inned shsd are bsd yaub released. we've done that. that was srt thafs started and continued by me in january of 2011. we had 1,451 in admin seg as it's called. in january of 2014, we had 597. in a sense, i don't feel i'm replacing mr. clemens. i feel i am fulfilling his vision. i respect him and i have known him for quite sometime. working with the association of the state corrections administration. we have done a lot of work and let me throw things out there as i am running out of time.

for some reason we seem to think that for admin seg, someone will sell 23 hours a day. who defines that? it's probably some court case that mandates that and why isn't it 20 hours a day or 18 hours a day. they work their way down to 10. that's one thing we will be doing. it's been automatic that someone on death row will stay in administrative segregation until they are put to death. some are found innocent and released and we will change our policy on that and giving them the opportunity to get outside of yourself. where we will end up is a small handful of all that we are talking about. for those in administrative segregation, that doesn't mean we give up on them, but i sat

there for over 20 hours. this was no way to treat an american. no way they should be treating someone like this and internationally it's not a way to be treating someone. this is receiving the right amount of tension at the right time and it's time to move this forward. thank you. >> thanks. i might say to those gathered here, the roll call just started and my colleagues will leave to vote. we may need a short recess and they will be back quickly to resume. >> distinguished members of the committee, thank you for having us here to address this important issue. i spent 13 months in the federal system. if you are familiar with orange is the new black, you know i was never held in an isolation unit. the longest amount of time i was placed alone was four hours and i was ready to climb the walls

of that small room by the end of that. i am here today to talk specifically about the impact of solitary confinement on women in american prisons, jails and detention centers. women are the fastest growing segment of the criminal justice system and their families and communities are increasingly affected by what happens behind bars. at least 63% of women in prison are there for a nonviolent offense, however some of the factors that contribute to women's incarceration can land them in solitary confinement. in my first hours of incarcerations, warnings of the shoe came from both prisoners and staff very quickly and very minor infractions could send you to the shoe. they can keep you there as long as they want under whatever conditions they choose. unlike the normal hive-like communities of prison, 24-hour lockdown leaves you in a 6 by 8

cell for weeks or months or even years. this is unproductive for the outside communities to which 97% of all prisoners return. several factors make women's experience in incarceration different from men's. women are much more likely than men to suffer from mental illness. that makes being put into solitary confinement much more likely and much more damaging. like the majority of prisoners had a history of mental illness and 75% do. she spent the first year of her six-year sentence in solitary confinement. you have the full written statement and will share some of her words with you. i spent 3/4 of my time in a bunk in the fetal position rocking back and forth for comfort. i tried meditating to no avail. i can separate with mind.

i cried a lot, not for me, but my kissed. i laughed inappropriately. i got angry at myself, angry at those who abused me and led me to a life of addiction. i felt ashamed because i felt i deserved it. i felt sore i was born. i felt sorry for all the hurt i caused, but most of all i felt sorry that there wasn't a rope to kill myself because every day was worse than the last. solitary is miss misused as a threat to intimidate and silence women who are being sexually, b abused by staff. a woman who had done a lot of time told me about a friend of hers who was sexually abused by a guard. she told me they had her in the shoe for months during the sis investigation. they shot her full of psych drugs. she blew up like a balloon.

when they let her out, she was a zombie. they do not play here. there examples of solitary confinement being used to hide horrific systemic sexual abuse under their watch. the terrible threat of isolation makes women afraid to report abuse and serves as a powerful disincentive to ask for help or justice. finally solitary has a devastating effect on families and children of women prisoners. for health and safety, pregnant women should never be placed in solitary and yet this is allowed in prisons throughout the u.s. most women in prison are mothers. a child's need to see and hold his or her mother is one of the most basic human needs and visitation for prisoners in solitary is extremely limited and often all visitation is revoked. isolation should only be used when a prisoner is a threat to her own safety or that of

others, not when pregnant or suffering mental illness or for reporting abuse. i urge that the federal bureau of prisoners in assessment of solitary confinement take action to limit on wilt and visit as many institutions as possible. they should include confidential discussions for those who are in those facilities. my home state of new york announced significant reforms including prohibition of placing pregnant women in solitary and the bureau of prisons and other states should embrace those comprehensive reforms. thank you for the opportunity to testify and to help the subcommittee dress this very sig th 95 cant issue. i hope it can help the long-term oversight and reform. >> i reviewed the testimony of all the members of this panel and it is extraordinary. i don't want to miss it. we will take a recess so if you

can hang around, this committee will stand in recess for ten minutes. >> this hearing will resume.

please proceed. >> good afternoon chairman and ranking members of the committee. thank you for revisiting this pressing issue. changing the culture and the prisons will change the culture and the cities and the states. the use of solitary confinement is not only immoral, but a missed opportunity to break the cycle of crime. this approach does not increase safety and is contrary to justice fellowship goals for the criminal justice system. accountability and restoration. teaching people to be good citizens rather than good prisoners is a charge entrusted to the officers by the taxpayers. skilled wardens understand that they become responsible and productive members is paramount to the safety of our communities whether inside or outside. part of creating safe

communities includes removing prisoners who violate norms by placing themselves or others at risk. it needs to be temporary and what is asked can be available to them and achievable. the fellowships saw his power and cried criminal when he left president nixon's council to be a federal prison. upon his release from prison, his work actually started in 1979. that is where the justice fellowship was founded and i'm grateful to you, mr. chairman and for your support as has been mentioned for the cosponsoring of the smarter sentencing act.

i believe that we would applaud your work in that area. solitary confinement in theory is for the worst of the worst of the prisoners. case and point is in illinois where a study was conducted and found 85% were sent to disciplinary segregation for a minor rule violation and prisoners to these circumstances do not have their cases individually reviewed and looked at from oversight. there was an analogy over police officers and when they are struck or other things, but the justice system does a greater job on the outside of the walls of having accountability and individual review than segregation had historically. when it comes to the discussion about mental illness, our families suffering from those that are too often punished

rather than treated, i would like to share the story of a man named kevin that i am privileged to know in michigan who is diagnosed at 11 years old. at 14 he was pressured by's pier group to holding up a pizzeria with a toy gun. he wound up in adult prison and spent nearly a year in segregation. he described the experience as an panic attack and felt as though he was stuck in an elevator that he needed to escape from and he tried to commit suicide as an escape, but instead of helping kevin, they increased this punishment because that was all they were trained and knowledgeable to do. too often our jails have been our country's mental institutions and i believe

supporting these goals is the fact that they spoke of earlier that will help provide resources to the states and as well as to the state officials when they are encountering and dealing with people who are suffering from the mental health issues. with the strategies from justice fellow suspects perspective from those that reduced the use of segregation. that is first to use mission housing to target the need of prisoners with developmental delays and those at risk of sexual victimization. second to use alternative responses to the disruptions outside of segregation. the third is to increase the training on methods that promote positive social behavior within the bureau of prisons. jurisdictions strategies not

only tracked the reductions in the use of force and prisoners and the number of prison grievances, but i want to acknowledge the aca and other organizations have taken a progressive stance on inviting external reviews with the bureaus of prisons. i believe that that comes with no expiration date. and they give up the watch. i will hope this is not the end of the discussion today. these can be continued including the work with the newly authorized task force and prison reform. >> thank you very much. it's not the end. this is round two.

i don't know how many more will be. mr. levin, you are making me nervous. we keep inviting you to these hearings and i keep agreeing with you more and more. i hope you will at least highlight a few things you know we disagree on. thank you very much for coming. the floor is yours. >> thank you for your leadership on this. we are conservative think tank -- >> i will note you did find something you disagree with the chair on. we are a conservative think tank and to make the government less intrusive, we have to shine the light in the darkest of places in the most restrictive areas of government control. solitary confinement. i am pleased to be here today. one of the issues is ending the practice of releasing inmates

from solitary confinement. with over 1300 such releases from solitary confinement from texas state prisons n. washington state, the study was done on the super max that found inmate release from solitary confinement were less likely to commit a new offense and more likely not to commit a new offense as compared to inmates with similar defense profiles that were not released. mississippi noted earlier that they have done down from 1300 inmates to today only 300. that saved them over $6 million because it's less than half the cost. violence in prisons has dropped 70%. in maine, they have gone from 139 to between 35 and 45 today in just the bast towel of years.

