CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE REPORT – CA’S HEAVY PARTICIPATION IN CONTROVERSIAL FEDERAL PROGRAM SECOND ONLY TO RHODE ISLAND
Asset forfeiture laws allow government entities to keep money, cars, real estate, and other property that may be associated with a crime (usually a drug crime). Across the nation, local agencies are abusing the tool, using it as a cash cow, by taking money and property from people who have not been convicted of a crime.
In its latest “Policing for Profit” report, the Institute for Justice gave California a C+ grade for its civil asset forfeiture laws, which require “beyond reasonable doubt” for law enforcement officers to seize most property.
In CA, police cannot keep assets under $25,000 unless the owner is convicted, and for amounts above $25,000, officers have to be able to give “clear and convincing evidence” beyond a reasonable doubt, that the cash or property was connected to a crime.
But California and other states circumvent their own forfeiture laws through the controversial federal Equitable Sharing Program, which authorizes law enforcement agencies to use seized money as revenue, with only “probable cause” that laws have been broken, by bringing the feds into an investigation.
(This year, a California bill to reform civil asset forfeiture, which would have required a conviction for assets to be forfeited, could not survive lobbying from law enforcement groups.)
California ranks second-worst—50th out of 51 states (and DC)—for its heavy participation in the Equitable Sharing Program.
This second Policing for Profit report “highlights the continued need for forfeiture reform” and increased transparency, says Institute for Justice senior attorney, Scott Bullock. “Updated grades for state and federal civil forfeiture laws find that protections against unjust forfeitures still range from bad to worse, and too many laws incentivize revenue generation over the impartial administration of justice.”
THE GRIZZLY YOUTH ACADEMY AND THE STRUGGLING KIDS BEST REACHED BY THE MILITARY-INSPIRED EDUCATION PROGRAM
While schools across the nation replace problematic “zero-tolerance” discipline practices with more gentle and healing “restorative justice” methods, there may still be a place for military-inspired schools that protect and nurture—rather than punish—kids.
Over a period of a year, the Atlantic’s Michael Godsey visited one such school, the National Guard-run Grizzly Youth Academy at Camp San Luis in San Luis Obispo, California. At Grizzly, leaders act as father figures, giving teens who have dropped out (or are at risk of dropping out) boundaries and teaching them discipline.
Kids voluntarily enroll at the charter boarding school (in fact, there is a waiting list), and at the end of the 22-week program, many students don’t want to leave.
While the model doesn’t work for most struggling students, it reportedly works for some kids who are suffering from a lack of structure in their lives. Those teens come away from Grizzly feeling empowered, rather than defeated, according to Godsey. Here’s a clip:
When I visited Grizzly Youth Academy on Orientation Day, I observed as the new students waited in long lines, wearing identical gray sweats and black baseball caps, carrying their minimal belongings in clear garbage bags. Near the entrance, military personnel silently inspected their bags, while a sergeant in the distance yelled out instructions to a large group of boys, demanding that they answer him with a loud “Yes, sir!” I also heard a sergeant firmly promising an anxious new student: “Do not think for a second that I will let you fail here.”
Grizzly is a charter boarding school run by the National Guard that’s designed for high-school dropouts (or would-be dropouts) and operates using “quasi-military” style of governance. Its authoritarian structure is aimed at fostering the kind of protective and caring environment many of these kids—who often have track records of disciplinary issues and substance abuse—are seeking.
And it seems to work. A three-year study conducted by the nonpartisan think tank MDRC showed significant statistical success in the program; participants are more likely than their control group counterparts to have obtained a high-school diploma, to have earned college credits, and to be working.
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…the waiting list for enrollment indicates that this school is fulfilling a need in a unique and valuable way. In contrast with the high suspension rates often found at schools with a strict discipline policies, Grizzly makes a point to keep its students within its vision and reach. “We make it very hard for your son or daughter to quit,” one sergeant explained to the parents on Orientation Day. The school even takes custody of the students in cases of emergency. “For the five months they’re here at Grizzly, it’s like they’re our kids,” I heard a sergeant promise a group of parents, “and we take full responsibility for them.”
On the first day of classes, I stood with a Grizzly teacher as the kids jogged to their respective classrooms along designated clockwise paths, forming lines in front of classrooms and each staring at the head of the person in front of them as they waited for permission to enter the room. “If you saw this without any context, you might think it’s oppressive and question the purpose of it,” the teacher told me. “But many of these kids come from an absence of structure, and they really respond to this. A lot of them lack stability—family stability, home stability, economic stability—and the environment here is safe and predictable. They come to appreciate all the routines and rules.”
