MCN/USA TODAY: An investment in education is an investment in crime prevention

Matthew T. Mangino
More Content Now-USA TODAY NETWORK
February 5, 2021

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf recently unveiled, as part of his 2021-22 budget, a plan to invest $1.3 billion in public schools. As part of the initiative the governor has also taken on a taboo subject - increased taxes.

“My legislative plan is an investment in Pennsylvania’s students, but really it’s an investment in the future for all of us - for every Pennsylvanian,” said Wolf.

Investments are typically made with an eye toward cashing in. Can an investment in education pay dividends?

Several years ago the Alliance for Excellent Education reported that America could save billions of dollars in annual crime costs if school districts could raise the male high school graduation rate. While graduation rates have increased according to a 2019 Alliance report, males and “historically underserved students” have lagged behind.

“The nation needs to focus dollars and efforts on reforming school climates to keep students engaged in ways that will lead them toward … a career and away from crime and prison,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “The school-to-prison pipeline starts and ends with schools.”

There was a time when disruptive students were sent to see the principal. Today in some school districts, the disruptive student is handcuffed and ushered off to court. The school-to-prison pipeline is overflowing with students.

According to the Washington Post, more than 3 million students each year are suspended or expelled from school across the United States. Federal data, though limited, show that nearly a quarter of a million students are annually referred to law enforcement.

There is an indirect correlation between educational attainment and arrest and incarceration rates - particularly among males. According to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 56% of federal inmates, 67% of inmates in state prisons, and 69% of inmates in local jails did not complete high school.

The Alliance for Excellent Education found that increasing the male graduation rate would decrease crime nationwide. Annual incidences of assault, larceny, motor vehicle thefts and burglaries could see significant reductions.

In Pennsylvania, and across the country, the potential savings from an increase in the male high school graduation rate could save literally hundreds of millions of dollars in crime-related costs and produce millions in earnings and tax revenue from individuals who are employed rather than incarcerated.

There is more to the crime and education connection than just coursework and passing grades. The combination of largely unnoticed actions undertaken by individual schools affects education climates for millions of students in thousands of schools across the country. These school climates, in turn, often profoundly affect student performance.

The school-to-prison pipeline is fueled, in part, by “zero-tolerance” policies that accelerate the involvement of the criminal justice system in routine school disciplinary practices. The involvement of law enforcement in traditional matters of school discipline has soared as school districts across the country expanded the use of armed police officers in schools.

The nightly news is flooded with stories like the 7-year-old North Carolina boy with autism, whose mother said he was overwhelmed by the “comings and goings in his classroom,” and began spitting inside his special needs school.

The “school resource officer” arrived on the scene, put the boy in handcuffs, and pinned him to the ground, according to body-cam footage of the September 2018 incident that was recently published by WSOC-TV.

This pattern is all too familiar. Just this week, police pepper sprayed a 9-year-old New York girl during a family disturbance outside of school.

An investment in education is an investment in crime prevention. The potential to save money, generate revenue and minimize the anguish that comes with victimization is too important to ignore.

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Minnesota sex offenders involuntarily committed to treatment center go on hunger strike

A dozen men held at a sex offender treatment center in Moose Lake, Minnesota ended a 14-day hunger strike after state officials agreed to meet with the men and discuss their demand for a “clear pathway” for release from the program, which confines sex offenders indefinitely after they have completed their criminal sentences, reported The Dobb's Wire.

A dozen men who had stopped eating called off the hunger strike after Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead offered to hold monthly meetings between the strikers and leaders of the state sex offender program.

The purpose of the meetings will be to discuss the strikers' primary complaint: They have no "clear pathway" for release from the program and its prison-like treatment centers in Moose Lake and St. Peter.

The strike was organized to protest Minnesota's civil commitment system, which confines hundreds of rapists and other sexual offenders long after their prison terms. Some men have been held at the Moose Lake facility for years or even decades, effectively turning civil commitment into what they describe as a life sentence.

