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Gifted programs across Washington leave out black and Latino students — but Federal Way is one model for change | The Seattle Times
Claudia Rowe
Updated April 4, 2017 at 10:45 am
The classrooms where Washington students get the kind of advanced-level learning that grooms them for advanced-level careers might make visitors wonder if they’ve somehow stepped back in time.
Black, Latino, American Indian and Pacific Islanders — who now comprise a third of all students — are nonetheless represented at minuscule rates in programs for the gifted, a statistic deemed “stunning” by the state official who manages them.
Whites and Asians, meanwhile, fill almost all those seats.
This long-standing trend places Washington in line with other states, and it is raising uncomfortable questions. Like the ones that swirled around Nila Griffin at age 12, as she listened to her mother speaking with a teacher during the first parent conference of sixth grade. Nila’s transcripts, from her previous school in California, were covered with 90th-percentile scores. Impressive, her new teacher said. But was Mrs. Griffin certain they were actually her daughter’s?
“I was shocked by that comment,” said Angela Griffin, recalling the decade-old conversation at Illahee Middle School in Federal Way. “Nila had been in a Japanese-immersion program. She was pretty advanced in her learning and had the goal of becoming a doctor.”
The family tried not to leap to conclusions. But Angela Griffin, who is African-American, sensed similar skepticism later that year when Nila’s older sister tried to sign up for International Baccalaureate classes at her high school, also in Federal Way.
“The teacher looked at her on the first day and said ‘I think there’s been a mistake. I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,’ ” the girls’ mother said.
Griffin became so frustrated, and troubled, by similar stories from other minority parents that she ran — successfully — for the school board to push Federal Way toward re-examining its methods for finding academically talented kids.
“I saw this as a civil-rights issue,” she said.
Ten years later, things have changed dramatically.
The rate of black students doing advanced coursework has nearly doubled, to 34 percent, and Federal Way now has better participation among minority and low-income children in gifted programs than any other large, diverse district in the state.
Overall, however, Washington tolerates a persistent caste system in its schools, with an upper strata characterized by creativity and exploration, and a general-education track emphasizing little of that.
The label “gifted” is a loaded one. No proven marker of future brilliance, it is defined differently in different places, through an inconsistent mixture of I.Q. scores, state tests and teacher nominations. In some districts, students deemed gifted have their own schools; in others, their own classes.
What’s consistent is the racial uniformity.
Whites occupy 66 percent of the seats in Washington’s accelerated classrooms, and Asians much of the remainder. The big-picture ramifications — from future employment prospects to income inequality — keep education researchers awake at night.
“This is a huge public-policy issue nationally,” said Jonathan Plucker, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who has spent his career working with academically talented youth and is increasingly alarmed at the numbers.
“We’ve focused for so long on basic achievement — kind of waving the checkered flag at grade level and declaring victory for disadvantaged kids — that there’s now a persistent talent underclass, an entire demographic of black, Native American, Hispanic and low-income students who have not been developed for at least a generation — likely more,” Plucker said.
“We all want to believe that in this country if you’re talented and work hard you’re going to be OK. But data show us that’s flat-out not true.”
Part of the problem lies in the way schools find talented kids — or don’t.
Data from the National Center for Research on Gifted Education at the University of Connecticut show that even when children in poverty test at the same levels as their peers, they are 250 percent less likely to be identified for gifted education.
Federal Way also used to have such divides. But starting in 2007, the district began to tackle the problem head-on. By 2015, all middle- and high-school students working at grade level were automatically enrolled in advanced courses, and every second-grader — about 1,800 children a year — was screened for high aptitude.
None of these changes came without struggle.
Parents accused the school board of watering down gifted-education as a sop to political correctness. Teachers stormed out of equity meetings, offended at the suggestion that they might be part of the reason for minimal rates of minorities doing advanced work.
And even now, after years of funneling more kids into Advanced Placement courses, only to watch two-thirds fail their end-of-year A.P. exams, the district’s new superintendent Tammy Campbell is doubling down on basics like third-grade reading.
“It’s not just a matter of putting more scholars in these courses,” she said. “It’s making sure they’re prepared when they get there.”
Campbell still believes that participating in demanding classes benefits students in the long-run, and over 90 percent of those in Federal Way’s accelerated high-school courses pass their classes — if not the final test.
But her reinforcement of elementary-school skills speaks to the tension underpinning advanced education — a balancing act between affirmative-action style efforts, and the reality that when more kids from varied backgrounds take the same tests, scores tend to drop.
Alexis Beard, now a science teacher at high-achieving Federal Way Public Academy, feels the issue keenly. As a mixed-race kid, he’d never envisioned himself at any university — most of his family were medical technicians, and that was good enough, he thought.
It was a teacher who made the difference, nudging Beard onto the advanced track that changed the course of his life.
“These conversations made a lot of people uncomfortable,” he said, thinking back to the transition years in Federal Way from his laboratory-classroom, where a multihued group of seventh-graders was doing ninth-grade work. “But they were important questions to ask because people really didn’t want to know the answers.”
Pedro Noguera, a widely published lecturer on education equity and excellence, is happy to supply them.
“The kids we call ‘gifted,’ for many their only gift is their parents, who’ve had the time and money to invest in them,” he said. “We’ve confused being privileged with being gifted. Just because you’re an early reader does not mean you’re going to be a brilliant scholar.”
The question is one of definitions, and at the Robinson Center for Young Scholars at the University of Washington director Nancy Hertzog agrees that high I.Q. scores alone do not always correlate with giftedness — though that is a measure often used by schools. Hertzog sees these students as kids who need services akin to Special Education, rather than stars granted special status.
State officials, too, advocate a more nuanced evaluation that takes creative thinking into account. And they flat-out reject the kind of private intelligence testing that is popular as a gateway to gifted-and-talented programs in Seattle.
“When students are privately tested, they’re getting a completely different experience from the usual Saturday morning cattle call,” said Jody Hess, who supervises programs for the gifted at the state education department. “It’s just far more likely that a child is going to do better on that kind of test than they might in a group, and that’s a built-in advantage only available to families of means. It’s a privilege of wealth.”
Recognizing the inequity, Seattle offered to cover the cost of private testing for low-income students this year. But its list of suggested evaluators includes none in the city’s low-income neighborhoods.
Fred Provenzano, a psychologist who has spent 30 years testing kids in his cozy North End office, most commonly sees white or Asian students with parents willing to pay about $650, sometimes more, to appeal the results of school-based tests — essentially, asking for a do-over.
“We used to see that once every few years. Now it can be one or two a day,” he said. “It’s ugly. I see kids who’ve clearly been coached, and I hear all the time from parents who want to get their kids into gifted programs — not necessarily the program that’s best for their kids. It’s a problem, a big problem.”
While Federal Way was confronting its advanced-learning gaps, Carolyn Callahan, a University of Virginia professor and expert in gifted education, was invited to Seattle to assess its program.
Her report, released in 2007, was scathing.
The district’s practice of identifying highly-capable children in kindergarten was anachronistic, she said, largely because I.Q. scores at that age are malleable.
Further, low-income children who hadn’t attended quality preschools were at an automatic disadvantage. Bright students who didn’t speak English at home might be overlooked simply for lack of vocabulary. And insisting that highly capable kids post top scores in both quantitative reasoning and verbal skills, she said, could leave a math prodigy like Albert Einstein — who struggled with language — undiscovered.
Seattle has since loosened its approach, in the past two years testing all children at high-poverty elementary schools and identifying 100 who’d previously gone unrecognized.
“We think of that as a win for equity-outreach efforts,” said Stephen Martin, who supervises advanced learning.
Still, only 0.7 percent of Seattle’s African-American students are enrolled in the district’s most exclusive gifted classes. The rate for whites is nearly 18 times higher.
More race and equity coverage from Education Lab.
Among Washington’s large, diverse school districts, no other has a spread so wide.
