Hosted by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ)
Law & Justice Center
Salt Lake City, Utah
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
11:30am - 1:00pm
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MEMBERS PRESENT: John T. Nielsen, Chair John Adams Dan Becker Paul Boyden Susan Burke David Gomez for Mike Chabries Kal Farr Tony Garcia for Sid Groll Keith Hamilton Haruko Moriyasu Anthony Smith Joe Tafua Judge Bill Thorne Deidre Tyler |
STAFF PRESENT: Sandra Kinoshita |
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MEMBERS ABSENT: David Biggs Leticia Medina Cmsnr Bob Flowers Sheriff Brad Slater Brent Johnson Joan Smith Dan Maldonado Carolina Webber Judge Tyrone Medley Michael Zimmerman Ed McConkie |
GUESTS PRESENT:
Mike Haddon, CCJJ Research Russ Van Vleet, UofU Social Research Institute |
1. WELCOME, REVIEW OF MINUTES FROM LAST MEETING, & AGENDA REVIEW: (John T. Nielsen)
Lunch was served. John Nielsen called the meeting to order. The minutes from Meeting #11 were approved without further amendment.
The members voted on the collective priorities for 2003 at the October Commission meeting and via email. There was a tie, but Priority #4 is already in process by the subcommittee. The results of the voting are:
2003 Collective Priorities
1. Collect and analyze data in response to the new Utah law on law enforcement racial profiling. This priority includes education about the purpose of the law and about data limitations.
2. Develop strategic plans/goals to bridge, facilitate tensions, and integrate communication processes and information exchange between the Commission, Advisory Council, and community.
3. Strengthen and expand the pool of applicants of color.
4. Review current complaint processes, develop a standardized complaint form, and establish a complaint notification process to the Commission.
2. DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES IMPLEMENTATION UPDATE (Susan Burke)
The Commission was referred to Adam Trupp, Associate Director of DHS, in regards to implementation. DHS is aware of the issues underlying them and are trying to pursue more information.
With regard to the specific recommendations, DHS is:
working to gather and report more information on race/ethnicity of persons served and to correlate both to type of service,
working to analyze the information available to identify concerns or inconsistencies,
examining ways to gather more accurate socio-economic status information
providing data to researchers investigating these issues.
DHS is not coordinating well with Youth Corrections or the courts regarding either research or responses to the recommendations.
These issues will be taken to the DCFS administrative team during the next few weeks to determine whether they will take a more active position with regard to any of the recommendations.
The Commission' s Research Subcommittee would like to further suggest that DHS examine kids in the foster care system.
Discussion/Action Items: The Commission would like to engage DHS in dialogue to at least start the implementation process. This recommendation is included in the Commission Annual Report (the At-a-Glance table), and will be shared with Robin Arnold-Williams, DHS Director. The Commission has also requested a subsequent implementation report from DHS in approximately 6-10 months.
Action Item #1: The Commission Chair/Co-Chair shall contact Ms. Arnold-Williams to inform her of progress to date, accept suggested amendments to the current implementation language in the Annual Report, and request a subsequent implementation report.
Action Item #2: The Juvenile Disproportionate Minority Confinement Committee (DMC) will be asked to meet with DHS officials to brainstorm implementation methods. The DMC was the Task Force subcommittee to originally forward the two recommendations at hand.
3. RACIAL PROFILING LAW PRESENTATION (Mike Haddon & Russ Van Vleet)
There is no clear way to address or measure racial profiling (RP). The current law collects three data elements: race of driver, reason for the stop, and the race & gender of the officer.
They cannot purport if RP exists from just these data fields alone. Utah collects insufficient information. It is relevant, but not enough. Ideally, they need 25 - 30 identified data fields.
Professor Theresa Martinez and Russ Van Vleet have met with Salt Lake Chief Rick Dinse. His department is collecting much more data than mandated by the law, as is the Utah Highway Patrol. However, those are just two departments.
CCJJ has met with Rep. Duane Bourdeaux. CCJJ is looking at jurisdictions. They are able to identify anomalies. The anomalies found should be studied by the jurisdictions. This, along with behavior changes that stem solely from the dynamic of being monitored/studied, are the positives of the current law.