what i want to note is that the corrections commissioner noted that the downsiding led to substantial reductions in the use of force and use of restraints and inmates cutting themselves up. it's totally eliminated. they reduced the duration. those that used to go there for drug, may may still go, but if they test clean, they can graduate. if someone success kept for more than 72 hours that, is reviewed by the commission. i want to note that one of the keys in texas to reducing that has been the disassociation program. inmates can earn their way out by exemplary behavior and denouncing gang membership. using sanctions and incentives is a way to provide for incentives that lead inmates to.

inmates may have a longer curfew. those that misbehave may be denied prims like making phone calls and for example, access to the mailroom. no two things with concern to sanctions. there is a 24-hour time out, but again we have to make sure we are not overusing sot tear confinement for long periods. one of the strongest for a certain time, we will tell you regarding the white house and other members that are supporting the legislation particularly for the defenders. we can make sure folks have an incentive for good behavior in prison and by the way, a study has shown 36% fewer new offenses

as opposed to discharge without supervision. i want to go over the recommendations that we would urge you to do in addition ending the release from solitary confinement. those include eliminating rules and improving training and deescalation techniques and training in mental retardation and mental illness and using the parallel universe model for positive behavior and self improvement and a matrix.

unfortunately those who are being punished for discipline violations and we know the smaller housing communities were the better staffing ratio can address that issue. i will tell you if we can address the overcrowding, that helps. when you have inmates with inadequate ratio, that makes it more difficult to diffuse the placement. i want to thank the committee for their work on this and i believe we are on the path to solutions that will increase the order in prisons or make the public safe for when they are discharged. >> thanks to the panel and special thanks to them for speaking openly about their incarceration. they i read your testimony three times. it is that compelling. we will give you a few empties to summarize and answer

questions. >> ranking members and committee, thank you for inviting me to speak about 15 years in solitary confinement on death row in angola. i'm here because in 2012, i became the 141st innocent death exxonry since the u.s. supreme court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. before i was exonerated and released, i was subjected to solitary for 23 hours a day for 15 years between the ages of 23 and 38. this experience was all the more painful and cruel because i had not committed crimes for which i was sentenced to die. in my written statement, i described the torture. the heat and cold are often unbearable and normal physical and mental activity and the contact are superior. as harmful as the conditions are, it is made all the worse because it's a hopeless

existence. humans cannot survive without food and water. they cannot survive without sleep and they also cannot survive without hope. years on end, solitary on death row will drain that hope from anyone because in solitary there is nothing to live for. i know this because i lot of my hope. after realizing what my existence would be like until i was executed or exonerated, i was on the verge of committing suicide by state. giving up legal rights and allowing the state to carry out death. something that would be done a few weeks after signing the necessary paperwork. my lawyer talked me out of that saying i would be exonerated and released some day. that's why i was able to regain my hope and able to continue my legal fight.

i was one of the fortunate on death row because i had lawyers and supporters, but the state effectively kills most men in solitary years before they inject them with lethal drugs. i can see now reason to subject anyone to this type of existence no matter how certain they are that we are guilty of a horrible crime and among the worst of the worst. even if we want to punish them severely, we should refrain from this treatment because it's the humane and moral thing to do. my prshs fagz teaches that we should be humane in caring for all people. what does it say as a nation that even before the law allows the state to kill them bit by bit by subjecting them to solitary confinement. i do not condone what those have done, but i don't condone what they have done when we put them

on solitary when we treat them as subhuman. they should be better than that. i would like to believe that the vast majority of the people would be appalled that they knew what they are doing to inmates and understood that we are torturing them for reasons that have little in anything to do with protecting other inmates or prison guards from them. it's torture, pure and simple. no matter what else we want to call it. i would like to think we can agree that our constitution prohibits it. i thank the subcommittee for educating the public about it and i am pleased to have any questions you may ask. >> in the opening statement, it talked about the inmate that i met who said i got an extra 50 years because they said i would kill him and i did. it was stunning. cold-blooded statement.

did you run into similar circumstances in other inmates who were that dangerous? >> there was -- there was one. he volunteered for execution. that's why he dropped his appeal. he stated that if he got out, he would do it again. >> what's the right thing to do with that kind of person based on what you have seen in your -- i don't know how to describe it. incredible life experience. >> i have also come in contact with individuals who are on death row. they make no attempt to profess their innocence.

they would just prefer life as opposed to death. someone who would make a statement like that to kill man? is put in the cell with them, just leave them in the cell by themselves. you let them out at appropriate times. you don't just lock them in a hole and forget about them. if i or you were to do that, you would go to prison for that. it's inhumane. >> thank you. mr. kerrman, i know you may raise the question about incarcerated women. you lived that. you know the vulnerabilities they have. i think about other categories and those who have been held for immigration offenses which were technical violations. they are not crimes per se, but a violation of law, but it's not a question of a violent crime or anything like that.

the vulnerability they had because of language and culture and threat of deportation. what can you tell us about those women and what they face? >> they are held in confinement and potentially subjected to solitary confinement for a variety of reasons. that's a horrifying thought. too often solitary confinement is used not to control people who are truly dangerous to themselves or others, but as a tool of control. within an institution when other management tools whether it be a detention center or prison or a jail would be far more humane and more effective. >> was there recourse at danbury in terms of persons or office that you could contact as an inmate if you saw or felt you were being threatened by a

guard, for example? >> your best chance if you felt that you were under threat and in danger from either a staffer or frankly from another prisoner would be if you had had contact with the outside world. different prisoners have different degrees of contact with the outside world. a prisoner like myself who is middle class with a lot of access, money on my phone account and so on and so forth has a better chance at gaining recourse if i was subjected to either sexual abuse or any other kind of abuse. within a prison system, it is a very slippery slope to try to gain justice and inmates have a very limited trust of prison officials unless a prison is run in a way that is transparent and humane in the first place.

there is a medium security men's state prison i visited in ohio a number of times that is run in a very, very different way than any prison i was ever held in and the warden is a remarkable person. different institutions are run in different ways and it makes the difference in terms of whether a prisoner who is being targeted for abuse by staff or another prisoner feels comfortable. >> how much contact did you have with the outside world? >> i had five contact visits with my family in 15 years i was there. >> how often did you meet with your attorney? >> when they got up to visit. i had a law firm from minneapolis on my case as well. they probably saw me there three or four times. >> in 15 years?

>> in 15 years. i was more concerned with the case work they were doing. >> if they wanted to come and visit me, fine. being in a cell like that, you cherish the visits. >> i was more concerned with the progress being made in that case. >> it was a point in director samuel's testimony that stunned me. what i heard him say and i want to make sure i don't misstate it. he thought that 4% of the federal population in prison suffered from mental illness. i may be off on the number, but i heard numbers the challenges in a twichb. it was dramatically higher. >> i'm not sure and i can't

speak for him and believe the 4% was right. what went through my mind. he was talking about those mentally ill, but our numbers about 4%. our numbers of mental health needs that don't fall into that major category. i can tell you about 70% of the population has a drug or alcohol problem thrown into the mix. >> what we found in the first hearing is that many people with mentally challenged people and i can't tell you the levels, many people found it difficult to follow the rules as well as they should have and any type of resistance on their part because they were mentally challenged

with segregation. >> i will give you the example that i speak about. if i was walking past the buss stop, someone was mumbling loudly, we keep walking. we understand that there was a mental health issue. typically in an institution that would give people a disruption in the day to day activities. they would get themselves into administrative cells. what i said and i can't stress this enough and in my mind, the administrative segregation is used except for the extremely dangerous is used to allow an institution to run more efficiently. it suspends the problem at best and multiplies it at its worst. it does run more efficiently. if you haven't addressed it.

they have done nothing. that's the problem with the mentally ill. what i struggle with and what i change and how can you hold someone accountable with the rule they fwroek begin with. they change by giving the testimony. educating on behalf of those who are incarcerated. thank you for your powerful and moving testimony. i had the opportunity with thompson who was another individual who was wrongfully convicted of murder in louisiana and sentenced to death. he was subsequently exonerated and a powerful experience

personally and an opportunity to get to know mr. thompson and represent him with the court of appeals and the supreme court. let me echo the chairman's comment and apologized to you and you will do that. and to thank you for having the courage to speak out. that cannot be easy to do. this issue is an issue that raises complicated issues. i would like to ask in your judgment with what frequency is his solitary confinement used for relatively minor infractions. >> i can only give you my impression and my impression is that that is overused in that

area. i was talking about what is being done 100 years ago and so part of the process and making the facility run more efficient and that part of our mission was failing because of sending them out to a community worse than they came in. that's what making the periods of time in administrative segregation does. when i hear the comments and the issues and questions and sitting next to me was the director and pretty big systems.

