Almost the entire American criminal justice system is designed to "get a conviction" through any means possible. The twisted way in which this is accomplished is so insidious that some people will "plead out" even when they're innocent of the original crime they're accused of committing.
Why on earth would anyone do that?
The judicial system in general is under no obligation to inform or frankly to even give a shit about you, your sentence, or those collateral impacts. Worse, understanding what all these things might look like as a person tries to decide whether to "cop a plea" or fight on in a jury trial is almost impossible to determine.
Prosecutors typically charge a person with the "kitchen sink" approach; that is, they charge the individual with every single crime they can think of, knowing full well that the intent is to put the fear of God into the accused in order to make them more amenable to admitting guilt to lesser charges in exchange for some token "leniency."
The criminal justice system in America puts the accused at a very distinct disadvantage right from the start, unless the "suspect" has a hefty disposable income and/or a fat savings account they're willing to part completely with. Given that roughly half of American workers earn less than $30,000 a year, the chances that the average Joe or Jane is going to be able to afford experienced legal representation is pretty slim.
The accused's alternative is the appointment of a "public defender" to help them navigate a very complex legal system that speaks a language all its own and where facts play only a small part of the whole process. Anyone who has fought a court battle will tell you that even the simplest cases are never "open and shut," because that legal system doesn't really see things in black or white but instead, in endless shades of grey, with almost every aspect - except the mandatory sentence you'll have to do - open to nuance, argument, subjectivity, and the whims, prejudices and/or biases of the judge presiding over the case; the ambition or lack thereof of the Prosecutor; and the workload, level of sobriety, and/or the political ambitions of the public defender.
Added to this is the very real possibility that if you can't afford a lawyer, chances are you won't be able to afford bail, either, which means that you'll spend months waiting for adjudication behind some very bad bars, indeed. There is no separation of those who are "innocent until proven guilty" but can't afford to bail out from those who have been convicted for a variety of crimes, some who will do their time in the jail itself and others who are waiting for transport to state prison. It's conceivable - even probable - that the 19 year-old kid arrested for a bag of weed will have multiple contacts with the convicted child raping killer, or the violent gang thug who beat a carjacking victim nearly to death in the commission of the crime.
And that 6th Amendment guarantee of the right to a "speedy trial" you've probably heard about is damned near worthless for criminal defendants. Horror stories abound about people who've done more time behind bars fighting their cases and waiting to be exonerated than they would have done had they simply pleaded guilty to a "deal" and served out their sentence. Consider that:
"Dozens of suspects have remained behind bars in the Harris County jail for years without going to trial, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation. Legal experts and judges called the situation outrageous and said it may be a violation of the suspects’ constitutional rights."It's also no secret that prosecutors "punish" those who request jury trials, and they'll do so with a malevolence and scandalousness that would make a used car salesman blush. Worse, even when they're caught red-handed in "egregious government conduct," they're damned near untouchable. Michelle Alexander, a distinguished and seasoned civil rights attorney, during a conversation with a woman who had been in and out of prison for drug use, stated:
"I was stunned by Susan’s question about plea bargains because she — of all people — knows the risks involved in forcing prosecutors to make cases against people who have been charged with crimes."So a "fish"enters jail for the first time, charged with every conceivable crime the police and the DA can trump up, and facing a bond they'll never be able to afford because bail has been set higher due to the number and seriousness of the bloated, inflated "charges" pressed against them. S/he must then contemplate what to do about the dozens of years they could end up serving their sentence while locked down, away from the advice and support of any family they might have on the outside, and surrounded by "jailhouse lawyers" and ignorant fools all willing to share other horror stories - real and imagined - about "Joe" who spit on the sidewalk and got 4 years from the same "hanging" judge hearing your case, or "Jane" who spent 3 years in jail fighting her charge when had she simply pled guilty, would have been out in 90 days.
If the "accused" is lucky enough to get a bunk, they curl up on it and think constantly about their lives falling apart on the outside. Sleep is rare under that kind of pressure, and lights are on 24 hours a day in most jails. They lay there wondering about the loss of their jobs, the embarrassment for their families, the questions from their children. When they open their eyes, they look around at the "company" they are currently in, and try to figure out an entirely different code of conduct to adhere to - from jail policies to inmate-driven "rules" about everything from who one can talk with to how to interact with others. The utter terror and pressure to get the fuck out of this hellish new world is almost unbearable. In fact, for many, it is unbearable. Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor found that:
"Suicides kill more inmates than homicide, overdoses, accidents combined."Prosecutors know all this, and they use it against the accused and to their own advantage. Leave a man or woman in the jail environment for a couple of months, then approach them right before the court proceedings start and offer them a reduced sentence; time served and release if they agree to plead to one or two of the charges, and most folks will jump at the chance to get out of hell.
While they may dimly recognize that a criminal conviction will have ramifications in their future, they often don't understand the full impact of their deal with the devil, and even when they do, they're often willing to sacrifice themselves to the future in order to alleviate the torture of the present. The devil knows all of this and exploits it and the defendant's terror at every opportunity. In terms of "power of the state," scandalousness, egregious behavior, and downright assholiness, the Prosecutor has no equal; no used car salesman, attorney, politician, or bank executive comes close.
It's only after the person has long paid his or her debt to society - warranted or not - and tries to get on with their life do they begin to grasp the full consequences of their decision; consequences the devil knew all along.
While I am a firm believer of the "do the crime, pay the time" philosophy, I think people deserve an opportunity to rebuild their lives, unfettered with a lifetime carry of the baggage of a mistake they made or were coerced into agreeing they made. There is no benefit whatsoever to any of us in keeping a man or woman chained to the debilitating impact of a criminal conviction over their entire lifetime.
