Our Justice Isn’t Just

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This is the second post of a series of blog posts discussing what skills and experience we should look for in the presidential candidates. To read the previous post on this subject, scroll down to the post entitled “What Should He Or She Care About?”

In choosing which Presidential candidate we vote for we should try to determine which of them cares most about reforming our criminal justice system, and which of them seems best qualified to do it. The following explains why this is so important.

Our criminal justice system isn’t working. If it is meant to persuade criminals to end their life of crime it is failing. Worse yet, our criminal justice system comes down harder on People of Color than on White people.

For example, let’s compare the U.S. to China. China’s population is much greater than ours. And it is a dictatorship. Chinese citizens can be arrested for saying or writing things that reflect badly on the government or the nation. For example, recently, newspaper writers who described the recent problems in China’s stock market were pressured to stop doing so. Attorneys who represent defendants in court are often pressured, or even arrested, for representing their clients.

Given the above, it is a no-brainer. There must be more people in Chinese prisons than in American prisons. In fact the opposite is true.

The population of China is 1.4 billion. The population of the US is 320 million. So the population of China is a little over 4 times that of the US. However we have more people in prison than they do. According to the Institute For Criminal Policy Research, the number of people in US prisons is a little under 2.2 million. For China, that number is a little under 1.7 million.

People in the criminal justice system of the United States track what is called the recidivism rate of federal and state prison inmates. They track how many released prison inmates commit new crimes and get sent back to prison. According to a recent report of the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, a study of state prisoners from 30 states found that 67.8 percent of inmates were re-arrested within three years of their release and 76.6 percent were re-arrested within five years.

A report From The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, says 61% of the prisoners released from our state prisons are back in prison within 3 years. That percentage makes the word “rehabilitation” a cruel joke.

According to the Ella Baker Center For Human Rights, the federal government and state governments combined spend $80 billion a year to run their prisons. To paraphrase the late flamboyant gay pianist Liberace, “Do you like our prisons? You better. You paid for them.”

The most important goal of our criminal justice system must be the rehabilitation of criminals. This will help criminals make a better more honest life for themselves. That, in turn, will make life safer for people like you and me.

Then there is the issue of disparate treatment of Whites and People of Color. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2014, Black men had the highest imprisonment rate in every age group and were in state or federal prisons 3.8 to 10.5 times more often than White men

and 1.4 to 3.1 times more often than Hispanic men. That same source said that in 2013, 37% of inmates in federal prisons were African American. And yet African Americans are only 12.4% of this nation’ population.

The situation in California is not much better. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 29% of male inmates in California’s prisons are African American.

We should try to determine which candidate is likely to care about these issues and to do something about the problem.

What Should He or She Care About? – Part One

I voted for Barrack Obama twice. I did so, in part, because I hoped our first Black president would make addressing the multiple problems of African Americans one of his highest priorities. Sadly he has not done that.

Actually a White president from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, was much more vigorous, and public, in his efforts to address these problems.

I think addressing these issues should be a high priority of any presidential candidate we vote for. Here’s why.

According to an August 7 report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for adult Blacks is 9.6%. For Whites it is 4.6%.

For White males, aged 16-19 years of age, the unemployment rate is 20.6%, but for Black youth the rate is 31.1%.

According to a recent report from the Henry K Kaiser Foundation, 10% of White Americans live in poverty. For African Americans the number is 27%.

The American dream has always been that, with hard work and diligence, poor Americans can move up to the middle class. However recent facts refute that expectation, particularly as it relates to African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

The Urban Institute did a study of trends in the gap in family wealth among White, Black, and Hispanic households. Their report says that, in 1989, White households had 5 times more in retirement savings than Black or Hispanic households. In 2013 Whites had 7 to 11 times more in retirement savings.

The amount of income you have depends greatly on the amount of education you have. Generally, those with college degrees, get higher wages than those without degrees. According to data from the US Census Bureau, among those 25 years or older, 29.3% of Whites (non-Hispanic) had a four year college degree while just 17.7% of Blacks do.

This college graduation rate gap may be influenced by the differences in the way White and Black students are treated in grade and high school. Recently the Graduate School of Education, of the University of Pennsylvania issued a report on the expulsion or suspending rates at school districts in 13 southern states. They reported that, on average, just under 25% of the students are Black, but Black students were nearly half of those who were expelled or suspended. Large numbers of suspended or expelled students drop out and do not even get a high school diploma.