i was asked that question by one of the audience members, i pointed to the others, welcome to the knuckle-dragging club. the public perception is that's what we are. if i can stress one thing, i saw him transgress and i would also, at one time in my law enforcement career, i may have had that same impression and i have to tell you that overall i have never seen a more dedicated professional group of men and women that risk their lives and they do it because they wanted to have a safer community and they put themselves at great risk to do that. they become the largest in each state or close to it. it's how we react to the problems and that's why right now i really appreciate what you have done to participate.

i don't know if any state in the nation you asked right now. you really brought to the forefront and you all understand that it's professionals and the movement, this is not the right way we should be treating people and we get that. what we ask for is help in finding solutions and there some that are too dangerous that they can't be let out. that's a small number. >> thank you. in your written come, you stated that while the goal of many are reforms is to decrease the number of offenders housed in administrative segregation, there will always be a need for a prison within a prison. some will need to be isolated for a secure environment to staff and offenders. it strikes me that a great many

people would think that solitary convinement is not an appropriate punishment for minor infractions, but could well be a necessary tool for the most violent inmate who is pose a threat to the sanctity of other inmates. each of the members have the criminal justice system in different capacities. as inmates, they were administer ing the correctional institution system and helping bring hope and redemption to those incarcerated and mr. levin studying the important justice issues and the question i would ask is of all five of you.

in your judgment based on the different experiences you had, is there an appropriate role for solitary confinement? is there a need for it? in what circumstances if at all would you welcome the views of all five witnesses. >> in my mind right now, yes. in a limited sense. that's because i said some deceases are not cured and that doesn't mean we don't keep trying to find a cure, but what i have been told is that we have four to five in our system that if they are let out of administrative segregation, they will kill someone and they lay that responsibility on me and i

get that. i also understand that in all other areas, there is so much room for improvement. let's figure that out and take care of all the other numbers that are sitting in administrative segregation that at this point there is many other alternatives other than keeping them. >> yes. that's an excellent question. i would first of all say we have to distinguish 24 hours or 72 hour placement for the situation from long-term in texas state prisons. the average time in solitary is four years. some served as long as 24 years. the other issue in texas, thousands were placed in solitary confinement for being gang members. it's critical and i question that for thousands over the last couple of years.

there is an ongoing study in texas. the legislature is proven by the session. one of the cases you brought up that is very important, if you got somebody in solitary who is 23 hours no stimulation, having to earn an hour more this month and programming and such so that they can get out or work their way towards more interaction. that's a great idea. i think generally speak as i said, the more you can be positive incentives for inmates to address these issues, these going to be able to make sure that people in long-term confinement are those that have done harm for inmates and staff and statements indicating they intend to do that. the short-term can be used to diffuse and even that, we heard about the teams and there is deescalation training and things making sure there is not

overcrowding. that can diffuse them behind bars. >> there is a study, senator, that was done in minnesota for a faith-based dorm that we have run there for more than ten years. it was a study of every inmate that went through the program and it found that there was a .8% resit vichl rate and that was every type of prisoner who went through from the worst of the worst on through. it found that they had no technical violations of people who went through the program in the general population that headed 37%. they would still be human beings with that lifestyle. the director's comments about technical violations that we

should take to heart, that's the same behavior i see in my kids and the workplace. when they 2350i7d a bunch of people, they will still get it wrong and how they get through a day. they need to take it seriously when i started my statement. in the cities and the states, you have to change the sulture on the inside. i was so impressed and encouraged to see people talking about it and seeing the director and his willingness to see people who are doing it right. there prisons where the population of people in the prisons have made a decision that they don't want to live in a bad downward spiral culture. when skilled people change that culture and they use very sparingly the use of segregation, the people knowing

that they can return back to a positive and improving culture when they straighten their act out, that's where it is best used. temporary. these creeks officers do have a responsibility it seems that the noble people from the fire departments and the police departments were supposed to be making it more safe for us as taxpayers than the people need with the difficult job. you have to empower and train them and hold them accountable and have oversight like they do in the professions and using the power and how is it being made and to what end and out comes and metrics? you can do a far better job than we are. you will not be able to illuminate it. >> i don't believe it has a rehabilitative value. therefore i think it should not be used other than for the most

serious security concerns. what i have seen in solitary confinement most often is that disciplinary seg, not adseg. it is true that women often do not go into adseg though sometimes they do spend years and years and solitary confinement. i can only emphasize that there is nothing rehabilitative about being locked in a tiny box for 23 hours a day. they have a responsibility to rehabilitate and direct the tremendous tax pay dollars that they consume towards that goal. >> in my 15 years in angola, it got to a point where we were all being taken in one at a time. when i got there, they were taking it one tier at a time. an incident takes place and

everyone suffers the consequence. not just the person who commits the incident. that is a real big minus in the system because it tells everyone that it doesn't matter that i am a model inmate. why should i bother. if solitary confinement will be used for the worst of the worst because safety is the issue. let's face it. if it's going to be used. they had mental issues and emotional issues and if you identify that and find a way

around it, you can deal with it in a humane way it. doesn't have to be -- just put him in a jump suit and shower shoes and lock him in the cell for 23 hours a day. the one thing i wanted more of when i was in the cell is time out of the cell. sadly, that's not the reality. if you want solitary confinement, use it in the most limited capacity. >> thank you very much. >> i want to thank all of you for shedding light on this issue and i particularly want to thank officer thibaudeau because your testimony was -- you have been there. as you say, my model for sharing

your terrible experiences. i had a concern about being confined in solitary for sexual abuse by the bureau and prison staff and especially as i have been working with senator jill brand and others to address the issue of sexual assault in the military. another institution where survivors of sexual assault can be at the mercy of their supervisors and the chain of command due to the power dynamic and possible threats or retaliation that can exist in both of these environments. i want to thank you for your testimony and i do note that you noted that 97% of our prisoners do get released into the community so we need to pay attention to what's happening with them. as you say, they should come out better, not worse than when they were in prison. i think that's a sentiment that

all of us would share. miss kerman, you heard director samuels's response to my questions about what happens in the instance of the abuse of power by the prisons personnel with regard to women and sexual abuse. now, having heard his responses, do you think that the bureau of prisons is doing enough to prevent and prosecute this kind of abuse of power by their staff? >> no. i believe that in every woman's prison and jail, sexual abuse of women and girls by staff is a problem. in some places like otter creek, kentucky or in alabama, those abuses have been revealed to be systemic and very widespread.

very sinister. what i observed during the time i was locked up was that a what i observed during the time i was locked up was that a staff member who was under suspicion for sexually abusing prisoners would be removed from direct contact with the prisoner or prisoners that he was accused -- there were always men in the instances that i knew of, but they would still be there on the property and, of course, a person is innocent until proven guilty. i firmly believe that, but many, many aspects of the experience of incarceration have that silencing effect. the fact that your abuser may not, in fact, be far away from you, may be in view. he might be driving perimeter in the facility in which you are held and so you might, in fact, see him all the time.

