All too often, ex-offenders are released from prison and unable to land a job because of licensing restrictions. The “Mississippi Fresh Start Act” would provide a second chance.
Introduced by Rep. Mark Baker (R-Brandon), House Bill 1284, which has cleared the Judiciary A Committee and is headed to the full House, would prohibit occupational licensing boards from using rules and policies to create blanket bans that prevent ex-offenders from working.
A companion bill, Senate Bill 2781, has been introduced in the Senate by Sen. John Polk (R-Hattiesburg). It has cleared the Accountability, Efficiency, and Transparency Committee, but a reverse-repealer was added in committee.
Under the proposed legislation, licensing authorities would no longer be able to use vague terms like “moral turpitude” or “good character” to deny a license.
Rather, they must use a “clear and convincing standard of proof” in determining whether a criminal conviction is cause to be denied a license. This includes nature and seriousness of the crime, passage of time since the conviction, relationship of the crime to the responsibilities of the occupation, and evidence of rehabilitation on the part of the individual.
An individual may request a determination from the licensing authority on whether their criminal record will be disqualifying. If an individual is denied, the board must state the grounds and reasons for the denial. The individual would then have the right to a hearing to challenge the decision, with the burden of proof on the licensing authority.
If this legislation passes, it would provide hope for ex-offenders who want to turn their lives around and learn a trade so that they can better support themselves and their families.
A network of cameras that could track people throughout a city 24 hours a day is open for misuse and misidentification.
A man is shopping with his family during the holidays at a crowded mall when a law enforcement team swoops in to arrest him, wrongly, as a wanted child predator. News of the arrest quickly passes through Twitter and becomes front page news.
A sheriff is concerned about a NAACP chapter that is critical of her. She begins to track members and have them arrested.
An innocent man is on trial for murder. The most important evidence is an incorrect facial recognition match between him and a video of the perpetrator caught on a home video camera. The match serves to shift the burden to the incorrectly identified man to prove he is not the person in the video.
These things will happen with facial recognition technology. The question is how often.
Sunday, January 13 brought two brutal murders in Jackson. One a slaying of a preacher as he entered his church. The other a shooting in a Wal-Mart parking lot at a busy time when families are present.
The two murders are continuations of a very worrisome trend in which Jackson’s murder rate is increasing when the rates in nearby cities are decreasing. They are part of a murder rate that is the highest Jackson has seen in over 20 years. The city had 92 homicides in 1994 and 1995, and 84 in 2018. But Jackson also had roughly 190,000 citizens in the mid-1990s, and today, after hemorrhaging citizens for decades, stands at approximately 166,865. We are killing more with less.
Mayor Chokwe Lumumba addressed the public after these Sunday murders. One of the crime-fighting methods he announced the city would pursue is a “Real Time Crime Center” that “will give us eyes into our community, so we can hopefully stop crime before it happens because we’re watching the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” The center would rely on facial recognition technology used through a network of cameras that could track people throughout the city.
That certainly has the ring of Orwell’s 1984.
It is unclear if the mayor is serious about the city pursuing this technology, or whether his comments were more of an off-the-cuff variety that did not reflect an intentional and definitive policy direction. Understandably, the mayor would like to reassure the public that his administration is serious about the issue of violent crime.
However, facial recognition technology has the potential for misidentification and abuse. Both are obvious problems. If the city is serious about pursuing this technology, the problems associated with it must be addressed and the public needs to be fully engaged in the process – something that is not occurring around the nation as private companies are quietly attempting to sell these technologies to law enforcement agencies.
Early tests of the technology as it exists today (and it is constantly evolving) reveal significant misidentification issues. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California recently tested Amazon’s Rekognition software using its default settings. This mirrors how the technology is used by a sheriff’s department in Oregon. It compared every member of Congress with 25,000 mugshots, and falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshot images.
The test also revealed, as have other tests, that facial recognition technology is more likely to misidentify people of color. This is one of the reasons Brian Brackeen, who is CEO of the facial recognition firm Kairos and also is black, has been fighting against the use of the technology by law enforcement.
