Objective: Exploring what leads people into the prison system and what are the ramifications of this on both the prisoner an on society.
Slogan: Tough on Tough on Crime
Members: Alex Bergin, Rachel Lee, Izzy Patten, Lanie Tubbs, Bailey Tulloch
****
Third Post:
Izzy, San Francisco: Higher Education and Lower Spending
To gain a better sense of the costs of the California criminal justice system, I sought to compare funding among different program areas and analyze state general fund money allocated to prisons with that allocated to another state responsibility. I chose two major budgetary areas that have received different treatment from the California legislature: corrections and higher education. In recent years, numerous studies conducted by organizations such as Public Policy Institute of California and the California Legislative Analyst’s Office have demonstrated the disparities in California’s budget: California currently spends more on corrections than on higher education and invests more per prisoner than per college student. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons and nearly $50,000 per inmate but $5.7 billion on higher education and less than $9000 per student.
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office posits that as the state witnessed recessions and budget shortages in the last ten years, spending on corrections has increased while spending on higher education has decreased. However, according to a study conducted by public policy organization California Common Sense, the negative correlation between education and corrections spending existed earlier than recent economic downturns. In fact, according to California Common Sense, the financial dichotomy has existed for thirty years, with higher education’s share of the budget “consistently declining” and correction’s share of the budget “consistently increasing.” Since 1980, higher education spending has decreased by 13 percent while spending on prisons and correctional programs has skyrocketed by 436 percent.
There are multiple causes of the spending disparity, but chief among them are policies like sentence enhancements and the Three Strikes Law, which resulted in explosions in California’s prison population in the late 70s-90s. In fact, fifty-five percent of the growth in corrections spending is a direct function of growing prison population during the time period. Additionally, the study notes that while prison guard salaries have steadily increased, university faculty salaries have not experienced the same boost and have in fact declined in recent years. However, state spending on corrections has also increased because of programs implemented in the 2000s to improve recidivism rates and inmates’ quality of life through more comprehensive health care and rehabilitation programs.
Bailey, Washington, D.C. – Comparative Prison Spending
I have always found prisons an interesting topic ever since stumbling upon an article about correctional facilities in Scandinavia a while back. It talked about the pristine conditions of these prisons, and as I browsed the photos of a maximum security Norwegian institution, I was shocked that some of the cells looked even nicer than my dorm room. These seemingly luxurious prisons, aimed at helping mentally correct prisoners and treating them with humane dignity – which they call “restorative justice” – give Noway one of the lowest recidivism rates on the world at approximately 20 percent. The United States, however, has one of the highest, with 76.6 percent of prisoners being re-arrested within five years.
Despite the beneficial social impacts of these prisons, Norway in fact spends roughly $93,000 per prisoner while the United States spends closer to $31,000. Quality of prisons aside, this makes sense considering Norway has a total of 3,800 prisoners in country compared to the 2.2 million within the U.S. But though Norway spends significantly more capital on each individual, the grand total adds up to around 353.4 million…and the U.S. spends closer to 6.82 trillion.
Of the 2.2 million prisoners and 6.82 trillion spent on them nationally, only about 3,000 reside in specifically D.C. correctional facilities (and interestingly, almost all of them are male). Collectively, the three varying kinds of prisons located in D.C. – the Central Detention Facility, Correctional Treatment Facility, and Community Corrections Operations – cost around $145,000 to operate annually.
These statistics are relatively low in comparison to those of D.C.’s surrounding states – and unsurprisingly so, considering the city’s size. Despite this, D.C. is still a leading city on promoting programs to encourage prisoner correction through education and support systems. The recent passing of the NEAR Act, which provides a stipended mentorship and educational experience for criminally at-risk youth, is just one example of how D.C. is moving toward using its funding for programs more like those of successful Scandinavian countries.
Rachel Lee, Houston- Prison Spending versus Education Spending in Texas
A report titled Trends in State and Local Expenditures on Corrections and Education, released by the U.S. Department of Education on July 7th, 2016 found that Texas’ rate of spending on corrections has grown about five times faster than its rate of spending on education. While overall, Texas spends more on education than on corrections, corrections spending has increased by 850% between 1989 and 2013 while education spending has only increased by 182% in the same time period. Texas has the highest incarceration rate in the United States with about 221,800 men and women in prisons or jails. Texas also has the highest correctional supervision rate, which includes people in adult facilities, on probation, and on parole. The report suggested that Texas’ harsh sentencing laws and the strict enforcement of non-violent offenses have quadrupled its incarceration rate.