And then there is the criminal justice system. According to a study by the ACLU, one in three Black men can expect to go to jail in their life time. For White men that number is one in seventeen.

The ACLU report notes that “The War on Drugs has been a war on communities of color. The racial disparities are staggering: Despite the fact that White and Black people use drugs at similar rates, Black people are jailed on drug charges 10 times more often than White people are. Black people are also three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white people are.”

The Jury selection process may be part of the problem. Lawyers for defendants, and prosecutors are permitted to dismiss prospective jurors with”peremptory challenges”. This means the person challenged in this way will not serve on the jury, and with few exceptions, the attorney or prosecutor need not give any reason for dismissing the potential juror. Studies done in several southern states found that prosecutors in those states were 3 times more likely to dismiss Black jurors than White Jurors.

A recent report published in the Journal of the American Economic Association notes that, if juries in death penalty trials were unbiased, the rate of appeals court reversals of death sentence convictions of Blacks and Whites should be the same. However, the report notes that the death sentence conviction reversals for Blacks is 3% to 9% higher than for White defendants. This suggests bias in the trial courts.

We need to seek and support residential candidates who make correcting these problems a high priority if he or she is elected.

More Later

Does He Or She Have What It Takes?

This is the first article in my new blog. I’ll use the blog to share my thoughts on the critical issues of the day. I’d be happy to have you comment on those views. An honest, respectful, dialog on the issues we care about is good for the soul.

As we head into the 2016 presidential election, it’s critical that we think deeply about the experience, qualities and views needed for the next president of the United States. Then we should measure each candidate against those criteria. Here are my views on the subject.

1. We need a candidate to have experience running a large entity.

Experience as Governor of a state, or in running a large corporation, will allow us to judge whether or not a candidate has the skills needed to run the US government.

For example, Carly Fiorina, a Republican candidate for President, ran technology company Hewlett Packard for six years before being fired by the company’s Board. During her stay with the company, the company’s stock lost half its value and she had fired thousands of the company’s employees. Should we support a candidate with that record?

By contrast, Governor Jerry Brown (not a presidential candidate) gets high marks from California residents. According to a recent LA Times poll, 64% of respondents approve Brown’s performance as governor. He must be doing something right. A candidate like that, might be worth supporting.

2. We need candidates who are capable of creating the right “corporate culture”. Especially, a culture which says “sloppy work will not be tolerated.” I voted twice for President Obama twice, but, sadly he did not make this clear to federal workers. If he had done so, we probably not have seen the following:

– The sloppy computer design of the Obama Care software that made it so hard for people to sign up for health insurance.

– The spectacle of US Secret Service personnel using our tax dollars to hire prostitutes when they should have been guarding the president.

– An intruder, with a knife, making it all the way into the White House before being stopped. He had crawled over the White House fence and run across the lawn, before entering the building.

When candidates have experience as governors, or corporate executives, we can evaluate their experience and consider whether or not thy can establish a good corporate culture.

3. We need candidates with lots of legislative experience.

Experience in a state legislature or Congress makes it possible to assess the legislative skills of the candidate. Is the candidate skillful in getting key legislation enacted? Presidents often need to persuade Congress to enact legislation that meets the President’s goals. President Obama’s ability to get Congress to allow the Iran nuclear agreement to go though will depend on his skill in persuading House and Senate members to support it.

President Lyndon Johnson had legislative skills in spades. He honed these skills during the 17 years he served in Congress. When he became President he faced a Congress controlled by southern Democrats who firmly opposed civil rights legislation designed to secure the rights of Black Americans. Even so, he persuaded Congress to enact several important civil rights laws.

4. We need candidates with foreign policy experience or knowledge.

As must be obvious, the next President will have to deal with many, complex, challenges in foreign policy. If our next President makes a mess in handling these challenges, our nation could be in serious danger. When candidates have such experience, we can review how they did in handling foreign policy issues.

Who has had such experience? They include ambassadors, Secretaries of State and members of the foreign relations committees of the US Senate and US House of Representatives. Political science professors, who specialize in international relations, would have lots of information that might help them deal with this nation’s international challenges.

Probably no candidates will have all of the above. But the more of them a candidate has, the better we can judge whether he or she has the skills we need in our next President.

More In My Next Blog