Sweeping changes to Misdemeanor Crimes Proposed - Urgent!


NEW BILL ATTACKING PUBLIC SAFETY IS BEING VOTED ON IN THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ON MARCH 26.

Senate bill (S.C.6935) is being voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee TOMORROW – on Thursday March 26. This bill duplicates many of the most harmful provisions in a bill previously proposed by Senator Foley (S.F. 200) and, as a result, will greatly compromise public safety if enacted. Please contact Senator Linda Higgins, of Minneapolis , who serves on the committee, to let her know that you oppose this bill and any other bill that reduces our response to misdemeanor crime. Her contact information is below.

People have asked why this is a bad bill for public safety. Below are several reasons:

1. This bill reduces DWI penalties for chronic DWI offenders. A fourth DWI offense would no longer be a felony, but a gross misdemeanor. This will make our roads less safe and send the wrong message to chronic drunk drivers.

2. This bill reduces all ordinance violations – which include most of our livability offenses (i.e. many types of trespass, aggressive solicitation, loitering with intent to commit a crime, lurking, noisy or unruly assembly, possession of drug paraphernalia in a public place, and many more offenses) – from misdemeanors to petty misdemeanors, no matter how many times the offender has previously been convicted.

3. This bill reduces many statutory misdemeanor violations – including but not limited to theft, criminal damage to property, receiving stolen copper scrap metal, driving without insurance, driving without a license, and many more offenses – from misdemeanors to petty misdemeanors. While this provision only applies to first-time offenders, officers will have no way of knowing whether an offender has a prior conviction. Therefore, in reality, these offenses will be treated as petty misdemeanors no matter how bad the offender’s criminal record is.

4. The reduction of these offenses from misdemeanors to petty misdemeanors means:
1. These offenses will no longer be considered crimes.
2. Police may no longer arrest offenders who commit these crimes, even if offenders are likely to continue their criminal behavior if not arrested, and even if offenders are unlikely to appear in court.
3. Prosecutors will rarely have a chance to ask the court to restrict an offender from a geographic area, such as your neighborhood, when they commit one or more of these offenses, no matter how chronic their behavior. Geographic restrictions have been an invaluable tool used by judges and prosecutors to restore neighborhoods targeted by chronic livability offenders.
4. Prosecutors may no longer collect restitution for victims on any hit and run or careless driving accident, and on many crimes of theft and criminal damage to property.
5. Crime victims will no longer be consulted and will no longer have the opportunity to provide a victim impact statement when an offender is charged with one of these crimes.
6. Judges will no longer be able to place chronic livability offenders on probation for many offenses.
7. Judges will issue far fewer arrest warrants for people who commit livability and other misdemeanor crimes when they ignore their court appearances.

5. This bill compromises public safety and reduces the ability of police, prosecutors, and the courts to effectively combat chronic livability offenses and other misdemeanor crime.

Senator Linda Higgins is the Minneapolis representative on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She may be reached at sen.linda.higgins@senate.mn. If you have questions about this bill, contact your local police precinct and ask to speak with your community attorney.

What's odd about it that is not often that a unit of government gets involved in legislative action like this, and does so by going directly to the constituents.

I am at a complete loss why anyone would propose all of these reductions. Am I that much of an ideologue? Any guesses why someone would propose this?

This is very odd. I couldnt' find 6935 but did find 0200 by Leo Foley (D), who coincidently sits on the Judiciary Committee. I only did a cursory read of the bill, and I must say it needs a more thorough reading. Very interesting to say the least. I'd really like to here others thoughts on this bill.

I think this is probably to reduce the costs. Our goverment and the courts are broke.

There is no right to counsel or jury trial with a petty and opposed to straight misdemeanors. The reduction from felony to Gross Misdemeanor means a 6 person jury instead of a 12 person jury. It reduces the costs of public defenders and juries, and there are fewer hearings if an offense is not a felony. More settlements if the penalty is less.

And it means county jail instead of the State prison system. (Pawlenty's No More (state) Taxes.) Just county property taxes to keep the pledge.

The Courts cannot afford to protect constitutional rights, or lock folks up for all the crime we have today. When we set up this country there were only about 8 common law crimes; the penalty for everything was quick death, or possibly some mercy if a fine could be paid.