Advocates of education and criminal justice reform have argued that if we focused more on education as a preventative measure for incarceration, we would be able to lower the poverty rate and incarceration rate of young adults. This issue really resonates with me because FuelEd Schools, the education start-up where I’m interning this summer, works to improve educators’ social and emotional competencies in order to enhance academic as well as pro-social skills for students. I was even able to attend a presentation and meeting about restorative justice practices in schools and one of the major issues discussed was the “school to prison pipeline”. This was an interesting way to combine my interests in criminal justice and education reform.
Texas currently ranks 38th in per-pupil spending and spent an average of $8,998 per student this year which is more than $3,000 below the national average, according to the National Education Association. In comparison, Texas spends an average of $20,000 per inmate per year. Perhaps if the government invested more money in education, it would help mitigate the cycle of poverty and violence that many children fall into and prevent them from falling into the prison system.
Lanie Tubbs- France
Again, I am analyzing data about France as country rather than data about the particular region in which I am living and working. Because the French government is centralized rather than federal, the regions (e.g. Ile-de-France, Brittany, etc.) do not have sufficient autonomy to make localized funding decisions that are significant or unique from other regions; one of the few meaningful variables would simply be population, which can be controlled or adjusted for. It is important, though, to recognize that the centralized government funds the criminal justice system; for the most part, there is one entity (the government) paying for one system. In contrast, state budgets will not perfectly reflect the true average spent per prisoner within the geographic boundaries of a state because such budgets do not account for federal funding in a state and smaller localities, like counties, funding jails and prisons; therefore, statistics about France are not perfectly comparable to those in the United States.
First, France incarcerates a drastically smaller proportion of its 66 million residents than the United States imprisons. In 2011, the overall incarceration rate in France equaled 93 to 96 prisoners for every 100,000 residents (depending on the source). That same year, the United States incarcerated 743 people per 100,000 residents. By 2015, the incarceration rate in France had risen to about 99[1] people per 100,000, while incarceration in the United States fell to a rate of 693 prisoners per 100,000 people. So, France’s raw costs will be lower simple because of the huge difference in incarceration rates between the country and the United States, a trend tied to both political/policy issues and social attitudes.
Nevertheless, correctional costs made up nearly 40 percent of the 2011 budget of the French Ministry of Justice. The cost per prisoner over that year was around $48,000. For context, it is possible to compare France’s spending to that of its neighbors. This data reports the burden on taxpayers in 2012 and is compiled in a study by the University of Lausanne for the Council of Europe. In 2012, France spent about $45,320 on each prisoner. This expenditure was on par with the European average. Germany and England and Wales both spent more per prisoner in that year at $54,660 as did Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) , which spent from $78,020 to $148,100 per prisoner per year. Iberian peninsula residents felt a lesser tax burden with costs around $21,720, a figure only dwarfed by expenditures in eastern European countries (Croatia, Lithuania and Poland) of around $6,300 per person.
Economically, one key difference between typical systems in the U.S. and prisons in France is the nature and degree of involvement by the private sector. Private entities have become involved in the funding and operation in prisons in the US, which has driven down both price and quality. Some U.S. prisons are even fully privatized. French prisons also operation in conjunction with private companies. However, the effect is the opposite of that in the U.S. Rather, privatization has improved both the quality and cost in France.
I attempted to find estimates of the cost of incarceration on society, not simply on budgets. However, I was unable to find any data concerning the lost productivity, lost GDP, or population trends.
Alex Bergin – Austin
Texas annually spends over $3 billion on the criminal justice system and has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the country. 90% of this money, however, goes towards incarceration, leaving only 10% for rehabilitative programs. Despite the enormous amount of money spent on locking people up, Texas still has among the highest crime rates in the country. One source I found said that Texas has cut spending on crime, closed prisons, and seen a reduction in crime in recent years, but this contradicts other data I found. Though I largely will ignore this article due to it being contradicted by most other sources I found, I mention it to offer an alternative point of view. From what I can tell, the amount of money that Texas is throwing at criminal justice is not working very well, though I found it difficult to find any data on any causal relationship.