In fact, it does more harm than good in most cases, because not only can they not recover fully, we as a nation often end up paying for their oppression and ostracism in terms of lost productivity and a variety of social problems as a direct result of those collateral sentencing consequences.
Frankly, I don't think there is anything worse to do to a person, especially a young man or woman, than to saddle them forever with a criminal conviction.
Boxed In: How a Criminal Record Keeps You Unemployed For Life
(Reuters/John Gress)
This article was reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.
Luis Rivera had some peace of mind for about five months, from late fall of 2010 through early spring of the following year. That’s the closest thing he’s seen to financial stability in more than twenty years.
“I got hired for a wonderful job. It was a clerk/porter/doorman position at a high-rise classical building in the East Village,” he recalls wistfully. Rivera, 44, has a wife of twenty-five years and three teenage daughters. They live up in East Harlem, where the Puerto Rican–born New Yorker grew up and has spent much of his life. He’s ferociously proud of his marriage and children; his back straightens and his tone turns serious when he talks about his family, like a man who’s managed to achieve something he’s been told he can’t accomplish. Yet looking back on those five months as a jack-of-all-services for wealthy downtown hipsters, Rivera still gets excited about an opportunity that tore him away from home at all hours.
“When they needed somebody, they would call me in the middle of the night and I would say, ‘Yes!’ Because I needed a job. And the pay was excellent,” he brags, pointing to his $17 hourly wage for part-time work. “I was next to be hired in a position there permanently.”
The new position held promise that Rivera could finally work just one legit job—on the books, with steady hours and a steady paycheck—rather than hustling to piece together part-time informal work, as he’s done his entire adult life. But that promise hadn’t yet been realized. He was still at the mercy of his employer’s whims. If they called, he worked; if not, he didn’t. So when the superintendent of a building across the street mentioned that his crew was looking for part-time help as well, Rivera put in his name. While applying, he was honest to a fault.
“I made the mistake of trusting,” Rivera says now, shrugging. “I explained to this guy that I have a record from 1990-something. But I explained that I paid the price. I’m clean—gimme a chance. He gave me his word of honor that he would not tell.” But word travels fast when you’re an ex-con. Suddenly, the upscale building at which Rivera hoped to build a future stopped giving him shifts at all.
“So I made a phone call and asked to speak to them,” he explains. He says his boss told him, “We found out you have a record. And you can’t work here, due to the fact that this is a fancy place—anything could happen.”
At age 22, Rivera says, he committed a burglary in the Bronx. He was a lousy criminal and soon got caught. The judge didn’t make him serve any time, just released him to his parents’ custody and gave him five years of probation. Within two years, he’d earned release from probation as well. But the conviction has nonetheless stalked him ever since. “Twenty years later, it’s still there.”
Rivera is part of an uncounted population of formerly convicted or incarcerated people trying to find work in a hostile economy. They are failing, by and large, thanks to the illegal but still widespread practice of employers rejecting applicants or firing workers solely because they have criminal records. A growing movement is pushing states to “ban the box,” or more closely regulate when and how employers can ask about criminal records on job applications. The movement has logged some victories: in October, Target, the nation’s second-largest retailer, announced that it would stop asking the question of prospective employees. The move comes after Target’s home state of Minnesota passed “ban the box” legislation—one of ten states to do so, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP). But the way that many companies screen for criminal records is already barred by federal law.
Back in 1987, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared that blanket bans on hiring people with criminal records were a Civil Rights Act violation. The EEOC noted that the law bars not only overt bias based on protected categories like race, but also seemingly neutral policies that have the effect of reinforcing racial disparities So it told employers that they can consider criminal records only as one factor in hiring, and then only when the conviction is directly related to the work. But Congress is most responsible for undermining this guidance. Following 9/11, lawmakers issued blanket bans on former felons working in a broad range of transportation jobs. States followed suit, and the list of banned occupations grew exponentially: private security guards, nursing home aides, just about any job involving kids. Former felons are now categorically barred from working in more than 800 occupations because of laws and licensing rules, one study estimates.
Partly
in reaction to this growing list, and partly in response to the
simultaneous explosion of the background check industry, the EEOC issued
an updated guidance in 2012. The new guidance didn’t change the core
idea—that blanket hiring bans based on criminal records have a
disproportionate impact on black and Latino workers and thus violate the
Civil Rights Act; instead, it offered employers updated details on how
to stay on the right side of the law. In sum: if you conduct background
checks, your hiring systems must include a granular method of confirming
their accuracy and considering the specifics of a person’s case. The
experience Rivera describes is just the sort that would not pass muster.This summer, the EEOC showed its willingness to enforce those rules. In June, the watchdog filed separate suits against BMW and Dollar General. BMW’s subcontracted hiring firm had imposed a blanket ban that not only affected new hires but led to the firing of many longtime employees. In Dollar General’s case, one of the plaintiffs had been denied work because of a six-year-old conviction, which drew the EEOC’s scrutiny not only because the practice is illegal, but also because the woman had previously worked for a different retailer in the same type of job without incident. “That’s huge,” says Maurice Emsellem of the National Employment Law Project. “The guidance is one thing, but all this activity surrounding the guidance—that shows they’re enforcing it.”
If so, the EEOC has got its work cut out for it. There’s no firm number on the population of workers with criminal records, but the NELP estimates that there were 65 million in 2010—a stunning 28 percent of the adult population. In 2006, the Justice Department spitballed the number at 30 percent of working-age adults. A great many of these people have faced background checks. In explaining its updated guidance last year, the EEOC cited a 2010 study showing that 92 percent of large employers run background checks.