Abuse is harder to measure since the technology is not used in many places. We know from history that bad actors will periodically be in positions of power when the technology could be abused. We know that China is introducing the technology at a rapid pace and regularly reminds its citizens that the technology will make it virtually impossible to evade the state.
With these potential troubles in mind, it is perhaps time to hit the pause button and fully discuss this technology before using it. A technology’s availability, even its use by the private sector, does not mean it is something the government should use.
And this doesn’t address a more fundamental point. If Jackson wants to be serious about fighting crime, perhaps it should focus first on the easier-to-reach basics it is missing, like prosecuting cases in a timely manner, before reaching for Orwellian sounding technologies that promise magical abilities with great risks to civil liberties.
This column appeared in the Northside Sun on January 31, 2019.
In Harmelin v. Michigan, Justice Antonin Scalia pointed to the special danger inherent in governments using economic fines for punishment. Unlike other forms of punishment that cost the government money, fines are a revenue source. That source can act as gasoline that propels the government in search of prosecutions for fines in areas where previously it never would have searched.
Because of that, to use Justice Scalia’s words, “it makes sense to scrutinize governmental action more closely when the State stands to benefit.”
This concern and others are at play in Timbs v. Indiana, a case presently pending before the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Timbs is arguing the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to the states. He is challenging Indiana’s civil forfeiture of his $42,000 Land Rover following an attempted small quantity drug sale. The value of the Land Rover is nearly four times the maximum criminal fine he could receive for his criminal conviction.
This case is part of a larger debate that is occurring nationwide over the use of civil asset forfeiture proceedings to seize private property. Civil asset forfeiture proceedings, also called civil in rem forfeiture proceedings, permit the government to seize property that it alleges is connected to criminal activity.
There is usually no state-level requirement that there be a conviction in the underlying criminal matter in order for the government to seize the property. A difficulty lies in the fact this is done in a civil proceeding, not a criminal one, with its lesser burden of proof, i.e., preponderance of the evidence. Sometimes it is not even done in a civil proceeding but in an administrative hearing with even less protections for the property owner.
There are other problems. These include innocent persons who have their property tied up in forfeiture proceedings and taken by the state, either permanently or for long periods of time, because unbeknownst to them someone such as a family member used their car for an illegal purpose.
The Excessive Fines Clause already applies to civil asset forfeiture proceedings instituted by the federal government. The question in Timbs is whether it applies to these same proceedings brought by the states.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that most provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars states from depriving persons of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” This process of applying the first 10 Amendments to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment is referred to as “incorporation.”
During oral argument in Timbs this past November, the Justices sounded skeptical of Indiana’s arguments that the Excessive Fines Clause did not apply to the states. Justice Neil Gorsuch, an appointee of President Donald Trump, interjected at the beginning of Indiana counsel’s argument to express exasperation at Indiana’s argument that the Clause should not incorporated against the states: “most of the incorporation cases took place in like the 1940s. And here we are in 2018 still litigating incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Really? Come on, General.”
Fellow Trump appointee Justice Brett Kavanaugh likewise seemed perplexed: “Isn’t it just too late in the day to argue that any of the Bill of Rights is not incorporated?”
Justice Gorsuch appeared to go so far as to suggest that if the Clause does apply, Indiana would also lose the case on the merits of whether the seizing of the Land Rover was in fact excessive.
Two federal circuits and 14 state high courts have already held that the Excessive Fines Clause applies to the states. Questions from Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and others suggest the Supreme Court may soon follow suit and affirm those courts took the correct path.
Interestingly, only four state courts have held that the Clause is not applicable to state actions. Mississippi is one of them.
Some may wonder how far a government might go in its justifications of civil asset forfeiture and arguments that it is not excessive. Some may further wonder whether opponents of the process are a bit too paranoid of potential abuses of power.
In response to those possible sentiments, look no further than Indiana counsel’s argument before the Supreme Court - he argued that it would not be excessive for the government to seize an automobile for the driver exceeding the speed limit by five miles per hour.