As Callahan scrutinized Seattle, Microsoft executive Trish Dziko — ambitious, entrepreneurial and black — approached Federal Way to pitch a new kind of school. Her academy would be science-focused and demanding in ways typically associated with advanced learning. But students at the Technology Access Foundation wouldn’t have to test in. Instead, they would be neighborhood kids, mostly low-income, and they would complete an accelerated curriculum — algebra in eighth grade; calculus by the end of 12th — without any labels.
“There are very, very few kids who are truly at the advanced-learning-genius kind of level,” said Wilson Chin, a cellular biologist who left the lab to teach sixth-graders at TAF, precisely because he wanted to usher more minority youths toward science.
“For most students, the idea that ‘my child is brilliant and can only be challenged by other so-called brilliant kids’ is absurd. If kids have the right teaching, any of them can be in a so-called ‘advanced’ program.”
Gabriel Diaz’s 10th-grade engineering class appears to bear that out. In his cramped studio, 25 students — only five of them white — were recently learning about the equations and filaments involved with 3D printing.
“I was completely under the radar myself as a smart kid,” said Diaz, who grew up in New Jersey and collected most of his degrees in Europe. “There was nothing within my reach that was anything like this, and I see a lot of myself in these kids. That’s kind of what inspired me to become a teacher in this district.”
With only 300 students, TAF might be waved aside as a small-scale hothouse, a special case. But next year the academy will move from its collection of portable classrooms onto the Saghalie Middle School campus next door, more than doubling its reach to a total of 800 kids. If the marriage is successful, Dziko believes it could signal the spread of a more democratic model for advanced-education districtwide.
Federal Way may be ahead of the curve among Washington school districts. But the success of other intensive-education programs confirms that it’s possible to develop intellect — rather than viewing it as a fixed feature that need be measured only once.
Rainier Scholars, for instance, handpicks promising minority students in the sixth grade, none of whom have tested into gifted programs. After 14 months of high-powered academic counseling, 95 percent find their way to advanced learning.
“In this city, and state, and country, our identification process for what it means to be gifted and talented is so narrow,” said Sarah Smith, executive director of the Seattle-area program. “These test scores change after intensive enrichment. And students’ mindsets do too.”
A similar realization has filtered all the way up to Johns Hopkins University, in the heart of struggling Baltimore where, after 40 years of cultivating students with top test scores, the staff acknowledge that neighborhood kids are “woefully underrepresented.”
Closer to home, Hertzog, at UW’s Robinson Center, has been working to ferret out hidden talents among overlooked kids since the day she arrived seven years ago.
“If you’ve got a 7-year-old who speaks two or three languages, wouldn’t you think ‘Wow, what else are you good at?’ ” she said.
To that end, she has expanded Robinson’s open-to-all Saturday enrichment program, where half the kids receive financial aid, with classes like “Dinosaurs Meet Asteroids” and “My Brain Hurts from Philosophy.”
Students who thrive may advance straight into the center’s advanced-learning pipeline — without taking a single test.
Hertzog has weathered some skepticism for her emphasis on equity. Undeterred, she gathered 300 educators from around the country to meet in Seattle last month and talk about it.
Angela Griffin was there, shaking her head at gifted-student Power Points that showed the same racial patterns she encountered a decade ago, driven by the same old tests.
Her daughter Nila, meanwhile, was 25 miles away. She’d been part of the first graduating class at TAF, attended college early and was back to tutor students in math before continuing her pursuit of a career in medicine.

created: Updated April 4, 2017 at 10:45 am

author: Claudia Rowe


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158 Resources for Understanding Systemic Racism in America | Smithsonian
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NBA Playoffs: Giannis Through the Eyes of Milwaukee Refugees - The Ringer
Danny Chau
May 15, 2019,  6:20am EDT
Even at the crack of sunrise, blue Milwaukee County Transit System buses flash a warning along their marquees before telling you their route.
FEAR THE DEER!
Basketball, long the third-tier citizen of Milwaukee’s professional sports hierarchy, has taken over the city. There are vinyl banners hung up all around town with the now-ubiquitous rhyming slogan, popularized nearly a decade ago when a rookie Brandon Jennings led a scrappy defensive-minded unit to a seven-game series in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks. Fear the Deer was a false alarm then; the warning rings a lot louder these days.
Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, 24, has put together an MVP-caliber season the likes of which the NBA hasn’t seen in decades. He is, without question, the best player the franchise has seen in more than 40 years, with only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar impeding his path to being considered its greatest. Milwaukee is back in the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 18 years, and the favorite to make its first Finals appearance in 45 years. These Bucks might just be the biggest threat the Warriors have faced during their dynasty.
The city has responded in kind. In parts of town, “Go Bucks!” has become Milwaukee’s “aloha.” I walk through Zaffiro’s Pizza, a 65-year-old institution, where a framed Giannis jersey greets you to the left upon entry, and where a bartender and regular are in the middle of negotiating over prime postseason tickets at the newly constructed Fiserv Forum. And with just under seven minutes remaining in the third quarter of the Bucks’ decisive second-round series win in Game 5 at home against the Celtics, I am stunned by the animal roar of the Fiserv crowd as Giannis flushes a sidecocked tomahawk dunk. In the moment, Antetokounmpo, in stride and silhouette, bears an uncanny resemblance to a skying LeBron James.
“A lot of people say that I can be the face of the league,” Antetokounmpo told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this year. “But, man, if I can’t be the face of the league being me, I don’t want to be the face of the league.”
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Being me, in this instance, had little to do with Giannis’s on-court style. His long jumper’s hang time, his power running downhill, his vision and ability to whip the ball from angles most men could only dream of—his game is the platonic ideal of an NBA superstar. Being me was addressing doubts that his inner circle had that he could become the central figure of a premier American sports league as a non-American, as a proud Greek and the son of Nigerian immigrants.
After that Game 5 win, Giannis expressed his awe toward the Milwaukee crowd; he’d never seen the community more excited about basketball. Antetokounmpo is representing a city that can feel itself on the verge of something great. But during my time in Milwaukee, I find myself thinking about how Giannis has become a much-needed symbol for people in the city who have no idea he exists. Giannis is on a fast track to becoming one of the most popular athletes in the world, but he was once an undocumented child living on the periphery of Greek society. He was a stateless person who made a home in Milwaukee. I want to meet the refugees in the city trying to do the same.
I enter through the back door of a shared office building on the south side of Milwaukee, less than 2 miles north of the airport. I am given vague instructions—no suite number, just the first door on the left. The building is completely devoid of noise. It’s just before 8 p.m. I slowly open the door to the left and see a man, barefoot on the floor, with his legs crossed. “Hello,” he says gently. “Are you Mr. Danny?”
It’s the end of the first week of Ramadan, and I’ve made plans to join a few members of the Rohingya community as they break fast. The man greeting me is Anuwar Kasim, the executive director of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization formed to assist Rohingya refugees in Wisconsin as they adapt to life in the United States. The Rohingya, an ethnic and religious minority of Myanmar with roots in the country since the eighth century, have for decades faced one of the starkest refugee crises in the world. They are a stateless people who, by law, receive no recognition from Myanmar as citizens, and face constant persecution that has veered toward genocide. Wisconsin’s number of incoming refugees has plummeted, consistent with nationwide trends under the Donald Trump administration, but refugees from Myanmar have accounted for a significant percentage of total arrivals over the past five years. At somewhere more than 2,000, Milwaukee probably has the largest Rohingya refugee population in the U.S.
Our iftar, the fast-breaking evening meal of Ramadan, is a modest potluck shared on the floor. The community members bring Tupperware containers of watermelon slices, a fiery chickpea curry, and egg rolls filled with shrimp, carrots, and mushrooms. Kasim unstacks his tiffin box of curried stir-fried noodles, fried eggs (with the yolk still runny), and a bright slaw of cucumber and thinly shredded cabbage, with a dizzying preponderance of whole green Thai chilies on top. Earlier in the day, I was told by the BRCW’s cofounder, Andrew Trumbull, that the food would be a bit spicy; I take a few of the chilies and pop them whole, in hopes of either ingratiating myself in their company, or at least creating a light-hearted conversation starter. “At first, Andrew was—” Kasim says before he makes the exaggerated sounds of a Midwestern white man gasping at the heat levels of Southeast Asian food. “But he kept eating. Now he can eat it. Now he is Rohingya.”
