In 2018, Jackson reported one of the highest murder rates in its history, part of a disturbing recent trend in violent crime. 

WLBT reported a homicide rate standing at 50.3 per 100,000 people. The Clarion Ledger reported just a few weeks ago that Jackson is on a record pace for murders, with estimates as high as 100 murders possible for this year. Shockingly, Jackson ranked third in the nation for its murder rate, standing only behind St. Louis and Birmingham in 2018. This sets Jackson violence ahead of New Orleans, Memphis, and Detroit, and is double the rate in Chicago.

While Jackson leaders had previously promised a crime center that would dramatically help the situation, nothing has come to fruition yet. 

The facts are clear, and the continued violence has hollowed out the town, driven down the population, and thus further discouraged younger generations from remaining in Mississippi, due to the lacking state of what should be a prosperous urban center.

Mississippi Today reported last year that the state is losing millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) at the fastest rate in the country, and it is millennials who are driving much of the population decline for the state. Many of these individuals attend public schools within the state through college, and then leave. This mass departure represents the loss of a serious investment from the public. Every individual who leaves, takes with them their years of college and high school education, largely funded by state taxpayers. 

While the suburbs around Jackson are thriving, a fact emphasized by the wealth transfer away from Hinds County, the city itself is rotting at its core. Jackson’s population has been on a consistent decline since 1980. 

City of Jackson population, 1970-2017

Residents are being driven away, thus causing an erosion of the tax base. This decline in revenue has impacted government operations, thus driving more people toward the better managed suburbs or out of the state entirely, and creating a vicious internal cycle. 

If Mississippi aims to seriously contend with the existing brain drain, then it must explore the root of what is driving so many young people to leave the state. 

According to a recent Nielsen study, millennials are drawn to cities at greater rates than previous generations. Older Americans once sought suburban withdrawal, but Nielsen reveals that millennials are tending to seek life with more subways than driveways. Compared to surrounding states, Mississippi has less to offer in regards to urban life, a point that is heightened by Jackson’s continued decline.

To begin drawing in residents again (especially millennials), the state must prioritize urban renewal for the city that was once considered a “gem of the south,” and it ought to start by making its residents feel secure again. A fully funded crime center equipped with expanded technological capacities to monitor and respond to crime around the city (as was promised) would be a potential major step forward. 

Christopher H. Wheeler, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve, has extensively studied and reported on the role that neighborhood characteristics play when businesses make a location decision. He found that security and low crime rates are vital to incentivizing business. The boarded up windows of former stores in the downtown area are a resting testament to our inability to attract new business, and without new business and new opportunities there are no new customers or new employees. 

Rather than attempting to financially incentivize out-of-state organizations to set up shop with tax payer funded bribes, we ought to consider bettering our natural incentives first. This can only be done by creating an environment in which it is safe to live and work. Reducing the violent crime rate has the potential to change Jackson’s trajectory. 

With a rejuvenated and safer urban center, we can attract new businesses to the state (without costly financial guarantees) and hopefully encourage people to choose Jackson again. For Mississippi to once again grow its population and revitalize its urban center in Jackson, people need to feel safe to operate a business and live their lives without the overhanging storm cloud that is an immense violent crime rate.

This week, Mississippi Center for Public Policy will be looking into the underlying reasons as to why Jackson is struggling, exploring the legislative and regulatory climate which encourages migration and business stagnation both within our capital city, and across the state.

A graduate student at Ole Miss is trying to pursue the American Dream. Then the state shut her down.

The Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology requires eyebrow threaders to spend hundreds of hours learning cosmetology methods that threaders do not use or need.

In response to these requirements, the Mississippi Justice Institute, the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dipa Bhattarai in a federal district court. The lawsuit was filed against Attorney General Jim Hood, who helps enforce the licensing requirements, and the Cosmetology Board. 

Eyebrow threading is a safe and simple technique that uses just a single strand of cotton thread to remove unwanted hair. It does not involve skin-to-skin contact between the threading artist and customer, does not reuse the same tools on different customers, and does not involve the use of sharp implements, harsh chemicals, or heat.

Yet, Mississippi law requires eyebrow threaders to obtain an esthetician’s license to practice. But before they can do that, they must complete 600 hours of instructions over a minimum of 15 weeks and pass two exams. Not one hour of the classes covers eyebrow threading.

>> Read more about the case in depth

By comparison, emergency medical technicians, who literally holds lives in their hands, are only required to complete 165 hours of training in Mississippi. 