As Justice Scalia noted, when profit is a motive there is special reason to scrutinize the exercise of government power. The use of civil asset forfeiture proceedings has increased significantly in modern times as a fundraising source for local governments and law enforcement agencies.
This is problematic, and Eighth Amendment protections are needed to protect against what Chief Justice John Roberts termed “the terrifying force of the criminal justice system.”
The quest by Rep. Mark Baker (R-Brandon) to reauthorize administrative forfeiture in Mississippi is gaining national attention. And not necessarily for the right reasons.
Last week, a coalition of numerous conservative organizations, in Mississippi and nationally, including Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Mississippi Justice Institute, American Conservative Union, Empower Mississippi, FreedomWorks, Institute for Justice, and Right of Crime sent a letter to Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, and Speaker Philip Gunn asking them to oppose the reauthorization.
“Conservatives rightly understand that private property rights are the bedrock of a free society, and the bar must be high for a government to seize property from its citizens and transfer ownership to the state through forfeiture litigation,” the letter reads. “Civil forfeiture is controversial because it often means innocent people losing their property to the state in processes that are complex and divorced from the prosecution of the crime that was the basis for the initial seizure.”
One of the preeminent Constitutional scholars in the country has also weighed in.
“Mississippi legislators should think hard before reinstating the controversial and questionable practice of administrative (sometimes called “civil”) forfeiture,” Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow at MCPP and the Director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, said. “This is a practice that allows state agents to seize property they allege to have been involved in a crime without so much as a court order. And since these are considered civil actions, property owners get few of the protections typically enjoyed by criminal defendants.
“In many past forfeiture cases, property was stripped away without any conviction, and sometimes without charges being filed at all—and then people had to petition the court and pay exorbitant legal fees to get their stuff back. Administrative forfeiture is simply at odds with basic American principles of fairness, justice, and due process. Reinstating it in Mississippi would be a step backwards, especially when many other states are reforming their laws to bolster property rights, not undermine them.”
In 2017, Mississippi became the 19th state in the country to make reforms to civil asset forfeiture in the past half-decade when the state mandated a searchable forfeiture database. That number is now up to 29 states.
If House Bill 1104 becomes law, this would be a rare instance where a state is actually walking back from reforms.
When Mississippi law enforcement agencies want to keep property they have seized from a property owner, they now have to prove to a judge that the property is connected to crime.
In a deeper analysis by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy of the state’s asset forfeiture database, 135 of 315 seizures listed in the first 18 months of the database had neither proximity to drugs or distribution of paraphernalia or funds directly traceable to the drug trade. That means 42.9 percent of all forfeitures were considered to be catch-all violations of the state’s Controlled Substances Act without any of the above justifications.
Right now, the state only has civil asset forfeiture which requires judicial oversight, but that could change.
House Bill 1104 is authored by state Rep. Mark Baker (R-Brandon) and it would bring back administrative forfeiture that expired on July 1. This type of forfeiture was for property valued at $20,000 or less and required only a notification to the property owner without any judicial oversight.
The bill will likely make it to the House floor out of the committee Baker chairs, the Judiciary A Committee.
Gov. Phil Bryant has already tweeted his support for the bill, saying that he is “standing with law enforcement.” He said if the bill makes it to his desk, he’ll sign it.
There are procedures provided under the law for forfeiture.
One of those procedures is that, when an agency seizes a vehicle, cash, a weapon or other property, they have to provide the property owner a Notice of Intent to forfeit that property. Most law enforcement agencies use a boilerplate form with six boxes that give a general reason for the forfeiture.
Without doing public record requests for specific incident reports from the law enforcement agencies, these NOIs provide the best view of the justification underlying most forfeitures.
The boxes on the standard forfeiture form include:
- Vehicle is subject to forfeiture under the state law since it was used to transport or facilitate the transport, sale, receipt, possession or concealment of controlled substances or property. The database has 54 vehicles that were forfeited under this provision.
