Psyche, Science, and Society

Steve Earle: Over Yonder

Add comment February 6th, 2008

Supreme Court allows sentencing leniency

As the U.S. has filled its prisons with millions of, mostly young minority males, many on often minor drug charges. While the War on Drugs has been a total failure at addressing the extent of substance abuse in our society, it has been ripe with abuses. The symbol of this abuse in recent years has been the extreme sentencing discrepancy between those arrested for selling crack, as opposed to powered cocaine. Those of us in substance abuse treatment know that there is essentially no difference between crack and cocaine, except for the common differences in who sells and uses them: crack — poor blacks; cocaine — middle class to wealthy whites. As all attempts to reform theses sentencing disparities have failed, federal judges have taken to using modest discretion in interpreting sentencing guidelines. The Bush administration, terrified by the humanity exemplified by the judges actions, tried to get the Supreme Court to put a stop to judicial discretion. Today, in a 7-2 decision, the SCOTUS said “NO” to the Bush administration. Adam B at Daily Kos explains:

SCOTUS: Let judges be merciful

Derrick Kimbrough is, no doubt, a bad man. In 2004 he pleaded guilty to four offenses: conspiracy to distribute crack and powder; possession with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of crack (he acknowledged 56 grams); possession with intent to distribute powder (92.1 grams); and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense. His plea subjected him to a minimum term of 15 years and a maximum of life, with the guidelines reccomending 19-22.5 years. The trial judge thought that such treatment exemplified the “disproportionate and unjust effect that crack cocaine guidelines have in sentencing,” noted that if Kimbrough had possessed only powder cocaine, his Guidelines range would have been far lower: 8-9 years. So the judge did the best he could, and sentenced him to the minimum of 15 years.

The Bush Administration didn’t like this and appealed, claiming that the judge should have had no discretion to consider the crack/powder disparity in sentencing him.

In a 7-2 opinion by Justice Ginsburg handed down this morning, the Supreme Court rebuked the Bush Administration and has given judges permission to deviate downwards from the draconian federal guidelines to consider the disparity in treatment between crack and powder cocaine.

Under the federal sentencing guidelines, a drug trafficker dealing in crack cocaine is subject to the same sentence as one dealing in 100 times more powder cocaine. These were guidelines drawn up in 1986 at the dawn of the crack epidemic, but they yield bizarre, unjust results. As the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission had explained to Congress, “Although chemically similar, crack and powder cocaine are handled very differently for sentencing purposes. The 100-to-1 ratio yields sentences for crack offenses three to six times longer than those for powder offenses involving equal amounts of drugs.” More:

“[T]he Commission concluded that the crack/powder disparity is inconsistent with the 1986 Act’s goal of punishing major drug traffickers more severely than low-level dealers. Drug importers and major traffickers generally deal in powder cocaine, which is then converted into crack by street-level sellers. … But the 100-to-1 ratio can lead to the ‘anomalous’ result that ‘retail crack dealers get longer sentences than the wholesale drug distributors who supply them the powder cocaine from which their crack is produced.’

“Finally, the Commission stated that the crack/powder sentencing differential ‘fosters disrespect for and lack of confidence in the criminal justice system’ because of a ‘widely-held perception’ that it ‘promotes unwarranted disparity based on race.’ [] Approximately 85 percent of defendants convicted of crack offenses in federal court are black; thus the severe sentences required by the 100-to-1 ratio are imposed ‘primarily upon black offenders.’ ”

The Sentencing Commission has repeatedly urged Congress to act and amend this disparity; it has failed to do so. In the meantime, the sentencing guidelines have shifted from mandatory to advisory on trial judges (long story), so the question remained whether deviating from this 100:1 ratio was something that judges could do on their own. Today’s ruling says yes, they can, and you can read it here, along with much discussion of how LSD sentencing works in America.

Justices Thomas and Alito dissented, with Thomas venting about how he doesn’t like the Court’s whole approach to the sentencing guidelines, and Alito briefly arguing that the guidelines were entitled to more weight.

In a second 7-2 opinion today, the Court further extended judicial discretion in sentencing, allowing a trial court judge to sentence a University of Iowa undergrad low-dollar ecstasy dealer ($30K netted) to 36 months probation, rather than that same length in jail, based on his clean living as a construction subcontractor since his arrest.

