How New Orleans Criminalizes Women, Girls, Youth and LGBTQ & Latinx People 2 PREPARED BY
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How New Orleans Criminalizes Women, Girls, Youth and LGBTQ & Latinx People 2 PREPARED BY TAKEMA ROBINSON ANNETTE HOLLOWELL AUDREY STEWART CARYN BLAIR CHALLENGING CRIMINALIZATION: HOW NEW ORLEANS CRIMINALIZES WOMEN, GIRLS, YOUTH AND LGBTQ & LATINX PEOPLE New Orleans has been labeled “ground zero” for criminal justice reform in America in a nod to the city’s history of overreliance on incarceration as well as recent successes in the long battle for criminal justice reform. Following decades of organizing and advocacy, reform of the city’s police and jails has taken root in the form of federal monitoring and oversight of the jail and police department and in drastic reduction of the daily jail population from 6,000 in 2005 to less than 1,800 in July 2015.1 Responding to the concerted efforts of grassroots organizations—including Voice of The Experienced (VOTE),* Youth BreakOUT!, Women With A Vision (WWAV), Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition (OPPRC) and national allies like the Vera Institute and the MacArthur Foundation—Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration has made criminal justice reform a central priority over the past six years. However, despite these considerable strides, New Orleans remains a national and world leader in systemic criminalization and incarceration of its citizens. New Orleans is Louisiana’s largest city and This study centers the voices and experiences also the city with the largest incarceration of youth, women, girls, Latinxs and LGBTQ rate. In a state that incarcerates more citizens people who face particular injustices due per capita than anywhere else in the world, to intersecting and interlocking systems New Orleans ranks at the top of the list, of white supremacy and patriarchy as they with approximately 90 percent of those are shuttled into and through New Orleans’ incarcerated being Black.2 And although criminal justice system. Despite the steadfast significant progress has been made, the work by organizations representing and reform efforts and support programs have fighting for these vulnerable communities, focused primarily on the impact of the interventions have been slow to take root and criminal justice system on Black men and criminal justice reforms are sorely lacking boys, while little to no attention has been in strategies to address the complex web of paid to particular impacts on women, girls, barriers and burdens that cause New Orleans’ Latinxs and LGBTQ people. most vulnerable populations to fall prey to the New Orleans criminal justice machinery. �. “The New Orleans Jails, 10 Years Later,” New York Times. August 27, 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/opinion/the-new-orleans-jails-10- years-later.html?ref=opinion&_r=1> (September 6, 2016) *Formerly Voice of the Ex-Offender, the organization changed its name to be more inclusive to the communities impacted by New Orleans’ criminal justice system. 2. Rainey, Richard, “Could New Orleans’ Prison System Lock Up Fewer People? Study Underway.” The -Picayune. May 27, 2015. <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/05/could_new_orleans_prison_syste.html> (September 6, 2016). 4 STUDYING CRIMINALIZATION IN NEW ORLEANS: METHODOLOGY For this study, we applied a variety of research methods to gather data and perspectives from those directly impacted by the system and those working to reform the system. We conducted four focus groups with directly impacted people and 40 interviews with 115 informants. We also reviewed public data sources and action research and data collection efforts conducted by organizations working for criminal justice reform in New Orleans. All research was conducted between March and June 2016. 115 STUDY SUBGROUP NUMBER OF INFORMANTS INTERVIEWEES BY SUBGROUP 40 WOMEN 26 INTERVIEWS GIRLS 31 COMPLETED YOUTH 35 LATINXS 17 4 LGBTQ COMMUNITY 6 FOCUS GROUPS CONDUCTED 5 BRIEF TIMELINE OF NEW ORLEANS CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM Criminalization of Black New Orleanians has deep roots, reaching back to the Code Noir laws introduced in 1724, which imposed a possible sentence of death for crimes such as burglary and striking a white person; restricted enslaved people’s religious practice, gatherings and movement; and required free people of color to treat white people with “respect” or face criminal charges. Prompted by the large number of Blacks in Louisiana, the Code Noir was enacted in 1724 to regulate relations between slaves and white colonists. The Code Noir had already been adopted in French colonies in the Caribbean as early as 1685. The code governed the institution of slavery all the way through the Civil War, and mandated that all slaves be baptized Roman Catholic and that they married in the Church. Beyond this, slaves had no rights and couldn’t even be freed by their slave masters without the approval of the Superior Council. Source: Wall, Bennett et al., Louisiana: A History. