdue."
The U.S. prison population dropped steadily during most of the 1960s, and there were a few small dips in 1970 and 1972. But it has risen every year since, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
About 739,000 prisoners were admitted to state and federal facilities last year, about 3,500 more than were released, according to new figures from the bureau. The 0.8 percent growth in the prison population is the smallest annual increase this decade and significantly less than the 6.5 percent average annual growth of the 1990s.
Overall, there were 1.6 million prisoners in state and federal prisons at the end of 2008.
In the past, prison populations have been lower when drafts were enacted, including during World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
"People who go to war are young men, and young men are the most likely to get arrested or prosecuted," said James Austin, president of the JFA Institute, a research organization that advises states on prison issues.
Story continues below
The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't involved in a draft.
Instead, the economic crisis forced states to reconsider who they put behind bars and how long they kept them there, said Kim English, research director for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
In Texas, parole rates were once among the lowest in the nation, with as few as 15 percent of inmates being granted release as recently as five years ago. Now, the parole rate is more than 30 percent after Texas began identifying low-risk candidates for parole.
In Mississippi, a truth-in-sentencing law required drug offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences. That's been reduced to less than 25 percent.
California's budget problems are expected to result in the release of 37,000 inmates in the next two years. The state also is under a federal court order to shed 40,000 inmates because its prisons are so overcrowded that they are no longer constitutional, Austin said.
States also are looking at ways to keep people from ever entering prison. A nationwide system of drug courts takes first-time felony offenders caught with less than a gram of illegal drugs and sets up a monitoring team to help with case management and therapy.
Studies have touted significant savings with drug courts, saying they cost 10 percent to 30 percent less than it costs to send someone to prison.
"I don't think they work. I know so," said Judge John Creuzot, a state district judge in Dallas.
The reforms in many state prisons and courts come even as crime rates continue to drop nationwide.
"It's economically driven, but the science is there to support it," Austin said. "They are saving money, but not doing it in a way that jeopardizes public safety."
One exception to the trend is Florida, which has enacted a law requiring all convicts to serve a high percentage of their sentences. The law is straining the state's prison resources.
"They know that they are stuck in a time bomb they can't get out of," Austin said.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative Creates an Urban Village
http://www.cpn.org/topics/community/dudly2.html
Case Study: Urban Village Vision Process Towards a Wholesome Community
Summer 1996
DSNI Mission
To empower Dudley residents to organize, plan for, create and control a vibrant, high quality and diverse neighborhood in collaboration with community partners.
Profile of the Urban Village
Boston
Population
12,018
24,068
574,282
Race/Ethnic CompositionWh : Bl : Hsp : C.Verde
7%-37%-29%-25%
59%-24%-11%-6%
Per Capita Income
7,634
8,631
15,581
Unemployment Rate
16.3%
8.3%
Households
3,513
7,584
228,466
Housing Units
4,040
8,680
250,365
Home Ownership
21%
22%
28%
Persons less than 18 years of age
36%
34%
19%
Vacant parcels
in 1984 1300
in 1996 1000
"Together, We'll Find the Way"
The Beginnings In 1984, Dudley residents came together to resist the patterns of abandonment and gentrification that had already pushed low income people out of the South End and the West End. Red-lining, disinvestment and arson fires combined to physically and spiritually devastate the community, the devastation symbolized by 1,300 vacant lots. We refused to accept these conditions. At DSNI's founding meeting, residents declared our intention to control community land and services for the benefit of the community.
The Vision - Our Urban Village Turning planning on its head, we created the vision for the neighborhood: the 1987 plan for an urban village. It laid out comprehensive strategies for the physical, economic and human development of a vibrant, diverse, empowered community where people could live, shop, work and play.
Our vision for an urban village built on the community's greatest asset - the rich diversity of cultures, talent and willpower of residents.
Dudley Village: A work-in-progress
Dudley village is work in progress. Early organizing victories against illegal dumping and trash transfer operations lead to hope that seemingly impossible barriers to progress could be removed. Hope replaced dispair. As we came together and started to develop a village spirit, more accomplishments followed:
The City of Boston's adoption of our plan as its redevelopment plan for the Dudley area.
Eminent domain authority to assemble parcels of vacant land for development.
Long-term control of land through a community land trust (Dudley Neighbors Inc.) to ensure neighborhood benefit and to prevent speculation.
Over 225 new affordable homes built according to criteria set by residents.
More than 300 units of housing rehabilitated.
Over 300 of the 1,300 vacant lots transformed into attractive homes, safe play spaces, gardens and community facilities.
The "Unity Through Diversity" mural, designed and painted by neighborhood youth.
Improved environmental safety from lead-contaminated soil, hazardous wastes and illegal dumping.
A DSNI Board of Directors elected by, representative of, and accountable to community residents.
A full youth summer camp program ran by "Bird Street Community Center" at Mary Hannon Park, and the park upgraded by the City.
The Multi-Cultural Festival in September, an annual community building event, sharing cultural pride and contributions through food, music and crafts.
Collaboratives of human service agencies and other organizations to achieve coordinated services responsive to residents' needs and priorities.
The opening of the Dudley Town Common at Dudley, Blue Hill and Hampden, serving as an elegant gateway to Dudley village.
A number of key features to the village are in the works:
Conversion of the old Dudley Mill Works building into youthbuild Boston's training headquarters and charter school, DSNI's new office, as well as commercial space.
The City of Boston's commitment to renovate the old vine Street Municipal Building (the Cape Verdean Community House) as a community center.
A Vision For the Future
Out of the rubble, Dudley residents have dreamt, fought and built. We have new housing, community gardens, play spaces, multicultural festivals, new neighbors and friends. We also have a new spirit of hope and possibility.
We are now taking the next steps in defining and realizing our urban village. It is time to take our vision to the next step based on what we have been able to accomplish. Our understanding of what we want and need has changed and grown as the neighborhood has changed and grown.
This report is about the steps we just took to update our shared vision. Over a period of eight months, we designed and carried out a community visioning process. Residents from throughout the neighborhood have met together in several groups to develop an updated and shared vision. Many of those in the earlier sessions came back; many long time residents participated for the first time; and many new neighbors joined in; participants and workers at some of the area's businesses and agencies also took part. Some spoke English; some spoke Spanish; some Cape Verdean Creole.
It was a fun and creative process. We challenged each other to think boldly, to push the limits on traditional barriers and expectations. We encouraged each other to dream and to treat those dreams as things that we can and will accomplish together. We envisioned a whole and wholesome community:
One which builds on and respects our rich cultural diversity and our sense of community values.
One in which we, the residents, have political and economic power.
One with a planned environment that is physically beautiful, environmentally sound, green and clean, affordable and safe for everyone.
A neighborhood based on a profound respect for lifelong learning.
One with a full range of recreational, educational and cultural activities.
One with safe, reliable, accessible and affordable transportation.
One where there are strong partnerships with public and private institutions that share our vision.
Please take a look at what follows - at all the ideas - big and small - that, together, will create the entirety of our village. discuss it with your neighbors. Add to it. Because this is a guide of our minimum expectations.
Perhaps the best way to describe what we think in a few words is in this poem:
You're What it Takes (To Make a Village)
by Paul Yelder
Some will claim It takes stores and shops Others believeWe need more bus stops
These are important That's for sure But You're what it takes For a Village to endure
Houses with yards Some will say Safe places where Our children can play
These are important Yes, indeed But You're what it takes For a Village to succeed
Mail-boxes, tot-lots Malls and park benches Clearing up vacant lots Eliminating foul stenches
These are important I will admit But You're what it takes For a Village to be legit
You're what it takes For a Village to be real Sharing with your neighbors A love you can feel
Yes, You're what it takes Both young and old You give us true worth More than silver, More than gold
Village Visioning
Groups met throughout the neighborhood. Using the type of scenarios that are on the next page, we dreamed about what we wanted in out future village, and shared these dreams within our groups. We drew, we talked, we wrote. We told stories. We recorded our best ideas on "post-its" and put them on the wall. Some of us took a field trip to other "Villages" and neighborhoods in the area. Some talked to friends and relatives about their vision. We added more of "hot ideas".
Then we grouped or clustered the ideas that came up with cluster names. We recorded everything publicly - so the entire group could see, discuss and make our changes together. We were weaving the fabric of our community to create something truly shared. We asked ourselves, if this is what we want, then what do we need? We tried to understand the relationship of the clusters to each other, and came up with some new insights.
