​Today Ban the Box, tomorrow Voting Rights. The Louisiana House of Representatives has heard about prisons and prisoners quite a bit in recent years, and now they are also getting an earful about rehabilitation, reentry, recidivism, probation and parole; about people living in the community and facing the policies of exclusion.
 
Today, the House passed a bill to Ban the Box on state job applications, 53-39, setting an example for the Senate, the Governor, and employers across the state that we need to be more encouraging for people looking for work, especially when work can be hard to find.
 
Tomorrow, this same chamber will vote on allowing voting rights to our community members trying to assimilate and exercise our most fundamental mark of citizenship: voting. The bill, HB 598, passed out of committee without opposition. VOTE and other advocates made the calls, provided the testimonies, and provided ample reasons for legislators to support the integration of people following convictions, an issue Governor Jon Bel Edwards has agreed is of critical importance.
 
We need your full support, now, at this critical time we are reducing open discrimination on employment and housing. We need you to make the following calls and emails:
 
Speaker of the House Taylor Barras
barrast@legis.la.gov
(337) 373-4051
 
Speaker Pro Tempore Walt Leger, III (D-91New Orleans)
(504) 556-9970
legerw@legis.la.gov
 
Governor John Bel Edwards
(225)342-0991 or (844)860-1413
 
Let these key people and your own representative know that you support voting rights for people living in our community on probation parole, to please use their positions of power to guide the House members to pass HB 598, and send a message every individual in Louisiana is still a member of our families, our communities, and our state. We need to encourage positive behavior, such as voting, and not deny the efforts of people who want to do positive things. 

When anyone calls us "Returning Citizens," correct them. They mean well, but the response is "not yet." Not until the 70,000 people on Louisiana, some who "returned" from prison while most were processed through the jail, are restored with the most fundamental and basic right of citizenship: voting. 

Dear House and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Michael Danahay,
Members of the Committee, and Members of the House:
 
Representative Danahay, your sponsorship of a bill to create three additional re-entry courts in Louisiana (HB 347) indicates you understand and wish to alleviate some of the challenges faced by people who are convicted of crimes. Once convicted, people face discrimination throughout all aspects of their life, including 389 different employment barriers, systemic housing discrimination, family interference, and lost voting rights. The message transmitted to people living in the community with convictions has been an anti-social eviction from mainstream society.
 
On Wednesday, your committee will hear two bills that would send a different message: 'We support your hard work to find a job and we encourage you to do your civic duty and vote.'

Banning the Box on state job applications (HB 266) and restoring voting rights to people on probation and parole (HB 598) will cost the state nothing. Both of these provisions will reduce recidivism and save the state money.
 
Louisiana has 2.8 million individuals in its criminal records database. Among the people living in the community with a criminal record, most never went to prison, yet face a lifetime of discrimination that was never mentioned by the sentencing judge. Some of this discrimination is personal and some is policy, including the employment barriers and the disenfranchisement of 70,000 people on probation and parole. Studies show that people who have a stable home, are working, and are getting to the polls on election day have a massive reduction in criminal activity.
 
Felon disenfranchisement is rooted in barring people who might impact elections through forgery, bribery, or perjury at a time when paper ballots and oaths were essential to fair elections. There was a rational relationship between the crimes and the barred activity. Today, there is no relationship between disenfranchisement and fair elections, and the law has only served to promote anti-social behavior, create massive disenfranchisement among Black people, and disrupt the natural progression of teaching civic responsibility from parent to child.
 
Please encourage your Committee to promote pro-social behavior by voting in favor of banning the box on state job applications and re-enfranchising people on probation and parole. This will encourage people to seek work and vote, whether they are reentering from prison or walked home from the courthouse under the weight of a conviction. We need to create an environment where we give everyone a place to contribute. If we can’t embrace those who want to be part of society, we are shooting all our reentry courts and programs in the foot.

Danahay, Michael E.       Chairman    Dist.  33     D  (337)527-5581     danahaym@legis.la.gov
Pugh, Stephen E.            Vice Chair   Dist.  73      R  (985)386-7844   pughs@legis.la.gov 
Carter, Gary                     Member      Dist.  102     D  (504)361-6600  carterg@legis.la.gov 
Harris, Lance                   Member      Dist.  25      R  (318)767-6095   harrisl@legis.la.gov
Harris, Jimmy                  Member      Dist.  99      D  (504)243-1960   harrisj@legis.la.gov
Hill, Dorothy Sue            Member      Dist.  32       D  (800)259-2118   hilld@legis.la.gov
Ivey, Barry                        Member      Dist.  65       R  (225)261-5739   iveyb@legis.la.gov
Jenkins, Sam                   Member      Dist.  2         D  (318)632-5970   jenkinss@legis.la.gov
Miller, Gregory A.            Member      Dist.  56       R  (985)764-9991  millerg@legis.la.gov
Morris, John C. "Jay"        Member      Dist.  14       R  (318)362-4270   morrisjc@legis.la.gov
Schroder, John M.           Member      Dist.  77       R  (985)893-6262  schrodej@legis.la.gov
Shadoin, Robert E.           Member      Dist.  12       R  (318)251-5039   shadoinr@legis.la.gov
Barras, Taylor F.               Ex Officio      Dist.  48      R  (337)373-4051   barrast@legis.la.gov
Leger, Walt III                   Ex Officio     Dist.  91       D  (504)556-9970  legerw@legis.la.gov