the fear of solitary confinement and isolation, i can't overemphasize how powerful a disincentive that is. to go into the shu for 90 days is a really long time, and typically during the type of sis investigation that happens in the b.o.p., those investigations do not happen quickly. not only will you deal with the pain of isolation which is so well detailed in some of the written testimony which has been submitted to this committee, but on a very practical level, you will lose your housing, you will lose your prison job, you will lose a host of privileges obviously if you're held in isolation. all of these things conspire to really, really silence women and, of course, the concern about how much they can trust the people to whom they are supposed to report abuse is a very serious consideration. >> so there are all kinds of disincentives in the environment where reporting of these kinds

of abuse of power does not readily occur. do you have any thoughts on what we can do, and i'm not even talking about using the threat of being put into solitary as a way to control and hide this kind of behavior on the part of the staff. >> the best case scenario is for female prisoners and frankly for all prisoners to have increased access to the outside world. so the person you would be most inclined to trust in terms of seeking redress against abuse would not necessarily be someone inside of the institution in which you live. access to counsel is a tremendously important issue. the vast majority of prisoners in any system are indigent. 80% of criminal defendants are too poor to afford a lawyer, and so their access to counsel

before they're locked up is poor and their access to counsel while they're locked up is negligible. those are the things that would make the biggest difference and frankly those things would make the biggest difference in their rehabilitation as well not just their ability to access justice while incarcerated but also in their ability to be rehabilitated and to return safely to the community. the isolation of solitary confinement is just a small metaphor for the total isolation of incarceration, and when we put people to the margins, it makes it harder for them to return to the community. >> and i don't want to confine my questions on women and the deleterious effect, the negative effect, but for the rest of the panel miss kerman has said maybe

one of the ways we can shed light on what is going on in the prison system, and i'm not saying this is symptomatic of everything that's going on. it's a tough problem, but would you agree that providing more access to the outside world is one way that we can prevent some of the these abuses of power from occurring within the system? >> yes, and also an ombudsman. we had a scandal of sexual abuses in our juvenile state facilities in texas in late 2006, early 2007. one of the things we did was create an ombudsman's office which is not in the chain of command of any prison warden and actually reported directly to the commission, texas youth commission at that time, whose members are appointed by the governor. so not reporting even to the paid director of the commission. so when you have an ombudsman who is not in the chain of command at a particular prison unit who these reports of abuses can go to and that individual can then independently look into them and certainly not every one is accurate, but some of them are. when it's not kept totally within the unit, there's more accountability and independence

in examining that. >> would the rest of you agree that's one of the ways that we could help? >> i would say very much so, and we find that at prison fellowship the more that the prison lets folks in from the outside, the less problems that exist. it's an inverse relationship, and i think that that would continue, and i know the gravity for a state or federal officials, i saw it first hand when i was speaker of the house in michigan. we had a mentally ill inmate found dead in his cell after being neglected for 72 hours and the cell was 110 degrees and i fought that as hard as i could but the gravity was we've got this, we've got an investigation, we've got people. it didn't get the satisfactory outcomes you would get with the justice system on the outside. we need independent voices. i think people need immediate access, not a month later, to a

phone call about something that's happened in their life, senator? >> thank you, mr. chairman. my time is up. >> senator, senator hirono. i want to thank everyone who has testified here today. we have over 130 statements that have been submitted for the record. i won't read the names of all the groups, but i thank them, each and every one. they will be made part of the record without objection. i asked my staff to look up a quote which was in the back of my mind. i got part of it right. dostoyevski who said the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. and that is why this hearing and this testimony is so important. we have our charge is to deal with issues involving the constitution, civil rights, and human rights, and i think all three of those elements come together in what we're talking

about today. there's some things that strike me as more or less consensus. we don't want to release people from segregation or solitary into society. the results are disastrous and they've been well documented. we don't want to see children in solitary confinement or segregation. perhaps in the most extreme cases maybe, but otherwise no. we know the vulnerability of women in incarceration and even more so in segregation and we certainly know the impact of mental illness on the behavior of prisoners and the problems that they run into once put in solitary confinement. if you get a chance to read mr. thibodeaux's testimony, do it, because he goes through in graphic detail elements of segregation or solitary confinement which should not be acceptable under any circumstances, under any circumstances, where the food you're given is barely edible, where there's virtually no medical care given to those who are in this situation, where -- i'm struck by the sentence where

you said for 15 years you never saw the night sky or stars. it just is one of those gripping realizations when you think about what you've been through. the limited access you had to even keep your body fit. limited access you had to outside visitors, even as you said, you made a conscious choice that you didn't want your son to see you there during that circumstance. all of these things suggest treatment which goes beyond incarceration. it really crosses the line, mr. raemisch, i think in terms of what we should do to any human being, any fellow human being, and that's what this comes to. i thank you all for being here. this is not the last of these hearings until the problem is resolved, and i don't know that it will ever be totally resolved but we are moving on the right path. the first hearing started the

conversation and i sense we are starting to move in the right direction at many different levels. i commend the states and i think senator cruz would join me in saying many of the states have shown a real willingness to take this issue on even more than we have, and i think it's important that they continue that and we learn from them in the process. we will leave the record open for about a week, if you get written questions, you might. it is rare, but it happens. if you would respond and return them, we would appreciate it very much. senator cruz thanks for being here. senator hirono, thanks very much. this subcommittee stands adjourned.

tonight on c-span3, washington journal's interview with michigan state university president luanna k. simon. it's part of our special series on universities in the big ten conference. that will be followed by events featuring conservative political figures and journalists. we'll bring you a discussion on the future of the republican party moderated by columnist david brooks. and then selections from this year's western conservative summit in colorado. plus, ben carson speaking earlier this year at the national press club. you can see all that starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. c-span's campaign 2014 is bringing you debates for the control of congress. last night e we showed you the

senate debate between amanda curtis and steve danes. here's a part of their debate. >> you know, when our founding fath fathers wrote our founding documents, they did not. intend for corporations to be running the show here. they absolutely intended for teachers and electricians and plumbers to be making the decisions and i have found that they are afraid of being part of the process that they don't think they are smart enough to do it or don't have the right background. the reason i have stepped up to the plate is to prove that you do not have to be a silver spoon-fed politician. a career politician to represent working families and the best person to represent workers in this state is one of us. >> follow-up to that with

amanda, i think we're getting to your experience. do you think you have the experience to represent the state with one year in the house of representatives and your background as a high school teacher? >> absolutely. i'm sure by now most folks have read in their local paper about my background growing up in poverty right here in billings. and the adversity that i experienced most people know that i have dedicated my life to education because it's the pathway to overcome iing the adversity that i have experienced. the experiences that i have had in a working class family in the state of montana absolutely make me the best person to be our voice in the united states senate. >> congressman? >> representative curtis and i agree we need to have a citizen-type legislature serving us. we need men and women who have experience to bring that back, taking the skills learned outside of washington to help lead the country. growing up in boseman, my dad is

a a billings senior bronk. but i can tell you i grew up watching a mom and dad start a construction business from nothing. e we lived in ten different houses growing up moving about every year and a half to stay a step ahead of the bank. i put myself through college in engineering. i think we need people who have had experience growing jobs, growing businesses because we talk about jobs. i'm the only candidate on this stage who has been out there and created hundreds of good high-paying jobs here in montana. >> quick rebuttal, amanda? >> i just have to apologize to the teachers out there for what you just heard because we know that teachers are also very important job creators in our state and in our country. >> you can see that full debate online any time at c-span.org.

we always welcome your thoughts on every race for office. you can share your reaction on twitter or facebook. c-span's 2015 student cam competition is under way. this nationwide competition for middle and high school students will award 150 prizes totalling $100,000. create a five to seven minute documentary on the topic "the three branches and you." videos need to include c-span programming, show varying points of view, and must be submitted by january 20th, 2015. go to studentcam.org for more information. grab a camera and get started today. the house judiciary committee formed a special task force in 2013 to examine criminal sentencing. in late june, the task force looked at the impact criminal convictions were having on individuals when it came to such

things as voting or their ability to get housing. this is a little over an hour. >> task force on criminalization will come to order. without objection, the chair will be authorized to declare recesses during votes on the floor. let me see, we're supposed to have an hour and half worth of votes beginning at 10:30 to 10:45. and i don't think that it would be advisable to have witnesses sit for an hour and a half and i don't know how many members will be coming back after an hour and half, so i'd like to wrap this up by 10:30, 10:45. i have an opening statement. i yield myself five minutes. good morning and welcome to the

eighth hearing of the judiciary committee's overcriminalization task force. today's hearing will focus on the collateral consequences associated with a criminal conviction. over its first seven hearings, the task force examined issues related to criminal attempt over federalization, penalties and other issues which affect criminal defendants during the investigative and prosecutorial phases of the criminal justice process. however, today's hearing will examine the consequences that follow a criminal conviction which may not be immediately apparent during the pendency of a criminal case. the american bar association knows that some collateral consequences serve an important and legitimate public safety or regulatory function such as keeping firearms out of the hands of violent offenders, protecting children or the elderly from persons with a

