July-August 2007 Clearinghouse Review

Cover

 
  • Advocacy to Help Reentering Juveniles Get Back on Track

    Returning to school helps young people reentering after incarceration avoid recidivism and become successful members of society. Former offenders face a number of barriers—among others, bureaucratic hurdles and unwelcoming school officials—to successful reentry into the educational system. From working with schools to bringing legal action, advocates can help them get back on track.

    By Pat Arthur

  • Mapping the Criminal Justice System's Impact in Your Community

    Understanding the pervasiveness of the criminal justice system’s reach into low-income communities is critical to meeting the civil legal needs of these communities. Advocates can learn more about this phenomenon by using a model that maps how criminal justice policies operate locally, beginning with the deployment of law enforcement resources. With the system deconstructed, advocates can consider ways to intervene to minimize harm to clients.

    By James Bell

  • Attacking Poverty by Attacking Chronic Unemployment: An Update on Developments in Transitional Job Strategies for Former Prisoners

    Many ex-offenders face problems of chronic unemployment upon reentry into society. Transitional jobs strategies can help them overcome complex employment barriers. Recent movement on both federal and state levels to institute transitional job programs offers greater opportunities for ex-offenders to be employed and reintegrated into their communities.

    By John Bouman, Joseph A. Antolin, and Melissa Young

  • Clearinghouse Review on Low-Income People's Involvement in the Criminal Justice System

    Before this special issue of Clearinghouse Review, thirteen articles on the same subject appeared in these pages in the last five years.

  • A Well-Grounded Fear: Civil Reform of Criminal Justice

    The promise of a right to counsel in a criminal proceeding is rendered meaningless when representation of the accused is undertaken by attorneys who are unqualified and inexperienced or whose own financial interests are at odds with zealous advocacy for their clients. This was the case in Grant County, Washington, where the county public defense system had failed to provide accused persons with adequate representation. To ensure that criminal defendants in the county would realize the full benefits of a right to a lawyer, civil legal aid advocates challenged this system in Best v. Grant County.

    By Beth Colgan

  • Parental Incarceration: How to Avoid a "Death Sentence" for Families

    Parental incarceration has far-reaching implications for parents, their children, extended family members, and the community. Children placed in foster care when their parents are incarcerated face the prospect of having their parents’ rights terminated. Advocates representing incarcerated parents and their children should know the legal parameters of child welfare decisions and the “reasonable efforts” requirements of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.

    By Tiffany Conway and Rutledge Q. Hudson

  • Cleaning Up Criminal Records

    To make criminal records disappear entirely is difficult, but all states have a process through which the impact of certain arrests or convictions can be mitigated to some extent. East Bay Community Law Center of Berkeley, California, has a Clean Slate Practice that has helped thousands of clients with arrests, prosecutions, and convictions lessen the impact of their records.

  • Pipe Dreams for Legal Aid Lawyers: A Civil Practice That Considers the Criminal Side

    Would poverty law practice be different if attorneys on the civil and defender sides worked in the same office? What if they rotated through each other’s offices? Fantasizing about what might seem impossible can lead to creative approaches.

    By Jack Daniel

  • Avoiding Unintended Consequences in Civil Advocacy for Criminally Charged Immigrants

    For immigrants, past criminal charges and minor interactions with the criminal justice system can have such deleterious consequences as jeopardizing their legal status. Advocates in civil proceedings must understand what criminal grounds can trigger unintended consequences and should counsel clients about the resources available to help them.

    By Alina Das

  • To Begin a New Era in Criminal Justice

  • The American Prison Nightmare

    Reviewing Bruce Western’s Punishment and Inequality in America in the New York Review of Books, Jason DeParle describes the heartbreak of parents and children separated by prison bars. He goes on to recount the books examination of the impact of that separation on families and communities, and the extreme racial imbalance of that impact.

    By Jason DeParle

  • When "Your Permanent Record" Is a Permanent Barrier: Helping Legal Aid Clients Reduce the Stigma of Criminal Records

    Criminal records are widely available and present many serious barriers to low-income people and people of color. Advocates can begin to remove these barriers by challenging the very availability and extent of their clients’ criminal records.

