7 States Making Bold Criminal Justice Reforms

No other sitting Commander in Chief, including Ronald Reagan, who took office in 1981 when prison populations spiked upward rapidly, or George W. Bush, the hang-’em-high leader who presided over 152 executions as Texas governor, had ever set foot inside a federal penitentiary. But last month, President Barack Obama stepped behind bars — hinting that he’s conscious of the legacy he’ll leave and is eyeing criminal justice reform as his next issue to tackle.
“When they describe their youth and their childhood, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made,” Obama said after speaking to six nonviolent offenders at El Reno prison, about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City. “The difference is they did not have the kinds of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.” He added, “It’s not normal. It’s not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What is normal is young people making mistakes.”
As bipartisan momentum grows in Washington, D.C., reform efforts are also sweeping the nation, many led by conservative governors. Here’s the latest innovations to come out of our country’s statehouses:
TEXAS SHUTTERS PRISONS
Everything’s bigger in Texas, including its correctional facilities. That is, until recently. Starting in 2007, Gov. Rick Perry, Bush’s successor in a “tough on crime” state and now a Republican presidential candidate, led the conservative state in reining in the size of its prison populations. Texas focused on expanding treatment programs and diverting offenders through probation and parole. In 2011, three juvenile facilities were closed, halving the number of incarcerated youth in the state. Cuts continued in 2013, when legislators reduced the corrections budget by $97 million, a clear sign they intended to scale back the system’s capacity. Two prisons near Dallas mired in scandal and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest for-profit prison company, looked to be on the chopping block. When Sen. John Whitimire, the longest-serving legislator, called for the closure of the prisons built during his watch, the decision seemed final. Through the budget process, both were defunded.
UTAH REDEFINES A PRISON-WORTHY OFFENSE
Obama didn’t selected El Reno prison for his visit at random. He picked the institution because half of its inmates are behind bars for drug offenses — the same proportion for the country as a whole. Utah faced the same situation. While crime fell for two decades, the state’s prison population increased without bound: From 2004 to 2013, the number of inmates grew by 18 percent, six times faster than the national average. This March, Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, signed a comprehensive reform package (developed by a commission of state and local officials) that reclassified all first- and second-time drug possession violations as misdemeanors, instead of felonies. Along with creating new guidelines for parole violations and adding “re-entry specialists” to smooth the transition from prison, the Beehive State’s new law is expected to eliminate the 2,700 projected incarcerations and save the public $500 million over the next 20 years.
ALABAMA DOESN’T JAIL FOR PROBATION VIOLATIONS
Alabama has one of the nation’s highest incarceration rates, jailing more than 30,000 people in a system designed to hold only 12,000 prisoners — leading officials to call it a “time bomb waiting to explode.” Almost a quarter of newly admitted inmates were thrown into overcrowded cells because they violated the terms of their parole or probation. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, half of those cases were for “minor technical violations,” such as missed appointments, unpaid fines, moving to a new home without permission or losing a job, “that did not result in a new offense.” A law signed in 2010 by Gov. Robert Riley limited incarceration for those who committed an administrative error but didn’t break any laws. The alternatives saved the southern state an estimated $18 million.
INDIANA RETOOLS DRUG-FREE ZONE LAWS
The signs are so commonplace you might not notice them: “Drug-Free School Zones.” In fine print, they’ll inform you that selling drugs within 1,000 feet of school property, a public park, a housing project or a youth center in Indiana is a Class A felony, automatically upping the recommended sentence to 20 to 50 years in prison. The creation of these areas were one of the government’s first salvos in the War on Drugs, passed by Congress in 1970, more than a decade before Ronald Reagan escalated the battle. Indiana’s reform began in 2007 in an unlikely way: bills in each chamber of the legislature initially set out to expand the drug-free zone to include bus stops and churches. Kelsey Kauffman, a professor at DePauw University, tasked her students with evaluating the law’s effectiveness. Over an eight-year campaign, they presented their findings — that more than 75 percent of the defendants affected by the zones were black — to multiple Senate committees. By 2013, new legislation cut the zones in half, limiting them to a 500-foot radius. A bill last year sought to scale them back even further to 250 feet, but political maneuvering killed the attempt.
NEBRASKA OVERTURNS DEATH PENALTY
Smack in the middle of America’s heartland, the Cornhusker State became the first conservative state in four decades to repeal capital punishment this May. Nebraska’s nonpartisan, unicameral legislature defied Gov. Pete Ricketts, a fierce advocate for the death penalty, with a 30-to-19 vote, just barely enough to overturn a veto. Liberals and conservatives alike believed the death penalty was inefficient, costly and immoral. “Today we are doing something that transcends me, that transcends this Legislature, that transcends this state,” Sen. Ernie Chambers, an independent from Omaha, said before the vote. “We are talking about human dignity.” Along with Washington, D.C., Nebraska joined 17 other states in banning capital punishment.
MISSOURI REPEALS SELECT BAN ON FOOD STAMPS
The federal welfare overhaul in 1996, passed by Rep. Newt Gingrich’s Republican stronghold in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, revoked the ability of felons convicted of drug offenses to receive welfare benefits. The lifetime disqualification from food stamps seemed so vengeful and contrary to public safety that 19 states have chosen to opt out of the provision entirely and 24 states created exceptions, according to a tally by The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline blog. Barring someone from benefits “increases the odds they will commit new crimes by virtue of the fact that you’re creating a significant financial obstacle,” says Marc Mauer, the executive director of The Sentencing Project. A grassroots push, particularly by religious leaders in St. Louis and Kansas City, united lawmakers in values-based support and won the governor’s signature.
GEORGIA WIPES THE SLATE CLEAN
Once a person’s made contact with the criminal justice system, it’s hard to allude its grasp. A criminal record follows you into every job interview. It’s a red flag on every background check for a new apartment or a loan. That’s the case — even if a person isn’t a felon who spent years in the pen or if a judge dismisses the case or a jury agrees the accused is innocent. With prodding from the Georgia Justice Project and others, legislators overhauled the state’s burdensome and limited expungement law. On the day the law went into effect, one-third of Georgia’s population had a record expunged. Bolstered by the success, Georgia Justice Project convinced Gov. Nathan Deal to issue an executive order to “ban the box” asking criminal history questions on state employment applications this February — the first state in the Deep South to change its hiring policy.