”Our client is just trying to pursue the American Dream, by putting her own skills and work ethic to use in a safe and worthwhile trade,” said Aaron Rice, the Director of the Mississippi Justice Institute. “Unnecessary laws and regulations are preventing her from doing that.  We want to help people like her fight back against this kind of job-killing red tape.” 

Plaintiff Dipa Bhattarai ran a successful threading business before she was fined and shut down by the state Board of Cosmetology. 

Bhattarai grew up in Nepal, where threading is a way of life, and learned how to thread at a young age from her family. She came to Mississippi after receiving a scholarship to attend Mississippi University for Women, where she saw an opening in the market for eyebrow threading. 

”My friends loved it when I threaded their eyebrows for them, and kept telling me I should open a business,” said Bhattarai, who is now a graduate student at the University of Mississippi. “I knew it was a great opportunity to bring together my passion for threading and my dream of owning a business.”  

Dipa hopes to re-open her business so she can continue to thread, while training and employing other threaders in Mississippi.

Everett White, an attorney with the law firm Sones & White, PLLC, is also serving as co-counsel to Ms. Bhattarai, and is not charging for his legal services.  

“I was really moved by Dipa’s story, said White. “She came here legally from Nepal to attend college and started an eyebrow threading business to support herself. Then the government shut it down based on irrational and unconstitutional regulations drafted by potential competitors. It’s ridiculous.” 

The lawsuit argues that Mississippi’s licensing scheme violates the due process and equal protection rights of unlicensed eyebrow threaders, because it is not rationally related to any legitimate governmental purpose. 

A similar Texas law was struck down by the Texas Supreme Court in 2015. Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arizona all repealed their licensing requirements for eyebrow threading after lawsuits were filed in those states.

“Mississippi’s ban on unlicensed eyebrow threading has nothing to do with public health and safety,” said Rice. “It is an unconstitutional giveaway to special interest groups who want to eliminate their competition. Laws like these hurt workers of modest means and young people like our client who are just trying to get their start in life.”  

Attorney General Jim Hood and the Board of Cosmetology will have 21 days from service of the lawsuit to respond.

Ten seizures worth $68,634 by the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office and listed in the state’s civil asset forfeiture database have no associated paperwork, according to an analysis of records by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

The Sheriff’s Office said that incident reports were only available for eight of the 18 forfeiture cases listed in the first 18 months on the civil asset forfeiture database. They said the other records were missing.

The eight incident reports provided by the sheriff’s office can be found here. Seven of them match up to records in the forfeiture database. 

One of them has the same case number as one in the database, but the dates and facts of the case differ from the one listed online.

This case from March 28, 2018 involved the seizure of a 2009 BMW 750iL luxury car worth $10,000, but the incident report provided to MCPP listed a driving under the influence case with a different arrestee from March 3, 2018 that involved no seizure of property and a 2017 Chevrolet Malibu.

These are the cases without associated incident reports:

• This case from May 5, 2018 where the Sheriff’s Office seized $710 in cash and a Glock pistol worth $550. The notice of intent to forfeit says the seized property was found in close proximity to ecstasy and marijuana.
• A Volvo commercial truck ($10,000 value) and a Great Dane refrigerated truck ($15,000) were seized on June 27, 2018. No drugs were listed on notice of intent.
• This case from May 17, 2018 resulted in the seizure of a 1998 Honda Accord ($1,000 value) and $1,201 in cash. No drugs were listed in the notice of intent.
• The sheriff’s office seized $6,131 in cash, according to the notice of intent, on July 16, 2018. The NOI said marijuana was in close proximity to the seized cash.
• On August 31, 2017, the sheriff’s office seized $1,431 in cash. No drugs were listed on the notice to forfeit.
• The database lists a seizure from October 10, 2017 when $3,863 was seized. Marijuana was reported as the drug in proximity to the cash.
• The sheriff’s office reported a seizure from October 12, 2017 of $5,000 in cash, a $500 safe and a 12-gauge shotgun worth $200. Marijuana was listed as the drug in proximity to the seized items, but the forfeiture was later contested and no final decision is listed in the database.
• On January 10, 2018, deputies seized $10,520 in cash, citing the presence of marijuana as the justification for the seizure. 
• On February 1, 2018, $1,040 in cash and a 20-gauge shotgun worth $100 were seized due to proximity to marijuana.
• This case from February 28, 2018 resulted in the seizure of $1,488 in cash. No drugs were listed on the notice of intent.