I’ve seen how criminal justice spending can particularly affect human trafficking, which my organization focuses on. Because there is such a disproportionate money being spent on incarceration versus rehabilitation, incarceration is often seen as one of the only viable options. Because of how little money is spent on rehabilitation programs, it is no wonder that law enforcement officials often feel that these types of programs do not work because the proper amount of money is not being spent on it. As I stated in the previous paragraph, it does not seem that the immense amount of spending is having much of an effect on crime rates in Texas, and I believe this is likely due to the disproportionate amount of money being spent on incarceration instead of rehabilitation. In addition to not making a dent in crime rates, this also has the consequence of sending many nonviolent offenders to be imprisoned for life rather than receiving proper rehabilitation.
http://www.texascjc.org/basic-facts-1
http://www.texascjc.org/solutions-safely-reducing-incarceration
http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/where-we-rank/
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/txp_media/html/just/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/life-without-parole_n_4256789.html
****
Second Post:
Look at most recently passed piece of legislation about crime, sentencing, policing, etc. we could explain the statute and discuss how it was adopted and perceived by the public?
Alex-Austin, TX
Safe Harbor Laws
The law I’m choosing to focus on is Texas’ Safe Harbor law which was passed in May 2013, and though not passed recently as in the last year it’s something that’s recently seeing its full implementation, and I’m choosing to focus on the Safe Harbor law because of the intersections it has with my internship. Safe Harbor laws are intended to grant victims of human trafficking “immunity” so to speak for crimes they committed while being trafficked as a result of their trafficking.
What I’ve seen through my internship is that the law is incomplete, but where it is incomplete varies based on the sector that one is working in. On one hand, many individuals working in law enforcement feel that by granting immunity to victims of human trafficking for the crimes they may have committed (such as prostitution), law enforcement feels they have nothing to keep victims of trafficking on, and instead must find small infractions unrelated to trafficking (such as possession of marijuana) to hold those being trafficked on. The reasoning for this, from the law enforcement officer’s point of view is that if the person being trafficked can not be held for a crime, there is no incentive for them to go to rehabilitative programs or no way to ensure that the person does not return to “the life” as it is called. The argument is that if victims of human trafficking can be held on the crimes they were forced to commit as a result of their trafficking, they can either be sent to jail where they will be “safe” from being trafficked, or given incentives to participate in rehabilitative programs or other programs to help with a transition out of trafficking.
However, from the point of NGOs and nonprofits this comes as a result of the failure to include any requirement that survivors of human trafficking are not provided proper rehabilitative services, and that not being able to lock up individuals for crimes they committed while being trafficked is the point and that locking survivors up does more harm than good.
What I’ve seen from these disagreements is that different actors view the role of the criminal justice system differently. It seems that law enforcement sees the criminal justice system and jail as a way to protect victims of human trafficking, who have high rates of relapsing and returning to “the life” as part of their recovery. Ironically, it feels that in this case, prison is viewed as something that is supposed to serve as rehabilitation in the case of human trafficking, but I do not feel that this is the case for most other crimes, but this may be due to a lack of appropriate places to send victims of human trafficking. On the other hand, it seems that nonprofits view the criminal justice system as a means of directing victims of crimes to the services they need and that utilizing the prison system as a means of rehabilitation causes more harm than good.
Keeping both of these points of view in mind, what I’ve seen from the Safe Harbor law as it relates to human trafficking is that passing an incomplete law with incomplete services in places causes disagreement and conflict between actors involved in law’s passage and implementation, and that in order to effectively pass laws and utilize the criminal justice system, a mutual understanding of the criminal justice system’s purpose must be achieved.
Bailey – Washington, D.C.
Responses to the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Act
D.C. recently passed a legislation called the “Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results Amendment Act of 2016” (NEAR Act), which seeks to prevent crime at its roots. The bill, modeled after an effort in Richmond, CA, establishes an office tasked with the specific mission of addressing crime and violence in the city through the identification of the young adults at highest risk of committing or being a victim of crimes. These selected individuals take part in a program, funded by a stipend of $9,000, which involves life planning, therapy, and mentorship in order to prevent them from living out a life of crime. Successful participants may even be granted an international trip at the end of the program to heighten their sense of culture and awareness of human life. The legislation classifies itself as identifying “the intersection of mental health disorders, substance abuse, and crime.”
Additionally, the NEAR Act requires the police department to take part in a yearly training on preventing biased-based profiling, community policing, and the use of force. For accountability purposes, and in order to ensure the efficient use of tax-payer dollars, both the criminal and police programs must publish evidence-based outcomes of each trial at the end of the year. The bill, if implemented in the manner it was proposed, should treat crime sustainably in the long-term.