Styrofoam plates are loaded up quickly and indiscriminately—it’s all getting shoveled down anyway. The men have come from long shifts at entry-level jobs in factories—mostly plastic or food-processing—and haven’t had any food or water since sunrise. They talk about their day. “This,” Kasim notes, “this is the happiest part of Ramadan.”
Kasim is in his early 40s. His English is proficient; back home in Myanmar, he worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as an interpreter before he was resettled here in 2015. Kasim is one of the lucky ones, having been born in the last generation of Rohingya who were able to go to school in Myanmar; the generations since have been denied all access to education. The U.N. has described the Rohingya as the most persecuted minority in the world, and as such, they face a learning curve as steep as any as far as adapting to the United States—and that’s after the vetting process, which can take 10 to 20 years. Given that less than 1 percent of refugees around the world are able to resettle in a new country, Kasim likens a refugee being granted U.S. admittance to a newborn baby—not only in how thoroughly they’re screened, but in how much there is to learn.
“The process is very extreme,” Kasim says. “After coming to U.S., people mostly struggle because they don’t know the language, and we have to also know that these people are coming from the very least developed countries to a superpower country. There is a big, huge gap.”
“Their minds are swirling with a million other things, and they have to try and retain all this stuff about American life and what it’s gonna take,” Trumbull tells me. “And there’s a lot to it. When you come from a refugee camp, shanties, and nothing—and now you have an apartment. So how do you clean it? … What’s OK? Are bugs OK? Are mice OK? There’s no real choice in that matter if you’re in a refugee camp.”
To make matters even more untenable, the Rohingya language has no formal alphabet; it is almost strictly a verbal language. Kasim is one of the few Rohingya in Milwaukee who can speak and read English well enough to read mail, let alone technical language found in court or medical documents. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough resources for him to do for the community what he wants to. “A lot of pressure and a lot of time deficit,” he says. “I want to do a lot, but I’m alone only, you know? I cannot.”
Kasim serves as a medical interpreter at Aurora Health Care, Wisconsin’s largest home care organization. I walk past the Aurora pharmacy several times during my stay; above one of the entrance gates hangs a vinyl FEAR THE DEER banner. I ask Kasim about the Bucks, about what he knows of the professional sports franchise that has brought new life to much of the city this season. For refugees like Kasim, they may as well be from another planet.
“I heard of this, but again, because of the situations, we are a bit away from the sports,” Kasim says. “We don’t have any chance. But now, I come here, I’m working at the community center, at the same time fulfilling other responsibilities, so time is pretty busy. So I don’t get the time to self-care.” Kasim, often solemn and deliberate in his speech, couldn’t help but let out a smile, having essentially wrapped the term “self-care” in sonic air quotes.
I tell him about Giannis.
He lives here in Milwaukee?
About how he’s one of the best basketball players in the world.
He’s from here or he came here with his parents?
About how, as a child, he, too, had no official claim to the home he had always known. About how he would peddle sunglasses, DVDs, and whatever else he could to make 200 or 300 euros a month for his family. And how his status as an undocumented person meant knowing that at any moment, police could ask his parents for their documentation, and that they could be sent back to Nigeria in an instant. Kasim cuts me off.
“Sometimes I don’t understand,” he says. “In some parts of the world, the humanity is so low that if you are going to [introduce] yourself, they don’t believe. You have to show some sort of paper to say that my name is blah blah blah. Only then they believe. Undocumented. ‘Show me the document.’ It’s so easy for them to wipe other people away.”
The night before meeting Kasim and the Rohingya community, I spend my night at Damascus Gate, the city’s first and only Syrian restaurant, for an iftar buffet dinner. Upon entrance, patrons walk past a makeshift bridge leading to a large wooden post. It’s as close to the actual gate of Damascus as you’ll get in Milwaukee. “I didn’t name” the restaurant, says owner Ahmad Nasef. “The refugees named it. They say, ‘When you open that door, to be the gate to Syria. The peaceful gate to Syria.’”
Down the center of the restaurant, just past the gate, is a long table lined with chafing dishes of kabab hindi and stuffed grape leaves, enormous pans of maqlooba with chicken, and aluminum trays of fried kibbeh and spinach pies—all prepared by two Syrian refugees in the kitchen, both of whom had fasted in observance of Ramadan.
“They did not expect the reaction from the American people, because they’re still scared,” Nasef says. “They’ve been scared for like five years in refugee camps. When they came here and found the support from everybody—the customers that came, the love that they’ve shown them—this is priceless.”
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Damascus Gate, which opened in January, has become a starting point for an array of Milwaukee’s refugees. Among the employees are four Syrian refugees—three coming from the Zaatari camp in Jordan, and one from Egypt—two Somali refugees, one from Gaza, one from Sudan, and one from India who escaped the conflict in Kashmir. “The plan was open something for whoever needs work, so they can pay it forward,” Nasef says. Refugees “have a lot of pride. They come and ask for help because they cannot cover their rent. Nobody hires them because they don’t speak the language—and even when they hire them, they give them minimum wages—not even. One of the girls that works here, her husband went to work carrying concrete—they gave him $5 an hour to work and then they took $1.50 in taxes. So who would work for $3.50? This is illegal, it shouldn’t happen in this country. … And you can see it in their faces. They’re crying because they got into that position. My goal, why I did this, to save their dignity.”
Nasef, a Milwaukee-based physician, immigrated to the U.S. from Syria in 1992 to attend medical school in Madison, Wisconsin. He’s spent more of his life in the state than in his home of Damascus. He’d begun volunteer work and refugee support long before the crisis in his homeland, sparked by something he’d seen on CNN back in med school—footage showed a father protecting his son as bullets caught them both. “And I felt so hopeless in that moment, that everybody’s watching and nobody’s doing anything,” Nasef says. “I told my wife at that time—I will never, ever see a helpless man and not help him.”
The Syrian refugee crisis only furthered his resolve. The country has been embroiled in civil war for the past eight years under the rule of Bashar al-Assad. Entire cities—and all the infrastructure that had allowed them to function—have been destroyed, displacing millions. The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has the total number of Syrian refugees at more than 5.6 million. Nasef knew Assad personally; only a few years separated them at the University of Damascus.
Nasef has traveled to Turkey in recent years to help out with refugees, once as a physician, and once as an interpreter. On one trip, he recalls walking with his wife down Istiklal Street in Istanbul’s Taksim neighborhood back to their hotel room. A girl, maybe 9 years old, rushed out in front of him. Please Uncle, please Uncle, can you buy some bottled water from me? From her accent, he could tell she was Syrian. She was from Aleppo, selling what she could to support her family—her father and mother had died, and it was on her and her older brother to look after their younger siblings and grandmother. The bottle of water cost 1 lira; Nasef took out his wallet and handed her everything he had. She told him to wait as she got him change, but before he could refuse, she’d sniped back: Uncle, I am not begging. I am working.
“I swear to you, I cried all night that night,” Nasef says. “She had so much pride. And I put myself in her place, and I would have took the money and walked away. No. I am working, not begging. She forced me to take all the water that she had or she would not take the money from me.”
Just as Nasef’s voice begins to shake, his mother walks into the restaurant, spots him, and holds his hand; he kisses her hand repeatedly.
“Any refugee—I know, because I encountered Syrian refugees—but I think any refugee is resilient. You would not believe,” Nasef says. “You ask a kid who has lost everything in life—you ask, ‘How are you doing?’ He’ll say, ‘Thanks God. I am doing better than other people. I didn’t lose an arm or an eye.’ He’s like 10 years old, lost his mom and dad and brother and sister, and everybody. So how can you defeat these people? You cannot. They will teach you to be strong and move forward, move forward all the time.”