A new report from the non-profit Institute for Justice on the federal equitable sharing program finds that civil asset forfeiture does not deter crime and does not reduce drug use, the two most common refrains from proponents of civil asset forfeiture. At the same time, forfeiture activity increases as local economies suffer.

A 1 percentage point increase in local unemployment — a standard proxy for fiscal stress — is associated with a statistically significant 9 percentage point increase in seizures of property for forfeiture.

Mississippi has begun to make a move to scale back civil forfeiture. In 2017, the legislature let administrative forfeiture die when the law authorizing the program was not renewed. 

Previously, administrative forfeiture allowed agents of the state to take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely obtaining a warrant and providing the individual with a notice. In order to get the property back, an individual was required to file a petition in court within 30 days and incur legal fees in order to contest the forfeiture and recover such assets.

The state is still allowed to seize and keep property through civil forfeiture, a process that requires the state to go before a judge for an adjudication of whether the property should be forfeited, even if the owner does not file suit. 

And much like the federal program has not translated into less crime or drug use, the program in Mississippi has generally not led to big drug busts. In fact, if you remove one large bust from the equation, the average value of forfeited property is only $5,422 over the past 18 months. Less than 10 seizures statewide amounted to more than $60,000. One-third were for less than $1,000. A similar story is evident among Hinds County seizures.

Documenting civil asset forfeiture in Mississippi once required lots of public record requests and a lot of inside knowledge, since there was no central database cataloging the practice.

Now, two years later, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics runs a database that provides some information, but has plenty of gaps. That leaves a lot of holes that require incident reports, which are public records and provide a way for law enforcement agencies to document suspected crimes or complaints.

The Hinds County Sheriff’s Office initially charged the Mississippi Center for Public Policy $450 for 18 incident reports, which adds up to $25 per incident report.

As part of digging deeper into our first two analyses, we’ve submitted public records requests to get more information on seizures from the initial 18 months the civil asset forfeiture database was in operation.

Most agencies were cooperative and shared their incident reports for a reasonable price (agencies have to be rightly compensated for their time searching for the records and to provide copies). Some laudable agencies dedicated to transparency — such as the Richland Police Department — didn’t even charge a fee to provide requested records.

Compared to Hinds, the Biloxi Police Department charged MCPP $78.30 for 19 incident reports and the Southaven Police Department charges $10 per report

State public records law says that governmental bodies can charge what it costs to share records and have to use the lowest-paid employee assigned to record search duties to hold down costs. They also recommend in their model public records rules that copy fees be limited to 15 cents per page.

So we filed a public records complaint with the Mississippi Ethics Commission. When you file one of these complaints, the governmental body has 14 days to reply. After that, the commission can dismiss the complaint, issue a preliminary finding or set a hearing for the complaint.

Once the two weeks had passed, the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office responded and decided to lower the costs to a more reasonable $8.10. 

There is one problem with the records provided. The Hinds County Sheriff’s Office said that incident reports were only available for eight of the 18 forfeiture cases listed in the first 18 months on the civil asset forfeiture database. They said the other records were missing.

The law requires only law enforcement agencies to list the description and value of the item seized, a copy of the notice to intent to forfeit, any petitions by property owners to contest the forfeiture and any judge’s order that would include those that cover final disposition of the seized property.

The city of Moss Point is in turmoil, as first-term Mayor Mario King is facing two lawsuits that allege widespread misconduct, abuse, financial mismanagement plus racial and age discrimination. 

The most recent one was filed on July 1 by 11 Moss Point residents — most of whom were former city employees — that paints a picture of a dictatorial mayor who created a hostile work environment for older employees he deemed expendable and utilized city property for non-official purposes.

The most salacious allegation is that King used the fire station as a place for an illicit rendezvous with a woman that the lawsuit alleges was not his wife. Despite having a no-weapon policy in city hall for employees, the lawsuit says that King still carried his firearm in the building and brandished it in an attempt to intimidate an employee.

On September 12, 2017, the lawsuit says that the mayor emailed city workers a statement that said “If you are in a place where you are no longer able to perform, you are getting angry, taking medication because of work, developed high blood pressure, or your job is a burden to you, it is time to make a tough decision.” 

The lawsuit makes repeated references to the mayor demoting or harassing employees age 40 or older, especially white employees.