The strikers and other detainees maintain that the state program is more focused on warehousing offenders than treating them, and they have demanded that officials increase the program's historically low rate of release.

The protest organizers had been refusing food since Jan. 21. Several of the men said in interviews that they were prepared to be hospitalized or starve to death if the state did not respond to their demands.

By early this week, the strikers reported feeling muscle pains, dizziness, nausea and rapid weight loss from lack of nourishment, according to organizers.

The men finally called off the protest and resumed eating after Harpstead offered to hold the monthly listening sessions, which are expected to begin this month and last through May.

Under the agreement, the Department of Human Services (DHS) will develop a report on the state sex offender program at the end of the discussions and produce recommendations. The agency has not made any commitments to specific changes.

"I am relieved that no one was seriously hurt or died, but this system of indefinite confinement has gone on far too long," said Merry Schoon of Appleton, Minn., whose 33-year-old son, Daniel A. Wilson, is being held at Moose Lake. "These men have families and they deserve a second chance to be productive members of society just like everyone else."

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MCN/USA TODAY NETWORK: An investment in education is an investment in crime prevention

Matthew T. Mangino
MCN/USA TODAY NETWORK
February 5, 2021

Gov. Tom Wolf recently unveiled, as part of his 2021-22 budget, a plan to invest $1.3 billion in public schools. 

Investments are typically made with an eye toward cashing in. Can an investment in education pay dividends?

Several years ago the Alliance for Excellent Education, which advocates for raising the high school graduation rate, reported that America could save billions of dollars in annual crime costs if school districts could raise the male high school graduation rate. While graduation rates have increased according to a 2019 Alliance report, males and "historically underserved students" have lagged behind. 

There was a time when disruptive students were sent to see the principal. Today in some school districts, the disruptive student is handcuffed and ushered off to court. The school-to-prison pipeline is overflowing with students.

According to the Washington Post, more than 3 million students each year are suspended or expelled from school across the United States. Federal data, though limited, shows that nearly a quarter of a million students are annually referred to law enforcement. 

There is an indirect correlation between educational attainment and arrest and incarceration rates — particularly among males. According to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 56% of federal inmates, 67% of inmates in state prisons, and 69% of inmates in local jails did not complete high school. 

The Alliance for Excellent Education found that increasing the male graduation rate would decrease crime nationwide.

In Pennsylvania, and across the country, the potential savings from an increase in the male high school graduation rate could be literally hundreds of millions of dollars in crime-related costs and produce millions in earnings and tax revenue from individuals who are employed rather than incarcerated. 

There is more to the crime and education connection than just coursework and passing grades. The combination of largely unnoticed actions undertaken by individual schools affects education climates for millions of students in thousands of schools across the country. These school climates, in turn, often profoundly affect student performance. 

An investment in education is an investment in crime prevention. The potential to save money, generate revenue and minimize the anguish that comes with victimization is too important to ignore.

Matthew T. Mangino is the former district attorney of Lawrence County and an adjunct professor at Thiel College in Mercer County.

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Minnesota sex offender wants Fifth Amendment protection in treatment

The Minnesota Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of a man who claims sex-offense confessions made to his probation officer as part of a court-mandated program are protected by the Fifth Amendment, reported the Courthouse News Service.

Adam McCoy’s appeal highlights a potential conflict between the state’s rehabilitation programs for sex offenders, their requirements of full disclosure and the constitutional rights of those offenders.

McCoy was charged in 2019 with two counts each of first-degree and second-degree criminal sexual conduct for the 2005 assault of his 2-year-old stepdaughter. A district court granted McCoy’s motion to suppress the statements that gave rise to the charges, which he made to his probation officer and a polygraph examiner during treatment mandated by a court as part of his probation for another sex offense.