Here are a few samples of the initial dreaming that we did:
Scenario:
Imagine . . . It is a pleasant Saturday morning in May. You are meeting a friend at the Dudley Town Common - the village gateway - for a leisurely stroll down Dudley Street.
Describe what you do, where you go for the next hour or so.
We talk and gaze at the beautiful flowers that the neighborhood planted. We sit at the Common and plan our time - what to do for the next two hours. We decide to go to the movies. Before that we go have an ice cream near the Commons in the ice cream parlor. We walk in the neighborhood stores, gaze around and buy nothing. We chat with other neighbors whom we meet along the way. We buy some popcorn in the neighborhood pop corn shop and watch the neighborhood kids swing, play ball and cheer them up. We could even go to visit the beautiful animals in the zoo close by your house
-Bahjah Zarinah Muhammed and Raheil Bernard
. . . For the most part, Dudley Street today is cleared of traffic. I notice the monorails soaring swiftly and silently overhead . . .
As I continue my trek to Dudley Common, I pass the Dudley shopping Mall which is really sort of a plaza. I see the parking area reserved for electric cars. Instead of gas stations, I see the service station designed for electric cars. Actually, all it is is a picturesque stone wall that is fitted with electrical outlets for customers to recharge their cars while shopping, if necessary. . .
-Warren Brown
I see shop owners sweeping the front of their stores. The street cleaners and cleaning trucks are sweeping and washing the streets. What a time we had with the City getting the contracts so that these residents could have these much deserved jobs with the right pay and benefits.
Out Bed and Breakfast place is always open. However, it's usually full. What a perfect spot for it in the middle of the village. . . .They can walk to the commuter rail if they want to connect to anywhere else in the state. Thank God that it was remodeled and we have that beautiful parking lot. So many of my neighbors own and operate everything in our community.
Well, we're still learning. There's a Board of Trade meeting at 7PM. We're looking over our guidelines and procedures for our new Resident Banking and Lending institution...
- JacQuie Cairo-Williams
Village Visioning
After all the small group meetings, a core team took the reports from all the sessions and put them together. We clustered the clusters and came up with the theme areas listed below.
This was a truly amazing process that allowed us to consider hundreds of ideas.
Themes From Visioning
Out of the many dreams, stories, and images of out future that emerged from these vision groups, these were the themes or goals that seemed to organize our ideas:
Encourage lifelong learning
Build and sustain unity through neighborhood activity
Community economic power
Physical and visual quality of life
Harmony with nature
Community security
Community friendly transportation
Self and group expression
Political power
Mutually supportive relationships
Within each theme, we listed "standards" - that capture values or principles that will ensure maximum community benefit - and "actions" - the concrete activities that will help us meet our goals. The ultimate "standard" by which every activity will be judged is that it must benefit the community.
Encourage Lifelong Learning
What is our community's "competitive advantage" in these tough times? One advantage that will allow us to succeed is that we value learning on every level - for young and old, in and out of school. We want the information, knowledge, and skills to control our destiny.
Standards
Actions
Family, community and personal values
Community information center: organizers and speakers with information
Respecting what's healthy for the neighborhood
Parent involvement - paid release time form work
Superior public schools
Kids and adults playing together from all cultures
Maximum inclusive access to school information and participation
Opportunities and safe place to play
Value all learning styles
Community schools - open non-school hours
Less theft, more respect for property
Families and kids going to Sunday school and church
Community (including youth) evaluation of schools
Earning and learning program
Adults going to school
Job training programs
"This is the first time that anyone has asked my opinion about anything of importance." -- Vision Pilot Group Participant
Build and Sustain Unity Through Neighborhood Activity
Our village is a culturally vibrant, active, people-centered, mutually supportive community with a sense of "can-do" optimism. We want play spaces, community gatherings, and a full range of neighborhood services, activities and activism.
Standards
Actions
Be inclusive
Community centers
Learn from our elders
Schedule for park activities
Productive meetings
Playgrounds
Build people/Build community
Integrational activities
Everybody work together across diversity
Seats and benches for elders
Take care of each other
Block parties
Intergenerational interaction
Bike paths
Encourage participation
Community meetings to inform the community
Everyone has a role
Foster grandparent program
Celebration of victories
Organized youth program
Highlight what we have
Monthly contributions to the emergency fund
Neighborly feelings
Build neighborhood associations
Encourage the "successful" to stay and come back
Local nursing homes
Communication among residents
Local medical clinic
Interfaith cooperation
Rehabilitation center for addicts
Resident-centered service delivery system
Swimming
"We lived here in the 70's, but we moved out. Now, we're back because the children want to be close to our family. It's so exciting to be here and see all the wonderful things that are happening." --Cape Verdean Creole vision group
Community Economic Power
We don't just want more jobs and businesses; we want ones that build the economic power of community residents. Our future village is a place where we can shop, eat, play, bank - right here. Our unique multicultural richness also attracts visitors.
Standards
Actions
Support local businesses
Technology to set up job bank
Businesses giving back to the community
Friendly banking and ATM
Resident priority in local jobs
Multicultural food court
Jobs for residents - people going to work
Ice cream parlor
Resident-owned business
Open air market
Convenient local shopping
Movie theater
Tourist attraction
Pharmacy
Chain stores, only if they give back to the community
Dry cleaners
Laundromat
No liquor stores
Bookstore/international magazines
Cultural clothing stores
Bakery
Outdoor cafe
"Once we all get together and stay together, we can do anything." --Jessie Farrier
Physical and Visual Quality of Life
Dudley Village is a planned physical community - one that is high quality, affordable, resource efficient and well-cared for.
Standards
Actions
Residents plan for a total physical environment
Store, residents, city sweep streets
Our fair share of city resources and services
Build and renovate more affordable housing
Environmentally sound housing (resource efficient)
Reception (function) hall
More affordable housing
Parks for kids
Fix up sand box at Mary Hannon Park
Nice bus stops
Mail boxes
Lights
Only NYNEX pay phones
Better looking St. Patrick's Church
Streets plowed in winter
Spray pools (fountains)
More public trash cans
Street improvements
Parking lots
"I looked out my window last night and said, 'Oh what a beautiful light' and realized that it was the Dudley town common. It used to be so dark." --Jessie Farrier
Harmony with Nature
Our community is clean and green, and reflects our respect for our surroundings.
Standards
Actions
Seeing ourselves as extensions of the earth
Clean streets
Enforce laws that apply to a clean community
Signs to keep community clean
Able to sit anywhere and feel comfortable
Rubbish receptacles emptied
No more graffiti
Energy efficient housing
Plan and maintain open space
Adopt a tree
Botanical gardens maintained by city
Plants (not fences)
Fruit trees
Tree-lined streets
Statues of M.L. King, Cabral and Mariana Bracetti
Water fountains
Apple trees
"This is OUR place! That's why we all take care of it." -- the original play "A Village Grows in Dudley"
Community Security
A truly safe and secure community will be an outgrowth of successful realization of out entire vision. Two of the foundations are, a village spirit of watching out for each other, and the establishment of this as a neighborhood where negative activity will not be tolerated. Villager and police must each do our part.
Standards
Actions
Safe community
Foot patrols
Rapid police response time
More involvement in reporting crime
Respect, communications between community and police
No drugs
Police do their job
Resident committee to watch over parks and public spaces
Able to leave car doors/ windows open
Seat belts on school buses
Positive activity replace negative activity
Supervision on school buses
Signs that appeal to people's conscience
Lights
"There's no better place to live. We don't need to be ashamed of living here. Our friends, family, children and older people all are here" --Jose Barros
Community Friendly Transportation
Dudley village is children and pedestrian friendly. Residents can move safely and conveniently within the neighborhood, as well as to other areas of the city.
Standards
Actions
Community voice on transportation issues
Better driver training
More affordable transportation
One fare/bus transfers
Reduce/restrict traffic
No potholes/smooth running traffic
Pedestrian friendly
Free shuttle bus to South Bay (from Uphams Corner & Dudley Station)
Reliable public transportation (buses and trains)
Dudley owned private transportation system
Good air quality
More school bus stops
Environmentally friendly vehicles
Train and bus shelters
Trash cans at all bus stops
Electric cars and buses
"We won't get all the things we want if we (e.g. Blue Hill Avenue) become just a thoroughfare for commuters" --Mt. Pleasant vision group
Self and Group Expression
The nourishing of the human spirit - on an individual, ethnic group and on a community level - is a critical part of a wholesome neighborhood.