- Money was found in close proximity to forfeitable substances.
- Money was found in close proximity to forfeitable drug manufacturing or distribution paraphernalia.
- Money was found in proximity to forfeitable records of the importation, manufacture or distribution of controlled substances.
- Deadly weapon or money is was used or intended for use in violation of state law.
- Said property subject to forfeiture since it was used or intended for use in violation of state law.
- Money or property being forfeitable since it was the proceeds or derived from proceeds traceable to exchange in violation of the state law.
According to the analysis, 180 of all seizures or 57.14 percent at least had one box checked that included proximity to drugs or distribution paraphernalia or funds directly traceable to the drug trade.
As for the breakdown:
- There were 148 or 46.9 percent of the 315 forfeitures that were in direct proximity to drugs.
- Only 72 forfeitures or 22.8 percent had directly traceable drug proceeds.
- There were 51 seizures or 16.19 percent involving proximity to paraphernalia for distribution.
- Only 27 seizures, or 8.5 percent, had all three: proximity to drugs, distribution paraphernalia and traceable funds.
If you asked most Mississippians whether the state should be able to confiscate cash and property from a person who was never charged with, much less convicted of a crime, the answer would be a resounding “no.”
Yet this is exactly what occurs every day under a practice known as civil forfeiture.
Right now, if Mississippians are accused of a crime, they are tried in a criminal proceeding. But if their property is seized by law enforcement, it instead goes into a civil proceeding, which lacks many meaningful safeguards.
The forfeited property does not even have to belong to the person suspected of criminal activity. Innocent property owners can easily become ensnared in this system. A parent who lets their teenager drive the family car may be surprised to learn they may never get the car back if the teenager is pulled over with drugs in the car, if the parent cannot prove they had no idea about the drugs.
Proponents of civil forfeiture argue that it is an important tool in combating drug trafficking throughout our state. This is a worthy goal, and should be pursued. But it should be pursued in a way that is consistent with basic American principles of fairness and justice. Those include the presumption of innocence and the protection from punishment for those not convicted of a crime under a fair and impartial process.
Returning to these principles would not require police to change any of their current practices. Police officers would still be able to take property they believed to be connected to crime. The only difference would be that prosecutors would actually need to charge and convict the property owner before the state could keep the property. If anything, requiring criminal convictions for forfeiture cases would likely increase the number of criminals who were charged, convicted, and taken off the streets.
Even if our elected officials are not willing to require a conviction before property is forfeited, they should at least ensure that the current civil forfeiture process has as many safeguards as possible. But this is anything but the case.
By far, the most problematic aspect of civil forfeiture is the seizure of low value property, because it usually does not make economic sense for the property owner to contest. If the state took a $4,000 car from you, and it would cost you $10,000 to hire an attorney to fight to get your car back, would you pursue it? If you won, you’d lose.
Yet rather than offering additional protections for innocent owners who have low value property seized, until recently state law created even more risk for low value property to be unfairly confiscated. Under a practice known as “administrative forfeiture,” the government was allowed to take and keep property valued at under $20,000 without even having the forfeiture approved by a civil court. The burden was on the owner to sue if he or she wanted to contest the forfeiture.
Fortunately, last year, the legislature allowed the law that authorized administrative forfeitures to expire. However, lawmakers are already promising to bring the law back this year. The data shows that they shouldn’t.
The legislature recently required a publicly accessible database to be created, providing some basic information about every seizure that occurs. This law has now been in effect for 18 months, and the initial data confirms that administrative forfeiture is a bad idea.
According to an analysis by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the database includes forty-seven seizures in which the state pursued administrative forfeiture. The average value of this seized property was only $2,988. Forty-seven percent of the seizures were valued at less than $1,000. Eight seizures involved property worth $250 or less.
Moreover, the data indicates that, far from being used exclusively to take large quantities of drugs and cash from drug mules and cartel affiliates, trivial personal valuables are often taken under administrative forfeiture. The database includes items like an Apple Watch, multiple seizures of individual iPhones, and a Makita power drill. In two instances, agencies seized as little as $50 in cash. All of this gives the appearance that administrative forfeiture is sometimes used for roadside wallet and pocket emptying.