Without documentation, material possessions, or much of an acknowledged public identity, family becomes the only tangible thing for many refugees to hold on to. From my talks with the community, it becomes clear how that dynamic concentrates amid the daily struggles and persists long after the traumas subside. The original husband-and-wife team in the kitchen at Damascus Gate no longer work at the restaurant. The long hours away from their children reinforced their separation anxiety; they now cater from their home with the help of Nasef. Ultimately, the mentality of refugees and migrants in search of a better life always comes down to the security of the next generation. It’s a mentality that Antetokounmpo, even in all his personal success, hasn’t been able to let go of.
“I think about where I was four years ago, on the streets, and where I am today, able to take care of my kids and my grandkids and their grandkids,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2017. “I’m not saying that in a cocky way or a disrespectful way. But it is a crazy story, isn’t it?”
The idea of legacy, especially in professional sports, is a bit convoluted: a way to preserve the ego in an indestructible black box before one’s retirement. But legacy, for most people, is as much about sacrifice as it is preservation—to the point where the two disparate concepts seem to reflect the same end. The legacy most families hope to leave behind is simply a future ripe with possibility for their children, but given the situations that most have to endure, that requires a kind of surrender that divests one’s own ambition in favor of paying it forward to the next generation.
“We talk about what the [the Rohingya’s] hopes are, and their expectations, and it almost seems like they’ve written their lives off in favor of their children’s,” Trumbull says. As the cofounder of the Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, Trumbull has spent years with the refugee community, internalizing their struggles and finding inroads to help them seek self-improvement. “I mean, everybody you will ask, you ask what’s important. They’re going to tell you their kids. Right? And it’s not like they’re giving up. They work hard. It’s just, as an American I want more for them. I want them to want more. And there’s only so much we can do to spur them on, but it has to come from them, too.”
Trumbull, himself, is carrying on a family legacy. He is the first cousin (many times removed) of Jonathan Trumbull, a governor of Connecticut before the Revolutionary War, and the first governor to oppose British rule. His third-great-grandfather was Lyman Trumbull, an Illinois senator who coauthored the 13th Amendment, the country’s first civil rights act.
“I think that’s one of the biggest driving factors in my life: What it means to be a citizen,” Trumbull says. “And it might seem strange for other Americans to see this white guy cofounding an organization that supports a Muslim group. You know, typically you’d see birds of a feather in some context. I don’t know if it’s weird or not, but I guess for me personally, the message is: It’s about the equality. It’s about supporting everybody here. When I think about the United States, and what the United States stands for, I’m proud to represent that in the best way that I know how. And it’s in a very similar way that my family has done since before this country became the country it is today.”
Six years ago this month, Giannis’s life changed forever. At 18 years old, just one month before the 2013 NBA draft, he and his older brother, Thanasis, were awarded Greek citizenship, the skeleton key to a viable financial future for the Antetokounmpo family. (Their lack of documentation up to that point had prevented them from playing in domestic professional leagues and from being able to travel outside the country.) When Giannis argues that his non-Americannness is nonnegotiable, it’s an assertion of identity, after years of undocumented status in his home of Greece left just about everything in life uncertain. It’s an example to follow.
“If Giannis would come say hi to those refugees, that would mean the world to them,” Nasef says. “I love the guy. My kid’s infatuated by him. We go a lot to the Bucks games—we have good seats. But I don’t think [most refugees] are capable of seeing any of it, because first, they don’t have time, so they can’t afford it. And I think connecting a refugee with refugee, that will tell the American people that we’re stronger standing together, all as one unit.”
An earlier version of this piece misstated that Antetokounmpo and his family were refugees; his parents emigrated from Nigeria to Greece, and while he and his brothers were all undocumented, they were not refugees.

author: Danny Chau


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Milwaukee’s Hip-Hop Week Is What Happens When Hip-Hop Goes Back to Its Roots
GizmodoJalopnikKotakuQuartzThe RootThe InventoryBlack News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta AttitudeHomeLatestEntertainmentThe CultureNewsBeauty/StyleOpinionEditionsEspañolDeutschFrançaisWe may earn a commission from links on this pageHomeLatestEntertainmentThe CultureNewsBeauty/StyleOpinionPoliticsAnd It Don’t Stop: Milwaukee’s Hip-Hop Week Is What Happens When Hip-Hop Goes Back to Its RootsByStephen A. Crockett Jr.PublishedAugust 23, 2019We may earn a commission from links on this page.Rapper Kevin Gates performs onstage during the PANDORA Discovery Den SXSW on March 18, 2016 in Austin, Texas.Photo: Rachel Murray (Getty Images)In 1994, Notorious B.I.G. would release his groundbreaking album, Ready to Die. The first single from the seminal hip-hop classic was “Juicy,” a Dickensian tale of a young black man’s ascension from having nothing to having everything, assuming, of course, that young black men can have Dickensian tales. The lyrics of B.I.G.’s first album have been combed over and dissected as if they were ancient etchings on Egyptian walls. I contend that the first line that B.I.G. rapped on his debut single from his first studio album might be its most important and the impetus for Milwaukee’s annual hip-hop week:Related ContentNah, Jigga: Jay-Z Reportedly Has No Chance of Getting His Hands on an NFL TeamIt’s Showtime! Here’s Our 2024 Summer Movie PreviewAndre Ward on His Book ‘Killing the Image’ & on his Successful Boxing Career
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Poor stay in jail while rich go free: Rethinking cash bail in Wisconsin - Wisconsin Watch

January 20th, 2019
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This series explores the use of cash bail in Wisconsin and around the country.
Bail bond industry fights back against moves to limit or end cash bail
Nonprofit bail funds help poor gain freedom nationally and in Wisconsin
Key terms explained
Center reporter Emily Hamer discusses this story on WPR’s Central Time and on community radio WORT.
On a summer night in 2017, a police officer conducting a drunken-driving sweep in northeast Wisconsin tried to pull over an SUV after a check showed the owner had a revoked driver’s license. The driver fled. As the officer gave chase, siren blaring, the vehicle blew through multiple stop signs in a residential area.
The officer stopped the pursuit for public safety reasons. When police found the vehicle parked later, the driver was nowhere to be found.
The vehicle owner told the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism that he was not driving the car that day; his ex-girlfriend had been using it for months. He asked that his identity be shielded in this story —  “David” is a pseudonym — because although the case has been dismissed, prosecutors could still refile charges against him.
When David went to retrieve his SUV from the impound lot, he was arrested for the felony charge of eluding police. The next day, the court commissioner set his bail at $5,000. David asked the commissioner to set an amount he could afford, closer to $1,500, but the commissioner declined.
So David sat in jail for 84 days waiting for his trial — even though he had an alibi and witnesses to swear that he was not driving the SUV the night of the chase.
Eventually, David’s public defenders got the case dismissed.
But he can never get back the nearly three months he served in jail for a crime he said he did not commit. During that time, David lost his job, his car, his apartment and visitation time with his now-12-year-old son. While David was in jail, his son’s mother filed for child support, which David could not pay. After he was released, his 50-50 custody changed to one weekend a month.
Although David got his job back, he had to dip into his retirement savings to pay off the loan still owed on the SUV that police seized. The impound fees, which had accumulated while he was jailed, eventually totaled more than the vehicle was worth.
“I thought you were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not guilty and then prove you’re innocent,” David said.
Such pretrial incarceration is common throughout the United States. About half a million U.S. residents are held in jail on any given day awaiting trial — a trend that has grown sharply since the 1980s, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, which researches and advocates against mass incarceration.
Some defendants spend longer in jail awaiting trial than their sentences ultimately call for. In Louisiana, the problem is so acute that some indigent defendants — who under the law are presumed innocent — can wait four years or more for their day in court.
Studies show incarceration for inability to pay bail can cascade into a chain of events that jeopardizes the lives of those charged, their families and society at large.
