Human Rights Commissions and Criminal Justice

Meetings Wind Down, Work Continues Through 2008

Members of the Executive Session on Human Rights Commissions and Criminal Justice gathered for their sixth and final meeting at Harvard’s Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA in April, 2008.  Our discussions were enlivened by the addition of several special guests including a director of public safety, a current and a former police chief, and representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice COPS Office and the International City/County Management Association.  While the formal meetings are behind us, the work of the Executive Session continues.

In June 2008, we released the paper, Strengthening Relations Between Local Police and Immigrant Communities: The Role for Human Rights Commissions.  As national pressure builds to crack down on illegal immigration, those working at the local level know that strained relationships between police and immigrant communities can be counterproductive to achieving public safety goals. The paper sets out ways in which human rights organizations have worked with police departments throughout the country to address issues involving day laborer hiring sites, gang violence, and ethnic and racial profiling.  With their experience working to minimize intergroup conflict and to eliminate discrimination, human rights organizations are equipped to partner with law enforcement officials to help encourage effective working relationships between immigrant communities and police.

At our April gathering, the group agreed the Executive Session will produce one additional paper, this one proposing to formalize a concept we returned to repeatedly over the past three years. While we looked at many ways human rights commissions can promote human rights and reduce discrimination in the criminal justice sector, we found that strengthening relationships between human rights commissions and police departments probably holds the greatest promise for achieving these goals.  In particular, human rights and human relations commissions are uniquely situated to serve as institutional intermediaries between police and minority communities.  Various ways human relations commissions can collaborate with police departments to improve community-police relationships include:     

Immigration, Community Policing and International Human Rights Law Shape the Discussion in Atlanta

In September 2007, the members of the Executive Session on Human Rights Commissions and Criminal Justice met in Atlanta, Georgia at the site of the first-ever joint annual conference of the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies (IAOHRA) and the National Association of Human Rights Workers (NAHRW). 

In our Atlanta meetings, we were joined by a number of human rights commission directors, commissioners and staff as we talked about ways in which human rights agencies can be involved in the delicate area of immigrant-police relations.  We also discussed ways in which human rights commissions can be most effective in working to improve relations between communities and police in the majority of American communities where community oriented policing is practiced.  These discussions will serve as the basis for papers and projects the Executive Session is undertaking, adding to work we have already done on improving diversity in police hiring, tracking and addressing hate crimes, and intervening in the fractured community-police relations following instances of excessive use of force by police.  The series of papers is available in the publications section of this website.

Also in Atlanta, in a discussion led by Cynthia Soohoo and Eric Tars from Columbia University Law School’s Bringing Human Rights Home Project, we considered ways in which international human rights laws can be leveraged to further the goals shared by human relations and human rights organizations in the United States.  The Bringing Human Rights Home Project works with U.S. lawyers to use human rights standards, strategies and forums in domestic social justice work.  The United States is a party to international human rights treaties that protect and ensure human rights in the United States, and engagement with international human rights bodies provide opportunities to leverage new forums and share best practices and standards.  We discussed the role that human rights commissions in the U.S. could play in elevating compliance with international human rights law and standards from the local level up. 

Finally, we were joined in a special lunchtime talk by Congressman James E. Clyburn, who, before ascending to Majority Whip of the U.S. Congress, served for 17 years as Commissioner with the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission.  If you missed his talk, you can read the transcript.

Just like last year when I attended the IAOHRA annual conference, I was impressed to hear of examples of criminal justice-related projects that commissions are involved with throughout the country.  For example, in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, the Community Relations Committee works with the Police Department on two projects to develop trust and communication between officers and citizens. One program, the Police-Community Relations Awards Program, recognizes officers who have made outstanding contributions to the improvement of police-community relations in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area.  Officers are honored at an annual awards luncheon attended by hundreds of people, including the mayor and chief of police and other government officials.  The other program, the Police Complaint Review Program, assists citizens through the process of alleging officer misconduct.  Offered as an alternative to registering complaints directly with the police department, CRC staff members monitor the police department’s Internal Affairs review process of citizen complaints.  The program is reportedly welcomed by the police as they feel it protects interests of its officers as well as those of citizens; it is perceived to add a level of fairness by both sides.