Standards
Actions
Create a unique sense of place
Arts
More opportunities for public expression
Murals
Unity through diversity - promote community cultural pride
Dancing/Music
Concerts on the Dudley Town Common
Street Theater
Live music in restaurants
Cultural opportunities for youth
Museum
"Everybody is dreaming for a better community" --Cape Verdean Creole vision group
Political Power
In order for our voice to be heard, we need to register to vote, vote, be informed and advocate for ourselves.
Standards
Actions
Be able to determine our own destiny - Vote!
Educate people about why Register to vote
Resident power!
Advocate for resources
Inform people about elections
Community phone to inform policy makers
Groom local people to run for office
"We've never been shy to dream and never so faithless as to not take risks." --Clayton Turnbull
Mutually Supportive Relationships
We can't do it alone. It is through cooperation that we come to understand that anything is possible.
Standards
Actions
Cooperation with other communities
Government and residents working together
Leverage for neighborhood groups
Institutional support
$ (money)
Use media - get message out; fight stereotypes
"You know what's best? We ALL had a chance to help plan this village. That's why it works.That's why people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds feel like this is really OUR place!" --the original play, "A Village Grows in Dudley"
Next Steps
Building on our tremendous accomplishments, we have updated our shared community vision. We have dared to dream, and to believe that we can define our village, and have power over out destiny. We will continually lift the ceiling on our sense of possibility
This vision will provide the framework for the DSNI staff and committee work. We will now work to translate vision into reality. We will look for the resources, work with partners and implement a strategic plan to achieve our goals.
Along the way, there will continue to be many remarkable things - big and small - happening in Dudley Village. Some will be very visible, like new businesses, gardens, lights, new families moving in, tot lots, and, who knows, maybe even a greenhouse.
Others will be less visible, but no less striking - like a safer neighborhood with a positive community spirit, even greater participation in our community decision making process, and every eligible Dudley resident will be registered to vote!
If we all stand and work together, we will achieve our vision!
More Information
Gertrudes Fidalgo or May LouieDSNI617-442-9670
Case Study: Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street
The award winning documentary about community vision, struggle, and change.Produced by Leah Mahan and Mark Lipman.
Holding Ground is at once a cautionary tale of urban policies gone wrong and a message of hope for all American cities. Through the voices of committed residents, activists and city officials, this one-hour documentary shows how a Boston neighborhood was able to create and carry out its own agenda for change.
SynopsisIntroductionThis section traces the decline of the Dudley Street neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s due to disinvestment and arson. Some 1,300 vacant lots in the area become Boston's dumping ground.
From the AshesIn 1985, angered by a neighborhood revitalization effort initiated without their participation, residents take charge of a community meeting. They create the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.
Don't Dump on UsTo create a sense of community power, DSNI's first campaign forces the city to clear vacant lots of appliances, rotting food, and abandoned cars and to close two illegal dumps.
Turning the TablesMore than 200 residents create a comprehensive plan to revitalize their neighborhood. The city adopts the plan as its official plan for the area.
Take a Stand, Own the LandFor development purposes, DSNI asks the city for eminent domain authority over privately held vacant land in its area. In 1988, it becomes the first grassroots group in the country to have this power.
Not Just Bricks and MortarThis segment depicts the broader social aspects of DSNI. The Young Architects Program provides youth with basic architectural skills that they use in building models for two planned community centers. DSNI also takes on a serious drug problem at the only park in the neighborhood.
Breaking GroundDespite a lack of local bank and developer investment, DSNI breaks ground on new housing in 1993. Later, a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrates the completion of the first 6 of 300 homes. Homebuyer classes prepare residents to get mortgages, which usually have been denied in the past.
New VoicesShortly after the completion of the first new homes, drug dealers move back into the park. At a winter vigil in the park, a teenager encourages all teens to become involved with DSNI. Young people take leadership in the multicultural festivals and together create a mural. The program ends as the community elects new DSNI board members, including neighborhood youth.
Holding Ground on Public Television Holding Ground is coming to public television in May 1997!
Holding Ground offers compelling viewing to people of all ages who are interested in the revitalization of America's cities. It will be of particular interest to:
Architects and urban planners
Bankers
Community development organizations
Environmental Organizations
Foundations
Government officials
Human service providers
Labor organizations
Police and corrections officials
Public health officials
Religious organizations
Youth organizations It will be a welcome addition to high school, college, and university courses in:
Anthropology
Architecture
Community Organizing
Criminal Justice
Environment
Film Studies
Government
Multiculturalism
Political Science
Public Health
Race Relations
Social Change
Social Policy
Social Work
Sociology
Urban Planning and Urban Studies
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Why the Poor Stay Poor
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/books/review/Ford-t.html?scp=92&sq=&st=nyt
By RICHARD THOMPSON FORD
Published: March 6, 2009
When the nation’s first black president took the oath of office, surrounded by the grandeur of the National Mall, it was easy to forget that one of the country’s most isolated and impoverished black ghettos was a few short blocks away. The poverty, violence and hopelessness in America’s inner cities have become increasingly dire in the four decades since the height of the civil rights movement. But as Barack Obama’s victory suggests, racial prejudice is less severe today than ever before. Why haven’t the problems of the ghettos improved along with race relations generally?
MORE THAN JUST RACE
Being Black and Poor in the Inner City
By William Julius Wilson
190 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $24.95
Conservatives have a ready answer. Racism is not the problem; instead, a pervasive culture of instant gratification, violence and loose morals — think gangsta rap — keeps poor blacks from enjoying the American dream, not white racists. Liberals have a more charitable, but unfortunately more obscure, rejoinder. Poor blacks today suffer from covert racism, unconscious racism, institutional racism, environmental racism and a host of other theoretically abstruse “racisms” that don’t involve cross-burning white supremacists or crude Archie Bunker-style bigots — and may not even involve racial animus or discrimination. Each side has little patience for the claims of the other. Conservatives reject the idea of structural and institutional racism as an intellectual’s way of playing the race card. Liberals attack any emphasis on the dysfunctional culture of the poor as “blaming the victim.”
In “More Than Just Race,” the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson recaps his own important research over the past 20 years as well as some of the best urban sociology of his peers to make a convincing case that both institutional and systemic impediments and cultural deficiencies keep poor blacks from escaping poverty and the ghetto.
The systemic impediments include both the legacy of racism and dramatic economic changes that have fallen with disproportionate severity on poor blacks. State-enforced racial discrimination created the ghetto: in the early 20th century local governments separated the races into segregated neighborhoods by force of law, and later, whites used private agreements and violent intimidation to keep blacks out of white neighborhoods. Worst, and most surprising of all, the federal government played a major role in encouraging the racism of private actors and state governments. Until the 1960s, federal housing agencies engaged in racial redlining, refusing to guarantee mortgages in inner-city neighborhoods; private lenders quickly followed suit.
Meanwhile, economic and demographic changes that had nothing to do with race aggravated the problems of the ghetto. Encouraged by recently built highways and inexpensive real estate, middle-class residents and industry left the inner city to relocate to roomier and less costly digs in the suburbs during the ’60s and ’70s. Those jobs that remained available to urban blacks further dwindled as companies replaced well-paid and unionized American workers with automation and cheaper overseas labor. The new economy produced most of its jobs at the two poles of the wage scale: high-paying jobs for the well educated and acculturated (lawyers, bankers, management consultants) and low-paying jobs for those with little education or skills (fast food, telemarketing, janitorial services).
And, as Wilson argued in an earlier book, “The Declining Significance of Race,”the success of the civil rights movement inadvertently made things worse for the most disadvantaged. After federal law prohibited housing discrimination, successful blacks began to leave the inner city for many of the same reasons whites did: in search of better schools, less crime, lower taxes and a leafier landscape. This left the least well off behind in ghettos that were both more socially isolated and more economically depressed than ever.