These problems, and a raft of lawsuits, have prompted numerous states including Wisconsin to question whether cash bail for minor offenses is cost-effective — or even constitutional.
is defined in Wisconsin statutes as “monetary conditions of release,” but is often used interchangeably with bond.
is a form of security to ensure a defendant’s appearance at future court dates. It can be in the form of cash, property or their signature.
, or , is an amount of money defendants have to pay to be released from jail while their cases are pending. The money is returned to them if they show up to court and comply with the conditions of their release, unless the defendant owes restitution or other fees to the court. Then, the bail money would first be applied to those fees.
According to a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case, liberty is supposed to be “the norm,” and detention before trial “the carefully limited exception.” Today, for many of those too poor to post bail, detention is the norm.
At the same time, rich defendants can post high cash bails for even the most egregious charges such as homicide and rape, allowing these potentially dangerous defendants back into the community.
The Wisconsin Constitution states that cash bail can be used only as a means of making sure the accused appears for the next court hearing — meaning judges are not supposed to consider public safety when making decisions about bail.
Wisconsin judges still set high cash bails for serious crimes, using the justification that the accused is a high flight risk because he or she is facing a lengthy prison term, said Dane County Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara.
Later this month, a Wisconsin legislative study committee will consider various proposals to change the system. They include allowing or requiring judges to consider public safety when deciding whether to let a defendant out of jail pretrial, and sharply reducing or eliminating cash as a condition of release.
Researchers have found that spending even a few days in jail awaiting trial correlates with defendants commiting more crimes later on and pleading guilty even if they are innocent. It can also exacerbate poverty and cause defendants to lose child custody or employment. Holding them in jail also can be counterproductive; research shows defendants detained pretrial for even brief stays are less likely to show up for court than defendants not detained.
As more people are held due to inability to pay bail, the overall cost to taxpayers has ballooned, placing a financial burden on states, communities and their taxpayers.
The United States spends $14 billion annually on incarceration of approximately 450,000 inmates awaiting trial on any given day — or 63 percent of the country’s jailed population, according to a 2017 report by the Pretrial Justice Institute, which advocates for “safe, fair and effective” pretrial justice practices.
Such concerns led California to make the controversial decision in August 2018 to eliminate cash bail altogether, a move that the bail bond industry blocked pending a 2020 statewide referendum. In the new system, judges would detain defendants pretrial only if they are deemed dangerous or likely to skip court.
Policymakers and judges across the country, including in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Texas, Maryland and Ohio, have joined the chorus pushing to eliminate cash bail for minor offenses or set bail based on defendants’ ability to pay.
Increasingly, courts across the country have found use of cash bail unconstitutional.
In January 2018, a California appeals court ruled that failing to take into account a defendant’s ability to pay was unconstitutional. The case involved a man who was held on $350,000 bail for nearly a year after allegedly robbing another resident of his apartment building of a few dollars in cash and a bottle of cologne.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Maria G. Rosa made a similar point when overturning a ruling in a pretrial incarceration case.
“Discrimination on any basis, including on the basis of how much money someone has, is a violation of the equal protection clauses and due process clauses of the New York State and United States Constitutions,” Rosa wrote. “Freedom should not depend on an individual’s economic status.”
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Mississippi had 3,700 defendants who were in jail awaiting trial at least 90 consecutive days, including 875 who waited for over a year, according to a 2018 study by the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. The center, a criminal justice watchdog,  sued local governments in Mississippi over the detention of poor people, alleging they were running “debtors’ prisons.”
“Because it has been imposed in every criminal case in Mississippi for decades, it is hard to convince people to end the practice of money bail,” center director Cliff Johnson said. “The fact remains, however, that no one should have to pay for their freedom simply because they have been accused of a crime.”
Now-retired Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Kremers said he has seen that disparity play out in Wisconsin’s largest county. Back before the county changed its bail policies, many defendants could not afford even small cash bails.
Said Kremers: “$150, $200 and people are sitting in our jail. You can’t tell me those people are dangerous. If you thought they were dangerous, you wouldn’t set bail at $200, right? And they couldn’t get out.”
In 2015, Wisconsin had the 18th lowest pretrial incarceration rate among the states, according to data from the Vera Institute of Justice, which works with government to improve justice systems to ensure fairness, promote safety and strengthen communities.
That year, Wisconsin’s pretrial jail incarceration rate was 158.4 per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 209 per 100,000. In contrast, New Mexico, which had the highest rate, jailed 462 per 100,000 residents pretrial that year. Rhode Island had the lowest rate at 86.2 per 100,000.
Dane County is one of the few Wisconsin counties where clear data are available. According to an April 2018 report by McNamara, the Dane County judge, among all criminal cases in Dane County from 2012 to 2016, 81 percent of defendants were released on signature bonds, meaning they pay only if they fail to return for their next court date or violate terms of their release. For misdemeanor cases, that number was 86 percent.
The national problem of holding defendants on “excessively high” cash bail for low-level crimes is “probably not happening in Dane County,” McNamara concluded in his report. The judge said he is not aware of another similar report in Wisconsin, so it is hard to gauge how often this happens in the rest of the state.
Though Wisconsin is jailing fewer people pretrial than many other states, public defenders here say some of their clients still get stuck behind bars because they cannot afford bail.
Assistant state public defender Stanley Woodard, who works in Dane County, said even if just a small percentage of Dane County defendants are held for lack of money, there are still some who probably do not need to be in jail.
“I can’t look at a person as a statistic,” Woodard said. “I have to look at him as a human being and how it affects him.”
Public defender Fritz Anderson of Superior sighed when asked how many of his clients have been in jail simply because they could not pay bail. “Unfortunately, way too many.”
He recalled the case of a young man who came to Wisconsin to work. While in the state, he was charged with 1st degree reckless injury, a class D felony, and did not have $50,000 to buy release until his case was heard.
is the period from arrest through case resolution.
also called preventative detention, is the practice of detaining potentially dangerous defendants without bail as they wait for their court dates.
If the judge orders a , the defendant signs a promise to return to court and is released without having to post cash. This is sometimes called being . Signature bonds often still have a specified monetary amount attached to them, which defendants may have to pay if they miss court or violate the terms of their release.
“He was eventually exonerated, but he sat in jail for six months,” Anderson said. “That was six months of his life — gone.”
Three other public defenders interviewed by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism said they, too, have had Wisconsin clients who get stuck, unable to post cash bail. Laurie Sazama Osberg, a public defender from Eau Claire, had a client who sat for more than 170 days on a $1,000 cash bond — nearly double the time he was ultimately sentenced to after testing revealed the substance he possessed was not a drug.
“We have the presumption of innocence now, and yet we have people every single day that are being put in custody on high cash bail based on poverty alone,” State Public Defender Kelli Thompson said.
Attorney Blake Duren — who often takes cases from the Public Defender’s Office and works in counties including Adams, Dane, Iowa, Juneau, Richland and Sauk — said most of his low-income clients get released pretrial without having to post cash.
“Most of them are held on signature bonds,” Duren said. “And, especially in some of the smaller rural counties, most of the time the judge will ask the defendant, ‘How much can you pay?’ ”
Regardless of how and why some poor defendants are assigned cash bail, one thing remains true about Wisconsin’s jails: The rich can still buy their way out.
Rep. Cindi Duchow, R-Town of Delafield, plans to re-introduce a constitutional amendment to require judges to consider the danger a defendant might pose to the community when setting bail. The amendment passed the Assembly but stalled in the Senate.
The Legislature formed a study committee on bail and conditions of release to review Duchow’s proposal, examine other problems with Wisconsin’s pretrial laws and recommend solutions to the Legislature. Committee members have not yet decided what proposals they will recommend. Newly elected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers — whose goal is to cut the state prison population in half — has formed a panel to advise him on criminal justice and public safety matters.
Former Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, voted “yes” on Duchow’s proposal, explaining, “I wouldn’t want someone guilty of domestic abuse released to commit the same crime while awaiting trial.”