Given the constant ratcheting-up of sentences by politicians looking to be “tough on crime,” today’s decisions should help tremendously in allowing judges to be just, humane and merciful.

Add comment December 10th, 2007

African-American psychologist at Columbia victim of hate crime

African-American psychologist Madonna Constantine, Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University Teachers College was targeted Tuesday with a noose on her door. It appears that, since the Jena 6 case got wide publicity, the incidence of noose incidents on campuses has spread. Here are two articles from the Columbia Spectator, the first on this incident and its aftermath, the second on protests at the school:

No Suspects Yet in Noose Incident
By Joy Resmovits

As hundreds of students, professors, and city leaders gathered Wednesday to protest the hanging of a noose on the office door of an African American Teachers College professor, police said that there were no suspects yet in the criminal investigation of the incident.

Officials said Wednesday that they were considering the incident aggravated harassment as a hate crime. Investigators reported that the noose had not been on the door of Professor Madonna Constantine’s office as late as 11:30 p.m. Monday night and that it was found on Tuesday by one of Constantine’s female colleagues, who reported it to the police. The NYPD, which noted that this was the first noose case in at least five years, said officials are interviewing all of professors in Constantine’s department.

Meanwhile, Columbia’s campus continued to react to the event. At an afternoon rally outside of Teachers College, Constantine made her first public appearance since the hate crime was perpetrated. As Constantine exited Zankel Hall, the crowd exploded with cheers.

Constantine thanked those present for the “overwhelming support” for her in light of the “heinous and highly upsetting incident.”

“I would like us to stay strong,” Constantine said. “I would like the perpetrator to know that I will not be silent. Hanging a noose on my door reeks of cowardice on many, many levels.”

Teachers College students held signs and chanted within police barriers on 120th Street. After a prayer and a moment of silence, the students marched around Columbia’s campus and the surrounding streets chanting.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and New York state senator Bill Perkins spoke out from Zankel’s steps. Perkins discussed the symbolism of the noose, adding that he was troubled that someone with a CUID and knowledge of TC’s labyrinthine halls perpetrated the incident. “It’s as if a burning cross was placed on the campus of Columbia University,” he said. “This sounds like an inside job.”

While top TC administrators—including TC President Susan Fuhrman and Provost Thomas James—were present, Columbia University representatives were not. “Where is Bollinger? Where is Bollinger?” one protester chanted.

Bollinger, meanwhile, was at a meeting with a number of student leaders— chiefly representing cultural groups—where students grilled him on his handling of the incident and voiced sentiments that Columbia’s campus was hostile towards students of color. While Bollinger said he offered his support to Teachers College, he emphasized that it was a separate institution from Columbia.

The Chaplain’s Office and the University Provost have scheduled a common meal in response to the TC hate crime for Thursday at 6 p.m. in Earl Hall.

Tom Faure and Josh Hirschland contributed to this article.

Second article:

Students Call For Reform at Teachers College

By Joy Resmovits

A simple piece of rope—looped, knotted, and left on a office door in Teachers College two days ago—sat at the center of a firestorm Wednesday as members of Columbia’s community sought to make sense of its chilling symbolism.

Many students and administrators, both from within and beyond Teachers College, voiced outrage and called for change in the school’s culture at pair of official gatherings. A TC town hall, scheduled before the incident, featured a panel of college administrators and a student senator in a crowded Cowin Auditorium, while University President Lee Bollinger led a heated meeting with student leaders in Lerner Hall.

Others turned to rally on 120th Street, where students wearing black shirts cheered for Constantine as she made her first public appearance since the discovery of the noose.

“I’m upset that our community was exposed to such an overwhelmingly blatant act of racism.” Constantine said. “Hanging a noose on my door reeks of cowardice on many, many levels.”

The rally also featured a moment of silence, prayer, chanting, and appearances by Fuhrman, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and New York State Senator Bill Perkins, D-Morningside Heights and West Harlem.

Stringer said he would support the victim. “You will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law because your poison can be infectious,” he said.

“I share your shock and outrage. This is an abhorrent act,” Fuhrman told the assembled crowd. She added, “We will have the first chance as a family … to share our feelings. … It won’t be just talk, but actions. This has to stop.”

Protesters walked through the campus and around 119th Street chanting “No more nooses” and “Hey hey, ho ho, racism has gotta go,” drawing the attention of many onlookers. They continued chanting as they made their way toward Cowin Auditorium for the town hall meeting.

