Kevin Mannix, former head of Oregon’s Republican Party and four-time loser in his bids to become Attorney General and Governor, is desperately trying to remain politically relevant and he is doing it at Oregon’s expense. He has already collected and turned in enough signatures to qualify Initiative Petition
40, which would create a new set of mandatory minimum sentences for drug and property-related crimes. Mannix thinks it will be easy to sell getting tough on drug and property crime to voters while gathering him increased notoriety to advance his expected 2008 campaign for Attorney General. Here is
the problem: if IP 40 passes it would wreak havoc on Oregon’s budget, seriously diminishing resources for public education, the Oregon Health Plan and other critical services. Not only that, IP 40 would actually make crime and public safety worse.
Partnership for Safety and Justice (PSJ), formerly Western Prison Project, is a statewide organization that advocates for a criminal justice system that is more just and that better creates the types of safe communities we want to live in. PSJ is working to build a broad-based and powerful coalition of organizations to defeat IP 40 and potentially pass a better alternative. We know consequences of IP 40 would be devastating for Oregon both fiscally and in terms of its human toll. Here’s why.
Mandatory minimum sentences take the power out of the hands of judges and juries to decide the most appropriate sentence for each individual. It is a one-size-fits all approach to justice that assigns mandatory sentences regardless of the circumstances.
We also know that mandatory minimum sentences are incredibly expensive, driving the prison population up and forcing the state to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into building new prisons. The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission estimates that if IP 40 passes it will expand our prison system
upwards of 45% in just the first three years. The Department of Corrections isn’t equipped to deal with such a sudden influx of people and would have to build up to three new prisons. The projected price tag for this terrible initiative is projected at over $400 million a biennium, not including the cost of prison construction.
The saddest part of IP 40 is that it actually prevents judges from providing more effective sentences like access to treatment and Drug Court. The property crime that IP 40 is focused on is driven by drug addiction. Yet, rather than addressing the root causes and expanding access to treatment, the initiative chooses to warehouse people in prisons that are ill-prepared to help people to succeed once they return to the community. Research around the country suggests that investing in community and prison-based drug treatment would be a far more cost effective approach to addressing drug and
property crime than building more prisons. Oh, we almost forgot, shouldn’t we focus on strategies that help people turn their lives around?
Although we didn’t ask for this fight, we have a unique and urgent opportunity engage in a statewide dialogue with voters about shifting away from an over-reliance on incarceration and towards investing in prevention. In 2007, Oregon gained the dubious distinction of spending more on prisons than on
higher education. Help us stop the madness!
Additional Background for PSJ’s
Treatment Not Incarceration Policy Proposal
What is your current strategy for moving this idea forward? What is the general timeline?
There is a two fold strategy for this campaign.
1) We are working to convince legislative leadership that they should use the February supplemental session to refer an initiative to the ballot to compete directly with Mannix’s IP 40. We believe running a proactive campaign rather than just a “No” campaign would be not only more winnable but more useful for long term movement-building. We want to be able to get people to vote for progressive approaches to public safety rather than simply voting against destructive ideas. So far, legislators have expressed interest in a referral and they are in a process of generating one now that is built on the need to expand access to drug treatment for addiction driven offenders. We think this is a viable and positive step. Nevertheless, there are a lot of political factors involved and getting a legislative referral may not happen. If it does happen, in March we begin to build a campaign to get voters to vote “Yes” on the referral and “No” on IP 40. If there is no referral, we begin a straight “No on IP 40” campaign.
2) The second phase of this work is really about driving a successful campaign from April to November. This will involve traditional electoral organizing work. We will need to engage in targeted voter education including community presentations and canvassing. We will need to do voter identification work including canvassing and phone banking. And of course, we will need a healthy dose of Get-Out-the-Vote work. Additionally, we will plan creative media-grabbing events that clearly communicate that Oregon’s future will not be found behind bars.
Based on the list of prizes that are available for the winner of this contest, what prizes would you select and how would you put them to use?
Mobilization is definitely a strength of the Bus Project’s and we could potentially want to tap the Lobby Day prize as early as the February session. Depending on our read of the political landscape, we may want to mobilize allies for a Lobby Day/Demonstration on the capitol steps in order to ensure legislators have the political will to pass a referral. Added juice to that effort from the Bus Project could put us over the top.
If we had enough Days for Democracy credits we would definitely utilize a Bus canvass for voter education and identification. We have not yet targeted particular districts for on-the-ground organizing, but that will happen early in the campaign. We believe canvassing will be a critical strategy. Because this is a presidential election year and campaigning has started earlier than ever, our sense is that voters will be fairly tuned out to election related tv and radio ads early on. Therefore in order to cut through the election related noise, we will need to have face to face interactions with voters. We would definitely play to one of the Bus Project’s core strengths.
Where will such monetary donations go and how will they be used? How will you be able to put volunteers to use and what kinds of tasks will they perform?
We will use all donations to pay for public education expenses directly related to the “No on IP 40” campaign. Volunteers could be used in a variety of ways. We can use volunteers to help with the logistics of campaign related events like presentations and house parties, to organizing phone banks, to putting together voter education material and making presentations.
Please include a 3-4 sentence biography of the presenter of your idea, a description of your organization, or a hybrid of the presenter and the organization.
Amy Elkanich is on the Board of the Safety and Justice Action Fund, the affiliated 501c4 of Partnership for Safety and Justice. As a former public defender and a practicing criminal defense attorney, Amy is very familiar with the weaknesses in Oregon’s criminal justice system. Also, as a former lobbyist for the Oregon Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, she is also well acquainted with the legislative process.