The District Where Healthy School Lunches Are Actually Succeeding

School lunches are healthier than ever under First Lady Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Federal law now requires schools to serve more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, as well as cut down on food that’s high in calories, fat and sodium.
The new school lunch standard is wonderful in the fight against childhood obesity. However, its actual implementation has been fraught with controversy. School lunch companies are complaining that the tough nutritional guidelines are too rigid and claiming that they’re causing a steep loss in revenue. Picky eaters are also revolting about the taste of their foods, and many just end up going hungry when they throw whole trays of food away.
But there’s one school district where kids are actually eating — and even enjoying their meals.
MORE: Celebrity Chefs Urge New York City to Provide Free School Lunch for Every Student
As the Atlantic reports, the Lincoln Public School System (LPS) in Lincoln, Nebraska “has gone above and beyond the legal requirements, dishing out a daily vegetable smorgasbord. On top of veggie burgers and black-bean chili, the school system serves up local yellow watermelons, black and green peppers, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, ripe plums and fresh cantaloupe.”
And according to the Journal Star, all of the district’s high schools, most of its middle schools and about one-third of the elementary school have a fruit and vegetable bar. Chicken nuggets are coated in whole wheat crumbs and lasagna made with low-sodium sauce and whole wheat noodles.
“Last year, we spent over $1.1 million dollars on produce. So we do serve a lot, and I’m really excited to see that children don’t waste it, that they eat it. That is really cool,” says Edith Zumwalt, the Director of Nutrition Services in LPS.
For its efforts, the district was recently given the “Golden Carrot Award” from the Physicians Committee (PCRM), a nonprofit medical organization of 12,000 physicians. The award came with $1,500 prize for the nutrition services program. Remarkably, LPS was the only public school to win; private schools in California and Arizona also shared the award.
Following the award, the school district even received praise from one Kourtney Kardashian, who’s apparently a big healthy food advocate and has teamed up with the PCRM. “As a mom who makes her healthy eating a priority, I’m so impressed to see that Lincoln’s lunch trays are filled with colorful, locally grown cherries, savory carrots, yellow watermelon, fresh blueberries, and plums,” the reality star writes in a letter to the school.
Clearly, healthy food doesn’t have to mean bland. Hopefully more schools can take up this philosophy too.
DON’T MISS: This State Is Making Sure No Child Is Ever Denied a School Lunch

