By K.D. Norris
ken@wktv.org

The Smart Justice Campaign, led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has the stated goal to “eliminate racism in the criminal legal system and reduce the U.S. jail and prison population by 50 percent” across the nation.

The need for the effort is clear: America has an “addiction” for incarceration, ACLU leaders like to say — despite having about five percent of the global population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prison population, with about 2.3 million people in our nation’s jails and prisons currently, according to the ACLU. Our prison system costs taxpayers $80 billion per year nationwide.

And racial issues are a huge part in the problem: Persons who identify as “Black or African-American” make up about 13 percent of America’s population, but according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as of May 2019, almost 38 parent of those incarcerated are black. One out of every three black males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino males, compared to one of every 17 white males, according to the ACLU.

But, as was part of the discussion at the ACLU’s annual Grand Rapids luncheon Wednesday, May 16, at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, the problems with America’s legal system are not entirely a racial issue and very much a West Michigan issue.

“There are a host of people who are trapped in this system, who cannot get out, who are not black or brown,” Brandon Buskey, ACLU national deputy director of the Smart Justice Litigation and Criminal Law Reform Project, said to WKTV prior to his keynote talk at the local luncheon. “But this is all still tied to our nation’s addiction to punishment. And we really don’t think about these kinds of systems because they are impacting people with the least amount of power.”

And those people without power, mostly people of color, are the focal point of the new ACLU Smart Justice Campaign.

Smart Justice Campaign elements

The campaign, according to ACLU information, focuses on five general areas: reforming sentencing laws and policies that lead to “extraordinary long” prison sentences; overhauling “harmful, unjust, and for-profit” bail systems that discriminate against the poor; challenging prosecutorial “abuse” in the courts and legislatures — and through voter education; addressing a “broken” parole and release system; and, finally, helping prisoner re-entry into society when they are confronted with “federal, state and local legal restrictions that make it difficult to reintegrate.”

“In a nutshell, the campaign for Smart Justice is a multi-year, multi-state effort,” Buskey said. “At the national level, we are developing blueprints for all 50 states, all of our affiliates, that sets forth a real set of options as to how we can realistically get to this goal of 50 percent decarceration. That is where it goes local. That is where states like Michigan have picked up the baton.”

That picking up of the Smart Justice baton, in Michigan and in the Grand Rapids area, has recently taken the form of both a ACLU lawsuit in the Detroit area to challenge bail procedures for low income persons and a local kick-off of a community organizing effort led by Richard Griffin, ACLU field organizer and a survivor of America’s penal system himself.

Local ACLU action focuses on community action

The ACLU’s West Michigan Smart Justice effort, led by Griffin, recently held its campaign launch event which highlighted the local, multi-organizational “community-based” program. Griffin is one of four community organizers recently set up across Michigan.

“Here in Grand Rapids, we partnered with the NAACP, Linc Up (community development organization), as well as the Kent County probate division,” specifically the Probate Court’s Delta youthful offender program, “and other grassroots groups,” Griffin said to WKTV prior to the luncheon. “We wanted educate the Grand Rapids community and make sure the Grand Rapidians were informed as to what Smart Justice is … what the goals are to correct what is wrong with our criminal justice system.”

And what is next for the local Smart Justice effort?

“We want to galvanize this community, to mobilize individuals, whether that be through legislative advocacy to try to move the needle legislatively,” Griffin said, or “our canvasing efforts, to make sure we are getting the word out.”

Griffin has been on the job in Grand Rapids since last year. But his passion for the work runs deep — he was incarcerated at the age of 16 for a drug-related homicide and spent 23 years behind bars. For a WKTV In Focus interview with him from just after he took the ACLU position, visit here.

Over the time Griffin has been on the job locally, he said there has been some lessons learned.

“The biggest lesson is recognizing the social dynamic in Kent County between different demographics and ethnicities,” he said. “The black and the brown communities are dispersed, somewhat, and disconnected. … That was a stark reality for me to accept. I had not been around in this community for some time. Getting familiar with that. … That social and community disconnect is important in rolling out a campaign like this (Smart Justice). … Many people are disconnected from the issues while suffering from the issues.”

ACLU lawsuit against Detroit court system

The lawsuit in the Detroit area — led by the ACLU of Michigan, the national ACLU, and the law firm Covington & Burling LLP — is a federal class action lawsuit against the 36th District Court in Detroit for “violating the constitutional rights of people who are presumed innocent but are confined to jail because they cannot afford to pay bail following their arrest,” so states an ACLU statement echoed by Buskey.

“The lawsuit seeks an overhaul of an unconstitutional cash bail system that discriminates against poor people, locking them up because they cannot afford to pay while allowing those who have money to go free,” he said.

And, Buskey said to WKTV, the current system in the Detroit court system — and mirrored in varying ways across the nation, including in West Michigan — amounts to a modern debtor prison system and can discriminate against all poor persons not just poor persons of color.

“It may be a simple way of putting it, but (calling it debtor’s prison) is entirely accurate,” Buskey said. “In places like Detroit, the going assumption is that a person will have to pay some amount of money prior to their trial if they want to go home to their family. If they can’t pay that money, they are going to go back to jail, potentially for the rest of their case. These are people who have not been convicted of anything, they are presumed innocent and yet … we are essentially running a debtor’s prison.”

In the Detroit court system, Buskey pointed out, 85 percent of the people coming before the courts are having some kind of financial conditions set and they are often held because they cannot come up with the bail money — “and there are other options to make sure people come back to court, which is the whole reason for our current (bail) system.”

It is not just persons of color who are caught up in a legal system that discriminates against the poor, but in Detroit it is impossible to avoid the racial aspect.

“There are a number of reasons why we have allow these types of systems to persist,” Buskey said. “But in our county it is really had to separate the two issues (race and economic status). It is hard to separate the fact that people of color — black people, brown people — have traditionally been those with the least economic means in our country.”

Griffin added that the legal system problems faced by poor persons of color can and do impact all the community in West Michigan, but locally the numbers point to a racial problem as well.

“It is much more than a racially focused issue, but race is still a part of that conversation,” Griffin said. “While African American, Latinx as well as our Caucasian counterparts currently fill our Kent County jail, the African American community only represents 14 percent of this city’s population but we make up over 50 percent of Kent County jail’s population.”

But “more than it being an issue of race, it is an issue of treating people fairly,” he said. “The instruments used to facilitate a prosecution should be used to facilitate it equally and with the intent of reform are rehabilitation in mind, we are not geared to a punitive approach.”

For more information about the Smart Justice Campaign, visit aclumich.org .