GAO report finds Federal Justice grants favor law enforcement at the expense of the indigent.

Washington, D.C. - Almost none of the money that the federal government provides to state and local governments for justice system improvements goes to helping to defend poor people, a new study shows. The report bears out claims that supporters of indigent defense have made for years that there is an enormous disparity between governmental financial support for prosecutors and defenders.


According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released yesterday, almost half the money block granted to the states under the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program (Byrne JAG) grants goes to fund law enforcement and prosecution activities, with less than 1 percent being used for public defenders or other private lawyers appointed to assist those who cannot afford legal representation on their own.
GAO Report: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-569

"Despite repeated calls from the legal community for improved funding for indigent defense, and even though Attorney General Holder himself has declared a 'crisis' in the right to counsel for the poor, this study shows that state and local governments continue to give justice for the needy short shrift when they divide up the federal dollars they receive," said Virginia Sloan, president of The Constitution Project (TCP), a bipartisan legal watchdog group.

The GAO report says that the Department of Justice (DOJ) distributed more than $500 million to state and local government under the Byrne JAG program in five of the six fiscal years between 2005 and 2010. Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the money sent to local governments, and only seven-tenths of 1 percent of the money allocated to the states, was spent on indigent legal defense, the report shows. In contrast, 54 percent of the funds DOJ sent to localities, and 38 percent of the funds sent to states, were spent on law enforcement and prosecution activities.

The report indicates that among the reasons that indigent defenders do not receive more funding is that, most of the time, they are not part of the decision-making process that disperses the funds, and many are not even aware they are eligible to apply for them. Nearly two-thirds of the public defender offices responding to a GAO survey said they did not know that they were eligible for federal funding, and 31 percent said they lacked the knowledge or the personnel to complete the application process.

In responding to the GAO report, the DOJ indicated it was taking steps to make public defenders more aware of their eligibility.

"We commend the DOJ for finally taking steps to alert the indigent defense community to their ability to tap these federal dollars," Sloan said, "but much more needs to be done, including more systematic planning for the expenditure of these funds, with public defenders and other indigent defense counsel at the table for the planning process. Most importantly, the federal government must tell the states and localities that they will not receive funding unless they distribute it more fairly between law enforcement and indigent defense."
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs092/1101561619973/archive/1109975481535.html

Juvenile offenders sentenced to life can face harsher treatment than adults.

“Juveniles are getting sentenced more harshly than adults because of their inability to negotiate the adult criminal justice system,” LaBelle, the director of the Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative, told The Huffington Post.

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to experts. And five states -- California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- account for two-thirds of all youths younger than 18 currently serving natural life sentences. This means that they will likely die behind bars.

In Michigan, children as young as 14 who are charged with certain felonies can be tried as adults and, if convicted, sentenced accordingly. Michigan ranks second behind Pennsylvania with more than 370 young people thus far having been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, according to LaBelle’s report, “Basic Decency: An Examination of Natural Life Sentences for Michigan Youth.”

The report, released in conjunction with Second Chance 4 Youth and the American Civil Liberties Union, details wide-ranging differences in the way the states sentence their youth. It also highlights the financial and human costs of juvenile life-without-parole sentences and vast racial disparities.

In Michigan, 73 percent of youths serving life sentences are racial minorities, even though minority youths comprise only 29 percent of the state’s youth population.

The disparity shows up in other trends. "Nationwide, black youths represent just 28% of juvenile arrests, yet they account for 35% of juvenile defendants who are waived to adult court," the report stated.

“There is just so much wrong with the original idea of putting youth in the adult system that we didn’t think through as a society,” said Ashley Nellis, a researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group that aims to reform sentencing laws. “Now we’re coming to see how many injustices there really are [in] the way we are sentencing youth from the very start.”

In March the Sentencing Project released its own report that compiled data about 1,579 individuals nationwide who had been sentenced as juveniles to life sentences without parole; this sample represented about 60 percent of American juveniles serving such a sentence. The report, "The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey," documented "high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage, extreme racial disparities in the imposition of these punishments, sentences frequently imposed without judicial discretion, and counterproductive corrections policies that thwart efforts at rehabilitation."

Young defendants encountered disadvantages from the start, according to the report. The attorneys representing youths sentenced to life without parole in Michigan have been disciplined by the state bar at an extraordinary rate. Some 38 percent of lawyers representing youths sentenced to life without parole “have been publicly sanctioned or disciplined for egregious violations of ethical conduct,” compared with a rate of just 5 percent for other attorneys.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/juvenile-offenders-life-sentence-_n_1519298.html