The court ruled that the statements, in which McCoy detailed an assault of his stepdaughter along with other unidentified victims, were inadmissible because they violated his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The case was dismissed, but prosecutors won a reversal in the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which found that because McCoy’s disclosures were not compelled because he did not assert his right against self-incrimination before filling out a detailed questionnaire and taking a polygraph test, and was informed that the examiner and probation officer were mandatory reporters.

McCoy’s lawyer, Zachary Johnson of Park Rapids, Minnesota law firm Thomason, Swanson & Zahn, argued Tuesday morning that his client had been trapped in a Catch-22. Without an attorney present, he said, McCoy should not have been expected to know what statements could be incriminating.

“It should not be up to the individual probationer to know where to draw the line,” Johnson said. “The question of whether something is incriminating or not is often a legal question or an investigative question, and often we’re not dealing with sophisticated parties.”

He added that a decision that the ostensibly rehabilitative treatment process can be used to prosecute offenders could lead Minnesota defense attorneys to advise their clients not to participate in sex offender treatment at all.

“Every lawyer would have to advise their clients to participate in sex offender treatment at their own peril,” he said. “No probationer in his right mind would ever agree to cooperate with that.”

Johnson also sought to distinguish McCoy’s case from State v. Murphy, a 1983 case in which the Minnesota Supreme Court decided that the Fifth Amendment does not make statements to a probation officer about crimes unrelated to the probation inadmissible if the probationer does not assert his right to avoid self-incrimination.

“The nature of this encounter was incredibly different than what happened in Murphy. In Murphy, we had a normal probation interview,” Johnson said. “That’s different here, and I think the court can see the difference.”

The state, meanwhile, argued that Murphy was an appropriate precedent to apply. Cass County Attorney Ben Lindstrom, whose jurisdiction lies in the north-central part of Minnesota, pointed out that, like in Murphy, McCoy volunteered the information without being threatened with breach of probation, imprisonment or any other penalty.

“The appellant was never told that he needed to provide information that would incriminate him. As a matter of fact, the polygraph provider was very clear on that, ‘don’t provide us incriminating information,’” Lindstrom said, adding that pleading the Fifth is a legitimate excuse under the rules of probation.

Much of the court’s questioning surrounded whether a threat was implicit in the requirement of a full-disclosure polygraph, especially in light of the fact that McCoy was not read his Miranda rights ahead of time.

“How should we be defining threat?” Chief Justice Lorie Gildea asked Lindstrom.

The prosecutor argued that threats, in this case, would have to be unlawful actions, and that the possibility of a probation violation didn’t qualify.

“I would distinguish consequences from threats,” he said. “I would distinguish the lawful imposition of a consequence versus the unlawful imposition of a consequence.”

Justice Paul Thissen also pondered aloud whether the issues presented by McCoy’s case could be better resolved by amending Minnesota’s rules of evidence to clarify when and whether statements like his could be admitted.

Justice Barry Anderson poked at Johnson’s effort to set his client’s case apart from Murphy, drawing out a sideswipe against Lindstrom.

“This issue’s been around a while, and Murphy’s been around a while, and I don’t see any indication that the roof is falling in,” Anderson said.

Johnson agreed, with a major caveat.

“The reason why you haven’t seen the sky falling in… is because these prosecutions should be rare,” he said. “Many prosecutors in the state, the idea of prosecuting a crime on the basis of these statements is just something they would not choose to do.”

“These prosecutions should be relatively rare. I would hope they would be, at least,” he added. “But now that we are faced with one, it could be a case where bad facts make bad law.”

Minnesota’s sex offender rehabilitation process has been at the center of several controversies in recent years, many of them focused on the state’s civil commitment program for offenders deemed to be sexually dangerous persons.

A federal judge’s 2015 order requiring the state to create pathways to release for committed offenders was overturned by the Eighth Circuit two years later, but releases have become slightly more common regardless. Before 2015, no one had ever been fully released from the program in its 20 years of operation, and only three people had been conditionally released.