Today many ghetto residents have almost no contact with mainstream American society or the normal job market. As a result, they have developed distinctive and often dysfunctional social norms. The work ethic, investment in the future and deferred gratification make no sense in an environment in which legitimate employment at a living wage is impossible to find and crime is an everyday hazard (and temptation). Men, unable to support their families, abandon them; women become resigned to single motherhood; children suffer from broken homes and from the bad examples set by both peers and adults. And this dysfunctional behavior reinforces negative racial stereotypes, making it all the harder for poor blacks to find decent jobs.
Wilson criticizes the liberals and black power activists who attacked as racist Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient report “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (1965). According to Wilson, the vitriolic condemnation of the Moynihan Report effectively closed off a serious academic focus on the culture of poverty for decades, robbing policy makers of a complete and nuanced account of the causes of ghetto poverty. But he argues that the legacy of racism and changes in the economy matter more than the dysfunctional culture of the ghetto. And he rejects the argument that the black poor are responsible for their predicament, insisting that an aggressive public policy response is necessary to break the cycle of poverty.
“More Than Just Race” is somewhat ponderous and academic in style; too often the book details an important and fascinating question only to end inconclusively, with a call for “further research.” But this is more than made up for by its considerable substantive virtues: it is straightforward, accessible and sensible, free of the ideological cant and posturing that often mar even serious academic studies of racial issues.
At heart, Wilson is a Great Society liberal, so it’s easy to understand why conservatives might resist his analysis. But his suggestion that racism is less to blame for black poverty than are race-neutral changes in the labor market and his attempt to rehabilitate the study of the culture of poverty have made him a controversial figure in liberal academic and civil rights circles. As Wilson notes, some on the left reject any cultural explanation of black poverty — even one as sympathetic as that in the Moynihan Report or Wilson’s own — as blaming the victim. And the accusation of racism turns heads and grabs headlines, whereas Wilson’s complex and multifaceted investigation requires a book-length exposition.
Moreover, racism, unlike a complicated web of economic, demographic and cultural forces, triggers a legal response: instead of persuading recalcitrant legislators and voters to support policy reform, liberals can simply insist that the black poor, as victims of race discrimination, have a right to redress that courts must enforce, regardless of popular opposition. But the law’s arm is not long enough to reach bigotry that occurred in the past, nor can it get a grip on the economic and demographic changes that have hollowed out America’s inner cities. The urban poor need remedies that judges cannot order: public and private investment to create jobs that pay a living wage, training to help them learn new skills and understand the job market, and most of all a chance to move into racially and economically integrated neighborhoods where there are better opportunities and healthier cultural norms. Wilson’s levelheaded, thorough and unemotional analysis should help such badly needed policies prevail in the court of public opinion.
Wilson says the legacy of racism and changes in the economy matter more than the culture of the ghetto.
Richard Thompson Ford is a professor of law at Stanford University. His book “The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse” is being published in paperback this month.
By RICHARD THOMPSON FORD
Published: March 6, 2009
When the nation’s first black president took the oath of office, surrounded by the grandeur of the National Mall, it was easy to forget that one of the country’s most isolated and impoverished black ghettos was a few short blocks away. The poverty, violence and hopelessness in America’s inner cities have become increasingly dire in the four decades since the height of the civil rights movement. But as Barack Obama’s victory suggests, racial prejudice is less severe today than ever before. Why haven’t the problems of the ghettos improved along with race relations generally?
MORE THAN JUST RACE
Being Black and Poor in the Inner City
By William Julius Wilson
190 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $24.95
Conservatives have a ready answer. Racism is not the problem; instead, a pervasive culture of instant gratification, violence and loose morals — think gangsta rap — keeps poor blacks from enjoying the American dream, not white racists. Liberals have a more charitable, but unfortunately more obscure, rejoinder. Poor blacks today suffer from covert racism, unconscious racism, institutional racism, environmental racism and a host of other theoretically abstruse “racisms” that don’t involve cross-burning white supremacists or crude Archie Bunker-style bigots — and may not even involve racial animus or discrimination. Each side has little patience for the claims of the other. Conservatives reject the idea of structural and institutional racism as an intellectual’s way of playing the race card. Liberals attack any emphasis on the dysfunctional culture of the poor as “blaming the victim.”
In “More Than Just Race,” the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson recaps his own important research over the past 20 years as well as some of the best urban sociology of his peers to make a convincing case that both institutional and systemic impediments and cultural deficiencies keep poor blacks from escaping poverty and the ghetto.
The systemic impediments include both the legacy of racism and dramatic economic changes that have fallen with disproportionate severity on poor blacks. State-enforced racial discrimination created the ghetto: in the early 20th century local governments separated the races into segregated neighborhoods by force of law, and later, whites used private agreements and violent intimidation to keep blacks out of white neighborhoods. Worst, and most surprising of all, the federal government played a major role in encouraging the racism of private actors and state governments. Until the 1960s, federal housing agencies engaged in racial redlining, refusing to guarantee mortgages in inner-city neighborhoods; private lenders quickly followed suit.
Meanwhile, economic and demographic changes that had nothing to do with race aggravated the problems of the ghetto. Encouraged by recently built highways and inexpensive real estate, middle-class residents and industry left the inner city to relocate to roomier and less costly digs in the suburbs during the ’60s and ’70s. Those jobs that remained available to urban blacks further dwindled as companies replaced well-paid and unionized American workers with automation and cheaper overseas labor. The new economy produced most of its jobs at the two poles of the wage scale: high-paying jobs for the well educated and acculturated (lawyers, bankers, management consultants) and low-paying jobs for those with little education or skills (fast food, telemarketing, janitorial services).
And, as Wilson argued in an earlier book, “The Declining Significance of Race,”the success of the civil rights movement inadvertently made things worse for the most disadvantaged. After federal law prohibited housing discrimination, successful blacks began to leave the inner city for many of the same reasons whites did: in search of better schools, less crime, lower taxes and a leafier landscape. This left the least well off behind in ghettos that were both more socially isolated and more economically depressed than ever.
Today many ghetto residents have almost no contact with mainstream American society or the normal job market. As a result, they have developed distinctive and often dysfunctional social norms. The work ethic, investment in the future and deferred gratification make no sense in an environment in which legitimate employment at a living wage is impossible to find and crime is an everyday hazard (and temptation). Men, unable to support their families, abandon them; women become resigned to single motherhood; children suffer from broken homes and from the bad examples set by both peers and adults. And this dysfunctional behavior reinforces negative racial stereotypes, making it all the harder for poor blacks to find decent jobs.
Wilson criticizes the liberals and black power activists who attacked as racist Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient report “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (1965). According to Wilson, the vitriolic condemnation of the Moynihan Report effectively closed off a serious academic focus on the culture of poverty for decades, robbing policy makers of a complete and nuanced account of the causes of ghetto poverty. But he argues that the legacy of racism and changes in the economy matter more than the dysfunctional culture of the ghetto. And he rejects the argument that the black poor are responsible for their predicament, insisting that an aggressive public policy response is necessary to break the cycle of poverty.
“More Than Just Race” is somewhat ponderous and academic in style; too often the book details an important and fascinating question only to end inconclusively, with a call for “further research.” But this is more than made up for by its considerable substantive virtues: it is straightforward, accessible and sensible, free of the ideological cant and posturing that often mar even serious academic studies of racial issues.
At heart, Wilson is a Great Society liberal, so it’s easy to understand why conservatives might resist his analysis. But his suggestion that racism is less to blame for black poverty than are race-neutral changes in the labor market and his attempt to rehabilitate the study of the culture of poverty have made him a controversial figure in liberal academic and civil rights circles. As Wilson notes, some on the left reject any cultural explanation of black poverty — even one as sympathetic as that in the Moynihan Report or Wilson’s own — as blaming the victim. And the accusation of racism turns heads and grabs headlines, whereas Wilson’s complex and multifaceted investigation requires a book-length exposition.
Moreover, racism, unlike a complicated web of economic, demographic and cultural forces, triggers a legal response: instead of persuading recalcitrant legislators and voters to support policy reform, liberals can simply insist that the black poor, as victims of race discrimination, have a right to redress that courts must enforce, regardless of popular opposition. But the law’s arm is not long enough to reach bigotry that occurred in the past, nor can it get a grip on the economic and demographic changes that have hollowed out America’s inner cities. The urban poor need remedies that judges cannot order: public and private investment to create jobs that pay a living wage, training to help them learn new skills and understand the job market, and most of all a chance to move into racially and economically integrated neighborhoods where there are better opportunities and healthier cultural norms. Wilson’s levelheaded, thorough and unemotional analysis should help such badly needed policies prevail in the court of public opinion.