At the forum, about 600 members of the Teachers College community gathered to hear Fuhrman and Provost Thomas James speak.

Fuhrman called the incident “so incongruous with what we want to believe about ourselves.” She said that students and faculty should be accessible and helpful to police, express their feelings openly, and take action.

“I am in pain. I am in anger,” said Janice Robinson, director of the Committee for Community and Diversity who sat on the panel with Fuhrman and James. “We have to use this moment to galvanize us.”

Fuhrman said the incident occurred as TC was trying to increase diversity and awareness, especially by bolstering the accessibility of financial aid. And last spring, Fuhrman appointed James in an effort to increase diversity among faculty. Still, as a professor pointed out at a TC town hall meeting, there are few tenured full-time African-American professors at the school.

Many students complained about a pervasive feeling of racism at Teachers College. “I totally was not surprised, shocked, when it happened,” TC student Nicole Woodard, who is black, said. “It’s scary when I go into a lecture, I can count on my fingers how many people look like me. … Why could this person feel comfortable putting a noose on the door? He should have been shaking.”

Some said they were uncomfortable speaking about race in class, saying there is little diversity, and they expressed concerns that professors whom they may challenge control their grades. “Race is the white elephant in the classroom,” TC student Shawn Maxam said.

“I want to thank the person who put the noose up,” said Dawn Arno, director of TC EdZone Partnership, a group of students who teach in Harlem. “If the soil is not fertile, the seed cannot grow,” referring to the event’s potential to raise awareness.

Many students lined up to express emotions and suggested changes, such as creating an open space for students to voice concerns about diversity. Jonathan Jungblut, TC, received applause when he suggested that Teachers College create a post for a “special master who deals with race, sex, and gender who … advocates for issues.”

Teachers College administrators discussed TC’s programs and curriculum, and the possibility of making institutional changes. The school is currently undergoing a self-study to examine how race can be addressed across the institution.

“The administration is supportive in bigger ways than you probably realize,” Robinson responded after the Town Hall.

While the forum gave students a chance to discuss their emotions, many continued to feel shaken after the event. “I’m still crying every time I think about the physicality of what it must have felt like for her [Constantine],” Alyson Vogel, a program development specialist who works with Constantine, said after the town hall.

While some said they were pleased that the school dedicated time for the event, others were disappointed by the one-hour length and shortage of concrete initiatives.

“They cut it off prematurely as people were still lined up,” Nick O’Mahony, TC, said. “What does this say?”

James said it was cut off because the space was already reserved for other meetings and forums, and Fuhrman had to leave to speak with the media.

Some students were upset that the administration did not use the time to create policy. “I want some hope. They left me high and dry,” Lisa Robinson, TC, said.

“There are things underway that we’re extending, but we’re not today making policy decisions now,” James said in an interview. “We’re trying to support Madonna Constantine.”

The students who organized the rally met again in the TC dining room with Robinson last night. At the meeting, students deemed the event a success, and discussed plans for the future. They want to form a coalition that will last after they graduate, and make fighting racism a priority for the school.

“People are already over it, but we have some momentum,” Jasmine Alvarez, TC senate representative, said.

On Wednesday, students will have another opportunity to voice their concerns and discuss solutions with administrators at the state of the college address.

Joy Resmovits can be reached at joy.resmovits@columbiaspectator.com.

[Thanks to Ken Pope for calling attention to this.]

1 comment October 11th, 2007

School discipline, the “new” racist frontier

The world has become aware through the story of the Jena 6, that racism is alive and well in our nations schools. Yesterday I posted the horrific story of the racist attack in the school lunchroom on a schoolgirl who dropped a piece of cake in Palmdale, CA [see this post and this one]. Perhaps most horrifying was that, when the girl’s mother, a school system employee herself, went to talk to the school administration and demanded that the racist guard be arrested, the mother was arrested instead. [Also arrested were a student who filmed the guard's brutal attack on a cell phone, and that student's sister.] The entire school administration there seems to consider it their God-given right to attack and abuse black people.

Now the Chicago Tribune shines further light on the magnitude of racism in school discipline across the country. The Tribune analyzed carefully hidden US Department of Education data that show tha, in 49 out of 50 states, black students are far more likely to suffer sever discipline [suspensions or expulsion] than are white students committing similar offenses.