But Rep. Evan Goyke, D-Milwaukee, a former public defender, said Duchow’s proposal does not prevent dangerous but well-funded defendants from going free. A member of the study committee, Goyke is drawing up a proposal for “substantial reduction or elimination” of cash bail.
“Bail affects only those who can’t afford to pay the amount set by the judge, but doesn’t really prevent those who are dangerous from reentering the community as long as they can meet the payment,” Goyke said.
For example, in May 2018, a man posted a $500,000 bail in a St. Croix County case. His alleged crime? Fatally shooting his own son. The father has pleaded not guilty, and his attorney argues the 19-year-old shot himself accidentally or intentionally, according to the Hudson Star-Observer.
Kremers said what Wisconsin needs is a law that would allow judges to hold defendants who pose significant public safety risks with no option to bail out. Those not considered dangerous could be released without bail — taking a defendant’s ability to pay out of the equation.
“Until we get that, then our only option for someone who we all agree is very dangerous, a super flight risk, is to set high cash bail,” Kremers said. “I could set your bail at $500,000. What I don’t know is that you (the defendant) have a brother who’s a hedge fund manager who comes in and posts the $500,000 and you’re out.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has already approved such pretrial, or preventative, detention laws in other states. Wisconsin has such a law, but it has procedural flaws that render it useless. “It’s never been used — ever,” Kremers said.
Said McNamara: “Eventually, I do think there will come a time when cash bail is not being used. I mean, that is the trend, and I think that that’s probably a positive goal. But people must understand that with that will be preventative detention. … There will be some people — even though they are still innocent — there’s enough public safety concern to hold them in custody.”
The study committee is considering proposals that would allow judges to keep dangerous defendants in jail without bond before trial. Committee members said any changes should safeguard against excessive detention and prioritize release.
Committee members are scheduled to finalize their recommended legislation at their next meeting Jan. 29.
Goyke said he will vote against pretrial detention changes unless they are paired with cash bail limitations.
Spurgeon Kennedy, vice president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies, agrees with Goyke that cash bail should be limited or eliminated. Otherwise, he said, judges will keep setting bail amounts that put the poor behind bars.
“Money has no place in a fair and effective pretrial system,” Kennedy said.
While the study committee is mulling statewide changes, seven Wisconsin counties — Chippewa, Eau Claire, La Crosse, Marathon, Outagamie, Rock and Waukesha — are implementing new pretrial strategies as part of a pilot program.
Constance Kostelac, director of the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Information and Analysis, said these counties have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, mechanisms to help ensure defendants meet terms of their release and show up in court, as well as programs that divert defendants from jail altogether.
The counties will also pilot the Public Safety Assessment, an algorithm that helps judges identify low-risk defendants so they can be released to go home — without paying cash bail — pretrial. This tool, called a risk assessment, is already being used in Milwaukee and Dane counties.
“We are moving into this trying to create a systematic approach to pretrial across all these different jurisdictions,” said Tiana Glenna, coordinator for Eau Claire County’s Criminal Justice Collaborating Council.
Other counties are implementing changes on their own, but some — especially small, rural counties — do not have enough money to make significant changes, said La Crosse County Circuit Judge Scott Horne, a member of the committee.
“The resources aren’t in place,” Horne said. “They don’t have the tools. They don’t have the people. They don’t have the time.”
As Wisconsin takes small steps away from bail, Jason Hanson, a Dane County Circuit Court commissioner, warns not to disregard its usefulness. He said for many, cash bail is a fair tool for ensuring court appearances.
“Cash bond is often seen as a real evil more recently … and I’m not so sure I agree entirely with that — or that I even agree with it at all,” Hanson said. “Sometimes, it’s exactly the right answer.”
If cash bail were not an option, he added, more people might need to be kept in custody without any option for freedom.
Studies show the effects of pretrial detention can be counterproductive — and long lasting.
A 2013 Arnold Foundation study of the Kentucky jail system showed people held pretrial get sentences that are nearly three times longer than those who were released pending trial. Defendants who served an entire pretrial period in jail were four times more likely to be convicted of the charged crime than those released at some point during the pretrial waiting period, the study found.
Some fear releasing more defendants pretrial will put the public in danger. In fact, studies show long pretrial jail stays correlate to more criminality later on, making communities less safe in the long run.
“The intuitive response is the best way to save the community … is that we lock people up — ‘That will make us all safer,’ ” La Crosse County Circuit Judge Elliott Levine said. “And it just is not true.”
One study analyzed records of more than 150,000 defendants in Kentucky from 2009 and 2010. It found that low-risk defendants incarcerated before trial for just two to three days were 40 percent more likely to commit another crime pretrial than those who were released within 24 hours. The study was conducted by the Arnold Foundation, which works to advance community safety and improve the criminal justice system.
Those low-risk defendants held for eight to 14 days were 51 percent more prone to recidivism within two years of completion of their cases than those who were released within one day, the study found.
“The longer you detain a low-risk person, the more you destabilize them, and the more you destabilize them, the more likely they are to get rearrested or pick up new charges down the road,” said 1st Judicial District Court Administrator Holly Szablewski, who works in Milwaukee County.
And when people are released pretrial, they tend not to be a threat to public safety. In Milwaukee County, 98 percent of those released to pretrial supervision whose cases were resolved in 2017 did not commit new violent crimes, according to a presentation by Kremers.
In Washington, D.C., which has essentially eliminated the use of cash bail, 94 percent of defendants were released pretrial without cash bail in fiscal year 2017, Kennedy said. Ninety-one percent appeared for court, 88 percent did not commit a new crime and 98.5 percent did not commit a new violent crime.
“If I can release 94 percent and most come back, you don’t need money in the system,” Kennedy said.
Some politicians and judges have an interest in keeping the system as is, since change can give ammunition to opponents to label them as soft on crime.
In New York, the governor’s plan to reduce or eliminate cash bail for minor offenses was reportedly scuttled amid opposition from the state’s District Attorney Association.
When Georgia’s Republican governor proposed requiring judges to consider the financial circumstances of an accused person when setting bail, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills sent an email to the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, stating the governor did more for criminals “than Lucifer and all of his demons combined.”
Despite the heated rhetoric about “coddling” criminals, the plan passed Georgia’s GOP-run Legislature, and was signed into law in May.
Wisconsin lawmakers will soon have the chance to decide whether to join the tide of states reforming the way defendants are treated pretrial.
Penny Stinson, for one, is optimistic about the national picture. Stinson is past president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.
Speaking in June 2017 at a meeting of investigative journalists in Phoenix, Stinson marveled that even deeply conservative states such as Arizona were contemplating ending cash bail for minor offenses.
“For many years, I described my experience in pretrial (reform) as feeling like I was on the Titanic with a thimble bailing — no pun intended — water as fast as I could,” Stinson said. “Changing a culture is not an easy thing to do. … But we are certainly on the path to see some really meaningful reform in our criminal justice system.”
Any changes, however, will come too late for people like David, who now lives with family after losing his apartment while locked up. He regrets missing time with his son, which would have been spent fishing, jet-skiing or wishing him a happy birthday in person instead of on a phone call from the jail.
“I didn’t do it. I figured I would get out right away, but that didn’t happen.
“I was in jail,” David said, “for something I didn’t do.”
Reporter Riley Vetterkind contributed to this report. Sheila Cohen, one of the authors, is also a donor to the nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
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by Emily Hamer and Sheila Terman Cohen, Wisconsin Watch
This <a target="_blank" href="https://wisconsinwatch.org/2019/01/poor-stay-in-jail-while-rich-go-free-rethinking-cash-bail-in-wisconsin/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://wisconsinwatch.org">Wisconsin Watch</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wisconsinwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cropped-WCIJ_IconOnly_FullColor_RGB-1.png?fit=150%2C150&quality=100&ssl=1" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"><img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://wisconsinwatch.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=645835&ga4=G-D2S69Y9TDB" style="width:1px;height:1px;">

created: January 20th, 2019


text:
Controversial algorithms help decide who stays in jail before trial - Wisconsin Watch

February 17th, 2019
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Eddie Armstrong had been sitting in the Dane County Jail for nearly two weeks when a judge set him free to await trial. His release was based in part on computer-generated scores that rated Armstrong’s likelihood to return to court as fair and predicted he had a good chance of not committing a new crime.
