My daughter,
Chloe, is interning at one of the new Seattle Housing Authority housing complexes,
New Holly, while she is working toward her Masters Degree in Social Work at the
University of Washington. She thought
I’d be interested in attending a discussion among her colleagues at New Holly and a group
of non-profit housing providers talking about their policies
toward admitting people into public housing who have criminal records.
While the
Seattle Housing Authority’s policies do not mean that a criminal conviction
will result in a denial of housing, it automatically defers any consideration for
one year of an applicant or applicant’s family member if the person has been
convicted of a Class A felony and incarcerated.
A partial list of those crimes listed on SHA’s site includes:
Arson, Assault, Burglary,
Explosives, Extortion, Homicide, Kidnapping, Leading organized crime, Machine
gun use in felony, Malicious explosion of substance, Malicious placement of an
explosive, Manslaughter, Possession of explosive device, Possession,
manufacturing or disposal of incendiary devices, Robbery, Setting a spring gun,
Trafficking, Treason.
New Holly Seattle Housing Authority |
Keeping a
safe environment for the people who live in public housing is clearly a
paramount responsibility of the Housing Authority. Beyond the physical safety that is
fundamental, there are other economic factors as well. For example, most of the new housing
authority projects are now mixed income, with houses for sale where the income from the sale provides
a subsidy back to the homes rented by lower income people. Without an untainted sense of safety, the
for-sale housing doesn’t work as intended and ultimately the subsidies flowing from the
for-sale houses are less.
The housing
authority enforces its policies by producing a criminal background and rental
history credit check on each of its applicants.
These come from a number of criminal background data bases maintained by
states – about 100,000,000 records in all – more than 90% of which can be
accessed on the web.
Background
checks have become common in today’s human resources culture. For example, 93% of employers conduct
criminal background checks on some prospective employees while nearly 75% of
employers perform criminal background checks on all their prospective employees. Nearly all housing authorities make use of
background checks, but the quality of the information they get is often poor.
These
records are searched and reports produced by a poorly known industry. Nobody really knows how many criminal background
checking companies there are. There are big companies and there are one-man-band companies. These businesses have grown up with the Internet
and their employees or contractors are frequently dispersed and distantly
supervised. There are no certificates or licenses required to do this work and often very little oversight. They are poorly regulated
given how profoundly their work affects the lives of people
Despite the
housing authority’s efforts to get the best information available, it is not easy
and it is costly to do the research necessary to verify the accuracy of information
on the criminal backgrounds of applicants for housing. There are many different types of
errors. Having a common name often leads
to confusion in the database. A Smith, for example, can be easily confused
with other Smiths. Many of these databases do not have the
final disposition of a case. If you've been arrested in the last five years, some databases do not have a record of any disposition of the case -- whether the case was dropped or you were found innocent or guilty. Just 4% of the criminal database
in Mississippi contain a disposition of the case within the last five years while 40% of Montana cases
have a known disposition. Washington
state is near the top, with 94% known dispositions of cases within the last
five years, according to a US Justice Department review. Also, the pure volume of information in these
databases creates a growing backlog of updating that often cannot be met. Frequently, companies in the criminal background business buy and sell information to one another that can lead to misleading data. For example, one conviction
can be reported several times, one felony arrest becoming five.
We like to
think that redemption is at the core of our criminal justice system, but as
Jean Valjean, the lead character in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, points out to
a woman on a Paris street, redemption does not come easily, then or now:
“You want to know who I am? I'm a convict! Yeah! I served my
sentence. Now my punishment begins, it
seems. Look, in prison they gave me a bed of wood. Now I have one
of stone. That's what they do when they set you free!”
Criminal
databases, like Javert, the policeman who obsessively chases Valjean, are without the idea of redemption. They
do not distinguish between a mistake side-by-side with an otherwise ethical and
productive life well-lived. Like Javert,
they focus on the mistake and ignore the life. Someone else has to apply judgment and that doesn't come easily or without cost, time or questions.
