Stop Throwing Kids into Debtors' Prison

September 29, 2016

Jessica Feierman and Alex R. Piquero- In Arkansas, a 13-year-old was incarcerated for three months in a juvenile correctional facility, placed in solitary confinement and forced to miss even more school because he and his family couldn't afford to pay a $500 truancy fine. In California, a mother was still paying off $7,000 for her son's jail fees months after he was killed on the streets. A mother who had been laid off from her curtain factory job pawned her jewelry and rented out half of the family home to pay for her son's juvenile probation and placement fees. Stories like these documenting the adverse toll that fines and court costs exert on juvenile offenders and their families are common across the country.

This Dickensian situation is not limited to just a few unlucky kids. Each year, approximately 1 million youth appear in juvenile court, which is ostensibly created to provide services to youth in trouble or in need. Far too often, youth are assessed a variety of court-ordered fines, fees or restitution that they cannot afford. Youth who cannot pay are pushed deeper into the juvenile justice system; many face removal from their families and incarceration in facilities with high rates of violence and harmful practices like solitary confinement and strip searches.

Our new Juvenile Law Center report, Debtors' Prisons for Kids? The High Cost of Fines and Fees in the Juvenile Justice System, examines the national prevalence of financial obligations in juvenile court and the dire consequences for many youth and families. Youth are fined for skipping school, underage drinking, and smoking tobacco. They are charged for the cost of expunging their juvenile records, the cost of public defenders, the cost of treatment or probation, mental health evaluations, and HIV tests, often without regard to their ability to pay. They may even be asked to pay for the cost of diversion services like arts programs, parenting classes or group therapy sessions designed to prevent juvenile court involvement. Costs can range from minimal amounts to tens of thousands of dollars.

In most states, a failure to pay court-ordered costs can lead to secure confinement for youth. Once youth are locked up, costs continue to pile on, with many families owing child support to the state, or a per-night cost of incarceration.

These policies exacerbate an already pronounced economic divide: When youth with money get in trouble, they are often allowed to stay at home, remain in school and receive community-based services, but youth in poverty experience incarceration and further justice system involvement because they can't afford the price of their freedom.

Costs and fees also make our communities less safe. We found that imposing fines, fees and restitution actually increased the likelihood of recidivism in a sample of more than 1,000 adolescent offenders, even after ruling out many other potential factors. Moreover, the higher these imposed costs, the higher the recidivism rates.

Netanya-who? The Media’s Short Attention Span on Israel

18 months after the press covered his speech to Congress like it was World War III, the media largely ignored his U.N. address. 

September 23, 2016

Poynter - Irrelevance takes hold so quickly among the press. Only Fox News went live to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the U.N. Thursday. CNN and MSNBC opted for a North Carolina district attorney's press conference. So much for the single biggest foreign policy mess the U.S. confronts, the Middle East.

Remember his speech to Congress, which everybody covered as if it was World War III? Perpetually tanned, cigarette-sneaking, golf-loving John Boehner was Speaker of the House. That was a very long 18 months ago.

Yes, some did acknowledge Bibi was in New York Thursday to speak to the entire world.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on Tuesday laid out, in the starkest terms yet, his differences with the Obama administration on how to deal with the threat of Iran's nuclear program." (Los Angeles Times) Very proper.

There was the U.N.'s own sanitized version. "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never been about settlements, or about establishing a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly today, saying 'It’s always been about the existence of a Jewish State […] in any boundary.” (U.N.)

But it's the Israeli press that was most instructive and displayed its counterpart to the Fox vs. Huffington Post contrasts when it comes to coverage of President Obama in the U.S.

There was the marshmallow-soft right-of-center Jerusalem Post: "This time there were no props — like a cartoon of a bomb — and no gimmicks, such as a 45-second pause to ram home a point, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday." (Jerusalem Post)

But then came Haaretz, the left-of-center newspaper. Its headline was short on ambiguity: "Netanyahu does his usual schtick before U.N. audience with zero expectations."

"Usual schtick?"

Ah, yes: "It’s true, however, that Netanyahu had good reason to be smug this year, and the best evidence of that was, in fact, the scores of U.N. diplomats who abandoned their seats in favor of a lunch at some posh East Side restaurant or solid schmoozing over a sandwich outside in the hall. They didn’t leave because of anti-Semitism, God forbid, but to prevent themselves from falling asleep in their seats. Netanyahu, in a surprising collaborative effort with Abbas, has managed to exhaust just about everyone." (Haaretz)

Detroit Public School Scandal: Judge Locks Up 4 More Detroit Principals for Robbing Students in a Kickback Scheme

September 9, 2016

Detroit Free Press - One by one, the convicted principals pleaded for mercy, insisting they lived for their students and had suffered enough already.One called himself “a hero.”

But the judge sentenced them all to prison — longer than the defendants preferred, but shorter than what prosecutors had hoped — for helping a millionaire businessman cheat the state’s poorest schoolchildren out of $2.7 million in supplies.

“They need to know that they all deserve better than what these principals gave us,” U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said Thursday in sentencing four more Detroit principals to prison for stealing from the students they were supposed to protect.

In a sensational school corruption trial that has triggered public outrage and planted a bull's-eye  on Detroit’s struggling schools, Roberts handed down sentences that ranged from six months to one year to four ex-principals who took kickbacks from vendor Norman Shy as rewards for approving his phony invoices.

The scheme, prosecutors said, cheated DPS out of $2.7 million in school supplies that were paid for but never delivered.