The D.C. Council voted unanimously to pass the legislation, but D.C. citizens seem to have different feelings on the matter. Though most do feel that treating crime at its roots is a good idea, many people are concerned with the implications of identifying “high risk individuals.” The primary criticism is that identifying the “most at risk individuals” could result in further racial profiling, bias, or detrimental arbitration. And though most people support the program’s mission and its elements of life planning, therapy, and mentorship, an additional concern is the implication that individuals are being monetarily rewarded for not committing crimes.
Overall, many D.C. citizens seem to be on board with the idea of treating crime at its roots rather than after the harm has been done. The buzz surrounding the legislation’s mission seems to be wholly positive, but the means of implementation seems to be gaining more negative traction. I will be really interested to see how the public continues to respond to this bill once the program has been fully launched for a few years.
Izzy- San Francisco, CA
Responses to Racial Profiling in California
In response to the public anger and activist movements in response to the national killings of unarmed men, women, and children of color, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law legislation intended to protect minority Californians from profiling, abuse, and excessive force at the hands of police offices. Under the 2015 legislation, California police must record, collect, and distribute data on who they stop, including his or her race and ethnicity, reason for stopping, and outcome of the encounter. Moreover, the legislation also requires that police wearing body cameras follow specific recording and storage rules, such that the video footage is not mishandled. According to a statement from Governor Brown’s office, such legislation will “strengthen criminal justice in California.”
Responses to this legislation have been mixed, particularly among law enforcement agents and public officials. While Brown’s signature represents a victory for civil rights activists and some law enforcement agents note the legislation’s soon-to-be important role in checking police misconduct, others are less certain about the legislation’s true effectiveness. David Bejarano, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, not only finds the task of collecting data time-consuming, but also unnecessary, perhaps even futile: “”There is no proven information that [data collection] reduces or prevents racial profiling…It’s a huge amount of data collected without any consequence.” Others, like Lt. Steve James, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Association, call the legislation “terrible.”
Such disagreement about the legislation’s effectiveness, however, seem to be a question of personal beliefs about the nature of racial profiling and police misconduct. For instance, while James argues that “there is no racial profiling…there is criminal profiling,” other civil activists like Rosa Aqeel, legislative director of PICO California, suggest that through the bill “we’ll be able to look at the data and see what’s really going on,” responding to police officials who deny the existence of such goings-on.
Regardless of belief, however, the legislation certainly represents a step-forward towards a more intentional analysis of race and the criminal justice system, race and police brutality. While data on stopping and seizing exists among individual agencies, it is rarely examined across departments and cities state-wide. As the data system is implemented in 2018, more disagreement and perhaps more knowledge is still to come from California.
Rachel- Houston, Texas
Under Texas law, 17 year olds who commit a crime can be charged and prosecuted as adults. This law, however, conflicts with United States Supreme Court rulings that say 18 is the age of adulthood. Lawmakers in the Texas House of Representatives tried several times to raise the threshold for being charged for a crime as an adult from 17 to 18, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Lawmakers filed house bills 53, 1205, and 330 to try to achieve this goal, but they were not approved by the House or Senate. Instead, the Texas legislature passed a bill that ends the practice of sending students who skip school to the adult court system, which can lead to jail time.
Juvenile justice advocates, as well as members of the public, believe that this is not a large enough action taken on the part of the Texas legislature. They argue that 17 year olds are not mature enough to be tried, sentenced, and incarcerated along with adults. Texas is one of only nine other states that has 17 as the age of adulthood. This law, created in 1918, does not align with the federal standards for jails and prisons. According to University of Texas professor Michele Deitch, “Youths under the age of 18 endure higher rates of physical and sexual abuse in adult jails and prisons, and are 36 times more likely to commit suicide.” Furthermore, when a person is tried as a juvenile, the criminal record is sealed, yet when someone is tried as an adult, it goes on the public criminal record. This record follows the person for life and can have negative effects with regards to finding housing and employment.
A major reason that efforts to raise the age of adulthood have met dissent is the financial burden of constructing new or additional juvenile facilities. Many counties in Texas do not have juvenile holding facilities and would have to allocate funds to build them. However, it seems short sighted to refuse to raise the age of adulthood to 18 because of this initial cost, because in the long run, it would probably result in lower recidivism rates and lower costs for prisons overall. According to a 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, youths who were transferred into adult systems had 34 percent more felony re-arrests after age 18 than those detained in youth facilities.
While the Texas legislature failed to move the age of adulthood to 18, it opened up an important debate about the efficacy of juvenile detention centers, prisons, and harsh sentencing.
