“We are faced with the daily reality
of an imminent collapse of our criminal justice institutions.”
- New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley
Some say crime causes a city to be under siege;
others say crime is the symptom of a city under siege. Either
way, New Orleans is in serious trouble. Our criminal justice
system is in unprecedented crisis.
Thursday there were four murders in 24 hours
in New Orleans. Over the weekend three more people died from
gunshots. So far this year, 170 people have been murdered in
New Orleans – a rate seven times the national average.
The District Attorney of New Orleans just resigned
at the insistence of the Mayor, the Attorney General and several
legislators. His office owes a group of discharged employees
a federal civil rights judgment of over $3 million – and
neither the City nor State was willing to pay unless he resigned.
There is high turnover in the office and thousands of people
arrested have been released because the office could not decide
in a timely fashion whether to charge them with crimes or not.
His resignation will not make New Orleans any safer.
Katrina severely damaged an already dysfunctional
criminal justice system in New Orleans. In fact, what has occurred
and is happening now in New Orleans is really neither “justice”
nor a “system.”
Before Katrina, New Orleans averaged 1000 violent
crimes each quarter. In the second quarter of 2007, New Orleans
reported over 1300 violent crimes – despite the fact that
not many more than half the people of New Orleans are back.
Black on black crime continues to dominate. Of
the 161 homicide victims in 2006, 131 were black men, along
with most of the suspects. Many victims and the suspects were
teenagers. About two-thirds of the deaths of 2006 have gone
unsolved.
Police work out of trailers, including the brass.
During the summer, officers filled out paperwork in their cars
because there was no working air conditioning in their temporary
trailer offices. Not until spring 2007 was there a working crime
lab.
New Orleans has a post-Katrina police force
over 80% as large as before the storm – nearly half are
new officers. At the end of 2006, seven police officers were
indicted on murder charges – and then hailed as “heroes”
by many fellow officers as they reported to court. The police
force is supplemented by hundreds of National Guard members
patrolling the city in camouflaged humvees, and, on special
occasions, members of the state police as well.
The public defender system is starting to improve
but remains unable to represent all those facing charges. Recently,
Orleans Criminal Court Judge Arthur Hunter mailed over 450 letters
to attorneys in New Orleans ordering them to report to his courtroom
to start defending poor defendants. Most declined.
Jail is not the answer to our crime problems
because Louisiana already leads all 50 states in the percentage
of our people in jail, and New Orleans leads Louisiana. A report
on those in the New Orleans jail shows that the majority are
awaiting trial and many of those in jail could easily be released.
A third are in on bonds of $5000 or less – the only reason
they remain in jail is because of their poverty. Over half are
only facing minor charges and nearly three-quarters have no
other outstanding warrants for their arrest.
Addressing crime takes a functioning criminal
justice system – and New Orleans is working on that by
increasing communication between the various agencies and enacting
some new programs. But, like the resignation of the District
Attorney, this is not likely to dramatically reduce crime.
Three recent reports help show the way for New
Orleans to improve the criminal system. They stress earlier
and better communication between the police and prosecutors;
a wider range of pre-trial release options; and greater use
of alternatives to prison.
The August 2007 report of the Urban Institute,
“Washed
Away? Justice in New Orleans,” documents past and
present challenges for criminal justice.
The VERA Institute of Justice report, “Proposals
for New Orleans’ Criminal Justice System: Best Practices
to Advance Public Safety and Justice” gives four concrete
ways that the system can be improved in the short run.
The community-based Safe
Streets Strong Communities organization has put out several
recommendations about how New Orleans can fight crime without
criminalizing or alienating the people in the neighborhoods.
But
even if all these changes are started, most leaders acknowledge
what Criminal Judge Calvin Johnson, who has presided in criminal
court for nearly 20 years, says over and over “We cannot
arrest our way out of this problem.”
Crime is not an isolated action. It is impossible
to fix the crime problem if the rest of the institutions that
people rely on remain deeply broken.
The head of the local FBI suggested to the Christian
Science Monitor that criminals in New Orleans “are products
of an educational system that didn’t educate, a state
judicial system that failed to mete out consequences for criminal
activity, and an economic landscape devoid of meaningful jobs.”
Katrina and its aftermath place enormous daily
stresses on all people, particularly those already disadvantaged
by race, gender and class systems. Treatment facilities report
much more substance abuse, suicide and domestic violence. Yet,
the mental and physical health systems are only a shell of what
they were before the storm. Affordable housing is scarce and
families are separated. Public education is not working for
the poorest children. There is only so much the criminal justice
system can do.
The number of doctors and social workers and
nurses who treat mental health is down dramatically. Beds are
down nearly 80%. Hospitals turn troubled people away every day.
Doctors report people who cannot be turned away are chemically
restrained on gurneys in the hall or kept in dimmed emergency
waiting rooms until they can be released. The system is backed
up around the state.
Even regular medical treatment is a challenge
for uninsured and insured both as many hospitals remain closed.
Drug and substance abuse treatment are scarce.
The extreme lack of affordable rental housing
means many older family members have not returned to New Orleans.
Many teenagers have returned on their own – living alone
or with other relatives and friends.
Public education for those not in charter schools
continues to be quite an uphill battle for the children –
often in highly policed public schools that illustrate the school
to prison pipeline.
Before Katrina, New Orleans had the highest
per capita murder rate in the nation a couple of times. The
police arrested few people for violent crimes and prosecutors
and judges and juries convicted less. Police, prosecutors and
public defenders were overworked and underpaid – often
losing their most experienced people to the suburbs and other
cities where the work was calmer and the pay better.
After Katrina it is all worse. There is much
more stress on the streets. There is much less counseling and
treatment available. There are fewer
extended families to provide a supportive environment. The police
are less experienced. The police do not communicate well with
the prosecutors, who do not work well with the victims and witnesses,
while the judges feud with the public defenders, and on and
on.
After Katrina, there is even less of a system
and certainly less justice for everyone – the public,
victims, the accused, law enforcement and people working in
the institutions. Only when the criminal justice system is supported
by a good public education available to all children, sufficient
affordable housing for families, accessible healthcare (especially
mental healthcare), and jobs that pay living wages, can the
community expect the crime rate to go down.
The District Attorney has resigned. But New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast remain in serious trouble on all
fronts. Our criminal justice system is but one illustration
of our institutions melting down. For us, crime is not the cause
of our community being under siege; crime is the scream of our
community under siege.
BC Columnist Bill
Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola
University, New Orleans. He has been an active public interest
lawyer since 1977 and has served as counsel with a wide range
of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina
social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death
penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional
rights and civil disobedience. He has litigated numerous cases
with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the
Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which
he served as General Counsel for over 15 years. Click
here to contact Mr. Quigley.