    By Sharon M. Dietrich

  • The Intersection of Race, Poverty, and Crime

    Any informed discussion of the criminal and juvenile justice systems must acknowledge the overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of people of color caught up in those systems. In many communities incarceration has become so common as to be unremarkable. Although the number of people imprisoned in the United States and the racial disproportion have skyrocketed recently, these phenomena are deeply rooted in policies that one can trace to the post-Civil War era.

    By Francisca D. Fajana

  • Civil Consequences of Women's Criminal Records: Strategies for Advocates

    Our current policies on drug use, incarceration, and the civil consequences of criminal records hurt women and children and reinforce problems of domestic violence, sexual assault, and addictions. Advocates can help reverse this trend by recognizing these implications when handling individual cases, developing systemic advocacy, and educating policymakers about the need for trauma-informed services and addiction prevention programs for survivors of abuse.

    By Amy E. Hirsch

  • Representing Individuals with Criminal Records Under the LSC Act and Regulations

    Although Legal Services Corporation (LSC) regulations prohibit representation in “criminal proceedings,” programs that receive LSC funds may represent individuals who are not in prison but have criminal records. Such representation may relate to the individuals’ criminal records, such as actions to seal or expunge record and advocacy to change practices that bar people with criminal records from employment.

    By Alan W. Houseman and Linda E. Perle

  • Debtors' Prison—Prisoners' Accumulation of Debt as a Barrier to Reentry

    Incarcerated persons can accumulate significant debt from various criminal financial penalties and child support obligations, leading to unrealistic payment obligations, which they are unable to meet. Policymakers should set and enforce child support policies and criminal financial obligations in a manner that supports successful reintegration into society and reduces recidivism.

    By Kirsten D. Levingston and Vicki Turetsky

  • Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration: Strategies to Facilitate Timely Restoration of Benefits upon Release of Inmates with Mental Illnesses

    When inmates with mental illness are released from prison or jail, they may face deterioration and reincarceration if they do not receive mental health treatment and basic support. Prerelease benefit applications and agreements between correctional facilities and government agencies may help promptly restore to such inmates the federal benefits that were terminated or suspended during incarceration. Advocates may use statutory and constitutional claims to challenge correctional facilities to secure services for mentally ill inmates.

    By Jennifer Mathis and Laurel Stine

  • News and Notes

  • Targeting the Homeless: Constructive Alternatives to Criminalization Measures in U.S. Cities

    As homelessness has increased during the past three decades, many cities across the United States have implemented measures that criminalize homelessness. These measures typically use police resources and the criminal justice system to punish homeless people for their status. Advocates need to be aware of what measures cities use to target the homeless, problems with criminalizing homelessness, and constructive alternatives to criminalization.

    By Tulin Ozdeger

  • Collateral Estoppel and Benefits Fraud Prosecutions: People v. Garcia

    Legal aid advocates and indigent criminal defense attorneys in California worked together to protect a welfare recipient from criminal prosecution for fraud and perjury. Applying the doctrine of collateral estoppel, the attorneys kept state prosecutors from convicting someone who had been cleared by an administrative law judge from wrongdoing in connection with an overpayment of benefits.

    By Gary F. Smith

  • Cross-Sector Collaboration in Reentry: Building an Infrastructure for Change

    Criminal justice system involvement permeates all aspects of low-income clients’ lives and continues to do so long after the clients’ official relationship with the criminal justice system ends. The impact of these efforts has proven devastating to low-income communities. Cross-sector collaboration among advocates and agencies that traditionally have little contact with each other is essential to reverse the lasting impact of the criminal justice system. New York’s Reentry Net offers one model for such collaboration.

    By McGregor Smyth

  • Protecting Subsidized Housing for Families of Released Prisoners

    When a person exiting jail uses the address of a family receiving a subsidy and the housing authority finds out, the housing authority often tries to terminate the family’s housing benefit without regard to evidentiary rules, due process, and burdens of proof. Advocates should insist that competent evidence be introduced, participants have an opportunity to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and the housing authority prove its case.

    By Robert A. Stalker

  • Chicago's Title VII Working Group

    Chicago’s Title VII Working Group, an eclectic group of lawyers, reentry providers, community groups, and others, meets regularly to find ways for lawyers and paralegals to help people with criminal records successfully reenter society. Margaret Stapleton, senior attorney at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, initiated the group.

    By Margaret Stapleton