Lanie – Paris, France
The state of emergence (l’état d’urgence) in France
Disclaimer: I am focussing on a national policy because of the way the policy embodies and represents a salient issue and pervasive mindset about criminal justice and policing. Additionally, national policies are better able to represent French politics because the country’s government is highly centralized compared to the government of the United States, meaning that local policies are not as common, varied or meaningful.
Background: The government of France, led by President François Hollande, declared a state of emergency just hours after ISIS-led terror attacks left 130 people dead in Paris on November 13, 2015.
The state of emergency is designed to make the French government, particularly its police and law enforcement agents and military, to be more flexible and responsive in order to better prevent additional incidents of terror and unrests in the wake of the attacks. The measures “allow police to conduct house raids and searches without a warrant or judicial oversight, including at night, and give extra powers to officials to place people under house arrest outside the normal judicial process. It also allows for restrictions on large gatherings.[1]”
In just two weeks following the attack, the emergency measures led to “1,233 searches, 165 arrests, 230 arms being seized and 266 people placed under house arrest[2].” As of May 19, sixty-nine people were currently under house arrest and more than 3,500 raids had been carried.
Extension: The state of emergency in France has been extended three times. The measures were first extended for three months the week after the attacks and later extended again in mid-February and in mid-May.[3] Each time they are modified or extended, both chambers of the national Parliament must vote to pass the extension.[4],[5]
The most recent extension was passed by Parliament to allow the state of emergency measures to cover the Euro 2016 soccer championship and the Tour de France throughout June and July. The two-month extension was approved 46 to 20 in the National Assembly (lower house of Parliament) and 309 to 30 in the Senate (upper house)[6],[7]. Prime Minister Manual Valls has said that the Euro 2016 has been a security priority qnd the government’s emphasis on caution has since been validated by terror threats that ISIS cells were en route to Belgium and France and smaller lone-wolf attacks carried out in June[8]. Valls did say “the state of emergency cannot be permanent” and the most recent extension does not include the authorization of police raids without warrants[9].
Responses: States of emergency have been used historically by corrupt leaders and governments to bypass checks on power and to accrue more authority in spite of constitutional and legal protections for human and civil rights. Likewise, military rule has historically been linked to the dissolution of constitutions and the birth of dictatorships. Because of the historical reputation of states of emergency means to perpetuation state-sponsored violence (taking of political prisoners, murder and politically-motivated mass disappearances) many in France and internationally are suspicious. The concerns especially remind older generations of the use of the state of emergency during the Algerian War in the 1950s.
The loudest critics of the state of emergency and its repeated extension are human rights groups, which have indicted the extensions as unnecessary and lacking the clarity and specificity necessary to prevent abuse. Amnesty International representatives[10] have said that international rights laws outline specific criteria under which the declaration of state of emergency is appropriate; yet, the human rights watchdog has highlighted that France has not abided by such criteria or sufficiently proved evidence of true threat.
United Nations human rights specialists warned of “the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions of the state of emergency and surveillance laws.” The Human Rights League of France echos that the state of emergency “seriously impacts public freedoms.” The rights that are threatened include freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to privacy. Concurrent to these general warnings, human rights watchdogs and liberal activists have also cautioned that the state of emergency justifies and permits the unlawful profiling of Muslims[11]. A Human Rights Watch report emphasized that innocent Muslims have been victimized by the police, who have burst into “homes, restaurants, or mosques; broke people’s belongings; terrified children; and placed restrictions on people’s movements so severe that they lost income or suffered physically.[12]”
However, the extensions have remained largely accepted and popular in the general French population, with polls throughout the eight month implementation of the state of emergency revealing a majority favor caution and therefore the state of emergency[13]. Amongst the popular supporters, many hold the mindset that the measures are appropriate and necessary[14]. As security and privacy are often considered or framed as trade-offs, those who support the state of emergency belief that stringent measures are warranted to save lives[15].
Conclusion: The declaration of state of emergency in France ultimately represents one of the strongest, current threat to justice and rights. It is symbolic of the simultaneous rises of nationalism, isolationism, xenophobia and islamophobia. The complicitness of French citizens and leaders in the extension of the special measures is indicative of a willingness to accept infringements on rights when such infringements are called “national security measures” and when the targeted criminals are branded as “terrorists.” The ability to justify constitutional or rights violations with the conjured image of imminent threat by some foreign menace is symptomatic of growing fear and insecurity in Europe and beyond. (Such fear, if not anxiety, has been linked to not only France’s state of emergency but the rise of anti-immigrant, far-right politicians and movements, such as Donald Trump and Brexit respectively.)