Some of the judges have said they will no longer put traffic offenses on the calender, I suppose people will not have to pay for speeding and stuff.

We cannot afford to administer all the tough on crime laws we pass without more taxes. We need to make administrative penalties, and eliminate the possiblity of jail for small crimes, or be realistic about taxes. (The conservatives want to cut government programs, so this is part of the cuts. Kick em out of jail and let them feed themselves.)

The other option would be to legalize drugs, they we'd have the resouces to continue to be righteous with everything else.

Or, we could build more prisons, and maybe, just maybe, start to treat criminals like, oh, I don't know, say, criminals? Tent cities, bologna sandwiches, pink jump suits and creating chain gangs should be brought back forthwith. I, for one, am sick and tired of more taxes to fund more government waste that does not do anyting to punish crime. We have the tough laws, but a lax judiciary and the desire not to every offend anyone or hurt their feelings, so yeah, reduse what is a crime, and that will surely teach those criminal minds to go the straight and narrow.

I received that email though there were links to the "bill".

Here are the links: http://www.senate.mn/Departments/SCR/BI ... ummary.pdf
http://www.senate.mn/Departments/SCR/BI ... sc6935.pdf

This is definitely not a bill. It looks more like a proposal of some sort.

You ever been inside a jail? Not the kind of place I'd choose for a holiday.

It could be that she has had too many "cousins" convicted of these offenses.

Yes. I wouldn't choose to spend a holiday there either. But you've made a somewhat argumentative statement. The point is that "jail" is a place where you can watch cable, take college classes, get fed three squares a day, work out, get medical care, converse with other criminals, send/receive communication, use the net, etc.

Some believe that incarceration should be punitive. Others believe it should be reformative (is that a word?). I think Moby was trying to say that he/she feels as though jail should be MORE punitive. I tend to agree, but that's just an opinion. Keep in mind I'm not that bright.

As to the OP, I think decriminalizing behavior that has victims is nothing short of insane.

I've been mentioning Chain gains for a while now, talk about a way to reduce the spending in the transportation budget. Let's have these guys build/demo raods by hand. Sure it's not the most efficiant, but it's not costing us money. And the chain gains work will reduce the work load for the real road crews we are paying for hence reducing the expenditure there hopefully.

The jail I saw had no cable, no classrooms, considerable isolation time, and little means of contact with the outside, except conference rooms, for attorneys, and brief family visit time. Gym equipment was a small, windowless basketball court, again with minimal access. Food was ok, dull by my standards, but likely better than inmates got outside. There was also a small clinic, with nurses on staff.

Most people in the MN corrections system do work, usually things like call center work, or simple industrial piece work, where inmate supervision is easy. Most prisons are also factory complexes.

America has more than 1,000,000 more people in prisons today than it did in 1970, yet crime is just as bad. It's true there's a lot of our money being spent on this, but it seems equally clear that it's not addressing the problem, either.

Anyway, the Strib carried this in the Metro section today. There's a poll, if you wanna vote.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/41869537.html

Bill takes a bite out of war on crime

The freedom to steal act? A Minnesota Senate measure with shorter sentences and more fees has plenty of critics.

By PATRICIA LOPEZ and JACKIE CROSBY, Star Tribune staff writers

As soon as this summer, shoplifters could pilfer $250 in merchandise and walk away with a fine. Same for those who buy or sell up to an ounce of marijuana or who fence stolen goods. Bad checks up to $125 would get similar treatment, as would credit fraud under $250.

A Senate bill that would dramatically change the criminal justice system -- reducing sentences, changing misdemeanors to petty misdemeanors, vastly increasing fees -- is under serious consideration as a means of dealing with the state's gaping $4.6 billion budget deficit and relieving pressure on an overburdened court system.

Backed by Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Mee Moua, DFL-St. Paul, it would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for felony drunken driving and delay felonies to the fifth offense. Under other provisions, with time off for good behavior, prisoners at most levels could be released after serving as little as 60 percent of their sentences, and parole violators would see jail time limited to 90 days. Harassment restraining orders, a staple of domestic abuse cases, would disappear.

