IJJ’s Criminal Justice Conference Opens
With Both Warnings and Words of Optimism

By VICTOR MERINA

For Connie Rice, an attorney and architect of Los Angeles City’s landmark anti-gang report, changing a mass incarceration strategy to a public health model is critical in dealing with an “endemic epidemic” of violence on community streets.

For Sheriff Lee Baca, who oversees the country’s largest jail system, a criminal justice system overtaxed by mental health issues among those incarcerated has worsened a staggering problem.

For Darren “Bo” Taylor, a former gang member who now works with at-risk youth as founder of Unity One, the everyday violence in communities of color is simply “a crisis.  It’s an emergency.”

And Blair H. Taylor, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban League, puts it even more dramatically, calling the need to curb community violence today’s paramount issue.  “It’s a problem, I believe, bigger than any problem in the 21st Century,” said Taylor, “bigger than global warming, bigger than terrorism.”

A civil rights attorney.  A law enforcement official.  An anti-gang worker.  A community activist.  All had warnings about the dangers of violent crime but all also shared optimism that a committed effort to change the criminal justice system could be a step toward curbing the mayhem and other crime that have shattered so many families.

Theirs were among the voices heard on the opening day of a three-day conference at the USC Davidson Executive Conference Center aimed at looking at one of the most vexing problems of the day: how to revamp a criminal justice system with its high recidivism rate and perceived inequities while also maintaining public safety.

The conference, “A 21st Century Criminal Justice System for Los Angeles: A Look at the Present, A Model for the Future and a Blueprint for Media Coverage,” was organized by 
USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism (IJJ) and funded in part by a grant from The California Wellness Foundation. 

“This is a solution-driven conference,” said Joe Domanick, an IJJ senior fellow who designed the criminal justice conference and who reminded the audience that the statistics can be daunting. 

The California correction system costs taxpayers $10 billion a year, Domanick has said, straining the state's budget. He added that after doing their time in prison, tens of thousands return each year to Los Angeles with most having received little or no educational help, mental health care, treatment for drug or alcohol abuse, or other services while in prison.  With no meaningful and coordinated reentry strategy to assist them, Domanick said seven out of 10 return to prison within three years of their release.

Many of the day’s panelists said it’s an ideal time to begin thinking of possible solutions.  Among the suggestions were reentry assistance programs that would help parolees better transition from prison and to find jobs.  Others suggested that community institutions such as churches get more involved with inmates and ex-prisoners.

Melinda Bird, senior counsel of the ACLU of Southern California, said that jails should no longer be used to incarcerate the homeless or the mentally ill.  Instead, she said, authorities should get the mentally ill on federal disability benefits and into supportive housing and reduce the jail costs of housing prisoners.

“We have an addiction to mass incarceration,” Bird said, “and it is an expensive addiction.”

Although there were warnings about the financial costs and political risks involved, there was a note of optimism among many of the participants. LAPD Chief William Bratton suggested looking at other locales, including his former home state of New York, where downsizing of jail populations has been accomplished with a corresponding downturn in crime.

“What informs my optimism is that in some places they are getting it right,” said Bratton, who joined Sheriff Baca on a panel that looked at policing “beyond arrest and imprisonment.”  

Bratton said that he, Baca and others in local law enforcement are open to changes in the criminal justice system.  “There is no time that I’m aware of where there is as much coordination, cooperation and cohesion than at this time among the law enforcement communities,” said Bratton.

In what she called “a perfect storm” of propitious events, Connie Rice had praise for both the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department. During a luncheon talk, she acknowledged that her tactics have changed from the days when she was successfully suing the police department in class-action cases. In January of 2007, she released a highly regarded report, "A Call to Action: A Case for a Comprehensive Solution to L.A.'s Gang Violence Epidemic."

Rice, director of The Advancement Project, now counts the police agencies as part of a coalition that includes community activists, former gang members and others seeking to deal with the violence that has prevented students from attending schools and that has caused post-traumatic stress disorder among many L.A. youths. She said that under a public health model, the entire “eco system” must be corrected.

In advocating an end to the root causes of such violence and reforms of the criminal justice system, Rice said politicians must come on board, although she acknowledged they might be reluctant to do so. “This is high risk, high wire, no-net kind of stuff,” she said, urging journalists to press legislators.

Ernest J. Wilson III, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, said the conference was important not just for the school but also for the city, state and country.
“I don’t need to tell you,” he told the audience. “You are professionals and knowledgeable in this area, but it really is a crisis that you are facing in this area of criminal justice.”

Moments later, former Attorney General John Van de Kamp, in an opening keynote address, echoed that theme and said that the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which he chairs, is seeking ways to reduce the prison population.

Those steps, he said, include improving police procedures so that there are fewer mistaken identifications in criminal cases, less reliance on jailhouse snitches and more scrutiny on false confessions.   He added that American Bar Association’s Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions is also looking at ways to help parolees in readjusting to release and supporting community-based treatment alternatives to incarceration.

“I didn’t come here this morning to dwell on the past,” said Van de Kamp, who also once served as Los Angeles County District Attorney, “but the fact that we have made some progress gives hope that more progress can be made.”

Victor Merina, the author of this piece, is a Senior Fellow for USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism.