Oregon’s public safety and criminal justice systems have worked for some, but they haven’t worked for all of us.
These are systems built within Oregon’s distinctly racist history, which means that systemic racism is threaded throughout. This feels especially true today as we approach the one-year mark of George Floyd’s murder and we await the verdict in the trial of the former police officer who killed him.
To disrupt the systemic racism in our criminal justice system, we need policies that sustain racial equity.
This principle is why a coalition of racial equity and public safety advocates and community leaders came together. The Transforming Justice Coalition comprises Latino Network, Coalition of Communities of Color, Disability Rights Oregon, Imagine Black, Partnership for Safety & Justice, POIC+RAHS, Red Lodge Transition Services, ACLU of Oregon, Central City Concern’s Flip the Script program, Sponsors and Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.
We began meeting in the summer of 2020 to develop anti-racist criminal justice reforms to address the systemic racism that we have today. Out of that work emerged the Transforming Justice Bill, or House Bill 2002.
From arrests to reentry to supervision, H.B. 2002 would broadly and holistically transform our public safety and criminal justice systems. This is one of the most important legislative proposals this session, and while amendments will likely change some of the specific policies, its passage would reform our systems with solutions that our communities need and deserve.
This column is a compilation of writings by community leaders from the coalition, each sharing their experience and expertise of how the system is failing our communities — and how we can transform them.
Transforming arrests with equity
By Shani Harris-Bagwell, political director at Imagine Black. Imagine Black helps Portland’s Black community imagine the alternatives we deserve, builds our political participation, and supports leadership to achieve those alternatives. We envision a world where people of African descent enjoy the rights, resources and recognition to be a thriving, resilient and connected community.
Imagine I’m a young Black woman coming home from work when I see the lights behind me. I panic and start questioning myself. I wasn’t speeding. I’ve broken no laws. My car is in good shape, and my registration is up to date.
I am now being told by an officer that my taillight is out, and they are asking for my license and registration. I reach to grab it from the glove box, and I’m suddenly being told at gunpoint to exit the vehicle and am being violently arrested for resisting arrest.
I think, “What have I done to deserve this? What am I being arrested for? Why is this happening to me?”
The confusion and terror are overwhelming and all too common when traffic stops are the primary reason for contact with a police officer.
Or I could be a young Black woman who has just been released from prison and am under supervision. I am working to make money the only ways I know how when I am jumped, robbed and assaulted. I am hurt. I am physically hurt, and I’m scared.
Do I report it? Or should I ask, “Why don’t I call the police?” It’s because I’m under supervision, and any contact with police will lead to my arrest. So I suffer in fear and silence.
What we are aiming to do with H.B. 2002 is limit the contact people have with police and limit the reasons police can physically connect with civilians.
This bill would mean that police can’t stop you for a broken headlight, taillight, brake light or expired registration. It would mean that police would have to send you a ticket by mail. They would no longer have those excuses to stop women like Sandra Bland or men like Philando Castille.
H.B. 2002 would be a huge step forward in tackling racial profiling and racial disparities in arrests. If we look at the current justice system like a giant skyscraper-sized Jenga tower made of heavy steel beams, it’s hard to topple. Structural racism holds it firmly in place.
This is our opportunity to take out some of those pieces, which paves the way for a future when we can take another piece and then another. We can weaken the foundation of structural racism and instead build a structure — a community — that supports us all.
Transforming sentencing with hope
By Babak Zolfaghari-Azar, Community Healing Initiative family care manager at POIC. Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center + Rosemary Anderson High School (POIC + RAHS) is a BIPOC-led, nonprofit organization that provides services in education, mentoring, family outreach, employment training and placement.
We say folks will have a fresh start after they have been held accountable and served their time, yet after completing a Measure 11 sentence, the people I serve start their first day in the community still handcuffed by the choices they made several years ago.
Ending Measure 11 mandatory minimum sentencing matters to me because I serve Black Oregonians who have Measure 11 convictions, and I see its impact every day. The daily experience of people includes hopelessness and an endless struggle with all the emotional, employment, educational and housing barriers that come with a lengthy mandatory minimum sentence.
People leave a cage in prison only to be put in another box once they return home. Their identity is shaped more by a felony than their freedom.
Since 1994, Measure 11 has been predetermining justice for crime survivors and has been driving mass incarceration and racial disparities in our justice system. In 2018, 4 in 10 people in Oregon’s prisons were incarcerated for Measure 11 convictions, and even more are there for Measure 11-related plea deals. And with systemic racial disparities at every stage of the justice system, Black people make up almost 10% of Oregon’s total prison population even while they make up less than 2% of the state’s population.
This legislative session, we have a chance to bring Oregon closer to a public safety system that achieves accountability, equity and healing, and it will do this in two ways:
First, we must reform Measure 11 sentences and instead allow judges to use current sentence lengths as guidelines.
Measure 11 reform is broadly supported by Oregonians with 77% favoring this approach, which would give judges back their authority to impose shorter or longer sentences for Measure 11 crimes depending on each case, including the circumstances of the incident, prior criminal history, personal responsibility and crime survivors’ input and needs.
Second, our sentencing structure should incentivize good conduct in prison.
With this proposed change, people would have hope to earn time off their sentence for positive behavior, which they aren’t eligible for now. This would shift the focus from a shame-based punishment to an internally driven accountability, and such positive momentum improves public safety upon return to the community.