On Friday, Louisiana’s choice to deny people the constitutional right to counsel by underfunding the public defenders reached a critical decision. Judge Arthur Hunter has ordered the release of people where the state failed to provide a capable attorney. This will certainly send shockwaves through the offices of District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, Attorney General Jeff Landry, and the state legislature. The order is stayed, pending review of higher courts.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the voters of New Orleans rejected a proposal for more funding for more police. Many people have been outspoken that we need solutions to the root causes of instability, rather than putting more cops on the street to round up people affected by systemic problems. The timing of Hunter's ruling and the people's vote shows a ripple of change in the way we have been doing criminal justice in New Orleans.
 
Judge Hunter correctly pointed out that merely appointing attorneys, without providing proper resources, “makes a mockery of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.” To illustrate his point of the true crisis in the system (not just the money), the ruling reprints, in full, public defender Tina Peng’s grueling letter about what it looks like to represent several hundred people at a time, where nine investigators are tasked with 18,000 cases per year. Knowing many public defenders and many people charged with crimes makes reading Ms. Peng’s letter feels like watching a schoolyard brawl between your two best friends- where everybody is losing. The lapse in quality representation is grueling on our community, but these idealistic attorneys have been drowning in their valiant attempts to do as much as they can within a system that has been designed for them to fail.
 
One could argue we reached the appropriate moment for this argument over underfunding decades ago, when crime bills increased the budgets of police forces, funded more prosecutors, created more courts, built more prisons, and left the defense side out in the cold. Regardless of how long we have choked off the Sixth Amendment, we are here now.
 
One manner of reducing this systematic violation of the Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel would be to release more people on bond, or even better, on a promise to appear in court. There are people in the city jail who can’t afford their bond, and people who are not allowed bond despite the fact that their accusation is a technical violation of their probation (meaning: no new crime, just something like a missed drug test or sleeping at their girlfriend’s house instead of their official residence).
 
Similarly, a lawyer can’t be expected to effectively represent someone who is being held five hours away- so Judge Hunter’s order would seemingly fit perfectly for the hundreds of people sitting upstate and awaiting the Sheriff’s deputies to drive all the way up there and all the way back for a court date, billing the taxpayers gas money that could instead be going to a defense investigator who can talk to witnesses and gather evidence.
 
Once the city stops petty prosecutions the overall caseload will come down for all. If Saturday's vote was to fund a public works jobs program, or an army of PTSD social workers, or a mental health facility not staffed by law enforcement- crime would have gone down and the people may have voted for it. But when the District Attorney seeks a life sentence for a stolen candy bar- suddenly that defense team must treat the case like a capital case, no differently than if it were a murder case. 
 
Once the jail population is reduced to people awaiting trial who represent only genuine imminent threats, charged with actual serious crimes, then there is plenty of room and, more likely, plenty of money. And that money can be used to address the systemic roots of community instability, and not just for more sets of handcuffs.

​New Orleans, the conviction capital of America, has just created the nation’s most progressive, and least discriminatory, public housing and Section 8 admissions policy. It is revolutionary. The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) has heard from the people for several years, including back-to-back hearings of standing-room-only crowds. We held a 24-hour vigil prior to the second hearing, which ended with the HANO board vote. The vigil sent a message to all housing providers: this is the right direction for our community, and we won’t stand for anything less.
 
Discrimination based on convictions, rather than race, have entered all parts of our lives since launching the Drug War nearly 50 years ago. Just last week came the revelation from President Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, that the Drug War was always a lie- it was merely a way to target and criminalize Black people and people on the Left. It has worked perfectly. By “disrupting communities,” political power is neutralized.
 
The vigil organized by Stand With Dignity and VOTE successfully brought together a few hundred people for teachings and story circles, including people from the Latin@ and Middle Eastern communities, to discuss gentrification, immigration, and criminalization. Those of us who spent the night in tents, cars, or staying up all night were awakened before dawn to the swarm of media angling to get their morning story.
 
The new policy takes into account the nature and date of each applicant’s convictions, and a three-member panel will review someone’s entire circumstances only when necessary. In such a highly impacted city, this affects tens of thousands of families. We pushed for additional amendments to the policy, pointing out that there should be one HANO-controlled board, the policy should explicitly allow people to keep their Section 8 voucher while having additional family members reviewed, creating stronger data reporting, and inserting mandatory language to control the private developers. For the most part, we got what we fought for.

Prior to the roughly 25 people testifying in support of the strongest policy we can get, the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance presented HANO with a 10 year plan for the city. The plan’s thick shiny book was presented to each board member (including myself, as I contributed a small part regarding vast housing discrimination against our highly-criminalized New Orleans residents). The plan calls for passage of the HANO policy, among many other housing objectives, as this issue is now squarely on the front burner. It was a short but perfect introduction to the “strict” three-minute limit testimonies we were all prepared to share.