As a result, across the country blacks are 3.1 times as likely as whites to be suspended and 2.9 times as likely to be expelled. In my state of Massachusetts, the rations are 2.4 and 2.7 respectively [see state breakdowns here].

While socioeconomic factors play a role, the disparities remained when socioeconomic status was statistically controlled.

Every American citizen should be horrified by these statistics, as we should be by the Jena 6 and the Palmdale cases. These cases and statistics show clearly that our society is at war with young black people, criminalizing and declaring them deviant in multitudinous ways. First we suspend and expel them from school, then we arrest and imprison them in their millions. Racism still seems central to American culture. Its seems especially important, given the violence of our culture, for Americans to have a despised minority always at hand. It is hard to see how this will be changed, but changed it must be.

Here is the Chicago Tribune article [it can be downloaded as a pdf here]:

School Discipline Tougher on African Americans

by Howard Witt

AUSTIN - In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious disciplinary infractions.

In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites.

In Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended.

Fifty years after federal troops escorted nine black students through the doors of an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in a landmark school integration struggle, America’s public schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when measured in terms of disciplinary sanctions such as suspensions and expulsions, according to little-noticed data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-2005 school year.

In every state but Idaho, a Tribune analysis of the data shows, black students are being suspended in numbers greater than would be expected from their proportion of the student population. In 21 states-Illinois among them-that disproportionality is so pronounced that the percentage of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the student body. And on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.

No other ethnic group is disciplined at such a high rate, the federal data show. Hispanic students are suspended and expelled in almost direct proportion to their populations, while white and Asian students are disciplined far less.

Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments, research studies have found. Some impoverished black children grow up in troubled neighborhoods and come from broken families, leaving them less equipped to conform to behavioral expectations in school. While such socioeconomic factors contribute to the disproportionate discipline rates, researchers say that poverty alone cannot explain the disparities. “There simply isn’t any support for the notion that, given the same set of circumstances, African-American kids act out to a greater degree than other kids,” said Russell Skiba, a professor of educational psychology at Indiana University whose research focuses on race and discipline issues in public schools. “In fact, the data indicate that African-American students are punished more severely for the same offense, so clearly something else is going on. We can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism.”

Academic researchers have been quietly collecting evidence of such race-based disciplinary disparities for more than 25 years. Yet the phenomenon remains largely obscured from public view by the popular emphasis on “zero tolerance” crackdowns, which are supposed to deliver equally harsh punishments based on a student’s infraction, not skin color.

That’s not what the data say is happening. Yet the federal Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which is charged with investigating allegations of discriminatory discipline policies in the nation’s public schools, has opened just one such probe in the past three years. Officials declined requests to explain why.

There’s more at stake than just a few bad marks in a student’s school record. Studies show that a history of school suspensions or expulsions is a strong predictor of future trouble with the law-and the first step on what civil rights leaders have described as a “school-to-prison pipeline” for black youths, who represent 16 percent of U.S. adolescents but 38 percent of those incarcerated in youth prisons.

Relatively few school districts scattered across the country have begun to acknowledge the issue of racial disparities in discipline and tried to do something about it.

In Austin, after administrators discovered that black youths accounted for 14 percent of the school district’s population but 37 percent of the students sent to punitive alternative schools, they introduced a program in some schools based on encouraging positive student behaviors rather than punishing negative ones.

At one school, Pickle Elementary, which serves mostly Hispanic and black students, the results were dramatic-disciplinary referrals dropped from 520 in 2001-2002 to just 20 last year.

“I am not going to give up on a child and suspend him or send him to an alternative school,” said Julie Pryor, who was the principal of the school when the behavioral program was implemented and is now a district administrator. “Washing our hands of a child will never change his behavior, it just makes it worse. These are children. It’s up to us to be creative to find ways to help them behave.”

But academic experts say many more school administrators, when confronted with data showing disparate rates of discipline for minority students, react like officials in the small east Texas town of Paris and strenuously deny accusations of racial discrimination.

Paris is the sole school district in the nation currently under investigation by the federal Education Department to determine whether higher discipline rates for black students there constitute institutionalized discrimination. The probe has been under way for more than a year.

“The school district has been a leader and very progressive when it comes to race relations,” Dennis Eichelbaum, the attorney for the Paris Independent School District, said in an interview earlier this year.

That perspective is not shared by the families of many of Paris’ black students, who make up 40 percent of the school district’s nearly 4,000 students.