history of physical, mental or sexual abuse, or barring people convicted of fraud from positions of public trust. others are directly related to the particular crime such as registration requirements for sex offenders, drivers license restrictions for those convicted of serious traffic offenses, or disbarment of those convicted of procurement fraud. however, advocates for reform in this area including our panel today have argued that in many cases, the collateral consequences applicable to a given criminal conviction are scattered throughout the code books and frequently unknown to those responsible for their administration and enforcement. this claim should sound familiar to members of this task force since the witnesses before us have repeatedly demonstrated that statutes carrying criminal penalties are also scattered throughout the u.s. code. additionally the supreme court recognized in padilla versus kentucky in 2010 that when a person considering a guilty plea

is unaware of serious consequences that will inexorably follow, this raises questions of fairness and implicates the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. i agree that this area is one that the task force should consider during its evaluation of the overcriminalization of federal law. however, there are several areas where i have serious concerns. most notably with regard to the argument that advanced by many including at least one of our witnesses today that congress should force private employers to ignore employees' criminal history when making a hiring decision via a ban the box and other legislative initiatives. generally i do not believe that adult offenders who engage in violent and other forms of mal conduct should be able to complain about the consequences of their actions. additionally, over the years congress has repeatedly seen fit

to make criminal history records available to be employers including schools, banks, power plants, and other vital parts of our nation's infrastructure in order to protect public health and safety. proposals such as ban the box run directly contrary to that important effort. additionally, as the author of the adam walsh child protection and safety act of 2006, i have serious concerns with any efforts to characterize dangerous sex offenders who prey on our children as suffering from an unjust collateral consequence. having said that, during my tenure in congress, i have been a consistent proponent of efforts to happy reality ex-offenders and lessen their risk of reoffending following release. last year, i reintroduced the hr-3465, the second chance reauthorization act of 2013.

this bipartisan legislation which has been cosponsored by the task force's ranking member, mr. scott, would reauthorize and streamline the grant programs in the second chance act to help ex-offenders become productive members of our society. i want to thank the witnesses for appearing today and look forward to hearing about these and other issues associated with the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction. it is now my pleasure to recognize for his opening statement the ranking member of the task force, the gentleman from virginia, mr. scott. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, last hearing focused on the problem of overincarceration and the need for proportional evidence based in individualized sentencing. the pew center on the states estimates that any ratio of over 350 per 100,000 in jail today begins to get a diminishing return for additional incarceration. they also tell us that anything

over 500 per 100,000 actually becomes counterproductive because you're wasting so much money, you're messing up so many families, if so many people with felony records that it actually increases crime, not decreases crime. data shows that beyond -- data shows since 1992, the annual prison costs from gone from about $9 billion to over $65 billion adjusted for inflation and that increase of prison costs was over six times greater than higher education. this hearing focuses on the significant punitive and often counterproductive collateral consequences that obstruct impede and undermine successful re-entry. our witnesses today will share the data that demonstrates that our existing system of state and federal collateral consequences waste of tax pace payers money violate common sense and are ultimately counterproductive to the goal of public safety.

just like each of the 195 man mandatory minimum has gotten into our code each and every one of over the 45,000 collateral consequences that were written in the state and federal law got there slowly over time. when considered in isolation, a collateral consequence may not initially appear to be a high hurdle to re-entry and success but taken together, these collateral consequences form a tightly woven web that restricts individuals from over coming the hurdles in their path. many of these collateral consequences are born from the worst of the worst of these tough on crime sound bites masquerading as sound public policy. just as mandatory minimum sentences sentence people before they're even charged or convicted, based solely on the code section violated without any consideration to the seriousness of the crime or the

role of the defendant, collateral consequences apply across the board into "all convicted felons." for example in the drug context in the fiscal year 2012, 60% of convicted federal drug defendants were convicted of offenses carrying a mandatory minimum penalty of some sort. right now restrictions on your ability to work, live, learn and survive are the same irrespective of your offense or how long ago it was or what role you played. the collateral consequences you face are not narrowly tailored or even tailored at all. it's a one-size-fits-all there another example of tough on crime sweeping far too broadly and far too harshly. there is no reliable scientific data that demonstrates any of these collateral consequences improve public safety, reduce recidivism or save money. to the contrary, all the evidence is the opposite. collateral consequences of

conviction affect an individual's ability to obtain necessary social services, employment, professional licenses, housing, student loans to further their education, the ability to interact with their children and critically, power through the voting in the democratic process. all of these restrictions among tens of thousands of other ones have resulted in lifelong civil penalties that prevent individuals from transitioning back to society successfully and serve to marginalize and stigmatize those with prior convictions. and treat them as second-class citizens. just as the children's defense fund has recognized secure housing, employment, education and other social services are the best crime prevention resources to redirect individuals from what they call the cradle to prison pipeline towards a cradle to college and career pipeline, so too must we apply the same data to redirect those reentering our communities after serving their sentences. when there is no hope for a decent job because employers refuse to hire those with a prior conviction, we can't be surprised that some chose to return -- choose to return to the very paths that led them to

prison in the first place. often, there is no bearing, no correlation or no relevance between someone's prior conviction and the job they're applying. some circumstances there may be value at looking at the criminal conviction. it makes sense for someone with an embezzlement conviction to be denied a job at a bank. but what does a 30-year-old marijuana possession conviction have to do with someone getting a good paying construction job? the eeoc has issued guidance that provides that an employer's use of an individual's criminal record of may may discriminate against them if there is a disproportionate impact on certain minorities without any job related relationship. that could constitute discrimination. so although the criminal record may be relevant, could i have about 30 more seconds? >> without objection. >> although the criminal record may be relevant, the untargeted overly broad denial of all jobs because of any federal record

may actually constitute discrimination. mr. chairman, i thank you for holding the hearing and look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. without objection, other members' opening statements will be made a part of the record. it is now my pleasure to introduce the two witnesses this morning. mr. rick jones is the executive director and a founding member of the neighborhood defender service of harlem. mr. jones is a lecturer at columbia law school where he teaches criminal defense externship and a trial practice course. he is on the faculty of the national criminal defense college in macon, georgia and is frequently invited to lecture on criminal justice issues throughout the country. he currently serves as secretary of the national association of criminal defense lawyers and previously served that organization as a two-term member of the board of directors

parliamentarian, co-chair of both the indigent defense committee and the special task force on problem solving courts and is currently cochair of the task force on the restoration of rights and status after conviction. platform mathias heck is a prosecuting attorney from montgomery county, ohio. he previously served montgomery county as a law clerk and then as assistant prosecuting attorney. he received his undergraduate degree from marquette university which is a very wise choice and his jd degree from the georgetown university law center. i would ask all of you to limit your opening remarks to five minutes. i think you're all aware of what red, yellow and green means and the timer before you. and even though i introduced you second, the prosecution always puts their case in first. so mr. heck, the floor is yours. >> good morning, mr. chairman. members of the task force. thank you very much. i appreciate your comment about marquette.

okay? thank you. again, good morning. i appreciate your comments about marquette university. and i know it's very dear to your heart. in addition to being the prosecuting attorney for montgomery county, dayton ohio i am honored to be the chair of the criminal justice section of the american bar association which is a section of about 20,000 members which include the whole array of the partners of the criminal justice section and the criminal justice process in the american system. and that is judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors, law professors and other law enforcement personnel. i appear today to talk about the aba's view you have collateral sanctions and how it relates to convictions and also highlight some of the things that the american bar association has done. as many of you know, the american legal system has long recognized that certain legal disabilities or collateral sanctions result from a criminal conviction in addition to a sentence. so there may be a prescribed sentence relating to a crime but attached there to may be collateral sanctions. or disabilities that are also imposed in addition to the sentence. that sentence could be probation, could be to the penitentiary or a combination of

both. these collateral consequences of conviction include such familiar penalties disenfranchisement, deportation, loss of professional licenses, felon registration, ineligibility for certain public welfare benefits even loss of a driver's license and many more. over the last number of years, collateral consequences have been increasing steadily in variety and severity throughout the country. and they have been accumulated with little coordination in state and federal laws making it almost impossible to determine all of the penalties and disabilities applicable to a particular offense.