 King is also described by the lawsuit as:

• Requiring city employees to work on private events while being paid by taxpayers.
• Using city employees and interns as personal drivers.
• Using city vehicles for personal use.
• Taxpayer-funded trips for personal gain.
• Expansion of contracts and city projects based on benefits received from private companies.
• Misuse of grants that have resulted in the suspension and revocation of the grants.

On Tuesday in response to the lawsuit, Alderman Sherwood Bradford proposed a new administrative policy that included cutting Mayor King’s pay by 15 percent, according to a story by WLOX.

The administrative policies proposed by Bradford include:

• Banning the mayor or any other city employees, except for the police department, from carrying weapons in city hall.
• No media releases concerning city business without board approval.
• Any travel in city vehicles 50 miles outside city limits or more would require board approval.
• City vehicles would have to be parked in the city lot by 5 p.m. each working day unless being used for official business.
• Any travel in city vehicles on the weekend except for public works, police and fire departments would require board approval.
• Summer interns are not allowed to drive city vehicles without board approval.
• City employees are forbidden from transporting anyone to the airport.

In January, Alderman Ennit Morris filed a $500,000 lawsuit against King, claiming that the mayor assaulted and threatened him during an executive session at a board meeting in December 2018. The lawsuit claims that King ordered a police officer to remove him from the meeting.

Civil asset forfeiture allows the government to confiscate property on the grounds that it is connected to a crime — without ever convicting someone of the crime. In court, a lower burden of proof applies in these civil cases than in criminal cases, even when valuable property such as the vehicle you drive to work is at stake.

Proponents of civil asset forfeiture will argue that such a practice is needed to keep illegal drugs out of Mississippi. That this is the best tool to stop drug mules from crossing Interstates 10 and 20 and reaching your neighborhood. But that argument quickly falls apart when you look at the latest data about the reality of how the practice is used both here in Mississippi and in the nation’s largest civil forfeiture program.

A review of the first 18 months of the state’s civil forfeiture database shows Mississippi law enforcement isn’t necessarily busting drug kingpins, but more likely collecting cash, an iPhone, or a vehicle if a person is in possession of an illegal substance. 

The value of the 315 seizures in the database averaged $7,490 per seizure. When a single high-dollar forfeiture is removed from consideration, that average value drops to $5,422. Less than 10 seizures statewide amounted to more than $60,000. 

The vast majority of seizures were for $5,000 or less and fully one-third were for less than $1,000. In two instances, law enforcement seized just $50 in cash. Since attorneys’ fees and court costs quickly add up to more than those amounts, many people don’t even try to contest a low-dollar forfeiture. 

A newly released nationwide study also reveals that civil forfeiture fails to fight crime. The non-profit Institute for Justice published a study looking at the nation’s largest forfeiture program: the federal equitable sharing program. This is the Department of Justice program that allows local law enforcement to cooperate on forfeiture with DOJ agencies and receive up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

The study combines more than a decade’s worth of data from the equitable sharing program, with local crime, drug use and economic data from a variety of federal sources. It found that increased forfeiture proceeds did not help police solve crimes or reduce drug abuse. However, increases in forfeiture proceeds were strongly related to economic hardship. When local unemployment rose by 1 percentage point, forfeiture increased by 9 percentage points. 

Many on the right and left have seen how this practice is unfair, and not in line with our principles. That is why there has been push back at the state level, and even from the U.S. Supreme Court in limiting this practice. 

Since 2014, 31 states, including Mississippi, have reformed their civil forfeiture laws. In 2017, the state brought a transparency requirement to civil forfeiture and last year the legislature let the provision of administrative forfeiture die. 

Other states have gone further. Seventeen states require a criminal conviction to forfeit most or all types of property. And three states – North Carolina, New Mexico, and Nebraska – have abolished civil forfeiture entirely. What does this look like?

New Mexico enacted sweeping reforms in 2015 abolishing civil forfeiture and replacing it with criminal forfeiture. To forfeit property, the government must convict the owner of a crime and tie that property to the crime with clear and convincing evidence in criminal court. This shifts the burden from the individual to the government, by requiring evidence that the person had knowledge of the crime giving rise to the forfeiture. And finally, all forfeiture proceeds must be deposited into the state’s general fund, eliminating the profit incentive that can distort law enforcement priorities.

Civil asset forfeiture violates fundamental property and due-process rights. If someone has been found guilty of selling or trafficking drugs, their property should be forfeited. But it should take a criminal conviction. That is the national mood, and movement.