Of course, this mindset is in no way new but is increasingly salient in Europe in the midst of a migrant crisis and in the wake of terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul and other European cities. It can be likened to the sentiments that sparked violence and prejudice against Muslim Americans after September 11. Nevertheless, the salience and ubiquitousness of xeno-or islamophobia reveals that politics are incredibly influential in shaping not only institutions but in shaping the very way individuals perceive others and crime. Therefore, policy is inevitably and inextricably entwined with social forces. The two influence each other, creating a vicious cycle in which social perceptions and norms are institutionalized by policies which then affect the way individuals think and interpret new situations and so on.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/20/france-seeks-to-extend-state-of-emergency-until-end-of-july
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/frances-state-of-emergency-could-lead-to-abuses-human-rights-groups-warn
[3] http://www.thelocal.fr/20151119/france-to-extend-state-of-emergency
[4]http://www.la-croix.com/France/Securite/L-Etat-d-urgence-version-allegee-approuvee-au-Senat-2016-05-05-1200758057
[5]http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2016/05/19/97001-20160519FILWWW00147-le-parlement-prolonge-l-etat-d-urgence-2-mois.php
[6] http://www.thelocal.fr/20160510/france-extends-state-of-emergency-to-end-of-july
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/world/europe/french-parliament-votes-to-extend-state-of-emergency.html
[8]http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/680091/Euro-2016-terror-warning-police-ISIS-fighters-heading-Europe-carry-out-attacks
[9]http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2016/05/19/l-etat-d-urgence-prolonge-jusqu-au-26-juillet_4922528_3224.htm
[10] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/france-state-emergency-extended-slim-evidence-160217174759408.html
[11]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/frances-state-of-emergency-could-lead-to-abuses-human-rights-groups-warn
[12] https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/03/france-abuses-under-state-emergency
[13] http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21695368-france-realising-its-state-emergency-may-last-long-time
[14]http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2016/02/25/apres-trois-mois-d-etat-d-urgence-un-bilan-conteste-et-mitige_4871303_3224.html
[15]http://www.la-croix.com/France/Securite/L-etat-d-urgence-devrait-etre-a-nouveau-prolonge-2016-04-20-1200754702
****
First Post:
We set out to explore the social construction of the criminal, examining the way that
individuals, cities, and nations understand criminality. In order to understand this, we analyzed
how local news sources cover crimes perpetrated by people of different class, race, or gender.
The impetus of this exploration was inspired in part by the raced and gendered news portrayal of
Brock Turner in the Stanford rape case.
Izzy, San Francisco:
I began the assignment by browsing the Crime & Courts section of the Daily Californian,
the Berkeley newspaper. Although I began by reading the articles documenting the
misdemeanors and more serious violations that occurred in Berkeley in full, I was quickly drawn
instead to the social commentary and implicit (if not explicit) biases in the comments section.
Specifically, I noticed the relative ease with which commenters were willing to condemn or to
forgive those who committed the reported crimes, an ease that was seemingly informed by the
race, class, or gender of the perpetrator or of the victim. Particularly, the comments followed a
fairly consistent, contradictory pattern in response to sexual assault and assault cases, in which
articles about sexual assault by fraternity members were dismissed– questionable evidence, the
fault of alcohol culture, etc.– while articles about other such crimes committed by non-students
or specifically by Latino, African American, or Middle Eastern men were the source of great
condemnation and urges to include the race of the perpetrator or “go get em.”
As I scrolled through the comments and assessed what small insights I could gain into the
profile of each commenter, I noticed the blurb above the comment section that read: “Please keep
our community civil. Comments should remain on topic and be respectful.” I went on to read the
comment policy in more depth, noting that any comment that “makes readers unreasonably
uncomfortable on the basis of one’s race, gender, religion, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation
or otherwise,” is explicitly violent, or excessively obscene would be removed. I found this policy
interesting and important, specifically because it gave the comments I read more legitimacy in
my quest for commonly-held biases about criminals. While I can often dismiss the comments on
internet content as unrepresentative of public opinion– those who feel empowered by their online
anonymity can be unfettered and ugly with their language and extremely vocal with their
opinion– these comments were explicitly censored and judged to be mild enough for the internet.
Thus, I concluded that because these comments were both written anonymously and somewhat
censored that they might serve as a brief foray into more widely held biases.