Locked away from his fiancé and three children, Armstrong said, he was “going crazy.” “I was in there — felt like I was gonna die,” said Armstrong, 27. “I didn’t even want to eat no more. Their food is nasty, worst food you probably could ever get in the world.”
After 11 days in jail, Armstrong finally got his bail hearing on May 25. If the court commissioner granted a signature bond, Armstrong would be free to go home to await trial. All he had to do was sign a promise that he would return to court.
But if the court commissioner set a bail amount that he could not afford, Armstrong would spend more time in jail — even though he was presumed innocent. Armstrong’s attorney, Blake Duren, appointed by the public defender’s office, said it was unlikely his client would have been able to come up with bail.
Spending time locked up awaiting trial is a familiar story for low-income defendants across the nation.
On any given day in the United States, around half a million people are held in jail awaiting trial — a trend that has grown sharply since the 1980s, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that researches mass criminalization. Some poor defendants can spend days, weeks or even years behind bars, just waiting for their day in court, while rich defendants remain free.
Research shows even short jail stays can have devastating impacts on the accused, including job loss, missed rent payments, lost time with children or feeling pressured to plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. Such consequences are causing states to rethink the use of cash bail. This includes Wisconsin, where a legislative study committee is considering substantial changes to the state’s pretrial system.
On this day, Dane County Circuit Court Commissioner Brian Asmus ordered a signature bond, and Armstrong was released. But it was not an easy decision.
Armstrong had three pending misdemeanor cases in which he faced multiple charges, one of which stemmed from a physical fight with his fiancé on May 15. According to the criminal complaint, Armstrong threw her to the floor, punched her and took the phone out of her hand when she called 911. He also missed one of his court dates.
At his hearing, Armstrong stood quietly in a pale blue jail uniform as he listened to law intern Kelly Orth, representing the Dane County District Attorney’s Office, argue that he should pay a $300 cash bond for his freedom. Assistant state public defender Stanley Woodard asked that he be given a “second chance” on signature bond instead.
“Well, I think it’s a close call,” Asmus said. “I’ll order a signature bond and go along with the Public Safety Assessment.”
Adopted on a trial basis by the Dane County Circuit Court, the Public Safety Assessment, or the PSA, is a computer algorithm that uses defendants’ criminal history and past performance in court to predict the risk of them committing a new crime or failing to appear in court. The PSA is one of many of these statistical tools, called pretrial risk assessments, that are being used across the nation.
The tool rated Armstrong as a 3 out of 6 in terms of the probability that he would be arrested for a new crime, with 6 being the riskiest. He was rated a 4 out of 6 for how likely he was to fail to appear for his next court date. Armstrong was not flagged as someone who had a risk of committing a new violent crime.
Based on these risk scores, the PSA recommended that Armstrong be given a signature bond with no conditions.
And two months later, Armstrong did show up for court, family in tow, with no new crimes on his record. In this case, it appeared, the PSA helped the court commissioner make the right call.
But a little more than two months after that, on Oct. 5, Armstrong broke his promise. His final hearing, where he was to be sentenced in all three of his cases, was scheduled for 10 a.m.
By 10:33 a.m., Armstrong still had not shown up, and his hearing was officially canceled.
Later that day, though, Armstrong came to court. He thought the hearing was scheduled for the afternoon. The court cancelled a planned warrant for his arrest and rescheduled the hearing. This time, he showed up on time and was sentenced to 30 days for theft and disorderly conduct. The rest of his charges were dismissed.
“One problem is that some people think a risk assessment is like a Magic 8 Ball that works,” Dane County Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara said. “Or it’s like a crystal ball that works, and lets you see the future. That’s not what risk assessments do.”
As states rethink the use of bail, pretrial risk assessment tools are often at the center of it. In New Jersey, lawmakers got rid of cash bail almost entirely, prompting judges to release more defendants in line with the PSA’s recommendations.
A Wisconsin legislative study committee has drafted changes to the way Wisconsin’s pretrial system operates. At a Jan. 29 meeting, there was general agreement among committee members to move the proposals forward. The Joint Legislative Council, which creates committees to study problems identified by the Legislature, would make the final decision on whether to introduce the measures.
Among the proposals are bills that would make cash bail harder to use and allow judges to preventatively detain potentially dangerous defendants without bail. Both proposals are contingent on passage of a constitutional amendment, which must be approved by two consecutive Legislatures, the governor and, finally, a statewide referendum. That means those changes would be more than two years away.
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One of the bills not dependent on the amendment would make it clear in Wisconsin law that judges are allowed to consider the results of a validated pretrial risk assessment during bail hearings — tools already in use in Dane and Milwaukee counties.
Seven other counties — Chippewa, Eau Claire, La Crosse, Marathon, Outagamie, Rock and Waukesha — have agreed to pilot the PSA. Other counties across the state have expressed interest in implementing such tools, said Constance Kostelac, director of the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Information and Analysis.
The idea is that these data-driven tools can help judges better identify low-risk defendants who can be released without bail, saving them from additional disruption and punishment and saving taxpayers the cost of incarceration. Judges then detain or assign bail only to the riskiest defendants.
But in the criminal justice system, the use of algorithms to aid in decision-making has sparked debate.
A common concern is that racial biases could creep into the calculation, exacerbating existing racial disparities within the system. Others argue there is not enough evidence to prove the tools are actually effective, and stakeholders should focus on other bail reform strategies, such as automatic pretrial release of misdemeanor or nonviolent offenders.
With these concerns in mind, nearly 120 criminal justice organizations signed a July 30 statement standing against the use of pretrial risk assessment tools, arguing jurisdictions should instead “decarcerate most accused people pretrial.” Proponents say even if risk assessments are flawed, they still might be an improvement on the way judges currently make decisions.
The tools could help move pretrial systems “from being really, really, really bad, to less bad and on the road to better,” said Kit Kerschensteiner, director of legal and advocacy services of Disability Rights Wisconsin and a member of a committee examining ways to bring more evidence-based practices into Wisconsin’s criminal justice system.
On the other hand, if authorities are not careful about how they use pretrial risk assessment tools, it could undermine efforts to stop jailing people just because they are too poor to afford bail.
As of 2017, about 20 percent of Americans, and 26 percent of Wisconsin residents, lived in a jurisdiction that used a scientifically validated pretrial risk assessment tool, according to the Pretrial Justice Institute, a Maryland-based group that advocates for “fair and effective” pretrial practices.
From 2012 to 2017, 28 states enacted laws relating to the use of risk assessment tools during pretrial, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. More than a dozen states — including Utah in 2018 — have authorized such a tool statewide.
In July, the PSA, the most commonly used tool, was released nationally for any jurisdiction to adopt. Arnold Ventures, formerly known as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which developed the tool, made it available on the PSA’s website for free, along with guidance on how to implement it.
“My general impression is that the world of pretrial is moving very, very quickly towards mass adoption of the Public Safety Assessment,” said Logan Koepke, senior policy analyst at Upturn, a nonprofit that researches and advocates for technologies that promote equity in the criminal justice system.
It is not hard to see why some criminal justice advocates are excited about the algorithms.
Pretrial is a tough spot in the criminal justice system, McNamara, the Dane County judge, said. Judges have to balance the liberty of people who are presumed innocent with the potential danger to the public of releasing someone whom police have apprehended.
The first time McNamara released a defendant because the man was sitting for “too long” and was simply “too poor” to post cash bail was when McNamara was a new judge in 2009.
Eight hours after the defendant was released, the man stabbed his brother.
“The public, defendants, everybody, don’t want to hear a judge say ‘I don’t know,’ ” McNamara said. “But I personally, admit I don’t know. I don’t know the future. I don’t know human nature.