Whether guilty or innocent, it makes no sense for anyone to pursue legal action over these types of seizures, especially if the potential of criminal charges is hanging over their head. The result is a system in which the government can confiscate personal property with virtually no expectation of having to justify its actions.
Mississippians want to combat drug trafficking. But we also respect the property rights of innocent owners, and we expect our government to as well. The two are not mutually exclusive. Our lawmakers should look for ways to separate criminals from their ill-gotten gains, while ensuring adequate protections for the law abiding public.
This column appeared in the Clarion Ledger on January 24, 2019.
All too often, ex-offenders are released from prison and unable to land a job because of licensing restrictions.
A criminal justice bill that prioritizes employment opportunities for ex-offenders will achieve the right balance between protecting public safety, protecting law enforcement and protecting crime victims while also helping ex-offenders reintegrate into their families and communities. In particular, Gov. Phil Bryant’s Faith Advisory Council, of which I am vice chair, is focusing our efforts on an important right-to-work reform that will reduce costs and legal exposure for state occupational licensing boards, as well as help people pay taxes, stay out of prison, and stay off of welfare. This reform allows qualified ex-offenders to work in their chosen field unless they have committed a crime directly related to their licensed profession.
In recent years, thanks to the N.C. Dental Board U.S. Supreme Court case, states have been forced to rethink their approach to occupational licensing. In many ways, Mississippi has been a leader in this area, thanks, in part, to the governor’s leadership on the Occupational Licensing Review Commission. More work, however, remains to be done.
In particular, licensing boards should remove blanket bans that prevent ex-offenders from working. These bans are overly broad, facilitated by vague references to “good character” and “moral turpitude.
Now, I’m a big believer in good character. But one of the hallmarks of a good character is the ability to learn from your mistakes and start over. It’s also worth noting that some of these occupational licensing requirements are distantly rooted in racist policies aimed at preventing African-Americans from competing with white workers. In the absence of clear guidelines as to what constitutes “moral turpitude,” it’s easy to see how blanket bans for ex-offenders could be abused to keep the wrong kind of person from getting a license.
Instead of blanket bans, occupational licensing boards should consider the individual circumstances of each offender. As an example, let me share with you Beth’s story, told to me by the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Beth’s name has been changed to protect her identity, but the challenges she faces are very real.
Beth is a Mississippi woman who made mistakes, served her time, and then wanted a better life. Upon release, Beth entered school with the dream of becoming a dental hygienist. In order to be a dental hygienist in Mississippi you must earn an associate’s degree and pass at least two national exams. In other words, Beth invested thousands of dollars and years of her life to pursuing her dream of becoming a dental hygienist.
After completing her coursework with honors, Beth discovered she was barred from obtaining a license because of a “good moral character” requirement for dental hygienists.
I don’t know what happened to Beth. I would guess she got another job. After her journey, I doubt she re-entered the prison system. But Beth’s dreams were crushed by red tape. That’s very hard. If I were Beth, I would have left Mississippi. Mississippi refused to take a chance on Beth, it refused to recognize her right to work.
Let me tell you another story. This story is about a man named Richard Chunn. In 1981, Richard pled guilty to marijuana possession in Texas. After that, he stayed clean and stayed out of prison. He ended up in Mississippi where he obtained work as a licensed bail agent. In 2011, however, the Mississippi legislature passed a law prohibiting bail agents from getting a license if they have a felony conviction. Richard lost his license.
But Richard is a fighter. He wasn’t going to let Mississippi’s bureaucracy deprive him of his livelihood. Richard sued, arguing that this Mississippi law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The state Supreme Court agreed with Richard, in a case decided in January 2015. Among other things, the Mississippi Supreme Court said:
“[The state’s] rationale utterly fails. The reasoning that supports the government's purpose—lack of trust—may apply to some felonies. For example, a conviction for embezzlement certainly calls into question the offender’s trustworthiness. But the statute’s broad reach includes many felonies that bear no relationship to trustworthiness.”