The bill that would make all these changes and more carries an innocuous label: Miscellaneous Criminal Justice System Changes. But some at the Capitol are calling it the Freedom to Steal Act and scratching their heads over how far the state will go to save a buck.

In addition to penalty changes, the bill imposes a cascade of fee increases on nearly every piece of paper that moves through the court system, adding new $1-per-page charges on top of general increases in filing and copying fees to raise $28 million over two years.

With fewer offenders going to prison and prisoners serving shorter sentences, the bill would eliminate 1,000 beds from the prison system, triggering layoffs and possibly the closure of a prison. The sentencing changes would save $30 million over four years, with $8 million of that coming from lighter drunken-driving sentences.

A memo from Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian said the 7 percent cut proposed by the Senate -- part of its proposal to trim government across-the-board -- would pull $66 million out of the system. "Cuts of this magnitude would severely compromise staff and public safety," she wrote.

The effects of budget cuts

The bill is scheduled to pass out of Judiciary tonight and could go to the Senate floor as early as next week. Moua said the public should be aware of what coming budget cuts may entail.

"I'm uneasy with some of these policy shifts," she said. "But the situation we're in requires all of us to move outside our comfort zone. I'm willing to have the courage to talk about this shift. Do I absolutely want all of this to become law? I'm not sure. Might we have to do it anyway? It's possible. That's why we have this proposal." Being tough on crime, she said, "does not equal prison time."

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman agrees but said the changes could hurt public safety. "This is about saving money," he said. "I get that. But some of this is just not well thought out. We already have the second-lowest incarceration rate per capita in the 50 states."

Freeman said he found the provisions on drunken driving and reduced sentences particularly disturbing. "Arriving at tougher felony DWI laws was a long, hard fight in this state and the data shows it's working for repeat offenders," he said. A change that would allow good prisoners to serve 60 percent of their time instead of two-thirds could result in aggravated robbery convicts getting out after as little as 28 months, he said. A felony DWI offender who was sentenced to 86 months might get out after 52 months.

"We need to make changes," he said, "but we need to have some rational dialogue."

Fine-tuning likely

Moua said the bill will be fine-tuned but said no one should think they'll walk away from the state's fiscal crisis unscathed.

Earlier this year, Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson signaled that cuts to the courts would force him to curtail activities, including suspension of conciliation court, reduced dockets and other measures.

"If there are changes to be made, I want them to be done here, where we can let the public have some input," said Moua. "I don't want it done administratively in August, when it's too late for us to do anything about it."

Legislators are fast running out of time and options for crafting solutions to the budget deficit. Pawlenty opposes all of their tax increase proposals and Senate DFLers have rejected his one-time money solutions.

So far, the DFL-led House has shown little inclination to follow the Senate's lead on crime. Asked if there was a companion bill in the House, Majority Leader Tony Sertich replied, "God, I hope not."

Moua said that many of the provisions would sunset in two years.

Retailers, others worried

But that's cold comfort to retailers and others facing the prospect of shoplifters, check kiters and credit fraud artists who might see little deterrent in a $500 fine.

St. Paul City Attorney John Choi said that diversion programs promoted by Moua and others work in part because of the threat of a criminal record and possible jail time. "We need that hammer," he said.

Jake Sanders says that 95 percent of those who visit his two Shop in the City boutiques in Minneapolis are honest and valued customers. But an $89 spring coat got lifted the other day. So did a $129 shirt the staff hung in a spot they thought would make it harder to steal.

Sanders stopped taking checks recently because it had become too difficult and costly to collect on fraudulent checks.

Retailers already see about 2 percent of their inventory vanish in a variety of ways. Losses can reach 20 percent for small retailers, according to a 2006 National Retail Security survey. Nearly half those losses come from employee theft and about a third from shoplifting.

Brian McClung, Gov. Tim Pawlenty's spokesman, said Pawlenty opposes reducing criminal penalties. "People in the court system are interested in reform and so are we, but from our perspective, you have to be very careful in how you do that," McClung said.

plopez@startribune.com • 651-222-1288 jcrosby@startribune.com • 612-673-7335

Actually, that's misleading.

Crime rates increased dramatically, from 1960 to 1980, and stayed high until 1991. They've been declining rapidly since then.