Ask yourself this question: Would you feel safer with a neighbor who served a Measure 11 mandatory minimum sentence and had no internal motivation to grow or someone who took accountability for their actions and earned time off their sentence for safe, healthy behavior while they were incarcerated?
This legislative session, we have the opportunity to give our communities hope — hope that we can have an equitable, humanizing, restorative and holistic justice system. It’s a critical step forward in restoring trust and showing the community that Oregon is ready to meet the moment for racial justice and humanity in our justice system.
Transforming probation, parole and post-prison supervision with respect
By Morgan Godvin, a decarceration and drug policy reform advocate with an emphasis on improving jail and prison conditions and re-entry pathways. Morgan spent five years addicted to heroin and four years incarcerated as a direct result of her addiction. She will attend law school in 2022.
I am a supervision expert. I have been supervised and under correctional control in the community by Multnomah County, Washington County and federal probation.
Being on supervision can be summarized in one word: fear. No matter how well I was doing, every meeting with my probation officer sparked fear in my heart, and I walked into the office trembling.
Their most famed tool is arrest. That they use that tool against you feels like an eventuality. For countless urine analyses, an officer stared at me as I pulled down my pants and underwear and peed into their cup. I always panicked — what if CBD got into my drink and had trace amounts of THC? What if I had eaten poppy seeds?
Knowing I had not used drugs was not enough because the law is not in your favor when you’re on supervision. Your rights are diminished. You’re always a half step away from landing back in jail. A false positive. A missed appointment. It takes so little.
If you think it’s a matter of respect to show up to my place of work and out me to my co-workers with your emblazoned uniforms and visible firearms, we are grossly misunderstanding each other. Respect would be treating me as the normal productive member of society that I am.
When a probation officer comes to my place of work or home and all my neighbors and co-workers see, they understand the message: I am a criminal; I am dangerous.
Now the fear I felt, which must be a fraction of what people of color feel, was not my probation officer’s fault. They were good people doing their best. It’s the system. Supervision in its current form means fear, but it doesn’t need to.
Our system should be rooted in more positive emotions that motivate people to be their best selves. Oregon can do better by eliminating the most threatening and disrespectful approaches to community supervision, and we wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel to do this. People in Federal Bureau of Prison custody on community confinement are supervised by staff, in plain clothes, and without visible firearms. Without provoking fear.
H.B. 2002 proposes a similar approach that would fundamentally change the system, moving away from an adversarial system based on fear to a supportive system based on healing.
It doesn’t take my level of expertise in supervision to know that we need a change. We would have better outcomes if we had a system that was based more in hope, in respect and in justice.
STREET ROOTS NEWS: Punishment is no cure for addiction: Morgan Godvin pushes for prison reform (from July 2019)
Transforming communities with healing
By Arnoldo Ruíz, Youth Empowerment and Violence Prevention Program manager at Latino Network. Latino Network’s mission is to positively transform the lives of Latino youth, families and communities. It is a Latino-led education organization, grounded in culturally specific practices and services that lifts up youth and families to reach their full potential.
I was born in a border town in Texas, and until I was 9, everything inside and outside my home represented my culture. I saw myself in every aspect of my community.
When I migrated to Eastern Oregon, it was a complete culture shock. The dominant culture highlighted the many differences. Before this moment, I wasn’t aware that I was poor or that my English and Spanish were broken. My experiences with teachers and authority figures further emphasized my difference and attacked my culture. The only teacher that showed any interest in me was the football coach at my high school, but I couldn’t get to practice due to lack of transportation.
At the age of 13, gangs became appealing to me because they reintroduced a sense of pride in my culture and gave me an outlet for expressing myself that my school or other formal settings didn’t provide.
If I had access to a program that offered culturally specific staff and activities that celebrated Latino culture, I believe it would have diverted me from the path toward gang life and criminality.
Today I am a mentor and program manager, and I take pride in being able to provide youth with the services that weren’t available to me when I was growing up. I oversee three programs focused on addressing housing insecurity, unaddressed trauma, cultural indifference and the negation of Indigenous healing practices.
As someone who grew up without these services, and who now sees youth accessing them, I am heartened to see the joy the youth have in being able to participate in something that affirms their culture. By addressing these elements, youth feel empowered, a sense of belonging, and that they and their families contribute to their community.
As a person who has been directly impacted by the criminal justice system and who supports others who are heading down a similar path, I know that the community investments proposed in H.B. 2002 would make an enormous difference in communities like mine.
This is our opportunity to reinvest funds to culturally specific, community-based organizations that are trauma-informed and centered in healing, and that can provide the bedrock for prevention, intervention and assisting folks in our community.
Learn more
This legislative session, we have a chance to meaningfully transform justice, and we hope you’ll join us.
Over the coming weeks, our coalition will continue to advocate for H.B. 2002 to holistically transform our public safety and criminal justice systems. With it, Oregon’s response to crime can reflect our values of equity, hope, respect and healing.
While Measure 11 reforms are no longer a part of H.B. 2002, the proposal is still being considered in Senate Bill 401 and Senate Bill 191, and we are continuing to fight against Measure 11 this session and beyond.
To learn more about these and other transformative bills this session and the work we’re engaged in to pass them, visit safetyandjustice.org/2021priorities.