Wilson says the legacy of racism and changes in the economy matter more than the culture of the ghetto.
Richard Thompson Ford is a professor of law at Stanford University. His book “The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse” is being published in paperback this month.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Prisoners' Professor
http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:huffington_post:86...
Richard Shelton's first interest in a prisoner's poetry was born from curiosity rather than charity. In 1970, a convicted murderer named Charles Schmid--on death row at the Arizona State Prison in Florence--wrote Shelton and asked him to critique his work. Shelton, then a professor at the University of Arizona, accepted. He has since admitted that he did so "for all the wrong reasons...I was fascinated because he was a monster."
Shelton may not be proud of their first contact, but his relationship with Schmid led him to discover a life-changing project, when, four years into their relationship, the inmate convinced him to start a poetry workshop for prisoners. It's a workshop that Shelton has been teaching to this day.
A prison may seem like an odd place to find students of poetry, but in an environment where many are looking for a new sense of purpose, the art can have a remarkable impact. Last year, PBS's The News Hour With Jim Lehrer ran a feature on one of Shelton's workshops, and the prisoners spoke of the purpose that writing poetry had given their lives. Jaime Omar Meza, a thirty-year-old who has been in prison since age 17, related that "for the first time, I know what I want to do with myself." Another inmate, Andrew Jaiks, perhaps put it best:
"It's not a matter of giving something to the convicts. It's a matter of opening up people's lives so that they do have an avenue for understanding compassion, through the things that we read and hearing other people read, and learning how to take criticism, and have that be for some other reason than just to degrade you."
Shelton put it another way: "If you can learn to use language honestly, then you can apply it to yourself honestly, and I think you can see yourself in a different light." While it doesn't always work, poetry has helped many of Shelton's students find more meaning in life. Some, like Ken Lamberton and Jimmy Santiago Baca (both now out of prison), have even found success as writers.
Shelton recently published a memoir of his experiences called Crossing the Yard : Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer. The book describes how, in addition to the successes, there have been some difficult, and even dangerous, times. As you can see in this excerpt, the danger didn't always originate from the prisoners:
When I crossed the main yard that night, it was deserted. Chow was long since over, and the men were either in their cells or in classrooms in the education yard. I got to the iron door and yelled "Guard!" as I always did. The little basket came down as it always did, and I reached into it to get the key. But there was no key. Instead there were many little transparent plastic bags filled with white powder. I froze, but my mind was racing. From above, all they could see was my cowboy hat. They couldn't see my face. Somebody had made a terrible mistake. I had been told by men in the workshop that the mainstream drug trade was carried on by guards to supplement their extremely low salaries, but I hadn't believed it. Now I had seen too much, far too much for an outsider.
Usually, of course, the danger did come from the prisoners. Shelton's students once had to bar the door while a riot took place outside the classroom, and many of his students have been beaten, or worse. Schmid, his original pupil, was killed by fellow inmates in 1975. Shelton told the University of Arizona News, "It has been bloody. But the successes are also big and dramatic, and very rewarding....Many of these men have become like sons to us."
Shelton is now in his 34th year volunteering in the prison system. I think that this excerpt from his poem "Desert Water" helps to get at the charity of the man, and helps to explain why he does it:
once a yearwhen infallible toadsbegin to singall the spiders who left mereturn and I make room for them
I am too proudto mention their long absence
...we wait for the promised rainfor the second comingof water
each time it arriveslike the flood and I knowI have not wasted my life
spiders still cometo my house for shelter
You can read poetry by Arizona State Prison students in the journal Walking Rain Review, which publishes work by current and former inmates.
Richard Shelton's first interest in a prisoner's poetry was born from curiosity rather than charity. In 1970, a convicted murderer named Charles Schmid--on death row at the Arizona State Prison in Florence--wrote Shelton and asked him to critique his work. Shelton, then a professor at the University of Arizona, accepted. He has since admitted that he did so "for all the wrong reasons...I was fascinated because he was a monster."
Shelton may not be proud of their first contact, but his relationship with Schmid led him to discover a life-changing project, when, four years into their relationship, the inmate convinced him to start a poetry workshop for prisoners. It's a workshop that Shelton has been teaching to this day.
A prison may seem like an odd place to find students of poetry, but in an environment where many are looking for a new sense of purpose, the art can have a remarkable impact. Last year, PBS's The News Hour With Jim Lehrer ran a feature on one of Shelton's workshops, and the prisoners spoke of the purpose that writing poetry had given their lives. Jaime Omar Meza, a thirty-year-old who has been in prison since age 17, related that "for the first time, I know what I want to do with myself." Another inmate, Andrew Jaiks, perhaps put it best:
"It's not a matter of giving something to the convicts. It's a matter of opening up people's lives so that they do have an avenue for understanding compassion, through the things that we read and hearing other people read, and learning how to take criticism, and have that be for some other reason than just to degrade you."
Shelton put it another way: "If you can learn to use language honestly, then you can apply it to yourself honestly, and I think you can see yourself in a different light." While it doesn't always work, poetry has helped many of Shelton's students find more meaning in life. Some, like Ken Lamberton and Jimmy Santiago Baca (both now out of prison), have even found success as writers.
Shelton recently published a memoir of his experiences called Crossing the Yard : Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer. The book describes how, in addition to the successes, there have been some difficult, and even dangerous, times. As you can see in this excerpt, the danger didn't always originate from the prisoners:
When I crossed the main yard that night, it was deserted. Chow was long since over, and the men were either in their cells or in classrooms in the education yard. I got to the iron door and yelled "Guard!" as I always did. The little basket came down as it always did, and I reached into it to get the key. But there was no key. Instead there were many little transparent plastic bags filled with white powder. I froze, but my mind was racing. From above, all they could see was my cowboy hat. They couldn't see my face. Somebody had made a terrible mistake. I had been told by men in the workshop that the mainstream drug trade was carried on by guards to supplement their extremely low salaries, but I hadn't believed it. Now I had seen too much, far too much for an outsider.
Usually, of course, the danger did come from the prisoners. Shelton's students once had to bar the door while a riot took place outside the classroom, and many of his students have been beaten, or worse. Schmid, his original pupil, was killed by fellow inmates in 1975. Shelton told the University of Arizona News, "It has been bloody. But the successes are also big and dramatic, and very rewarding....Many of these men have become like sons to us."
Shelton is now in his 34th year volunteering in the prison system. I think that this excerpt from his poem "Desert Water" helps to get at the charity of the man, and helps to explain why he does it:
once a yearwhen infallible toadsbegin to singall the spiders who left mereturn and I make room for them
I am too proudto mention their long absence
...we wait for the promised rainfor the second comingof water
each time it arriveslike the flood and I knowI have not wasted my life
spiders still cometo my house for shelter
You can read poetry by Arizona State Prison students in the journal Walking Rain Review, which publishes work by current and former inmates.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Prosecutors Block Access to DNA Testing for Inmates
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/us/18dna.html
May 18, 2009
Prosecutors Block Access to DNA Testing for Inmates
By SHAILA DEWAN
In an age of advanced forensic science, the first step toward ending Kenneth Reed’s prolonged series of legal appeals should be simple and quick: a DNA test, for which he has offered to pay, on evidence from the 1991 rape of which he was convicted.
Louisiana, where Mr. Reed is in prison, is one of 46 states that have passed laws to enable inmates like him to get such a test. But in many jurisdictions, prosecutors are using new arguments to get around the intent of those laws, particularly in cases with multiple defendants, when it is not clear how many DNA profiles will be found in a sample.
The laws were enacted after DNA evidence exonerated a first wave of prisoners in the early 1990s, when law enforcement authorities strongly resisted reopening old cases. Continued resistance by prosecutors is causing years of delay and, in some cases, eliminating the chance to try other suspects because the statute of limitations has passed by the time the test is granted.
Mr. Reed has been seeking a DNA test for three years, saying it will prove his innocence. But prosecutors have refused, saying he was identified by witnesses, making his identification by DNA unnecessary.