THE FIVE STUDIES THAT HELPED DEBUNK THE AGING “SUPERPREDATOR” MYTH
In the early 90′s a wave of teen violence prompted a small cluster of academics led by political scientist John Dilulio to forecast the emergence of a new breed of children—”superpredators”—impulsive kids without compassion who would commit innumerable violent crimes.
The superpredators never arrived, and the myth was eventually debunked, but not before the theory did a great deal of damage, producing harsh sentencing laws for juveniles.
Pacific Standard Magazine’s Ben DeJarnette has compiled five studies that have shifted the conversation about youthful offenders and their brains, their conditional culpability, and whether they should face the same criminal consequences as adults. Here’s how it opens:
Princeton political scientist John Dilulio dubbed them superpredators—murderous teenagers who could commit heinous acts of violence without feeling a trace of guilt. “They fear neither the stigma of arrest nor the pain of imprisonment,” Dilulio wrote in 1995. “They live by the meanest code of the meanest streets.” According to Dilulio, the country was on track toward a scourge of youth superpredator violence, precipitated by troubling demographic shifts (read: more black kids) and a perceived morality deficit. The crisis, it seemed, was inevitable. Harrowing true-crime headlines splashed across the covers of Time and Newsweek. State and federal lawmakers scrambled to toughen sentencing laws for juvenile offenders. And Americans everywhere braced for the insurgence of some 30,000 new teen superpredators that Dilulio predicted would roam the streets by the end of the decade.
But for all the fear and frenzy, America’s teen violence apocalypse never arrived. In fact, the exact opposite happened. Juvenile violent crime rates that were forecast to double instead dropped by more than 50 percent, and advances in modern neuroscience began to complicate the prevailing superpredator caricature. Soon even Dilulio was walking back his claims. “Thank God we were wrong,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “I’m sorry for any unintended consequences.”
Yet those unintended consequences now litter the country’s federal and state justice systems. Today, kids as young as 11 years old are still being tried as adults, and many mandatory-minimum sentencing laws passed in the 1980s and ’90s remain on the books—even in progressive states like Oregon.
The mythical superpredator continues to cast a long shadow over American politics, but a promising reform movement—helped along by the Supreme Court—has recently made some major strides…
STEVE JOBS’ WIDOW IS USING HER “COLLEGE TRACK” PROGRAM TO TRANSFORM EDUCATION IN LA’S UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES
Last week, we pointed to the launch of the College Track program in Watts, which helps kids in underserved communities attend and finish college.
Laurene Powell Jobs, Apple founder Steve Jobs’ widow, co-founded the College Track program, which has 55 Watts participants this year, but hopes to expand to 300 students by 2019. The College Track program has also served Roosevelt High students in Boyle Heights since 2012, where it is expected to hit the 300-student mark by 2016. The program has a college graduation rate 2.5 times higher than non-participating low-income college students.
“It’s our privilege to work with College Track students as they chart their course toward a college degree,” Powell Jobs, said. “They bring persistence, creativity, and extraordinary discipline throughout their academic journey.”
The LA Times’ Howard Blume has more information on Powell Jobs’ college success program and involvement in education reform. Here’s a clip:
In the first year, 55 Jordan students, who were selected after a brief interview process, will participate. The program accepts students in the summer before ninth grade and works with them through college graduation, providing academic support, leadership training, college and financial aid advising and scholarships totaling up to $5,600 per student.
“I am thrilled to see College Track bring its incredible program to Watts, which will help us ensure this great community is a platform for educational, social and economic mobility,” said L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, in a statement. Garcetti joined Powell Jobs in last week’s ceremony at Jordan High. “This complements broader efforts across Los Angeles, as we tell our young people that we don’t just want them to go to college — we expect them to go to college, and we’ll give them the tools to get there.”
The program hopes to serve 300 students per year at Jordan by 2019. The Boyle Heights location, which opened in 2012, expects to reach 300 students per year by 2016.
Powell Jobs is one of the wealthiest individuals in the United States, with a net worth of $19.1 billion, according to Forbes. Although known for keeping a low public profile, Powell Jobs attracted attention recently with her announcement of a $50-million project to reshape the American high school.