States like North Carolina, New Mexico, and Nebraska have not become havens for drug dealers or seen spikes in crime. And again, the latest evidence shows that there is not a relationship between increasing forfeiture and decreasing crime and drug abuse. The choice between civil asset forfeiture and fighting crime is a false dichotomy. We know we can support law enforcement, safeguard our communities, and also protect the constitutional rights of all Mississippians. 

This column appeared in the Clarion Ledger on June 30, 2019.

The nation’s largest civil asset forfeiture program does not help police fight crime nor does it reduce drug use, two of the most common refrains from proponents of civil forfeiture. 

That is according to a new study from the non-profit Institute for Justice. While each state may have their own civil forfeiture law, the federal equitable sharing program is administered by the Department of Justice. It allows local law enforcement to cooperate on forfeiture with DOJ agencies and receive up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

This study asked the question, how is this program working and is it reaching its goals? Which is to “remove the tools of crime from criminal organizations, deprive wrongdoers of the proceeds of their crimes, recover property that may be used to compensate victims, and deter crime,” according to DOJ. 

It combined data from the program, along with local crime, drug use, and economic data from various federal sources. 

The study found: 

• More forfeiture proceeds do not translate into more crimes solved;
• More forfeiture proceeds also do not mean less drug use;
• When local economies suffer, forfeiture activity increases, suggesting police make greater use of forfeiture when local budgets are tight. A 1 percentage point increase in local unemployment—a standard proxy for fiscal stress—is associated with a statistically significant 9 percentage point increase in seizures of property for forfeiture.

Mississippi has begun to make a move to scale back civil forfeiture. In 2017, the legislature let administrative forfeiture die when the law authorizing the program was not renewed. 

Previously, administrative forfeiture allowed agents of the state to take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely obtaining a warrant and providing the individual with a notice. In order to get the property back, an individual was required to file a petition in court within 30 days and incur legal fees in order to contest the forfeiture and recover such assets.

The state is still allowed to seize and keep property through civil forfeiture, a process that requires the state to go before a judge for an adjudication of whether the property should be forfeited, even if the owner does not file suit. 

And much like the federal program has not translated into less crime or drug use, the program in Mississippi has generally not led to big drug busts. In fact, if you remove one large bust from the equation, the average value of forfeited property is only $5,422 over the past 18 months. Less than 10 seizures statewide amounted to more than $60,000. One-third were for less than $1,000. 

Rather than busting drug kingpins, law enforcement is more likely seizing iPhones, guns, or small amounts of cash. 

The Mississippi Justice Institute, along with the Cato Institute, and the Pelican Institute have come to the defense of Vizaline LLC, a Mississippi tech startup that the government wants to put out of business.  

The three constitutional litigation centers filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief on May 1 that urges the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a wrongful dismissal of the Mississippi company’s lawsuit against the government.  Vizaline utilizes a publicly-available legal description of a bank’s property and then inputs those parameters into a computer program that generates a line drawing of the property description. The program then overlays those drawings onto a satellite photograph and the customer receives the Viza-plat within 48 hours.

Vizaline helps by giving a bank a bird's eye view of the property that is being used as collateral. This service helps smaller community banks because it allows them to identify and resolve any discrepancies that might require the assistance of a surveyor or an attorney. 

The company doesn’t send employees to job sites to conduct surveys or place markers and says on its website that its Viza-plat product is not a legal survey or intended to replace one.

The Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors filed a lawsuit in Madison County Chancery Court against Vizaline in September 2017, accusing the company of engaging in the “unlicensed practice of surveying” and seeking the return of all of the fees paid to the company. 

With the help of the Institute for Justice, the company filed a counter suit on First Amendment grounds in July 2018, but the counter suit was wrongfully dismissed on December 18.

The amicus brief argues that the December decision by a federal district court contradicts several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that uphold the concept that the dissemination of public information, even done for profit, is protected under the First Amendment. 

The brief also argues that the board is another “instance of an unelected state board overreaching its authority for protectionist purposes” and that courts should apply closer scrutiny to overly broad licensing laws are used to shield existing businesses from more innovative competitors.

The District Court held that the licensing restrictions only “incidentally infringed” on Vizaline’s free speech rights and therefore did not violate the First Amendment.

The key Supreme Court decision cited in the brief is NIFLA v. Becerra, which was a landmark decision in 2018 for professional speech and the First Amendment. In that case, California regulators tried to convince the court that they were only regulating professional speech regarding Christian non-profits and state-provided contraception and abortion services. 