US incarceration compared to European Union |
This frenzy
of incarceration has created massive aberrations in our governments and
schools. Many years ago, I was driving
in a rental car through a dark night near Pendleton, Oregon. I was listening to an interview with Clark
Kerr, the famous University of California Chancellor who founded, in 1960, the
modern university system that offered, for a time, near universal higher
education in California and was seen as a model for the world.
Clark Kerr with President Kennedy March, 1962 University of California Library |
The effects of this trend, plus a stream of budget problems in the state, hit higher education hard. A Stanford
study done for the State of California says
that between 1990 and 2008, higher
education funding was reduced 40%.
Between 2008 and 2012, higher education funding lost an additional
28%. Since 1980, prison spending has
increased over 400%. Fifty years after
Kerr started an education structure that was the envy of the world, prison
spending surged past higher education for the first time. Today, California is one of a handful of
states spending more for prisons than higher education.
Comparison of Corrections, Higher Ed |
This has
caused some perturbations throughout the system of governance in
California. Today, prison guards are the
largest and most effective lobby in the state.
Even as the crime rate drops, the number of prison guards rises. And it
is not only higher education that struggles from the financial demands of California’s
gulag. It is public safety in
general. Most local governments in California
have seen reductions in public safety spending as prisons continue to suck up
state money. Today, the state of
California spends as much on prisons as it did on all of law enforcement a
decade ago. According to the National Association of State Budget Officials, the average state expenditure for prisons across the US is just over seven percent of state budgets.
Kerr’s was
a massive accomplishment, creating, for the first time, a state system of
higher education that served the full range of higher education needs and
interests. It was an amazingly simple
design. The university plan developed by
Kerr envisioned that the top 12.5% of high school graduates would be guaranteed
a direct entry into the University of California, then eight campuses to be
joined by two others a few years later. This part of the system today is home to 235,000 students. The top third of students would be provided
access to the California State University system, 23 schools and 284,000
students. Most of the state’s teachers
come from those schools. Everyone would
have access to the Community College Network, now 73 colleges and 2.5 million
students. All would have the opportunity
to move throughout the different elements of the system, based on merit. In 1960, all were tuition free. Students paid fees for food, dormitories,
books and other costs, but no tuition. It had its flaws, but it was radical, much admired and produced a constant stream of talent and opportunity that served business and government in California.
Kerr
articulated then, far ahead of his time, today’s information economy, driven by
accomplishments of the men and women who would be prepared for it by his dazzling higher
education system:
“What the
railroads did for the last half of the 19th century, what the
automobile did for the first half of this century, may be done for the second
half of this century by the knowledge industry.”
Though he
had a clear vision of the future, Kerr could not overcome the challenges of the
present -- growing unrest at the Berkeley campus over civil rights, the calamity
of Vietnam and the rise of Ronald Reagan.
Elected Governor of California in 1966 he immediately set out to find
the votes, including his own, to fire Kerr and “clean up the mess in
Berkeley." In 1967, Kerr was fired “effective immediately.”
Famously,
Kerr said:
“I came
here fired with enthusiasm and left the same way.”
Kerr’s demise
was the beginning of a long slide of his grand idea as tuition became more and
more a part of the budget in higher education, rising to $13,200 today for the
University of California schools, $7,025 at the state schools and about $50/credit
at the community colleges. Non-resident tuition
rose to nearly $38,000 and the percentage of non-resident students rose to 23%
from 11% as the schools traded off California children’s access to higher education
for income to the system.
At the
community colleges, where inclusiveness ruled under Kerr, enrollment is down
nearly 500,000 students as course offerings have been slashed, cost per unit
has increased and teachers laid off. The
transfer from the two year schools to the four year schools is much harder to
accomplish today. The community colleges
educate 70% of California’s nurses, 80% of its firefighters and 50% of its
veterans.
