Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, is introduced by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner during his campaign launch of "Mike for Black America," at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, is introduced by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner during his campaign launch of "Mike for Black America," at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, right, is introduced by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner during his campaign launch of “Mike for Black America,” at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Last week, presidential candidate and former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg launched his “Mike for Black America” campaign to focus on issues important to African Americans. Among them is, of course, criminal justice reform. Earlier in the month, his campaign released a set of proposals to address the end of mass incarceration by focusing on expanding the use of diversionary programs, such as drug courts.
It’s a bipartisan, agreeable position embraced by other presidential candidates. Even Donald Trump proposed pushing for more funding for veterans courts, another diversionary court program.
Diversionary programs by and large focus on low-level crimes (small drug possession, DUIs, misdemeanor assaults) and target people who might be struggling with addiction or mental health issues. The goal is to get these offenders into treatment programs while also requiring them to meet probation guidelines in lieu of jail time.
To understand the effort it takes to complete these programs, it’s best to think of them less as slap-on-the-wrist justice (which some prosecutors and lawmakers have compared them to) and more like rehab with a heavy dose of supervision.
For example, completing a drug court program can take years, with participants required to show up for weekly check-ins to probation officers, obtain medically assisted treatment, attend group therapy classes and, of course, attend monthly court dates and pay various court fees. In some counties, drug court participants still have to plead guilty to their charges, which will never get erased from their record. Compare that to a drug sentence of six months, and it’s hard to say that the court programs amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Operating the programs is expensive for governments at the outset, requiring more resources for costly therapy programs and medicines. At the same time, most people who wind up in jail for drugs or mental health issues are repeat offenders, and it costs jails much more in the long run to house and care for inmates who come back for longer sentences with each new crime.
Yesterday, The Philadelphia Inquirer looked at Bucks County’s diversionary programs, where more than 600 minor drug offenders have completed its program, freeing up caseloads for prosecutors to focus on more important or violent crimes.
“The last thing that we want is to catch somebody in a spin cycle of the justice system, where they may be a minor offender because they suffer from substance abuse disorder,” District Attorney Matthew Weintraub told The Inquirer. “If we can treat that underlying problem quickly, we have a much better chance of helping that person live and accomplishing the ultimate goal: never seeing them again.”
But there is a catch here. Oftentimes, diversionary court programs are only open to people who committed low-level crimes. Sometimes the programs only admit people with no past records, excluding people whose criminal acts are directly tied to their addiction or mental health issues — people who would likely stay out of trouble with the help these programs are designed to deliver.
And in some cases, as I reported in the past with Veteran Treatment Courts, people just aren’t signing up. In one Iowa county with a treatment court, only 10 veterans had gone through the program in four years despite hundreds of veterans incarcerated in state prisons.
We are looking into diversionary court programs. If you have a story or want us to look into something with them, reach out to us through our Listening Post. – Joseph Darius Jaafari
AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
A bronze statue of abolitionist Harriet Tubman is seen during a private viewing ahead of its unveiling at the Maryland State House, Monday, Feb. 10, 2020, in Annapolis. The statue, along with a statue of Frederick Douglass, will be unveiled Monday night in the Old House Chamber, the room where slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864. While the commissioning of the statues was put in motion several years ago, their arrival coincides with new leadership in the state legislature, including Maryland’s first black and first female speaker of the House and the first new Senate president in more than three decades. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
A study of Harriet Tubman: Tomorrow, Temple University’s Philadelphia campus hosts its annual Black history conference, focusing on the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman’s legacy. The conference is free to the public, and will last all day. For history on the conference, which is in its 17th year, and why it’s held in Pennsylvania, take a look at BillyPenn’s piece here.
The poor vote: For Keystone Crossroads, Miles Bryan looks at what it’s like to be on the verge of poverty, without a home but still trying to take part in politics. Studies show that those who live in unstable financial and housing conditions vote less often. And in Reading, where the eviction rate is highest among the state’s top five cities, that could mean low turnout in a city that has recently experienced an uptick in eligible Latino voters.
The high cost of living in Pa: If you and your partner live in city suburbs with two children, you have to make $88,000 a year if you want to live without government assistance, according to a Self-Sufficiency Standard compiled for 41 states by the University of Washington. That’s a shocking number for most Pennsylvanians, where the median income for the state is about $28,000 lower. The Inquirer broke down the standard of living calculations for the county suburbs surrounding Philly.
Having a son who will die in prison: Reporter Joshua Vaughn with The Appeal looked at what life is like for family members who have loved ones incarcerated for life in Pennsylvania. The Appeal’s short documentary interviews experts and activists on the tolls (financial and personal) of life-without-parole sentences, especially in cases where sentencing was handed out to defendants at such a young age.
A peek into the KKK: When Trinity Lule was researching white supremacy for her high school newspaper, her teacher suggested she call up the Knights of the KKK for an interview. A few weeks later, Lule got the interview, and she also got a front-page story about how a biracial student journalist was able to get earnest and candid quotes from the leader of the nation’s most well-known racist group. The Post-Gazette ran a story on Lule. You can read Lule’s story here.
Infighting: Democrats in Allegheny County are at odds over the endorsement of a candidate for state representative who has publicly stated her support for President Trump and mocked other Democratic positions. More here from Pittsburgh Current‘s Charlie Deitch.