Citizens self-reporting their race on their driver' s license applications is estimated to be >50%. This will require sampling and sub-sampling by jurisdictions when conducting research studies. Race of driver is a necessary data field.
Costs to gather data are substantial and are specifically tied to the component of collecting information on the officer. For larger departments along the Wasatch Front, it is estimated at $50,000. Nationally, researchers have found the officer demographics to be a secondary data field at best (so, officer demographics are not strongly related to racial profiling, are easily "cheated" on for data collection purposes, and extremely difficult to distinguish between officer perception and reality).
Commissioners have concern over the wording on the driver' s license applications. Currently, it specifically states that the data is collected to measure the existence of racial profiling and that one' s race will be numerically coded ON the license. This is not consistent with the law. See action items.
The Commission was asked to take a stance on the removal of the officer data collection.
This omission would cut the cost for some from $50,000 to $20,000 and decrease officer opposition; the Chiefs support the omission
Rep. Chad Bennion is willing to sponsor legislation if more relevant data will be collected and expenses decreased; CCJJ working with him
Law enforcement requested that more education and dialogue should include that this is not a RP law so much as DATA COLLECTION.
CCJJ (Mike Haddon) must report to the legislature, likely next fall, about the implementation of the RP law and data limitations.
The Commission voted to support the removal of the collection of officer data from the law.
ACTION ITEMS
We will send a letter to Rep. Bennion stating our position on removing the collection of officer data
Kal Farr will discuss a language change with Commissioner Flowers this afternoon.
If language is not changed, the Commission will then invite a representative from the Drivers License Division to the next Commission meeting to explain their data collection procedure and dialogue about this issue.
4. ANNUAL REPORT UPDATE (Keith Hamilton)
All Commissioners should have a copy of the Annual Report draft. Please review and submit any changes by Monday December 2, 2002.
Similar to the title page of the Task Force Final Report, three inspirational quotes will be included on the Commission Annual Report title page. Submissions to date were handed out. Please submit any additional quotes for consideration, as well as any preferences from the list, BY Monday December 2, 2002. The Operations Committee will be asked to make the final decision from those received at the December meeting.
Agency final approval of the Annual Report is required by Monday December 2, 2002.
We are on target for the January 2003 release. A sign-up sheet was passed around for those agencies requesting more than one Annual Report, as well as a polite solicitation from agencies for printing costs.
Please keep in mind that the distribution of the Annual Report was planned to be primarily electronic, due to costs. The limited number of hard copies will not include the Appendices (Agency Response Documents). The sign-up sheet was to measure the need for full copies which would include the Appendices' and will require outside funding.
The initial estimate for number of hard copies included only one report per Commission member/agency, Advisory Council members, and a very limited number of additional copies. References to the web are strongly encouraged.
All further Annual Report work will be conducted electronically as we likely will not meet before its release. If you are asked to submit any information, please respect the deadlines imposed.
5. ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Advisory Council voted in their leadership for 2003-2004.
Mary Daniels (Chair): small business owner & works closely with Calvary Baptist Church
Larry Houston (Vice Chair): Boy Scouts of America - Salt Lake Executive Council
Jah-Juin Ho (Secretary): 2nd District Court; interned with the Racial and Ethnic Fairness programs
Dr. Deidre Tyler (At Large): Professor at Salt Lake Community College, Commission member
Jan Saeed (At Large): Director, Institute for the Healing of Racism
6. NEXT MEETING DETAILS (John Nielsen)
There will be NO December Commission meeting, as the regular date falls on a holiday.
The January Commission meeting has been changed to accommodate legislative session. It was requested that the new RP bill/language be included in this meeting' s materials and/or be presented.
The next Commission meeting will be WEDNESDAY JANUARY 15, 2003, hosted by the Utah State Bar. Meeting details will be sent this week. Meeting reminders begin two weeks prior to the meeting.
6. ADJOURNMENT: (John Nielsen)
There being no further business to discuss, the meeting adjourned at 1:00p.m.
Special thank you to Ed McConkie, Susan Burke and CCJJ for hosting this Commission meeting.