now, some collateral sanctions or consequences do serve an important and legitimate public purpose. as the chairman has already mentioned, keeping firearms out of the hands of persons committed of crimes of violence or barring persons convicted of embezzlement from holding certain public interest jobs or deny diagnose driving privileges to those convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide. other collateral sanctions are more difficult to justify. particularly when applied automatically across the board to a complete category of convicted persons. and the reason is, it results in serious implications not only in terms of fairness and as a prosecutor i can say this, not only in regards to fairness to the individual charged but also to the resulting burdens on the community on the citizens. collateral consequences can also present challenges to the issue of re-entry and re-entry is very important. it may become a surprise to many of you but local prosecutors throughout the country have already spearheaded re-entry programs because we see this as a public safety issue. nonetheless, not all collateral

consequences of conviction are effective. many have no relationship to public safety. and prevent a former offender from doing productive work in order to support a family and contribute to the community. this effect to employment results and represents one of the more difficult issues facing i think our justice system and our nation. the reality is that ex-offenders who cannot find jobs that provide sufficient income to support themselves and their families are more likely to commit more criminal acts and find themselves again back in prison. now, the american bar association has adopted a comprehensive set of principles regarding collateral sanctions. and they have two primary goals. one to encourage awareness of all involved in the justice system process of the full legal consequences of a conviction. so when someone is convicted, they know what's going to happen. and secondly, to focus attention on the impact of collateral consequences on the process by which a convicted person can get

into re-entry and become back come back into the community and be a productive member of the community. they also call for a significant number of reforms to the law. number one, the law should identify with particularity the type, severity and duration of the collateral sanctions. so if there is a collateral sanction to a particular crime everyone knows what it is. now the collateral consequences of conviction project which is funded by the national institute of justice and completed just recently by the american bar association is something that was authorized by congress. we started it in 2009. we just completed it and we have adopted and found 45,000 collateral consequences. and again, the hope is that we can categorize these and that everyone knows it's open to the public, to defense lawyers, to prosecutors, and that way everyone can understand what the collateral consequences are, they're readily available and they know what's involved.

thank you very much. i appreciate it. i'll be glad to answer any questions. >> thank you, mr. heck. mr. jones? >> thank you for the invitation to appear before you this morning. we have a lot of ground to cover in a little time. i'm going to get right into it. 68 million people in this country are living with a criminal record. that's one in every four adults. 20 million people with felony convictions, 14 million new arrests every year, 2.2 million people residing in jail or prison. that's more than anywhere else in the world. as a member of the nacdl task force that produced this lateral damage report, i had the opportunity to travel to every region of the country and listen to the testimony of people

living with convictions as well as to the testimony of many other stake holders in the criminal justice system. in northern california we heard from a chief of police who was dealing with a significant crime problem, a rising murder rate and widespread community distrust. as he searched for solutions he realized that he was policing from a place of fear. that was his term, policing from a place of fear. he was not serving or protecting the community. he was at war with the community. his officers did not really know the citizens they were policing, distrust and fear was the order of the day. it wasn't until he took the time to get to know the people he was charged with protecting that he recognized and appreciated their humanity. trust and understanding improved. and his crime problem began to decline. 68 million people living with convictions more than the entire population of france, we are in danger of becoming a nation of criminals because we are policing from a place of fear. 14 million new arrests every year.

we are prosecuting from a place of fear. 45,000 collateral consequences on the books in this country. 45,000 roadblocks to the restoration of rights and status after conviction, we are legislating from a place of fear. the time has come for change in our national mind-set. we must move from the penalty, prosecution, and endless punishment to forgiveness, redemption and restoration. a great way for this task force to begin the healing process is to implement the first recommendation in our report. a call for a national restoration of rights day, a day every year where we can celebrate redemption and restoration with educational programs for employers, skills training workshops for the effective community, jobs fairs, certificate of relief programs at no cost and no cost opportunities, no cost opportunities to clean up your rap sheet. more concretely, there are four steps this task force can take

that will have an immediate impact on the collateral damage of collateral consequences. first, you must repeal federal mandatory collateral consequences. 14 million new arrests each year, 68 million people living with convictions, mandatory automatic across the board collateral consequences make no sense. you cannot paint with that broad a brush. there is no public safety benefit in stripping people of their right to vote. eliminate mandatory collateral consequences and stop creating new ones. second, you must provide meaningful federal relief mechanisms for those people living with federal convictions. first and foremost, 14 million new arrests each year is indicative of the problem. we must create avenues for

diversion in the federal criminal justice system. defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges must be cognizant of diversion opportunities and promote them. judges have to be empowered with relief at sentencing. individualized relief tailored to the individual and unique circumstances. the federal pardon process must be reinvigorated and carried out. pardons should be routinely granted in the ordinary course of business. the process must be transparent and accessible to all. the media must be informed and aware of the process and there should be dedicated staff committed to the regularized review of pardon applications. third, for those discretionary consequences that remain, they must be clearly established guidelines for decision makers

to follow guidelines with respect to relevancy, passage of time, and evidence of rehabilitation. there should be a presumption of irrelevance for any conviction beyond a certain number of years and from anyone who has shown evidence of rehabilitation. finally, consumer reporting agencies and background check companies must be regulated. rap sheets are not a commodity. we should not be creating a market in the buying and selling of people's conviction records. there are some law enforcement agencies in this country that sell rap sheets. that must stop. any records disclosed must be accurate. the fbi website which is the main source of criminal record acquisition is wrong 50% of the time. it must be cleaned up and maintained. and there must be an easily accessible no cost method for individuals to check their rap sheets and make corrections or updates. the time has come to end the economic drain of collateral consequences. the endless government intrusion into the lives of our citizens and the social and moral havoc they wreak on individuals, on families and entire communities. we need a coherent national approach to forgiveness, to redemption, to restoration of rights and status after conviction. thank you. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, mr. jones. the chair is going to put himself at the end of the question queue.

just so in case we run out of time, all of the other members will be able to ask questions and at this time, well, before recognizing the gentleman from virginia, mr. scott, let me say that the chair is going to be especially vigilant at enforcing the five-minute rule so that everybody has a chance. >> why do you say that? >> i do have a reputation of looking at the red light. gentleman from virginia, mr. scott. >> thank you. mr. heck, ban the box has been mentioned. is that where you have to check off on your application that you've been convicted of a felony? does that prohibit an employer from considering on an individualized basis your criminal record? >> what we -- first of all, on behalf of the american bar association, the american bar association has not taken a position on that. i think there are discussions that have to be had on that.

i think we're seeing a lot of problems that are associated with that particular issue. >> the point is, if you don't check off the box, it does not subsequently eliminate the employer's consideration of your record but only on an individualized basis and whether or not the record is relevant to the job. mr. jones, do you know, are you familiar with the eeoc guidance on the -- can you say a word about that? >> ban the box, you're absolutely correct, congressman scott. ban the box does not prevent an employer from having an opportunity to review and determine relevancy of a person's criminal record or criminal conviction. all ban the box does is get the person's foot in the door initially. it allows them to have an opportunity to prove their

credentials, to prove their ability to do a job. and before and once an employer is in a position to think that this individual is able to do the job and someone who we would like to employ, they then have the opportunity to review the person's criminal record and decide whether it's relevant, whether they've rehabilitated, whether there's been enough passage of time so that it's not a factor but they do at the end of the process have the opportunity to know and evaluate the person's record, so ban the box is not a wholesale preclusion. >> you never would have gotten to the point where you would have been considered if you checked the box, your application would have been thrown in the trash. when you talk about collateral consequences a couple things that haven't been mentioned is the total waste of money. california many years ago spent a lot more money on higher education than prisons. now prisons have exceeded by a large margin what they're spending on higher education. so the waste of money crowds out things and that is a collateral consequence of overincarceration and children with parents in

prison are also at high risk. just very briefly, mr. heck, can you tell me whether the automatic across account board collateral consequences help keep people from coming to jail or add to coming back to jail? for example, collateral consequence on employment making it more difficult to get a job, does that help or hurt in terms of recidivism? >> i think it's counterproductive to what we're trying to do. i think that across the board, any type of across the board sanction without looking at the particular offense and the particular offender is counterproductive. >> what about education? >> well, education is the same way. it's interesting in ohio, we have dealt with that and the legislature has over the last year. there are a number of alternatives that we now offer to prison. and i mean, a number of

different alternatives that they have to try because again, it makes no sense when we're talking about re-entry, most of the individual who's go to the penitentiary are going to be released. so i think we have to look at that on the front end rather than say what are we going to do after they're released. >> if you cut back on your right to get an education, education has been studied over and over again. more education you get, the less likely you are to come back denying somebody an education seems to be clearly counterproductive. >> absolutely. >> what about have you studied the implications of the right to vote in terms of recidivism? the project that the american bar association just completed looked into as a collateral consequence. again, i see no reason why someone is not restored to the right to vote. that is a to me a fundamental right, personally as well as the