While sorting through the comments section, I noticed that the concern, defense, and
respect for predominantly white, Berkeley students– particularly fraternity members– simply did
not exist for other Berkeley residents. For instance, several articles about sexual assaults in
fraternity houses were met with skepticism and calls for careful consideration of the evidence.
For instance, in one particular article, comments included: “why even bother with this story?”, “a
bit early to rush to judgment,” and a remark on the author’s grammar. Such leniency was not so
evident in other assault cases involving non-white, non-students. I witnessed dozens of articles in
which commenters were quick to either condemn the criminal or to provide details about the race
of the perpetrator were those details not provided by the newspaper. Such comments include: “so
we are given a physical description of the suspect except we are not told his ethnicity. Is it just
me or does it seem like providing the ethnicity would help to quickly narrow down the search?
70-year- old elderly women's lives matter too,” “all lives matter. Get em,” and multiple
transcriptions of the police reports that include the race and gender of the perpetrator. Thus, from
this brief examination of the comments section on the Daily Californian, one can witness the
sympathy that commenters hold for white, college-educated men and the simultaneous menace
that is applied toward alleged perpetrators if they are African American or Latino. This glance
into greater biases demonstrates that some face a presumption of innocence while others face a
presumption of guilt.
Lanie, Paris/France
Major news sites including:
L'Humanité,
La Croix,
Le Monde- center left
Le Figaro- center right
Libération- left
Ouest-France
Predictions:
French newspapers don’t acknowledge race overtly. In fact, the very word race has a negative
connotation. Race and racism certainly exists in France, yet it does not exist officially. Neither
the census nor work or school applications question race, even for record keeping or statistical
purposes. Thus, it is often considered inappropriate to ask where one is from in France.
Nonetheless, if race or ethnic origin is acknowledge, I expect to see more prejudice or negativity
towards individuals with origins in the Middle East/Maghreb than towards black people.
It is less taboo for the French to discuss money, which may be one way that classism is very
overt, even when racism isn’t. Class and race may be proxies for one another. For example,
living outside of Paris in the suburbs (les banlieues) is often a sign of lower class, but ethnic
minorities are also disproportionately represented in these populations.
Bailey – Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. is home to several national newspapers, so when I thought about which
to select for this assignment, my mind naturally went to The Washington Post. But as I continued
to consider this choice, I realized that it really is not representative of D.C. as its own city –
newspapers like these, rather, reflect the national ideals that have been carefully crafted by
journalists and politicians across the country. I wanted to find something a little more
authentically “Washingtonian,” so I walked around the block to the free newspaper bins.
There on a street corner is where I came upon Express, which is coincidentally a
publication of The Washington Post made specifically for D.C. This free publication is stacked in
newspaper bins across the city; paired with its reputability as a Washington Post subset, I expect
that Express likely influences the greatest number of D.C. residents.
Of course there is the huge chunk of D.C. residents knee-deep in politics or business who
focus all their energy on scouring The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today.
But despite its glamor as a working class city, D.C. has an overwhelming poverty population,
and not everyone living there is a high-powered business person or politician. Express is
certainly the most accessible newspaper in D.C., is pretty simple to read, and, most importantly,
specifically caters to residents of D.C.
After scanning the few articles touching on crime that were included in Friday’s edition
of Express, I noticed a pretty evident trend in themes of race. The first article was about the
Orlando massacre. Though this crime did not occur within D.C., the article focused on President
Obama’s visit to the site and the Senate’s upcoming decision about tightening gun control policy.
The D.C. politics, to a certain extent, overshadowed the tragedy of the crime itself.
But most interesting to me was the large photo of Senator John McCain – probably the
most eye-catching aspect of this article, if you just picked it up and glanced at it – next to which
was his quote about President Obama being at fault for the shootings. In large, bolded blue
writing, it says “Verbatim – ‘Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled
everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today’”
(McCain 8). I found the insertion of this quote interesting, because though the shooter was not
explicitly mentioned anywhere in the article, this mention of his race was actually the most
prominent aspect of the entire page.
This subtle engraination of race – and even more specifically, of Middle Eastern race – is
evident throughout each of the three reportings of crime in this issue. Whether or not this is
typical of Express would depend on the content of other editions, but I thought it was interesting
how references to Americans’ perceptions of Middle Eastern culture seemed to be manifested in
each article. The next one I looked at, another crime that occurred outside of D.C., was about the
British lawmaker who was killed by a fervent member of Britain First. Britain First is a far-right
group that stages provocative anti-Muslim demonstrations, and because the lawmaker was an
outspoken advocate for Syrian refugees, officials believe the killer was looking to make a
political statement. Again, the main takeaway from this article was the Middle East conflicts – it
less about the actual crime or the victim.