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc. 2002. Similarly, criminalization of LGBTQ people Stonewall rebellion, which was a watershed has deep roots nationally and locally, as moment for the national gay rights movement. evidenced by legislation criminalizing gay Throughout years of protesting, organizing sex and requiring clothing to match assigned and political action, laws that criminalize gender, as well as historical and current LGBTQ people have remained on the books accounts of routine and brutal harassment well into the 2000s, including some that of LGBTQ people by New Orleans police. remain today. In 2016, Louisiana’s governor, For many LGBTQ people, police harassment John Bel Edwards, issued an executive order has been a routine occurrence, especially in prohibiting discrimination based on sexual spaces where gay, lesbian and transgender orientation and gender identity in government people have historically gathered. This form and state contracts. The anti-discrimination of targeted police harassment was the spark law was swiftly deemed unconstitutional by of a 1966 uprising of trans women in San State District Judge Todd Hernandez because Francisco’s Tenderloin district and of the 1969 it sought to create or expand state law.3 3. “Louisiana gov. John Bel Edwards’ LGBT rights order thrown out by judge,’ CBS News. Dec. 14, 2016. < http://www.cbsnews.com/news/louisiana-governor- john-bel-edwards-lgbt-rights-order-judge/ > (February 1, 2017). 6 The 1970s set the stage for the modern surge consenting sexual behavior in private between of criminalization and a massive rise in adults of the same sex (this ruling was incarceration. As President Nixon declared eventually overturned by Lawrence v. Texas in the “war on drugs” in 1971 and new laws were 2003). passed targeting organized crime, a lawsuit Incarceration rates continued to climb settlement in Louisiana incentivized the throughout the 1990s when President Clinton building of larger local jails to house state passed the Violent Crime Control and Law prisoners. Inmates at Angola, Louisiana Enforcement Act of 1994, and tough-on- State Penitentiary, had filed a lawsuit in 1971 crime rhetoric dominated the political stage. over deplorable conditions and crowding, As jail and prison populations skyrocketed, eventually leading to a settlement agreement New Orleans-based organizations responded under which local sheriffs were housing with organizing, litigation and advocacy. In thousands of State Department of Corrections February of 1998, the Juvenile Justice Project (DOC) inmates. Per diem compensation for of Louisiana filed suit over conditions at housing inmates rose from $4.50 per day in Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth, and the 1970s to nearly $20 per day by 1990, which The New York Times published a scathing adjusted for inflation is a 33% increase in 20 investigative report on the state of juvenile years. Influenced by this financial incentive, justice in Louisiana and conditions at the local sheriffs filled their jails with DOC youth prison. Women With A Vision was inmates and opposed reforms that would founded in 1989 by a group of Black women reduce incarceration rates.4 In the mid-1970s, in response to the impact of the HIV/AIDS the Orleans Parish Prison housed about 800 epidemic and substance abuse on New inmates. By the time Hurricane Katrina Orleans’ communities of color and the need struck 30 years later, the jail population had for advocacy to address the injustices that increased tenfold to almost 8,000.5 affect Black women in New Orleans. Orleans During the 1980s and 1990s, criminalization Parish Prison Reform Coalition formed in of youth and LGBTQ people increased 2004, urging sheriff candidates in that year’s dramatically, fueled by punitive responses to election to sign on to a ten-point platform of the AIDS crisis and narratives about “crack jail and criminal justice reform. babies” and “super-predators.” The term When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the “super-predator” was coined by John Dilulio Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) housed nearly in 1995 and popularized by a Time magazine 8,000 pre-trial and sentenced inmates. These article warning of the dangers posed by out- inmates were trapped in the jail as floodwaters of-control urban youth. Within a few years, rose, while Sheriff’s Office officials had no nearly every state had expanded laws that plan for their evacuation or safety, eventually exposed youth as young as 13 to the adult evacuating inmates to a highway overpass. criminal justice system and adult sentences, In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many including life in prison without parole.6 organizations and individuals used this period LGBTQ people were also under fire; the 1986 of extreme chaos in the city’s criminal justice Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick system as an opportunity to tackle massive upheld the right of states to criminalize problems and long-standing issues. They 4. Chang, Cindy, "Louisiana Incarcerated (2012)," The Times-Picayune. Revised, 2015. < http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/page/louisiana_prison_capital. html> (July 05, 2016). 5. Reckdahl, Katy, "How to Shrink a Jail," Next City. March 28, 2016.