“They say there’s no racism here, but if you go inside a school and look in the room where they send the kids for detention, almost all the faces are black,” said Brenda Cherry, a Paris civil rights activist who assembled some of the complaints that sparked the federal investigation. “Unless black people are just a bad race of people, something is wrong here.”

Exactly why black students across the nation are suspended and expelled more frequently than children of other races is a question that continues to perplex sociologists.

Socioeconomic factors are certainly at play, researchers believe.

“Studies of school suspension have consistently documented disproportionality by socioeconomic status. Students who receive free school lunch are at increased risk for school suspension,” according to “The Color of Discipline,” a 2000 study by Skiba and other researchers in Indiana and Nebraska. Another study concluded that “students whose fathers did not have a full-time job were significantly more likely to be suspended than students whose fathers were employed full time.”

But those studies and others have repeatedly found that racial factors are even more important.

“Poor home environment does carry over into the school environment,” said Skiba, who is widely regarded as the nation’s foremost authority on school discipline and race. “But middle-class and upper-class black students are also being disciplined more often than their white peers. Skin color in itself is a part of this function.”

Some experts point to cultural miscommunications between black students and white teachers, who fill 83 percent of the nation’s teaching ranks. In fact, the Tribune analysis found, some of the highest rates of racially disproportionate discipline are found in states with the lowest minority populations, where the disconnect between white teachers and black students is potentially the greatest.

“White teachers feel more threatened by boys of color,” said Isela Gutierrez, a juvenile justice expert at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a watchdog and policy group. “They are viewed as disruptive. What might be their more assertive way of asking a question, for example, is viewed as popping off at the mouth.”

Nor has the decline of court-ordered integration across the nation and the gradual resegregation of urban schools in recent decades made much difference in disciplinary rates. Even in urban schools where most of the students are black, black youths are still disciplined out of proportion to their population, the data show. In Washington, D.C., for example, black students are 84 percent of the public school population but 97 percent of the students who are suspended. Other researchers believe that zero-tolerance policies, which encourage teachers and administrators to crack down on even minor, non-violent misbehavior, are exacerbating racial disparities. Some states, such as Texas, are so zealous that they have criminalized many school infractions, saddling tens of thousands of students with misdemeanor criminal records for offenses such as swearing or disrupting class.

The school security climate, in turn, can reinforce race-based expectations about which students are most likely to require discipline.

“Most suburban schools, where the students are more likely to be white, purchase security equipment that is meant to protect children-for example, hand scanners that make sure that the parent/guardian picking up the child is legitimate,” said Ronnie Casella, an expert on the criminalization of student behavior at Central Connecticut State University. “In contrast, urban schools choose equipment such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras that are meant to catch youths committing crimes.”

The new behavioral program being tried in Austin, and some 6,500 schools nationwide, seeks to turn zero tolerance on its head in a bid to slash the number of suspensions, expulsions and other punishments meted out by teachers.

Called “Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports,” the intensive regimen requires a commitment from an entire school, including training of students in the behaviors that are expected of them and re-education of teachers and administrators in the use of positive motivational techniques.

The interactions of individual teachers with their students are minutely scrutinized by a team of experts to pinpoint communication breakdowns, and specialized counseling teams are deployed to work with students who present the most serious discipline issues so that classroom teachers are not left to deal with the problems on their own.

“Most schools use a get-tough, punish-the-kids kind of perspective, which results in the kinds of racial disciplinary disparities we see across the country,” said George Sugai, a professor of education at the University of Connecticut who helped create the positive behavioral program. “We come at it from the other perspective: If you teach kids the behaviors that are expected, you have a greater likelihood of success. It’s really more about changing how adults interact with kids than it is about changing the kids.”

Schools like Pickle Elementary in Austin that are using the positive behavioral program often report sharp reductions in their disciplinary referrals. But Skiba, who is currently studying the effectiveness of the program, cautions that it does not always eliminate racial disparities.

“They’ve been very successful at reducing rates of suspension and expulsion while making schools function more effectively,” Skiba said of the schools using the program. “But if you look at the data by race, what you find is that some discrepancies still exist. It’s not enough to put this program in place and say, ‘We are happy to reduce our rates of suspension,’ because what we might have done is reduce our white suspensions and increase our African-American suspensions. There’s just no silver bullet for this problem.”

Add comment September 30th, 2007