The court, in a 5-4 decision, held that speech is speech and there is no separation between types, such as so-called “professional speech”. The decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas also held that the consequence of not protecting professional speech would be that states would reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by imposing a licensing requirement.

The Supreme Court came to the same conclusion in two earlier cases cited in the brief — Sorrell  v. IMS  Health  Inc. in 2011 and Riley v. National Federation of the Blind of N.C. Inc. in 1988 — that professional speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Vizaline resulted from the collaboration by Mississippi entrepreneurs Scott Dow and Brent Melton. Melton retired after 42 years in the banking industry. Dow came from the networking, remote sensing and geospatial modeling worlds and started his first company while still in college.

They met at the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology at the Stennis Space Center where Melton presented his idea before a group of tech entrepreneurs. The Viza-plat arrived on the market in April 2014.

The dispute started in 2015, when the Board of Licensure asked Vizaline to place a disclaimer on their website to ensure customers knew the Viza-plat wasn’t a survey. Vizaline complied with the board’s request, but the board sued them anyway.  

Download the full amicus brief here.  

There has been a movement underway around the nation and in Mississippi to reform our criminal justice system.

The movement has gained momentum due to our mass incarceration problem in the U.S. — a reality where our prison population has grown roughly seven-fold since the 1970s and left us with highest incarceration rate in the world.

By way of comparison that helps visualize the extent of the problem, the U.S. incarcerates 655 per 100,000 people of any age, while Turkmenistan incarcerates 583, Cuba 510, Rwanda 434, Russia 415 and Brazil 324, according to data maintained by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at the University of London.

In a nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world, Mississippi has the third highest rate as a state.

If you are hearing these types of statistics for the first time and are very surprised, you are not alone. Most are very surprised. And as you might suspect, our unique incarceration habit is a very expensive one. It is a budget-busting endeavor that is eating an ever-increasing percentage of state budgets around the nation, and it is doing so at the expense of other worthwhile and necessary public investments.

Perhaps this is one reason why even in this divisive political era, the reform movement has drawn supporters from across the political spectrum.

The Mississippi Legislature has been one such supporter, and more than that, it has been a leader on this issue nationally. In recent years it has passed two criminal justice reform measures, H.B. 585 (2014) and H.B. 387 (2018), and it is currently considering H.B. 1352, another reform measure. H.B. 1352 seeks to make it easier for people who have paid their debt to society to re-enter the workforce by removing barriers to employment. These barriers occur in various ways that are not directly or indirectly tied to fighting crime or reducing recidivism, such as through the denial of occupational licenses and the loss of driving privileges for offenses that are not related to driving.

In addition to addressing work-related issues, H.B. 1352 also addresses mental health issues, which along with addiction issues affect our criminal justice system. These issues often go unaddressed in prison. For addiction issues, drug courts have proven to be an effective tool. H.B. 1352 builds on drug court successes by allowing these courts to also offer treatments to those with mental health issues.

The cost implications are huge. Mississippi spends over $300 million annually in a cash-strapped state to support an overly large prison system. Funds are scarce to non-existent to dedicate towards measures that would reduce crime in the first place. H.B. 1352 would create a dedicated fund to ensure that cost-savings from reforms are invested in programs that are aimed at reducing crime and making communities safer.

Criminal justice reform is an issue that garners bipartisan support because of shared goals — safer communities, fewer people in prison, more people leading productive lives, and cost savings from unnecessary overincarceration. Over 95 percent of the people currently incarcerated in our prisons will be re-entering our communities at some point. A current reality is that approximately a third of those persons will reenter prison within three years. The reasons for this can range from the commission of a new crime to violations of a parole condition. We can change this equation to some degree by ensuring that when people leave our prisons, they can go to work. H.B. 1352 will help do that.

It is difficult to combat the realities of recidivism. There is no sense in making this battle more difficult by making it harder for the recently released to find employment through the imposition of unnecessary barriers. It is imperative that we eliminate these barriers, such as the denial of occupational licensing, that make it harder for people to find work and more likely to turn to crime.

Our current incarceration system is not effective. We should be smart on crime and adopt evidence-based solutions that actually make our communities safer – policies that have demonstrated success through the numbers, not simply emotion-based actions that provide only chest beating points. A smarter approach involves offering the dignity of work to people who have made mistakes and focuses incarceration efforts on those who truly pose a threat to public safety. This, in turn, will create safer communities for the people of our state. That’s something we can all agree on.

This editorial appeared in the Clarion Ledger on March 12, 2019.