Prosecutors had argued for stiffer penalties — in some cases double what the defendants got — but Roberts took into account the principals' otherwise clean records and years of good deeds.

For Spain Elementary Principal Ronald Alexander, whose school won a $500,000 giveaway on the Ellen DeGeneres talk show in February, any prison sentence was too severe. At least that’s what he argued to the judge as he called himself “a hero” who lived for his students and school community.

“All I have ever done is give my best to these children,” Alexander said. “I buried three students because the kids’ parents didn’t have money — out of my own pocket … I love this school. It think it's unfair."

Alexander, who received a one-year prison sentence for accepting $23,000 in kickbacks from Shy and a $23,000 restitution order, blamed his legal troubles on the vendor.

"Mr. Shy — he did me wrong. He was saying he gave me donations," Alexander said, referring to the gift cards and checks that Shy gave him over the years.

“Mr. Shy — he did me wrong. He was saying he gave me donations.”

Alexander said he spent it on the kids.

"I did not pad my pockets … some of the gift cards are still at home," he said later, blaming Shy again. "He's a known crook and he's been doing it for years."

Alexander also stressed that he needed to stay out of prison so that he could care for his 87-year-old mother. He also talked about his army of supporters — students, staff, religious leaders and the parent association at Spain Elementary School, which wrote the judge a letter saying it wants Alexander back.

"Nobody knows how bad I feel to have to go out from my job like this," Alexander said.

"I'm sad. I'm hurt. I feel bad. … I should be judged by the life I have lived. … I'm not the bad person that the federal (government) has accused me" of being.

Roberts reminded him that he had pleaded guilty.

"Despite your guilty plea, it sounds to me that you think you're guilty of nothing," said Roberts, who then quoted Alexander's plea agreement, in which he admitted that he approved fraudulent invoices "for school supplies that were never delivered to Spain Elementary."

"This is verbatim from your (plea) agreement," Roberts said. "This court and government doesn't have to make up anything. You signed it."

Roberts also rebuffed Alexander’s claim that he was hoodwinked by Shy.

"You are not blameless. You had everything in your hands," Roberts said. "Mr. Shy did not make you commit a crime."

Roberts also handed down a one-year sentence to former principal Gerlma Johnson, who came to court dressed in all black and sobbed after learning her punishment for accepting $22,884 in kickbacks from Shy.
Johnson, 60, the former principal at Charles Drew Academy and Earhart Elementary-Middle School, pleaded guilty to bribery in May and said she spent her kickbacks in two ways: buying jewelry, perfume and clothing for herself and helping her school.

In addition to the year behind bars, Roberts ordered Johnson to pay $22,884 in restitution to DPS.

“You essentially robbed Peter to pay Peter. It was their money,” Roberts said, referring to the students who were cheated out of school supplies.

The 5 Most Outrageous Things Hillary Clinton Said in Her FBI Interview

September 2, 2016

CNBC - Hillary Clinton was already having a bad week as polls show Donald Trump closing the gap between them and, in a few polls, even pulling ahead. It got worse Friday after the FBI released Clinton's answers to investigators' questions over her use of a private email server, revealing some pretty damaging responses from the former Secretary of State.

Here are five of the most outrageous statements Clinton made in that three-and-a-half hour FBI interview:

1. She cited her 2012 concussion as the reason that she cannot remember details of briefings during her "transition out of office."

2. She said she never even thought whether emails she exchanged on a future U.S. drone attack should be classified.

3. She said she thought the "C" before a paragraph indicated alphabetical order. The C actually stands for "classified."

4. She said no one ever raised concerns to her about her use of a private email server.

5. She said she could not recall any training on how to handle classified information.

What's more, Clinton aides told the FBI that the Secretary of State frequently replaced her Blackberry phone and the whereabouts of her old device would become "unknown." The FBI report suggests there were at least 13 different devices used.

You're going to hear on the mainstream media all weekend a lot of supposedly objective pundits insist the above revelations offer no "smoking gun." And that may be true from a legal standpoint, but we're in the middle of an election and these statements are poison for Clinton and cannon fodder for Donald Trump.

She conducted official State Department business while suffering from a concussion that may have impaired her memory? The report suggested she was only working for a few hours a day at the point based on doctor's orders but if it was that bad that she couldn't remember important briefings, she should have been on medical leave.

No. 2 stretches the limits of credulity. We're supposed to believe Clinton never even considered a discussion about a future drone attack should be kept secret? Saying "I never thought," basically sounds like a dodge on a charge of possible pre-meditation.

As for the claim that no one ever talked to her about any concerns about the private server, that's dangerous territory. Because it's probably not going to be hard to find someone at the State Department, or formerly at the State Department, to contradict this claim. In fact, there are many statements just now released from this FBI interview that are likely going to be refuted and in short order.

The "I could not recall" response to the question about prior training is a classic defendant's dodge. It works great because even if Clinton did get training, it can be argued that it doesn't matter because she doesn't remember it. But while it's a good legal dodge, it's potentially lethal in the midst of an election where you're trying to look like a competent and alert leader.

FBI Director James Comey may have decided not to indict Clinton, but the public revelation of this transcript today does a lot of damage. While you can expect most of the mainstream media pundits to pour cold water on the severity of the facts contained in them, the transcripts put the email scandal right back into the center of the news cycle. The last time that happened, Clinton's poll numbers wilted badly and it took a series of Trump missteps to reverse the decline.

She was already slipping in the polls — this could turn out to be very damaging for her and very good for Trump.