A recent analysis of 225 DNA exonerations by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, found that prosecutors opposed DNA testing in almost one out of five cases. In many of the others, they initially opposed testing but ultimately agreed to it. In 98 of those 225 cases, the DNA test identified the real culprit.
In Illinois, prosecutors have opposed a DNA test for Johnnie Lee Savory, convicted of committing a double murder when he was 14, on the grounds that a jury was convinced of his guilt without DNA and that the 175 convicts already exonerated by DNA were “statistically insignificant.”
In the case of Robert Conway, a mentally incapacitated man convicted of stabbing a shopkeeper to death in 1986 in Pennsylvania, prosecutors have objected that DNA tests on evidence from the scene would not be enough to prove his innocence.
And in Tennessee, prosecutors withdrew their consent to DNA testing for Rudolph Powers, convicted of a 1980 rape, because the victim had an unidentified consensual sex partner shortly before the attack.
Such arguments, defense lawyers say, often ignore scientific advances like the ability to identify multiple DNA profiles in a single sample.
Defense lawyers also say the arguments ignore the proven power of DNA to refute almost every other type of evidence.
In a case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, for example, Lynne Abraham, the Philadelphia district attorney, argued that the defendant, Anthony Wright, was not entitled to DNA testing because of the overwhelming evidence presented at trial, including his confession, four witnesses and clothing stained with the victims’ blood that the police said was found at Mr. Wright’s home. The Pennsylvania DNA statute requires the courts to determine if there is a “reasonable possibility” that the test would prove innocence.
Prosecutors say they are concerned that convicts will seek DNA testing as a delay tactic or a fishing expedition, and that allowing DNA tests undermines hard-won jury verdicts and opens the floodgates to overwhelming requests.
“It’s definitely a matter of drawing the line somewhere,” said Peter Carr, the assistant district attorney who handled the case of Mr. Wright, who was accused of raping and killing a 77-year-old woman. The defendant did not request testing until 2005, three years after the statute was passed, Mr. Carr said, and in his view there was no possibility that the test would show innocence.
“There’s also the idea that you want finality for the victim’s sake,” Mr. Carr said. “If someone else’s semen was found at the crime scene, we’d have to talk to the victim’s family about whether the victim was sexually active.”
Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, a New York legal advocacy group that uses DNA to help the wrongfully convicted, said that most prosecutors no longer resisted testing in cases like Mr. Wright’s, where there is one perpetrator. More obstacles arise, Mr. Scheck said, in cases with multiple defendants or cases where a test result might point to another suspect, even if it does not clearly prove the innocence of the defendant.
In one such case near Austin, Tex., a defendant who was convicted in the bludgeoning death of his wife requested a DNA test on a bloody bandanna found 100 feet from the house. On its own, a test of the bandanna would not prove the guilt or innocence of the defendant the same way testing semen in a rape case might. But if it matched DNA found at the scene of a similar crime in the same county, or DNA in a database of convicted felons, it would be significant evidence that someone else might be responsible — the kind of evidence that might plant a reasonable doubt in a juror’s mind or lead to a confession by a perpetrator.
Although such matches have been found in many cases, most state DNA statutes focus only on whether a test alone could prove innocence. The purpose of Tennessee’s DNA statute, a court there said, was “to establish the innocence of the petitioner and not to create conjecture or speculation that the act may have possibly been perpetrated by a phantom defendant.”
Law enforcement officials often say, “ ‘We’re not going to consider the possibility that a third party did it,’ ” Mr. Scheck said, adding, “which is completely crazy because you use the databank every day to make new criminal cases.”
In Mr. Reed’s case in East Baton Rouge Parish, the district attorney who first prosecuted the case and now his successor, Hillar C. Moore III, have appealed every DNA-related ruling in Mr. Reed’s favor and objected to even a hearing on the matter.
They have argued that Mr. Reed’s identity was not an issue in the trial because he was identified by the victim, even though DNA evidence has repeatedly contradicted eyewitness identifications. They have argued that there was no way of knowing whether the evidence would yield a usable DNA profile — a question that would be settled by testing it.
The victim testified that two attackers had sexual intercourse with her, but the prosecutors now argue that it might have been only one, Mr. Reed’s accomplice. Even if Mr. Reed’s DNA was nowhere to be found, said Prem Burns, the first assistant district attorney, he would still be guilty of aiding the rapist.
Mr. Reed’s lawyers have argued that a test on a rape kit and semen could prove his innocence if it shows two distinct profiles and neither is a match.
But Ms. Burns said that under her reading of the law, the mere possibility that the test would show two profiles is not enough — Mr. Reed has to demonstrate, in advance, that a favorable test result would resolve his innocence without question.
But the prosecutors also seem to believe that Mr. Reed’s arguments are far-fetched. “There are simply too many ‘ifs’ in this case,” Mr. Moore wrote in a recent appeal.
Prosecutors said much the same when Douglas Warney, convicted of murder in Rochester in 1997, argued that a DNA test could lead to the real killer. They called his assertion “a drawn-out kind of sequence of if, if, if.” Yet that is exactly what happened after Mr. Warney’s DNA test, and the killer, when he was identified, confessed.
Nina Morrison, a lawyer for Mr. Wright, said: “The one thing I’ve learned in doing this for seven years is there’s no reason to guess or speculate. You can just do the test.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 19, 2009 An article on Monday about resistance by prosecutors to agree to DNA tests for prison inmates misstated a point made by prosecutors in the case of Kenneth Reed, a Louisiana inmate who was convicted of rape and is seeking such a test. The prosecutors have argued that Mr. Reed’s identity is not at issue in the case because he was identified by the victim — not that he was identified by the defendant.
May 18, 2009
Prosecutors Block Access to DNA Testing for Inmates
By SHAILA DEWAN
In an age of advanced forensic science, the first step toward ending Kenneth Reed’s prolonged series of legal appeals should be simple and quick: a DNA test, for which he has offered to pay, on evidence from the 1991 rape of which he was convicted.
Louisiana, where Mr. Reed is in prison, is one of 46 states that have passed laws to enable inmates like him to get such a test. But in many jurisdictions, prosecutors are using new arguments to get around the intent of those laws, particularly in cases with multiple defendants, when it is not clear how many DNA profiles will be found in a sample.
The laws were enacted after DNA evidence exonerated a first wave of prisoners in the early 1990s, when law enforcement authorities strongly resisted reopening old cases. Continued resistance by prosecutors is causing years of delay and, in some cases, eliminating the chance to try other suspects because the statute of limitations has passed by the time the test is granted.
Mr. Reed has been seeking a DNA test for three years, saying it will prove his innocence. But prosecutors have refused, saying he was identified by witnesses, making his identification by DNA unnecessary.
A recent analysis of 225 DNA exonerations by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, found that prosecutors opposed DNA testing in almost one out of five cases. In many of the others, they initially opposed testing but ultimately agreed to it. In 98 of those 225 cases, the DNA test identified the real culprit.
In Illinois, prosecutors have opposed a DNA test for Johnnie Lee Savory, convicted of committing a double murder when he was 14, on the grounds that a jury was convinced of his guilt without DNA and that the 175 convicts already exonerated by DNA were “statistically insignificant.”
In the case of Robert Conway, a mentally incapacitated man convicted of stabbing a shopkeeper to death in 1986 in Pennsylvania, prosecutors have objected that DNA tests on evidence from the scene would not be enough to prove his innocence.
And in Tennessee, prosecutors withdrew their consent to DNA testing for Rudolph Powers, convicted of a 1980 rape, because the victim had an unidentified consensual sex partner shortly before the attack.
Such arguments, defense lawyers say, often ignore scientific advances like the ability to identify multiple DNA profiles in a single sample.
Defense lawyers also say the arguments ignore the proven power of DNA to refute almost every other type of evidence.
In a case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, for example, Lynne Abraham, the Philadelphia district attorney, argued that the defendant, Anthony Wright, was not entitled to DNA testing because of the overwhelming evidence presented at trial, including his confession, four witnesses and clothing stained with the victims’ blood that the police said was found at Mr. Wright’s home. The Pennsylvania DNA statute requires the courts to determine if there is a “reasonable possibility” that the test would prove innocence.
Prosecutors say they are concerned that convicts will seek DNA testing as a delay tactic or a fishing expedition, and that allowing DNA tests undermines hard-won jury verdicts and opens the floodgates to overwhelming requests.