Citing a similar case out of Connecticut, the Court observed that such laws fail “to consider probable and realistic circumstances in a felon’s life, including the likelihood of rehabilitation, age at the time of conviction, and other mitigating circumstances” with the result that “many qualified ex-felons are being deprived of employment.”
The Court also acknowledged that while “there is no doubt that the State could logically prohibit and refuse employment in certain positions where the felony conviction would directly reflect on the felon’s qualifications for the job. … A person’s God-given, constitutional liberty to engage in a profession should not so easily be extinguished by the government.”
The Court’s conclusion bears repeating: “A person’s God-given, constitutional liberty to engage in a profession should not so easily be extinguished by the government.”
Also worth reflecting on is this. While the scope of the Chunn decision is very limited – it only applies to bail bondsmen – the reasoning in the case is very clear. Under the Chunn case, the good character clauses imposed by many boards in Mississippi have a good chance of being challenged in court.
The fix is simple: pass legislation requiring occupational licensing boards to list specific criminal records that disqualify a person from receiving a license, but only where the offense is rationally, specifically and directly related to the duties and responsibilities of the licensed occupation.
Cleaning up our occupational licensing laws to let ex-offenders work is a win-win for state occupational licensing boards and for the people of Mississippi. As mentioned, it would reduce the legal exposure of the boards. In addition, it would remove barriers that keep ex-offenders from working.
According to a recent study published by Arizona State University, states with heavier occupational licensing restrictions have much higher 3-year recidivism rates. By making it easier for ex-offenders to work, Mississippi will see a reduction in crime and a reduction in prison costs.
Finally, according to the Miss. Supreme Court, the right to work – which includes the right to be free from irrational occupational licensing burdens – is protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The freedom to work is a civil rights issue and encouraging people to work is good for families and communities. This would be a commonsense fix that follows the growing number of states in helping ex-offenders turn their lives around and supporting their families by finding work in a variety of diverse professions.
Numerous conservative organizations sent a letter to Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, and Speaker Philip Gunn yesterday asking leadership to oppose reinstatement of administrative forfeiture in Mississippi.
Last year, the process known as administrative forfeiture was not renewed in the legislature. Administrative forfeiture allows state can take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely providing the individual with a notice.
The full letter said:
Governor Phil Bryant, Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, and Speaker Philip Gunn:
As you know, during the last legislative session the Mississippi legislature allowed legislative authority for administrative forfeiture to expire at the end of June. This was a significant and important step in addressing problems with civil asset forfeiture and continuing Mississippi’s path in being a national leader in criminal justice reform.
Conservatives rightly understand that private property rights are the bedrock of a free society, and the bar must be high for a government to seize property from its citizens and transfer ownership to the state through forfeiture litigation. Civil forfeiture is controversial because it often means innocent people losing their property to the state in processes that are complex and divorced from the prosecution of the crime that was the basis for the initial seizure.
While criminal forfeiture can and should be used to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains, cases of abuse throughout the country show that civil forfeiture—particularly when done administratively and not before a judge—has resulted in untold numbers of innocent property owners losing their vehicles, guns, cash, and other property without ever being charged with or convicted of a crime and the proceeds going to supplement law enforcement agencies’ budgets.
A growing number of states have crafted legislation to rein in the process of civil asset forfeiture and protect private property owners, and the leaders in reforms, New Mexico and Nebraska, have ended civil forfeiture and replaced it with criminal forfeiture, to address the legitimate needs of law enforcement to confiscate the fruit of crime.
Administrative forfeiture is particularly worrisome. This particular practice has come under increasing scrutiny due to its circumvention of judicial safeguards. Administrative forfeiture allowed agents of the state to take property valued under $20,000 and forfeit it by merely providing the individual with a notice. In order to appeal the ruling, an individual was required to file a petition in court and incur significant legal fees. For these reasons, administrative forfeiture was viewed as a particularly pernicious policy that placed lower-income property owners in the impossible situation of deciding whether to pay a large legal bill to get their property back.