“And even defendants themselves don’t know those things. … They may not know that right as soon as they get a chance, they’re going to repeat some of the same behavior that was intolerable.”
Jeremy Travis, executive vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures, said decisions made by judges about whether to assign cash bail are “highly subjective and reflexive” and “made in only a matter of minutes with potentially life-changing consequences for the person who’s held.”
Risk assessment tools, on the other hand, can cut through psychological biases that humans have, said Chris Griffin, visiting professor and research scholar at University of Arizona’s law school.  Instead of relying on an “amorphous” impression of a defendant, a judge can look at a defendant’s “demonstrated, empirical, objective risk.”
And research shows the vast majority of defendants are not that risky. In Kentucky, from July 1, 2013 to Dec. 30, 2014, when the PSA was first implemented, 85.2 percent of those who were released pretrial showed up for their court dates, 89.4 percent did not commit a new crime and 98.9 percent did not commit a new violent crime, according to a study of the PSA.
Nevertheless, the researchers concluded that “risk assessments are not silver bullets, but rather decision-making tools that require ongoing refinement.”
At the very least, McNamara said, these tools give judges more information.
“Most research has shown that … an informed human judgment together with an objective risk analysis produces better outcomes that appear to be more accurate and more fair,” McNamara said.
Upturn’s Koepke, who recently wrote a paper on the potential dangers of using risk assessment tools, said people tend to assume the tools work since they are based on data and statistics. But Koepke said the “jury’s still out” on whether they maximize public safety and court attendance while decreasing the number of people held pretrial.
Megan Stevenson, an assistant law professor at George Mason University, said risk assessments have a “glossy veneer of science” but there is a “sore lack of research” showing their effectiveness. In a recent paper published in the Minnesota Law Review, Stevenson wrote that when the assessments improve one outcome, like release rates, they can negatively impact another, such as appearances in court.
Early data, however, show jurisdictions have seen success, including New Jersey, which implemented PSAs statewide in January 2017. New Jersey’s pretrial population decreased by 43.9 percent from December 2015 to December 2018 after it began using the PSA, according to data from the New Jersey Courts. At the same time, crime rates in New Jersey decreased, the state reported.
Similar results were seen in Lucas County, Ohio, which implemented the PSA in January 2015. By August 2016, the proportion of pretrial defendants released on their own recognizance nearly doubled, while pretrial crime was cut in half. Among all defendants who were released pretrial, the proportion that were re-arrested while released was cut from 20 percent to 10 percent. The percentage of defendants skipping their court dates was “dramatically reduced,” Arnold Ventures reported.
Koepke countered that for research done in jurisdictions where multiple reform efforts are underway, it may not be clear which one is driving positive change. In New Jersey, for example, pretrial incarceration was decreasing before the PSA was put in place, he said.
Philadelphia reduced its jail population by more than 30 percent and plans to close one of its jails — all without risk assessment, said Mark Houldin, policy director for the Defender Association of Philadelphia.
Sharad Goel, an assistant professor at Stanford University in management science and engineering, said he thinks most criminologists would agree the evidence suggests risk assessment works but is not definitive.
“Generally,” he said, “fewer people are detained, and crime rates don’t go up.”
Waukesha County Circuit Court Chief Judge Jennifer Dorow said her sheriff, district attorney, public defender, court commissioner and herself disagree on many things in the bail system — but not risk assessment.
“There was one thing we were all in agreement on,” Dorow said. “And that was, it was far better to have a risk assessment tool than to not have one at all — that it was that valuable of a piece of information.”
But Houldin said risk assessments typically bring “harmful effects,” and jurisdictions should look first at other reforms that could reduce their pretrial jail populations.
In Dane County, Harvard’s Access to Justice Lab is conducting a randomized control trial — a method often called the “gold standard” of empirical research — to test whether the PSA is effective, said Griffin, who is the former research director at Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab and continues to help lead the research in Dane County.
As part of the trial, which started in 2017, the PSA is used in nearly half of Dane County criminal cases, creating a “world” with the PSA and a “world” without it. Griffin said researchers will then compare the two to see if the PSA improves judges’ decisions. This method mitigates the muddying effects of time and multiple reform efforts happening at once.
Griffin said the anticipated result is the “best possible evidence” of the effectiveness of the PSA, but the final report is not expected until 2022.
Asked whether the tool is working in Dane County, Griffin said, “It would be too anecdotal and too premature to draw such conclusions.”
Koepke said risk assessments may overestimate a defendant’s risk by failing to factor in recent bail changes — such as text message reminders or limiting cash bail — that can make people less likely to skip out on court or commit crime. Studies show long pretrial jail stays correlate to more criminality later on.
Colorado, for example, reformed its bail system in May 2013 but is still using a risk assessment tool based on data from before October 2012 — prior to the changes being enacted. According to Koepke’s analysis, defendants showed up for court more often than the tool predicted.
Houldin said when someone is labeled high risk it “becomes a defining characteristic of that person.” In Philadelphia, Houldin said, 95 percent of juveniles who were labeled as high risk by a pretrial risk assessment were detained.
Judges also might “level up” their judgment to ensure public safety, Koepke said. That could lead to more people being locked up or getting more conditions of release.
Koepke said he sees signs of this overestimation effect happening in New Jersey. Many more people than expected are being released with stringent conditions, such as electronic monitoring or frequent in-person check-ins.
Having more people placed under electronic monitoring is “trading one injustice for another,” said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund, which organized the July statement standing against risk assessment.
Said Koepke: “Reformers might be looking around like, ‘Hey what happened? Why are we still at the exact same percentage of failure to appear rate and re-arrest rate even though we’ve completely tried to revolutionize our system?’ ”
Almost all groups agree important precautions need to be taken if a jurisdiction chooses to move forward with risk assessments.
Criminal justice leaders say they should complement other information, such as arguments from prosecutors and defense attorneys. Algorithms also should be tested on the local population for accuracy and continually reassessed for problems, including racial bias. Most of all, those critical of risk assessments say they should not be used to lock more people up.
Gupta said risk assessment is not a “panacea” for bail reform, adding, “We can’t simply end money bail and replace it with these tools.”
Koepke said counties should focus on other changes such as expanding pretrial services or limiting cash bail, which he said are more effective at reducing pretrial jail populations. Pretrial services help defendants show up for court and comply with conditions of release by providing text, phone call or written reminders, in-person check-ins, electronic monitoring, and drug and alcohol testing.
State Rep. Evan Goyke, D-Milwaukee, and Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, members of the Wisconsin study committee, said they will work together to draft legislation to provide funding for such services across Wisconsin.
Said Travis of Arnold Ventures: “Risk assessment can help make decisions about who should be in, who should be out — but it (bail reform) is much bigger than an algorithm.”
The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
Thank you for reading this article and building a more informed Wisconsin. Before you go, we'd like to ask you to support Wisconsin Watch's accountability reporting.
In this critical election year, trustworthy local journalism is more important than ever. And in a time period where newsrooms across the country are cutting back, we have aims to expand and meet Wisconsin's ever-growing informational needs.
Tax-deductible donations from readers like you make all this possible. We're in the middle of our Spring Fundraising Campaign, and its our goal to raise $7,500 to support elections coverage in Wisconsin.
Thank you for all you do.
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Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Jeff Bauer, digital editor and producer, at jbauer@wisconsinwatch.org
by Emily Hamer, Wisconsin Watch
This <a target="_blank" href="https://wisconsinwatch.org/2019/02/controversial-algorithms-help-decide-who-stays-in-jail-before-trial/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://wisconsinwatch.org">Wisconsin Watch</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wisconsinwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/cropped-WCIJ_IconOnly_FullColor_RGB-1.png?fit=150%2C150&quality=100&ssl=1" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"><img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://wisconsinwatch.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=665375&ga4=G-D2S69Y9TDB" style="width:1px;height:1px;">

created: February 17th, 2019