“It’s definitely a matter of drawing the line somewhere,” said Peter Carr, the assistant district attorney who handled the case of Mr. Wright, who was accused of raping and killing a 77-year-old woman. The defendant did not request testing until 2005, three years after the statute was passed, Mr. Carr said, and in his view there was no possibility that the test would show innocence.
“There’s also the idea that you want finality for the victim’s sake,” Mr. Carr said. “If someone else’s semen was found at the crime scene, we’d have to talk to the victim’s family about whether the victim was sexually active.”
Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, a New York legal advocacy group that uses DNA to help the wrongfully convicted, said that most prosecutors no longer resisted testing in cases like Mr. Wright’s, where there is one perpetrator. More obstacles arise, Mr. Scheck said, in cases with multiple defendants or cases where a test result might point to another suspect, even if it does not clearly prove the innocence of the defendant.
In one such case near Austin, Tex., a defendant who was convicted in the bludgeoning death of his wife requested a DNA test on a bloody bandanna found 100 feet from the house. On its own, a test of the bandanna would not prove the guilt or innocence of the defendant the same way testing semen in a rape case might. But if it matched DNA found at the scene of a similar crime in the same county, or DNA in a database of convicted felons, it would be significant evidence that someone else might be responsible — the kind of evidence that might plant a reasonable doubt in a juror’s mind or lead to a confession by a perpetrator.
Although such matches have been found in many cases, most state DNA statutes focus only on whether a test alone could prove innocence. The purpose of Tennessee’s DNA statute, a court there said, was “to establish the innocence of the petitioner and not to create conjecture or speculation that the act may have possibly been perpetrated by a phantom defendant.”
Law enforcement officials often say, “ ‘We’re not going to consider the possibility that a third party did it,’ ” Mr. Scheck said, adding, “which is completely crazy because you use the databank every day to make new criminal cases.”
In Mr. Reed’s case in East Baton Rouge Parish, the district attorney who first prosecuted the case and now his successor, Hillar C. Moore III, have appealed every DNA-related ruling in Mr. Reed’s favor and objected to even a hearing on the matter.
They have argued that Mr. Reed’s identity was not an issue in the trial because he was identified by the victim, even though DNA evidence has repeatedly contradicted eyewitness identifications. They have argued that there was no way of knowing whether the evidence would yield a usable DNA profile — a question that would be settled by testing it.
The victim testified that two attackers had sexual intercourse with her, but the prosecutors now argue that it might have been only one, Mr. Reed’s accomplice. Even if Mr. Reed’s DNA was nowhere to be found, said Prem Burns, the first assistant district attorney, he would still be guilty of aiding the rapist.
Mr. Reed’s lawyers have argued that a test on a rape kit and semen could prove his innocence if it shows two distinct profiles and neither is a match.
But Ms. Burns said that under her reading of the law, the mere possibility that the test would show two profiles is not enough — Mr. Reed has to demonstrate, in advance, that a favorable test result would resolve his innocence without question.
But the prosecutors also seem to believe that Mr. Reed’s arguments are far-fetched. “There are simply too many ‘ifs’ in this case,” Mr. Moore wrote in a recent appeal.
Prosecutors said much the same when Douglas Warney, convicted of murder in Rochester in 1997, argued that a DNA test could lead to the real killer. They called his assertion “a drawn-out kind of sequence of if, if, if.” Yet that is exactly what happened after Mr. Warney’s DNA test, and the killer, when he was identified, confessed.
Nina Morrison, a lawyer for Mr. Wright, said: “The one thing I’ve learned in doing this for seven years is there’s no reason to guess or speculate. You can just do the test.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 19, 2009 An article on Monday about resistance by prosecutors to agree to DNA tests for prison inmates misstated a point made by prosecutors in the case of Kenneth Reed, a Louisiana inmate who was convicted of rape and is seeking such a test. The prosecutors have argued that Mr. Reed’s identity is not at issue in the case because he was identified by the victim — not that he was identified by the defendant.
Friday, May 8, 2009
The One Billion Dollar Man
http://www.fatherhood.org/downloadable_files/FatherAbsenceCost.pdf
Why should policymakers care about responsible fatherhood?
The federal government spends $100 billion every year to support father-absent homes.In June 2008, National Fatherhood Initiative released The One Hundred Billion Dollar Man, a ground-breaking study that showed that the federal government spends $100 billion each year supporting father-absent homes. And that's a conservative estimate - the study did not measure impact for related costs such as the criminal justice system, which is overwhelmed by men who grew up in father-absent homes.
The most challenging social problems of our time are connected to father absence.If you want to address poverty, child abuse, crime/recidivism, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, or education, then restoring fatherhood is an integral part of the solution. Father absence is not a single issue, and its social and economic consequences are felt across society.
Father absence has a direct impact on the well-being of millions of children. 25 million children, 1 out of 3, grow up in homes in which their biological fathers do not live. In the African-American community, the rate is 2 out of 3. These children are significantly more likely to live in poverty, drop out of school, engage in risky behaviors…all issues the government grapples with every day.
Why should policymakers care about responsible fatherhood?
The federal government spends $100 billion every year to support father-absent homes.In June 2008, National Fatherhood Initiative released The One Hundred Billion Dollar Man, a ground-breaking study that showed that the federal government spends $100 billion each year supporting father-absent homes. And that's a conservative estimate - the study did not measure impact for related costs such as the criminal justice system, which is overwhelmed by men who grew up in father-absent homes.
The most challenging social problems of our time are connected to father absence.If you want to address poverty, child abuse, crime/recidivism, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, or education, then restoring fatherhood is an integral part of the solution. Father absence is not a single issue, and its social and economic consequences are felt across society.
Father absence has a direct impact on the well-being of millions of children. 25 million children, 1 out of 3, grow up in homes in which their biological fathers do not live. In the African-American community, the rate is 2 out of 3. These children are significantly more likely to live in poverty, drop out of school, engage in risky behaviors…all issues the government grapples with every day.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
‘No Child’ Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/education/29scores.html
‘No Child’ Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap
By SAM DILLON
Published: April 28, 2009
The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation’s best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.
What We Learn From School Tests
Strategies for closing the academic achievement gap between white and minority students. Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President George W. Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.
Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.”
“There’s not much indication that N.C.L.B. is causing the kind of change we were all hoping for,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland. “Trends after the law took effect mimic trends we were seeing before. But in terms of watershed change, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”
The results no doubt will stoke debate about how to rewrite the No Child law when the Obama administration brings it up for reauthorization later this year. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods, and make other adjustments. “We still have a lot more work to do,” Mr. Duncan said of the latest scores. But the long-term assessment results could invigorate those who challenge the law’s accountability model itself.
Despite gains that both whites and minorities did make, the overall scores of the United States’ 17-year-old students, averaged across all groups, were the same as those of teenagers who took the test in the early 1970s. This was largely due to a shift in demographics; there are now far more lower-scoring minorities in relation to whites. In 1971, the proportion of white 17-year-olds who took the reading test was 87 percent, while minorities were 12 percent. Last year, whites had declined to 59 percent while minorities had increased to 40 percent.
The scores of 9- and 13-year-old students, however, were up modestly in reading, and were considerably higher in math, since 2004, the last time the test was administered. And they were quite a bit higher than those of students of the same age a generation back. Still, the progress of younger students tapered off as they got older.
Some experts said the results proved that the No Child law had failed to make serious headway in lifting academic achievement. “We’re lifting the basic skills of young kids,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “but this policy is not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy.”
But Margaret Spellings, Mr. Duncan’s predecessor under President Bush, called the results a vindication of the No Child law.
“It’s not an accident that we’re seeing the most improvement where N.C.L.B. has focused most vigorously,” Ms. Spellings said. “The law focuses on math and reading in grades three through eight — it’s not about high schools. So these results are affirming of our accountability-type approach.”
Whether anyone knows how to extend the results achieved with younger students through the turbulent high school years remains an open question.
The math and reading test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Long-Term Trends, was given to a nationally representative sample of 26,000 students last year. It was the 12th time since 1971 that the Department of Education administered a comparable test to students ages 9, 13 and 17. The scores, released on Tuesday in Washington, allow for comparisons of student achievement every few years back to the Vietnam and Watergate years.