For these reasons, we are asking you to oppose reinstatement of administrative forfeiture in Mississippi.
Sincerely,
Jon Pritchett, CEO
Mississippi Center for Public Policy
Aaron Rice, Director
Mississippi Justice Institute
Grant Callen, President
Empower Mississippi
Marc Levin
Right on Crime
Lee McGrath, Senior Legislative Counsel
Institute for Justice
Jason Pye, Vice President of Legislative Affairs
FreedomWorks
David Safavian, General Counsel
The American Conservative Union
A PDF of the letter can be found here.
The Mississippi legislature held a policy hearing on criminal justice reform Monday and there was plenty of agreement among corrections officials, prosecutors, law enforcement, judiciary, and interest groups.
These include spending savings from removing non-violent offenders from the state’s inmate population into job training and drug treatment programs, changing the state’s bond system, reducing the amount of controlled, post-incarceration supervision for non-violent offenders and removing “good faith” clauses from occupational licensing regulations.
The goal is ultimately to build on House Bill 585, which was designed to refocus prison space on violent and career criminals, strengthen community supervision and ensure certainty in sentencing.
In 2018, Gov. Phil Bryant signed another round of criminal justice reforms, HB 387, into law that created a “safety valve” option that allows judges discretion in applying mandatory minimum sentences for repeat offenders and prohibited incarceration due to the inability to pay a fine or fee among other reforms.
“In all of the corrections conferences I’ve attended, I’ve heard how Mississippi has taken steps forward,” said state Rep. Bill Kinkaide (R-Byhalia), who chairs the House Corrections Committee. “We want to embrace common sense reforms to enhance public safety while being good stewards of taxpayer funds.”
All parties agreed that more needs to be done to end the so-called “revolving door” of recidivism, where offenders keep reoffending and reentering the system because they lack the ability to find employment and build a life outside crime.
“We need to help these people (offenders) be successful or else you have to put them back in prison. That’s the bottom line,” said U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett, who was state judge from 1992 to 2004. “Everything that happens to that person in the criminal justice system affects their ability to be successful. Reentry needs to be addressed meaningfully by Mississippi.”
Starrett told the committee that the amount of time ex-cons spend on supervised release needs to be reduced in half. One reason he cited for reducing post-incarceration supervision was that most recidivism occurs in the first year for inmates after release.
According to Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall, taxpayers have saved $45 million since the enactment of the first round of reforms in 2014. According to Hall, the state’s inmate population was reduced by 11 percent after passage.
She told the joint committee that savings from those inmate population reductions need to be invested in job training and drug treatment programs and pay hikes for correctional officers, who are some of the lowest paid nationally.
Those concerns over spending on job training and drug treatment for offenders were amplified by Hal Kittrell, representing the Mississippi Prosecutors Association, Judge Prentiss Harrell of the 15thCircuit Court of Mississippi, and Sheriff Steve Rushing of Lincoln County, the president of the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association.
Helping ex-cons enter the workforce was also a concern for the experts testifying before the committee. The Mississippi Center for Public Policy’s Vice President for Policy, Jameson Taylor, recommended that the committee eliminate “good faith clauses” in occupational licensing regulations that prevent ex-felons from receiving occupational licenses. He cited two cases where ex-cons were unable to receive occupational licenses because of these clauses.
Jennifer Riley-Collins, the president of the Americans for Civil Liberties in Mississippi, told the committee that the state’s cash bail system needs to be changed since it disproportionately affects poor families.
California was the first state to eliminate its cash bail system.
She said the state’s average inmate population in county jails, where offenders await trial, averaged about 12,000 or so daily. Of those, she said 56 percent of them can’t afford bail.
“Taxpayers are footing the bill for a system that favors the wealthy and it’s not making our communities any safer,” Riley-Collins said. “You have to pay or you stay. If you can’t afford to pay, you have to stay.”