The final article I looked at was a brief clipping about a Palestinian prisoner in
Guantanamo Bay who reported all the horrors and tortures inflicted upon him by the CIA. The
article stated that the prisoner, who is still being held in Guantanamo Bay, was the first detainee
to be waterboarded by the CIA and was recently apologized to after the agency realized it had
overestimated his role in al-Qaeda.
So, after reading through Express, I was definitely surprised by the depictions of race in
the reported crimes. These articles seemed more critical of Americans, especially right-wingers,
than any other race. It is no surprise to me that these articles have leftist tendencies, particularly
because Express is a subset of The Washington Post, but regardless I would have expected to
find more problematic perceptions of race than I did. I wonder if, because Washington, D.C. is a
major international hub and ultimately the face of America, its media outlets tend to be more
careful in portraying race in crime.
Alex – Austin
As I browsed the crime section Austin’s newspaper The Statesman, the biggest difference
I noticed in reporting was that rarely were mugshots posted as the image to go with the article,
and most of the time when a mugshot was posted as the associated image, the suspect was a
black man. This trend did not seem to discriminate based on the type of crime– an article about a
teacher sexually assaulting a student did not come with an attached image, while the first image
associated with another article about a man convicted of sexual assault was the mugshot of the
person who had been arrested.
Currently in Austin the biggest news story is that of a man who was arrested for throwing
up to 94 rocks off of I-35 in the past two years, injuring several people and damaging many
vehicles. The arrest was just made Thursday, but prior to the arrest of the person who committed
the majority of the rock throwing incidents, another suspect had been arrested for committing
one incident of throwing rocks. What was interesting to me was the difference in portrayal of the
two suspects– the one who had allegedly committed the majority of the incidents had numerous
articles dedicated to him and included images of him speaking at City Hall meetings. The person
who allegedly committed one of the incidents, however, received one news story that, rather than
showing him dressed well and speaking at a City Hall meeting, showed his mugshot. Though
subtle, this decision to use a mugshot versus. another picture affected my initial perception of the
article– I assumed mugshots would be shown when the crime was more serious, but in reality it
seemed to be affected by race and it seemed to almost be an attempt to reaffirm racial biases in
understanding of who commits crimes.
KXAN, Austin’s news station, seemed to have less racially biased imagery at play, but
that may be due to the fact that, as a news station, it primarily relies on imagery. It was difficult
for me to determine if there was any difference in how the crimes were described as the majority
of stories focused on making the story sound as sensational as possible, with special emphasis on
making the perpetrator of the crimes seem as crazy or reckless as possible. Article titles included
“Mom who left child in hot car during stripper audition arrested again for neglect” among others.
This tactic seemed to be done to reinforce an “us vs. them” mentality in regard to society’s
relation to criminals. In KXAN’s reporting, I couldn’t find any clear racial or socioeconomic
biases, though I did notice that when the perpetrator of a crime had an Arabic or “Muslim”
sounding name, it was almost always mentioned in the very first sentence of the article, while
perpetrators with other types of names would either not have their names mentioned or have it
mentioned at a later point in the story.
Houston-Rachel
When watching Houston local news on TV and reading about it online, it seems that most
of what is covered has to do with crime. As a native Houstonian, who has grown up watching
this news, I only realized recently that I had never stopped to analyze what messages were really
being conveyed to me. I started by browsing the crime section on several local news outlets. The
crime reports from Click 2 Houston were very factual, listing only basic descriptions of the crime
and those who were involved. These reports did not include much commentary, so there wasn’t
much room for bias to come into play.
In the end, I decided to focus on the coverage of the Memorial Day shooting when a
military veteran opened fire on a neighborhood killing 2 and wounding 6. The sources I used
included the Houston Press, Channel 12 News, and Rawstory.com. Every news article I read
attributed the crime to mental issues and post-traumatic stress disorder. Speculations of terrorism
were quickly dismissed. The shooter’s race was never brought up and the only background
knowledge provided was of his tours in Afghanistan and the fact that he lived in San Bernardino
County, California. Unfortunately, if this same crime was committed by a person of Middle
Eastern descent, the reaction would be very different. The way that criminals are depicted in the
media is often very dependent upon race and religion. This does not come as a surprise to most
and it shows us that we have to be aware of how news is conveyed because it has a definite
impact on how we think about certain events and people.