As the Executive Session moves into its final working year, I have high hopes for the lasting impact of its work.  Quite simply I hope that, just like the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations, U.S. human rights and human relations commissions will come to consider it a given that the criminal justice system is one of the areas where their work is most needed and can be most valuable.  Just as there are endless criminal justice challenges facing every community, there are numerous ways in which commissions can work to address them. The challenge is to identify those areas in which the most impact can be made in each individual community.

Time to Innovate: A Model Human Rights Commission

In an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington and Professor Christopher Stone urge Atlanta lawmakers to establish a model human rights commission; one that has, among other things, subpoena power to investigate complaints about police conduct. The notion that Atlanta should create a world-class human rights commission along the lines of others around the world crystallized following a tragic police shooting of an elderly African American woman in November 2006.  In pursuit of a suspected cocaine stash, Atlanta police officers entered Kathyrn Johnston’s home with a no-knock warrant, without announcing themselves.  Terrified by the intrusion, Ms. Johnston opened fire on the officers.  Returning fire, the officers fatally wounded Ms. Johnston. No drugs were found at the house.
 

Following the raid, community members were outraged.  Calls were made for creation of a citizen review board with subpoena power to investigate complaints about police conduct.  For a host of reasons, citizen review boards in this country have had limited success getting to the bottom of citizen concerns over police conduct.  In the 1940s and 1950s, protests against the injustices of the criminal justice system sparked the creation of many human rights commissions.  Over the years, however, many commissions have turned away from criminal justice matters to concentrate on discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.  The public deserves to have a mechanism that not only vigorously investigates individual human rights abuses, whether civil or criminal in nature, but also works to build trust and shape solutions.
 

My involvement with this Executive Session has introduced me to fascinating work done by human rights organizations in India, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Mexico that seeks to hold accountable police and others in the criminal justice system.  There is no off-the-shelf blueprint for precisely the sort of entity we are envisioning in Atlanta; not in the United States or in other countries. There is, however, much to build from. The time is right to develop a uniquely American institution, one that sends the message local governments take seriously the dignity of all citizens and will work to find ways to minimize violations of their rights.

America’s Two Human Rights Movements

For many Americans, talk of “human rights” is about foreign policy and the abuse of rights by foreign governments. The human rights movement may include many organizations based in the United States—like Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First—but its concern seems to focus largely on how national governments comply with international treaties.

Less conspicuous, however, is a second human rights movement: focused on local issues of racism and other forms of discrimination within the United States. This second movement is not based in large, international non-profit organizations, but in more than a hundred small, local commissions that are part of city and state governments. Many of these commissions trace their origins back five decades or more, some predating the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Their names vary—human rights commissions, human relations commissions, community relations commissions—but they gather together in a professional organization that describes the movement well: the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies. This is America’s official human rights movement.

I first encountered this second human rights movement when I worked at the Vera Institute of Justice and learned about New York City’s Human Rights Commission. It turns out that the New York City commission is unusual for its large, professional staff—more than 150 full-time employees—and its strong local human rights law banning multiple forms of discrimination. But it is similar to its sister organizations across the country in its tenuous connections to the other human rights movement, so prominent in the same city.

Issues of criminal justice could unite these two human rights movements in a common cause. Concerns with conditions in jails and prisons, racial profiling by police, and the failure of the justice system to respond effectively to hate crimes are three examples of human rights issues that have caught the attention of both movements. They also make attractive issues for collaboration, because neither the big, international non-profits nor the local official commissions seem yet to have the answers. These are not issues where one movement can lecture the other; these are issues where creative local solutions can inform new international advocacy, and vice-versa.

Already there is common ground on these issues. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations cited international human rights standards in its statement in support of a death penalty moratorium in California, and the Commissioner/Chair of the New York City Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly participated as a trainer at human rights programs for police in Africa. But these are exceptional moments of overlap.

I hope that this Executive Session can extend this common ground. We are encouraging dialogue (such as the discussions between local commission leaders and their foreign counterparts) and documenting local contributions to issues of global concern (such as the case study on a controversial killing by police in Columbus, Ohio). But we want to do more.