Now, you
can’t lay all of it at the feet of a criminal justice system gone crazy. The radical property tax limitation, Prop 13 and a couple of big
recessions have played important roles, but the throw-away-the-key philosophy continues
to erode California’s ability to pay for other important things. In the frenzy to incarcerate, to want it all
without paying for it, Californians have reduced their considerable contributions to our
country and limited opportunities for its children.
The problem
with putting so many people in prison is that they must, at some point, be
released. Nearly 700,000 Americans were
released from prison in 2012, more than 7,500 in Washington state and 1,500 people
in King County, according to Professor Harris.
Stable
housing is among the critical factors keeping ex-convicts from returning to
prison because, among other things, it helps in the formation of stable family
relationships. With housing and stable relationships
in place, employment possibilities are far better. With all three in place, not many people
return to prison. According to the Urban
Institute, 40%-50% of ex-convicts will return to jail within five years. By the way, the return to jail percentage in
California is in the seventies.
The
released prison population is not an easy population to house. For several years, the Urban Institute followed nearly 300 released
prisoners in Ohio and describes the members of that class this way:
Over 80%
have a history of drug or alcohol abuse, 13% have a history of mental illness,
19% are illiterate, 40% are functionally illiterate. Over 30% were unemployed before their arrest
while 40% have not finished high school.
More than
half slept in a relative’s house their first night out of prison and 80% were
living with a family member six months later, though less than half were paying
any rent.
Amidst
these distressing and depressing numbers, there are some points of light. The US Supreme Court has capped the
population of the California prison system and has reduced the size of California's prison
population so that it fits better into the design of its prisons, though the goal is still 137% of design
capacity. Voters in California moderated
the ‘Three Strikes’ law that was passed in 1994 and sent an alarming number of
people to life in jail for minor offenses.
Three strikes will now only apply to violent crimes. Today, dangerous and violent criminals will go to
the state while less dangerous criminals will go to the counties with an
emphasis on diversion from jail. California passed a tax increase last year to focus more of its criminal justice on diversion, among other improvements. It will
be many years before the state truly reverses its decline into incarceration as a
first choice, but it has started down that path.
There are
small signs that the criminal backgrounding industry is starting to move toward
a set of standards that could lead to a bit more fairness and accuracy. Attorney General Eric Holder has made criminal
backgrounding a serious issue at the federal level and lawsuits are correcting abuses. There is also new research from
Carnegie Mellon University that demonstrates what we know intuitively – that the
longer a person is crime free, the less likely he is to commit crimes in the
future. Depending upon the crime and
when it might have been committed, the researchers found the point at which someone in
the general population is equally as likely to commit a crime as a former
criminal. If difficult judgments are to be made about who gets help or who gets prison,
it is an important step to back it up with data.
I’ve attached the study.
There is
also good news on the educational front.
California has new revenue for higher education, the first such increase since the last round of cuts began in 2008.
Along with some good news comes some bad news from the City of Richmond, California. Its council just voted
to bar businesses performing work for the city from knowing whether someone has
a criminal background by removing the box in which a candidate acknowledges having a
criminal background. It also bars the use of criminal background checks as a condition of employment. This know nothing approach is no better than what
the throw away the key crowd did in the first place.
It is a
very tough call for a housing authority or any of the non-profit providers in
the room to change some of their tough rules on housing ex-convicts. Most have waiting lists of people who have
committed no crimes and also need affordable housing. Most of them do not have the supportive service
environment needed for many ex-convicts.
Most don’t have the staff time or money needed for confirming the accuracy of background checks and determining the true character of some very
complicated individuals.
As Chloe and I walked out I turned to her and told her I was glad she cared about this stuff. I told her she had to hurry up and get her
Masters degree and get to work on this mess we have handed to her and her
colleagues.
Redemption and Criminal Background Checks
New York Times Obit, Clark Kerr
Brown vs Plata, US Supreme Court Decision on Prison Overcrowding in California
Redemption and Criminal Background Checks
New York Times Obit, Clark Kerr
Brown vs Plata, US Supreme Court Decision on Prison Overcrowding in California