One Little School on the Prairie Has Big Achievements

Money can’t buy you brains. And it can’t purchase you good grades, either. But just because you’re lacking financial resources doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve academic success.
The rural community of Grand Island, Nebraska is populated with many families that live below the poverty line; they make their living packing meat, processing potatoes into French fries, and working at fast-food restaurants. At the town’s Wasmer Elementary School, there are twice as many Latino students as white, and 86 percent of the kids live in poverty. Based upon this, statistics would normally suggest that the school’s standardized test scores wouldn’t  be so hot.
But astonishingly, Wasmer Elementary K-5 students score as high as children enrolled at the most affluent schools in the state, with 91 percent of kids achieving math proficiency and 87 percent reading proficiently — thanks to the concerted effort of their teachers, principal, and staff.
Principal Betty Desaire told Joe Dejka of the Omaha World Herald that there isn’t any magic formula to the school’s achievements, which come from a combination of high expectations, focusing on each child’s needs, and emphasizing the importance of testing and learning math facts. Additionally, the school holds students accountable for completing homework, and itinvolves everyone in the school — including the lunchroom staff and the janitors — in making sure the kids succeed. Wasmer is so in tune with her students’ needs that at the school carnival last year, the most popular prize the PTA offered was a new bed, because some kids don’t have a proper place to sleep.
“Betty Desaire and the school staff, they just get it, so much,” Wasmer PTA member Tracy Overstreet Gartner told Dejka, “And they are focusing on each kid individually. It’s incredible. They make it a team effort. … I get emotional about this because it’s so great.” For its achievements, in 2013 Wasmer Elementary School was named a Title I Distinguished School along with 45 other high-poverty schools across the United States.
Principal Desaire is due to retire at the end of the year, but everyone believes that the system she put in place will continue to help Wasmer’s students beat expectations for years to come.
MORE: Music Can Change A Troubled Kid’s Life. Here’s the Proof.
 

What One Guy Did When He Saw Poor Families in His City Weren’t Getting a Fair Shake

Mark Koller didn’t like the way payday loans can send low-income families into a downward spiral of debt. In his state of Nebraska, payday lenders charge 400 percent interest annually on emergency loans, with an average repayment time of 212 days. The terms are terrible, but low-income people often have few other options when they’re in a bind. So Koller is helping to form the first credit union for low-income families in Lincoln, Nebraska, offering an alternative to the 44 payday lenders operating in the city. The bank will be called Community Hope Federal Credit Union, and it’s already assembled a board and received approval from the federal government to proceed. If Koller and his allies succeed, the institution will become one of 2,000 low-income credit unions in the nation.
Community Hope Federal Credit Union plans to offer loans of up to $5,000 for six months or a year. Patrons will be offered financial literacy education opportunities so they can learn how to make a budget, save, and work toward owning a home.
Koller, who will manage the credit union, is seeking donations to raise $300,000 in financial backing. As he told Nancy Hicks of Lincoln Star Journal, when people use payday loans, “It’s steep, pretty dicey, and you can fall pretty fast.” Here’s hoping the Community Hope Federal Credit Union will be offering a smarter alternative to low-income Lincoln families soon.
MORE: Seattle Readies ‘Financial Empowerment Centers for Low-Income Residents

Low-Income Students Can Aim High. This Group Can Help

Nobody in Jennifer Alquicira’s immediate family had ever attended university, and they had no money to spare. So even though the Omaha woman was an accomplished student, she was resigned to going to community college.  But the intervention of College Possible helped Alquicira find an educational institution that matched her abilities and helped her figure out how to pay for it. With offices in the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, Omaha, Neb. and Portland, Oreg., the Minnesota-based non-profit’s mission is to target talented low-income students to help them avoid “under-matching”—seeking higher education institutions that don’t measure up to their ability.  College Possible contacted Alquicira when she was a sophomore in high school with an offer to help her prepare for tests, research colleges and complete her applications. Students can also visit the group’s offices, where AmeriCorps volunteers coach them for two hours, twice a week, on everything they need to know about preparing for college. With the help she received from College Possible, Alquicira is now a freshman at the University of Nebraska, and most of her costs are covered by scholarships and Pell Grants. “I felt like I could do this,” she told Kate Howard Perry of the Omaha World Herald. “I wanted to show how proud my family is of me and what I can do for them later in life.” 
MORE: What Wounded Soldiers Need Most After Battle

Meet the Hippest Barista in Nebraska

The Meadowlark Coffee and Espresso in Lincoln, Nebraska, is a local hub for environmentalists and activists who come in for local, fair trade and organic coffee.  33-year old owner Adam Hintz is part of a group of environmentally conscious entrepreneurs in the area that are demonstrating that businesses can be more sustainable while still making a buck. He says his activism on issues like the Keystone Pipeline stems from his concern for future generations. Put the Meadowlark on your next Midwest road trip.