Since then, 13 detainees have been fully released, and 11 were conditionally released in 2020. Those numbers are still dwarfed by the approximately 740 current detainees and the 86 who have died in the program’s custody.

McCoy was not civilly committed at the state’s sex offender treatment facility in Moose Lake, but Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor Eric Janus said his dilemma is not unlike ones faced by many of those offenders. Janus leads the St. Paul law school’s Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center, and has written critically about Minnesota’s program.

“Certainly, this whole area is fraught, because obviously on the one hand, full disclosure and telling the truth is critical in terms of sex-offender treatment. You’ve got that notion kind of in conflict with the idea that full disclosure can be self-incriminating,” he said.

“That information can be, and often is, used if there’s a sex offender civil commitment proceeding brought,” he added. “And that’s problematic from the perspective of the individual, but it’s also problematic because it creates a disincentive for people to participate in treatment.”

All in all, he said, sex-offender treatment is an admirable goal, but hitches like McCoy’s can make it difficult for offenders to go through the program without fear of consequences.

“We’re pretty sure that participating in sex-offender treatment is a positive thing. It’s helpful, in terms of helping people reenter society. It’s just a conundrum,” he said. “And when you couple that with mandatory reporting laws, even in situations where normally one would expect some confidentiality… these mandatory-reporting laws often mean that the expectation of confidentiality is violated.”

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Killings up nearly 30% across the U.S. last year

A study released by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, along with the Houston-based philanthropic organization Arnold Ventures, found killings rose dramatically across the U.S. last year, and suggested that coronavirus pandemic and racial injustice unrest were factors, according to The Associated Press.

 at crime rates in 34 cities of varying sizes. It found a 30% spike in homicides in 2020 compared to 2019. Study leaders called for urgent action to improve police-community relations and expand anti-violence initiatives.

Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist and one of the study’s lead authors, said officers around the country were forced off the streets and into quarantine due to either contracting COVID-19 or to avoid being exposed by colleagues. Even when on the job, social distancing requirements kept officers from interacting closely with the community, he said.

“That really reduced the ability of law officers to engage in the kinds of proactive policing that can reduce crime,” Rosenfeld said in an interview.

Rosenfeld’s home city was among those studied, and among the most violent. St. Louis recorded 262 killings last year, the most since 267 in 1993, when the city’s population was substantially higher.

St. Louis was far from alone. Homicides rose in 29 of the 34 cities studied. Killings more than doubled in Chula Vista, California, and Chandler, Arizona.

Larger cities were hit hard, too: Milwaukee’s homicides rose 85%, Seattle saw a 63% increase, Chicago killings jumped 55% and New York City saw a 43% increase.

Milwaukee police Sgt. Efrain Cornejo said in an email that several factors contributed to the city’s rise in killings. Efrain said the city is still researching the cause “to develop better and new strategies to reduce gun violence in the future.”

The study found that the pandemic “has disproportionately affected vulnerable populations, placing at-risk individuals under additional physical, mental, emotional, and financial stress.”

The virus also strained police, courts, hospitals and other entities tasked with responding to violence, and hampered violence reduction outreach efforts, the study found.

Homicide rates in 2020 topped 2019 levels during every month, but the increase was steepest after massive protests spurred by George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on May 25. The study found that in June through August, homicides rose 37% compared to 2019.

Rosenfeld said that deploying large teams of officers to demonstrations “reduced policing out in the community where it’s needed to keep crime in check.”

The authors said homicides also spiked in the mid-2010s when protests followed the deaths of young Black people at the hands of police, including 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

While it will be months before the federal government compiles full national statistics, authors of the study said it is likely that 2020 will see the worst one-year homicide rate increase ever, topping the 13% increase in 1968.

The study noted that despite the spike in killings, homicide rates in the U.S. have dropped sharply over the past quarter of a century. The overall homicide rate for the 34 cities study was 11.4 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2020, compared to 19.4 deaths per 100,000 residents in 1995.

