Everyday Injustice

The year 2023, marks the 50th year since the US prison population began its unprecedented surge. The Sentencing Project, is marking this year with a series of reports on Mass Incarceration Trends.

Joining Everyday Injustice this week, is Sentencing Project, co-director of research, Ashley Nellis.

In a recently published account, Nellis noted, “In 1972, the imprisonment rate was 93 per 100,000 people. The prison expansion that commenced in 1973 reached its peak in 2009, achieving a seven-fold increase over the intervening years. Between 1985 and 1995 alone, the total prison population grew an average of eight percent annually.”

This growth is not evenly distributed: “Racial and ethnic disparities are a substantial feature of the American prison system.”

Nellis writes: “Systemic causes range from a history of racial and ethnic subordination to ongoing police tactics that unfairly ensnare people of color into the system, and also include charging and sentencing practices that create stiffer punishments for people of color. Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Latinx men are 2.5 times as likely. Nationally, one in 81 Black adults in the United States is serving time in state prison.”

Listen as Ashley Nellis of the Sentencing Project discusses some of the critical data behind mass incarceration.

In their book, Suspect Citizens, Frank Baumgartner and his colleagues looked at a massive amount of police stops in North Carolina over a number of years. The findings shed light on the nature of police stops and one of the remarkable features is that the findings have held outside of North Carolina as well.

In short, Black and brown drivers are disproportionately stopped. When they are stopped, they are disproportionately having their vehicles searched. When they have their vehicles searched, they are slightly less likely to have contraband found on them.

More importantly, the overall hit rate for finding contraband is extremely low, calling into question the justification of using traffic stops as pretexts for broader criminal investigations.

Listen as Frank Baumgartner, a social scientist, discusses the data and ways that racial profiling overall impacts policing, and police violence.

Marc Bookman, Co-founder of nonprofit Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in Philadelphia and author of the book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays.

This book, a collection of essays that highlights the injustice of the death penalty.

Listen as he discusses some of the worst aspects of the criminal legal system. Bookman discusses among other things: racist judges and the role overall of racism in the death penalty, judges who execute despite the jury ruling for life, the role of mental health, and children killing their abusers.

In the end, he concludes that the death penalty is ineffective, arbitrary and widely infected with racism.

Aasha Ealy was a law student accused of a crime that she didn’t commit. What should have a simple case has dragged on since 2016. During that time, she has finished law school and passed the bar. And still, her case languishes in the system.

Listen to her amazing story as she was pressured into taking a plea, ended up rescinding that plea agreement, lost her attorney and ended up representing herself in the process.

Even after progressive DA George Gascon was elected in 2020, his office has refused to dismiss the case.

Listen as Aasha Ealy tells her amazing story of injustice and wrongful incarceration.

This week on Everyday Injustice, Jessica Henry talks about people who are convicted of crimes that never happened.

There are a whole class of wrongful convictions – some based on flawed forensic science, such as shaken baby or arson investigators.

Henry also chronicles suicide being mislabeled as a homicide. And more nefarious problems such as corrupt police planting drugs on an innocent suspect. A false allegation of assault is invented to resolve a custody dispute. Perhaps a false allegation of sexual assault for a consensual encounter.

Listen as Jessica Henry discusses why this problem underlies a deeply flawed system which allows—even encourages—these convictions to regularly occur.

And it has consequences as people spend years behind bars for crimes that never happened.

As most observers are well aware by now, the US incarcerates a much higher proportion of its population than any other nation. In Jeffrey Bellin’s book, “Mass Incarceration Nation,” he conceives of the system as having two distinct levels.

The criminal justice system where the public seeks “justice” in response to serious crimes like murder and rape. And the criminal legal system, “where the government enforces a variety of laws ostensibly to achieve certain policy goals, like reducing drug abuse or gun violence or illegal immigration.”

Bellin argues that while the increase in those serious crimes in the 1970s and 1980s did lead to a tough on crime crack down, “Increasing the penalties for crime in this country didn’t end crime.”

Instead, it ebbs and lfows as it has.

But what has changes is that our “tough on crime” policies have now filled prisons with a “small percentage but growing number of unlucky ‘criminals’” and once there, “tougher laws and tougher officials made sure they stayed locked up.”

Pamela Price made history on Monday, being sworn in by Oakland Mayor-Elect Sheng Thao, who herself made history as the first Hmong to be elected mayor of a major US City. Price became the first Black elected DA in Alameda County, birthplace of the Black Panthers.

Also speaking during the ceremony in front of at least 200 enthusiastic supporters in Downtown Oakland was Wanda Johnson, mother of Oscar Grant, Aisha Wahab who became the first Muslim and Afghan American to be elected to the California State Senate, and the legendary prison abolitionist and radical professor, Angela Davis.

Price following being officially sworn in, said, “This is an exclamation point in the history for Alameda County. I stand before you as our first Black woman District Attorney.”

During her speech, Price said, “For the last 10 years, the district attorney’s office has stood in the way of the progressive reforms, ushered in by our California legislature and endorsed overwhelmingly by Alameda County voters our message resonated in Alameda County because we know that the criminal justice system is not working for the hardworking people of Alameda County.”

Listen to Pamela Price, the legendary Angela Davis, and Wanda Johnson, the mother of Oscar Grant, who was killed more than a decade ago on a BART Train by a police officer has been fighting for justice for her son and so many others like him.

This week on Everyday Injustice we have NCAJ (National Center for Access to Justice) Policy Director Lauren Jones talking about their work on behalf of criminal justice reform.

“NCAJ uses data, research and policy analysis to expose how the justice system fails to stand up for equal justice- and all too often, functions as a source of oppression.”

We talk about their creation of the Justice Index and look at policy areas like fines and fees, where just about every state is failing to produce actual equity and justice.

Listen as Lauren Jones highlights how states have failed to provide justice in numerous areas.

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk with Joanne Scheer, whose son’s incarceration on felony murder, special circumstances led her to create the Felony Murder Elimination Project.

Under the felony murder law, if someone committee a felony and a person died during the commission of that crime, all individuals are held accountable for that death and are legally guilty of murder. Even if they were minor participants and the death occurred at the hand of another and was not foreseeable.

Under reforms like SB 1437, that has changed and going forward, people who were not major participants and not the actual killer are only guilty of the underlying crime and those who previously were convicted, can petition the court for resentencing.

But that doesn’t impact Joanne Scheer’s son. There have been attempts to change the law, such as Dave Cortese, who was previously a guest on Everyday Injustice, who have attempted to reach the high bar and pass SB 300 which would have allowed for people sentenced to LWOP who were not the actual killers to have a chance at parole.

Listen to the efforts Scheer and the Felony Murder Elimination Process to bring fairness and justice for many who languish in prison despite minimal involvement in the underlying crimes.

Today on Everyday Injustice we talk with Talitha Floyd from Sacramento Area Congregations Together (Sac ACT).

Sacramento ACT empowers ordinary people to identify and change the conditions that create economic and racial injustice.

Among the work we discussed was their Live Free program, whereby Sac ACT works to increase transparency and accountability with law enforcement, addressing implicit bias in law enforcement.

Following the killing of Stephon Clark in March 2018 and the release of findings in 2019, ACT has worked to organize healing circles and healing spaces for community.

ACT leads the Sacramento Reinvestment Coalition, a team of leaders and partners who advocate for a Reinvestment agenda in Sacramento County.

Learn about some of the work happening in the Faith Community in the Sacramento Area.