american bar association that should be respected and i think they should be restored. >> mr. jones, have you done any studies to show the impact on recidivism for any of these things i've mentioned? >> certainly when you disenfranchise you disenfranchise. and you want to enfranchise people. you don't want to take away their right to vote or their sense of participation in the democratic process. with respect to the money that the government spends on educating people to hold any kind of license to be a barber, for example, it makes no sense to educate someone and to give them a license to be a barber to pay for that and then when they get out, tell them they can't do that job. it's counterproductive and it absolutely leads to frustration and recidivism. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. the gentleman from the alabama, mr. bachus. >> thank you, mr. chairman. one statement here in mr. jones' testimony is even with conviction records, the well documented failure states record

when charges are dismissed or records sealed and the failure of private data company to keep accurate records hurts millions of individuals. you know, that's a little separate situation, but is that a big problem too? >> that is a big problem, particularly when people are being denied opportunities without even having a conviction, merely the arrest is enough in many cases to deny a person the opportunity. certainly when records are not updated someone has received a certificate of relief from disability, someone has been pardoned, those things are not added to the record and are not known. it hurts the person right off the bat because all we're seeing is an arrest and many times not even an arrest that leads to conviction that is denying people opportunities. >> what if you know the fact act has certain strict regulations on what can be reported in a background check. is that violated and what's the process for combating that? do you know?

or under the eeoc? >> it is frequently violated particularly in an age where you can get almost anything with a mouse click or a keystroke. so frequently, employers and other decisionmakers landlords are making decisions on less than accurate information and often inaccurate information. and really there needs to be much greater limited access to these records, much greater regulation over the records. opportunities for people to update and correct inaccurate information in their rap sheets, all of these things need much stricter guidelines limited access and an opportunity at no cost for people to correct mistakes in their conviction records or their rap sheets. >> well, do employers actually get the criminal record, criminal history? or do they -- or are they told whether or not the person meets a certain criteria? do you know?

>> employers are actually given a person's rap sheet. they can actually -- they can buy them from consumer reporting agencies. in some cases they can get them directly for fee or not from law enforcement agencies. so the access an employer or the decisionmaker has to a person's complete criminal rap sheet is far too loose and easily available. >> all right. >> and they have them. >> i'm the co-sponsor of legislation with mr. sensenbrenner and others. mr. scott, i think, of the second chance act which helps state and local government agency and community organizations improve prisoner re-entry nationwide. do any of you have any comments

on the second chance act and how it might help? >> well, again, i think with comments that have already been made, prosecutors around the country are certainly supporting and have started re-entry programs. i think it's so important. i think without looking up front of what's going to happen to an individual who it is sentenced to the penitentiary, knowing that that individual is going to come back into the community is just very -- it misses the entire point of what we're trying to do, trying to make productive citizens out of these individuals and help them. to just warehouse individuals as a prosecutor i can tell you, just warehousing individuals in the penitentiary it just makes no sense at all. i think we have to be smarter on crime, smarter on who is sentenced to the penitentiary and also to help, whether it's education, whether it's having someone to be help get a job, have employment, have housing when they're released.

so i commend all of you for supporting that. >> nacdl certainly supports the second chance act. >> thank you. >> gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from michigan, mr. conyers. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i just want you to know that i think this overcriminalization panel is one of the most important in the house judiciary committee. and what we're doing is working on ways to get this as much into the legislative mainstream as possible, and so we would welcome any thoughts that you have now or in the future about this. it's that critical. and after the votes this morning, in 2226 rayburn down the hall, we're going to have personal narratives of witnesses that have experienced some negative collateral consequences. so we wanted to invite not only you two distinguished lawyers but everyone here to join us, if you can.

my first question to both of you is, how can we ramp this subject up as effectively and as thoughtfully as possible without overdoing it or creating a backlash or anything like that? if you have any thoughts on that, gentlemen? >> i do, thank you for the question. first of all, the collateral consequences of conviction project that was funded by the niha and just completed by the american bar association.

this is a grant we got and many reasons because of senator leahy from vermont. a $750,000 grant. the american bar association because of the immense and the depth of this project invested another $750,000 of its money and just completed, again recognizing about 40,000 to 45,000 collateral consequences. what we would hope what the american bar association hopes is that congress and the states use this database that we have to identify all the different collateral sanctions or consequences throughout the country in the federal system. all right? and to look at them and say, how effective are they? how relevant are they? retool some. limit some. some have just been over broad or they've applied forever. and so they need to limit some

of those. so we're hoping again that congress will take advantage of this monumental project that we've just completed. and maybe use it and we'll be glad to assist in any way possible. >> well, we intend to. now, what about going beyond the american bar? you know that there are dozens of law organizations and associations across the country. i'm thinking about widening our approach so that we can begin this discussion with them working off of the good initial work that you started. >> well, i appreciate the question. and again, i think your point is well taken. as a former president of the national district attorney's association, i know that district attorneys across the country are very concerned about

this project and are very interested in what the results are that we just finished. i know we're going to be having conversations about this. i know state prosecutors associations are going to have and are always concerned about collateral sanctions. and the effect it has on not only the offender but on the community. >> you're giving prosecutors a great new description here. i always think of prosecutors as the bad guys that are trying to rack up convictions as many convictions with as many severe penalties as possible. i mean, i think that's -- i think this is an incredible of -- has there been some kind of turn around on the -- have we been making progress that we didn't know about or what? >> well, congressman, let me assure you that i can really believe i can speak not on behalf of the ndaa because i'm

not the president. henry garza from texas is now. what i'm saying is, i think most of the prosecutors realize that. this idea of just putting people away, that may have been the thought of some prosecutors many years ago but that is really not the thought today. the thought today is be smarter on crime and to identify those individuals who must be prosecuted and are a threat to the community. >> how refreshing. could i get just a -- >> gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from texas, mr. gohmert. >> thank you. and i appreciate your being here. i'm sorry i was late. this is a project that's near and dear to my heart and when ed meese called and asked if i would participate in something that dealt with the problem that i saw as a massive problem,

overcriminalization, something that as a former prosecutor, judge, chief justice has driven me crazy, because i had seen, when people want to beat their chest and show how tough they are, well, let's slap a criminal penalty on something. and so as you know, we talked about there may be 5,000 or so crimes. they're not in 18 u.s. code where they ought to be as a criminal code. and i had wondered why in the world have we not been able to clean this mess up before. and what i'd heard is that it seems like every time a project gets fired up to try to clean up the criminal code, that it ends up being a big santa claus christmas bag and people start trying to throw more and more in it and then overall, you lose too many votes and people go, i can't agree to that. wait a minute. i love the idea. i was on board but now you've thrown that in the bag. i can't agree to that.

and then it loses the impetus and nothing gets done over and over. and so that's one of my concerns as we go here. i hear from people going yeah, you're right. we've got to stop this overcriminalization and also we've got to the stop the militarization of many of these federal departments and you know, the epa doesn't need a s.w.a.t. team and neither does the department of education for heaven's sake. and we should never have, as we heard in this room, testimony about a poor little nerd that was trying to develop a new battery and he gets pulled over by three suburbans, run off the road, yanked out of his car, thrown down, boot in his back, handcuffed and drug off because he didn't put a sticker on a thing he mailed to alaska with an airplane with a line through it. he put ground only, checked that, but he didn't put the sticker. i mean we need to stop that. and so people are getting that

and they're getting all on board and then when we start saying, well, we're also looking into whether or not maybe employers shouldn't be able to find out if you committed a crime before they hire you. oh, wait a minute. now, wait a minute. this is a very sensitive industry. and you're telling me i don't get to know if he's been stealing from his last job or in this daycare job, i don't get to know that this person has actually molested people in the past? and i can tell you as a judge, i had a case where because of the law trying to protect people, protected a child molester and it wasn't till he molested and destroyed other lives that he got stopped. and because of the way the law was, the juvenile probation department didn't even get to know that he had had these other incidences just because of the way he was pro-tented. so i'm really concerned that we may be getting into an area where we're going too far if we're not careful.