The results point to the long-term crisis in many of the nation’s high schools, and could lead to proposals for more federal attention to them in the rewrite of the No Child law, which requires states to administer annual tests in grades three to eight, but only once in high school.
The 2008 score gap between black and white 17-year-olds, 29 points in reading and 26 points in math, could be envisioned as the rough equivalent of between two and three school years’ worth of learning, said Peggy Carr, an associate commissioner for assessment at the Department of Education.
Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has written about raising successful black children, said the persistence of the achievement gap should lead policymakers to seek new ways to increase low-performing students’ learning time.
“Where we see the gap narrowing, that’s because there’s been an emphasis on supplemental education, on after-school programs that encourage students to read more and do more math problems,” Dr. Hrabowski said. “Where there are programs that encourage that additional work, students of color do the work and their performance improves and the gap narrows.”
But he said that educators and parents pushing children to higher achievement often find themselves swimming against a tide of popular culture.
“Even middle-class students are unfortunately influenced by the culture that says it’s simply not cool for students to be smart,” he said. “And that is a factor here in these math and reading scores.”
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents more than 60 metropolitan school systems, said that much of the progress among the nation’s minority students has been the result of hard work by urban educators, not only since the No Child law took effect but for decades before.
“N.C.L.B. did not invent the concept of the achievement gap — much of the desegregation work in the ’70s and ’80s was in fact about giving poor, Hispanic and African-American kids access to better resources and curriculum,” Mr. Casserly said. “You do see from these results that in that period, the gains were steeper. It wasn’t being called an achievement gap, but that was what that was about.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 29, 2009, on page A1 of the NY Times
‘No Child’ Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap
By SAM DILLON
Published: April 28, 2009
The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation’s best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.
What We Learn From School Tests
Strategies for closing the academic achievement gap between white and minority students. Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President George W. Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.
Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.”
“There’s not much indication that N.C.L.B. is causing the kind of change we were all hoping for,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland. “Trends after the law took effect mimic trends we were seeing before. But in terms of watershed change, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”
The results no doubt will stoke debate about how to rewrite the No Child law when the Obama administration brings it up for reauthorization later this year. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods, and make other adjustments. “We still have a lot more work to do,” Mr. Duncan said of the latest scores. But the long-term assessment results could invigorate those who challenge the law’s accountability model itself.
Despite gains that both whites and minorities did make, the overall scores of the United States’ 17-year-old students, averaged across all groups, were the same as those of teenagers who took the test in the early 1970s. This was largely due to a shift in demographics; there are now far more lower-scoring minorities in relation to whites. In 1971, the proportion of white 17-year-olds who took the reading test was 87 percent, while minorities were 12 percent. Last year, whites had declined to 59 percent while minorities had increased to 40 percent.
The scores of 9- and 13-year-old students, however, were up modestly in reading, and were considerably higher in math, since 2004, the last time the test was administered. And they were quite a bit higher than those of students of the same age a generation back. Still, the progress of younger students tapered off as they got older.
Some experts said the results proved that the No Child law had failed to make serious headway in lifting academic achievement. “We’re lifting the basic skills of young kids,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “but this policy is not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy.”
But Margaret Spellings, Mr. Duncan’s predecessor under President Bush, called the results a vindication of the No Child law.
“It’s not an accident that we’re seeing the most improvement where N.C.L.B. has focused most vigorously,” Ms. Spellings said. “The law focuses on math and reading in grades three through eight — it’s not about high schools. So these results are affirming of our accountability-type approach.”
Whether anyone knows how to extend the results achieved with younger students through the turbulent high school years remains an open question.
The math and reading test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Long-Term Trends, was given to a nationally representative sample of 26,000 students last year. It was the 12th time since 1971 that the Department of Education administered a comparable test to students ages 9, 13 and 17. The scores, released on Tuesday in Washington, allow for comparisons of student achievement every few years back to the Vietnam and Watergate years.
The results point to the long-term crisis in many of the nation’s high schools, and could lead to proposals for more federal attention to them in the rewrite of the No Child law, which requires states to administer annual tests in grades three to eight, but only once in high school.
The 2008 score gap between black and white 17-year-olds, 29 points in reading and 26 points in math, could be envisioned as the rough equivalent of between two and three school years’ worth of learning, said Peggy Carr, an associate commissioner for assessment at the Department of Education.
Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has written about raising successful black children, said the persistence of the achievement gap should lead policymakers to seek new ways to increase low-performing students’ learning time.
“Where we see the gap narrowing, that’s because there’s been an emphasis on supplemental education, on after-school programs that encourage students to read more and do more math problems,” Dr. Hrabowski said. “Where there are programs that encourage that additional work, students of color do the work and their performance improves and the gap narrows.”
But he said that educators and parents pushing children to higher achievement often find themselves swimming against a tide of popular culture.
“Even middle-class students are unfortunately influenced by the culture that says it’s simply not cool for students to be smart,” he said. “And that is a factor here in these math and reading scores.”
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents more than 60 metropolitan school systems, said that much of the progress among the nation’s minority students has been the result of hard work by urban educators, not only since the No Child law took effect but for decades before.
“N.C.L.B. did not invent the concept of the achievement gap — much of the desegregation work in the ’70s and ’80s was in fact about giving poor, Hispanic and African-American kids access to better resources and curriculum,” Mr. Casserly said. “You do see from these results that in that period, the gains were steeper. It wasn’t being called an achievement gap, but that was what that was about.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 29, 2009, on page A1 of the NY Times
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
A racial achievement gap exists between Black and Latino students
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/detailed_achievement_gap_findings.pdf
A racial achievement gap exists where the average black or Latino student is roughly 2-3 years of
learning behind the average white student
– A racial gap exists today regardless of how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score)
and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures
– Averaging math and reading across fourth and eighth grade, 48% of blacks and 43% of Latino students are
"below basic," while only 17% of whites are; this gap exists in every state
– An even larger racial achievement gap exists in urban school districts, with only 3 of 11 districts having a
black-white gap smaller than the national average
Relative to other countries, black and Latino eighth-graders in the United States perform at the level of
transitioning countries in math and science; this trend is amplified as students get older
– In eighth-grade math, Latino students performed at the level of Malaysia and blacks perform at the level of
Bosnia and Herzegovina
– For 15-year-olds in science, US Latino students are at the level of Chile and Serbia and US black students
score on par with Mexico and Indonesia
This racial achievement gap grows in magnitude as a child nears entry to the workforce from grade 4
to grade 12
– Between fourth and twelfth grade, the gap grows 41% for Latino students and 22% for black students
The racial achievement gap is not correlated with overall state performance (i.e., better states do not
have smaller gaps)
– Even in states with the highest overall test scores, the racial achievement gap is very large (e.g.,
Massachusetts has among the highest overall NAEP scores, but black and Latino students are 8x more
likely to be “below“ basic in fourth-grade math than whites)
– And these regional and state variations in the achievement gap cannot be explained by the proportion of
black and Latino students in the educational system
A racial achievement gap exists where the average black or Latino student is roughly 2-3 years of
learning behind the average white student
– A racial gap exists today regardless of how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score)
and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures
– Averaging math and reading across fourth and eighth grade, 48% of blacks and 43% of Latino students are
"below basic," while only 17% of whites are; this gap exists in every state
– An even larger racial achievement gap exists in urban school districts, with only 3 of 11 districts having a
black-white gap smaller than the national average
Relative to other countries, black and Latino eighth-graders in the United States perform at the level of
transitioning countries in math and science; this trend is amplified as students get older
– In eighth-grade math, Latino students performed at the level of Malaysia and blacks perform at the level of
Bosnia and Herzegovina
– For 15-year-olds in science, US Latino students are at the level of Chile and Serbia and US black students
score on par with Mexico and Indonesia
This racial achievement gap grows in magnitude as a child nears entry to the workforce from grade 4
to grade 12
– Between fourth and twelfth grade, the gap grows 41% for Latino students and 22% for black students
The racial achievement gap is not correlated with overall state performance (i.e., better states do not
have smaller gaps)
– Even in states with the highest overall test scores, the racial achievement gap is very large (e.g.,
Massachusetts has among the highest overall NAEP scores, but black and Latino students are 8x more
likely to be “below“ basic in fourth-grade math than whites)
– And these regional and state variations in the achievement gap cannot be explained by the proportion of
black and Latino students in the educational system
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