What are some of the practical advantages of bringing these two movements closer together? Where might this prove a distraction or a distortion of the work at hand? And what are some specific projects that might prove good places to start building meaningful collaboration? We need all the help we can get in finding answers to these questions.

Reinforcing the Boardwalk to Justice

Last November I began work as project coordinator of the Executive Session on Human Rights Commissions and Criminal Justice.  After spending the previous 16 years working as a consultant to improve indigent defense organizations around the country, I admit I had a lot to learn about U.S. human rights commissions. 

This past September, I attended the 58th annual conference of the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies (IAOHRA) in Atlantic City.  My baseline goal was to make contact with the men and women who run the very organizations our Executive Session concerns, and to let them know about the project.   I also hoped to learn about what, if any, criminal justice activities human rights organizations around the country were already undertaking.  I was pleasantly surprised at what I learned.

At a workshop session discussing human rights and criminal justice issues, a show of hands revealed that a majority of the 40 or so attendees had some sort of criminal justice programming currently under way.  Perhaps the most common involvement mentioned was activities to prevent and respond to hate crimes, followed by efforts relating to police oversight. 

One innovative program discussed was from Schenectady, New York.  The Schenectady County Human Rights Commission operates a Jail Oversight Committee (JOC) that responds to inmate complaints and monitors conditions at the county jail.   The JOC was formed in 1999 following release of a report conducted by the Commission documenting human rights violations at the jail.  The sheriff agreed to grant the JOC round-the-clock access to the jail to respond to and investigate complaints from inmates.  The JOC, whose members include several Human Rights Commissioners and members of the public, addresses inmate quality of life issues including alleged physical and emotional abuse, racial discrimination, medical care, living conditions, and access to the law library and inmate mail. 

While the number of complaints skyrocketed since the JOC began its work, from 25 to 554 last year, there has been a significant decrease in the number of complaints alleging abuse by guards.  Today the vast majority of complaints received concern medical care issues.

In addition to its jail oversight work, the Schenectady County Human Rights Commission recently entered an agreement with the local public defender to field detained clients’ complaints about their attorneys.  Typical complaints concern insufficient access to and responsiveness by their public defenders.  When the HRC receives such an inmate complaint, it contacts the chief public defender, who then investigates the situation and typically responds to the HRC within several hours.  In all of my years working with public defender organizations, I had never heard of this approach.  Once mentioned, it struck me as an ideal partnership.

I heard of several human rights organizations, including the Fayetteville-Cumberland County Human Relations Commission, that have addressed community violence and race issues through formation of study circles.  Other innovative solutions were offered for reaching immigrant communities and identifying issues of concern for them.  In Columbus, Ohio, for example, work is under way to form a Community Intervention Team (CIT) with leaders of the local Hispanic community and police to confront the problem of police harassing undocumented individuals.  (See the Publications section of this website for a discussion of a CIT in Columbus dealing with relations between police and the city’s large Somali refugee community). 

A commonly stressed point amongst participants was the need for local human rights commission leaders to maintain close contact with their local police chiefs.  Strong working relationships with police chiefs are essential to responding to criminal justice issues and helping defuse community tensions when confronted with crisis situations.  Another important groundwork strategy mentioned is for human rights leaders to develop and maintain relationships with a group of “go to” people from all levels of the community.  Such relations can be critical when responding to community unrest.

My take-away perception from the IAOHRA conference was that many human rights and human relations agencies are already doing innovative programming pertaining to criminal justice.  The sense that human rights organizations seemed perfectly poised to work on criminal justice issues feels even more “right” to me now after attending the conference.  After all, many civil rights and human relations organizations were formed in the 1950s and 1960s following a polarizing situation, such as demonstrations about police mistreatment of minorities.  The Reverend Reginald T. Jackson, speaking at the opening plenary of the IAOHRA conference, posed the question: do we need to rebuild or reinforce the boardwalk to justice in this country?  With a range of interesting initiatives already in place, there is no need to rebuild agencies to undertake this work.  The challenge is to share information about these approaches, and provide support to those who seek to replicate them.