we lose the steam because -- let me just ask you guys. why would it be appropriate for congress to force private businesses to ignore somebody's criminal history? >> i just want to be -- thank you for the question. i just want to be crystal clear about ban the box, right? because ban the box does not prevent an employer or other decisionmaker from knowing about a person's criminal record. right? there need to be clear relevancy guidelines that adhere across the board so that decisionmakers understand what's relevant and what's not when looking at a person's criminal record, and there also needs to be an opportunity for the individual to get his foot in the door to be able to present his credentials and his employability but once those things are done, once there are clear relevancy guidelines and decisionmakers know and once the person has had his foot in the

door. then -- >> my time's about to expire. i want to get this question in. >> -- the employer has the ability -- >> isn't it true that those who access individual criminal histories are already subject to strict regulation regarding the use of that information under fair credit reporting act and equal employment opportunity commission? isn't that true? >> that's correct. >> so it's not just wide open already. >> i think there are safeguards. i think there are some abuses to it, no question about it. i understand what he's saying. i do think there are collateral consequences that are appropriate. >> okay, thank you very much. i yield back. >> the gentle woman from california, miss bass. >> thank you very much, mr. chair, and the ranking member for holding this hearing. i think this is such a critical issue for our nation. and earlier this year in my district, i had a town hall and we had several hundred people come talking about this very subject. and it seems like in our society, we used to have a belief that if you paid your debt to society, that you could can be reintegrated. and it seems like part of what has happened over the last couple decades is we no longer have that belief and in fact,

you can spend sometime in prison, but then you can spend the rest of your life with the stigma and not being able to appropriately reintegrate. in california, when i was in the state legislature, we had a law that said if you were a felon, that said that if you were a felon, you could not get a license to be a barber. at the same time, in our state prison system, we had a barbering program where we taught felons how to be barbers and then didn't allow them to have the license when they left. so we had to change that law and we had over 54 occupations that you couldn't do if you had been a felon. mr. jones, you mentioned that there should be a presumption of irrelevance and you know, the experience about ban the box i completely understand what you mean in terms of getting your foot in the door to even say that it was a conviction from 30 years ago. and it was when i was a college student or something like that because if you don't check that box and then you find out, then you're subject to immediate termination because you've lied. so when you were talking about a

presumption of irrelevance, i wasn't sure if you were talking about that rhetorically or if you actually meant that's what we should do. then i wanted to know how we would go about that. >> well, well, thank you for the question. you know, there are -- there are studies that suggest that after a certain number of years, a person's conviction is a person is less likely -- is no more likely and in some cases less likely to reoffend than anybody in the general society. right? so when we're talking about evaluating a person's criminal record for whether or not they should be accessible to an opportunity or benefit, then what we really need to do is we really need to look at whether or not there is any relevance to the opportunity, what the passage of type has been, and whether or not there's any evidence of rehabilitation and

when the passage of time has been such and there's evidence of rehabilitation, there really ought to be a resumption of irrelevance that the conviction is no longer relevant to whether or not this person ought have that opportunity. >> and i agree with you, but how do you do that? is it a law? do we pass a law that says that? and then i'm assuming that you would exempt certain type of crimes. >> exactly. i think there have to be guidelines that are set out clearly for decision-makers, for employers and landlords and others. there have to be guidelines that clearly instruct individuals as to what's relevant and what's not and what the passage of time is and what the evidence of rehabilitation might be. so that people understand and know we're all playing by the say rules. once we have the same guidelines and we're all playing by the same rules, then their ought be a presumption of irrelevance. >> one of you, i'm not sure which one, made reference to the

fact that the fbi website is wrong. a significant amount of time. and i wanted to know how it's wrong. is it the wrong people are listed, wrong charges are listed? >> well, i'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, ma'am, except to say that so many times when we have the silver streaks or we have the histories of convictions that many times people who put input that data that it is incorrect. and i think that not only. >> so it could be both the wrong charges and the wrong people. >> exactly. i find that when we're looking at defendants who we've charged in my office and an my assistant prosecutors will try to get a record check, we have to make sure we confirm that to make sure it is accurate. many times the inputting of that data and the way it goes through our bureau of investigation identification is wrong. >> i have a piece of legislation i've introduced called the success act looking at a piece of collateral damage which says that young people who have a certain crime cannot get financial aid.

and i'm wondering if in the tens of thousands of collateral damage examples that you two talked about, are there a number of them that relate to education? >> well, i think a lot of them do relate to education. either directly or indirectly. i think the idea of preventing young people who may have made a mistake from making amends from doing what they were supposed to do and then later in life restricting them from having the education that benefits not only them, but, you know, society, makes no sense at all. >> thank you. >> it's very difficult to make the argument that there's a public safety benefit from allowing young people to get an education. >> gentlewoman's time is expired. the gentleman from new york, mr. jeffries. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and let me thank both of the witnesses for your system and for your work on this very important issue. let me start with mr. heck. you testified earlier today, i

believe appropriately, that an automatic blanket across the board imposition of collateral consequences is counterproductive. in that regard, how would you suggest the committee look at or the task force look at how the collateral consequences that you believe may be appropriate in certain circumstances are narrowly tailored to fit the severity of the crime so that we don't broadly sweep into individuals into this blanket fashion? >> and i appreciate the question. i do think that some collateral consequences if they're applied so broadly across the board and are not relevant to that individual case or that individual offender. that's what i don't think the law's been looking at. at the offender, not just the

offense. for example, in ohio, if someone owes child support and they're not paying their child support, their driver's license is suspended. it's so ridiculous. i've told my prosecutors who handle those kinds of cases we are not going to ask for that. in fact, we're going to say it shouldn't be done because we're asking the person to pay child support and saying you can't have a job to pay it. i think we have to look at what the collateral consequence is because some are appropriate. >> when we craft a law, who should be given the discretion to make the determination as to the appropriate application of collateral consequence if one is appropriate under limited circumstances? should it be the court, should there be built into the law in some way? should the prosecutor have in the first instance have that opportunity? i don't know that everyone is as enlightened as you are or the prosecutors in your office? who should have that opportunity to make the determination. >> there have been a lot of suggestions made on that. >> i believe, not the aba, i believe that it should be the court. i think the judges are in a

unique position to see both sides of the denominator, to see what's going on, and that they should make the judgment. >> your thoughts on that? >> yeah, i think that everybody in the system needs to be aware, educated, updated. prosecutors, defense counsel, everybody needs to understand at every step of the process, the implication of collateral consequences as we go through the process i do think relief at sentencing by the judge who are able to tailor to the individual and remove and repeal consequences that are of no moment and are irrelevant is a good thing. so i believe relief at sentencing is important. i think all the players in the sentencing ought know and be aware of the consequences and their impact. >> both of you mentioned in your testimony there were 45,000 collateral consequences which is a staggering number. so that's a difficult undertaking but one that obviously is necessary and i think we as a task force have to think through how to create

greater transparency as it relates to those consequences and obviously take steps in my opinion to reduce many of them. but you mentioned that 68 million people in america i guess are living with convictions. is that right? >> that's right. and that number is growing. >> and that 20 million of those individuals have felony convictions which mathematically i gather would leave 48 million with misdemeanor convictions or criminal violations in some way, shape, or form. now, if we are to look at this issue in terms of collateral consequences, has any work been done to look at the consequences associated to those convicted of felonies versus the consequences associated with those convicted of misdemeanors? and is it relevant for us to think through this issue in that fashion? >> well, i think that even just looking at some of the legislation that's proposed,

certainly there always is this notion that you know, first time offenders, nonviolent misdemeanents are more often the subject of legislation, but the fact of the matter is that at some point, of's coming home, right? the vast majority of these folks are coming home, and we need to be thinking about and incorporating and be prepared to embrace all of these folks because nobody is merely the product of the worst thing that they've ever done and we all deserve a second chance. so i would strongly suggest that as you think about how to set these guidelines and evaluate relevance, that you include everybody. including those 20 million folks who are living with a felony conviction. >> thank you. the gentleman's time is expired. the gentleman from georgia, mr. johnson. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

we need to reject wholesale demonization of every person who has a brush with the criminal law, persons who are released from prison should be given a second chance. and we need to enter into a new age of restoration and redemption. these are things that are listed in your conclusion, mr. jonas. and i think that those are very important ideals that we should seek to live up to. oftentimes it's we ourselves that are the perpetrators of overcriminalization. certainly, the legislators are responsible. and certainly judges and os