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Local jail costs increased despite falling crime

Local jail costs increased despite falling crime and fewer people being admitted to jail, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report. Historically, the roughly 3,000 local jails operating in the United States have received less public and policymaker attention than prisons. But now, the COVID-19 pandemic has put jails—secure correctional facilities, generally operated by county or municipal governments, where people are detained before trial or confined post-conviction for periods usually lasting less than a year—under additional scrutiny. Jails rely on close confinement and so are high risk for disease transmission. Local governments are also confronting the budget implications of the pandemic and looking for potential savings, especially in costly areas such as corrections.

This environment provides an opportunity to examine correctional expenditures and consider strategies that may offer enduring public safety and fiscal benefits. The available data indicates that to mitigate COVID-19 exposure risk, jurisdictions reduced jail populations by about 31% nationwide from March to May 2020, and although those populations partially rebounded, they were still 15% below March levels as of October 2020. Further, people released from jail in March were readmitted less often over the ensuing six months than those released in January, suggesting that the pandemic-related decreases in jail populations did not affect public safety. These reductions may not yield immediate savings, but a sustained commitment to safely cutting the number of people in jail could provide long-term financial benefits. The recent experience of reducing prison populations offers a glimpse of the potential cost savings: The 9% drop in the prison population from 2008 to 2018 virtually flattened corrections spending, which had averaged 5.4% annual growth from 1991 to 2007.

To support state and local efforts to reduce jail spending and protect public safety, The Pew Charitable Trusts undertook an analysis of jail costs, using expenditure data for all U.S. localities, primarily from 2007 and 2017, and related criminal justice data. (See methodology for details on definitions and analyses.) Key findings include:

Local governments spend billions on jails. As of the end of 2017:

• Jail and other local corrections costs had risen sixfold since 1977, with jail costs reaching $25 billion.
• Almost 2 in 5 dollars spent on state and local correctional institutions went to jails.
• About 1 in 17 county dollars was spent on jails.
• The average annual cost of holding a person in jail was about $34,000.
• Roughly a third of jail facility capacity was more than 30 years old, and about 20% of jails were overcrowded, which could present significant capital challenges to local budgets.

Jail costs rose even as crime and admissions to jail fell. As of the end of 2017:

• A 20% decrease in crime and a 19% drop in jail admissions since 2007 had not led to reduced jail spending.
• The portion of local budgets spent on jails did not correlate with state crime rates.
• Small localities spent more per capita on jails than most other jurisdictions, despite having lower crime rates.

Nationwide, counties and cities are seeking to address budgetary pressures during these difficult fiscal times and for the long term. New policies and practices—including many they already have embraced in response to the pandemic—can safely reduce jail populations and associated costs and help them achieve those goals.

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Bruce Castor former PA prosecutor joins impeachment defense team

Former President Donald Trump announced two new attorneys who will lead his impeachment defense team, just days before his Senate trial is set to begin, reported the USA Today. 

The announcement came one day after it was reported five members of Trump's team split with him. 

Trump, the first president to be impeached twice, announced his legal team would be led by David Schoen, a criminal defense attorney who works in Alabama and New York, and Bruce Castor Jr., a former district attorney in Pennsylvania.

The news comes just days before filings are due in Trump's trial, including an official response due on Tuesday to the article of impeachment passed by the House charging Trump with inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump's trial will begin in earnest the week of Feb. 8.

"I consider it a privilege to represent the 45th President," Castor said in a statement released by Trump. "The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always."

Both attorneys are no stranger to high profile cases. 

Castor garnered headlines after he declined to prosecute actor Bill Cosby in 2005 on sexual assault allegations that years later sent Cosby to prison. 

Schoen has similarly been involved with cases for high-profile figures. Herepresented Roger Stone, a key Trump ally who was pardoned by the former president after charges stemming from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. 

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