Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I thank the ranking member of the committee, Mr. Nadler, and the chairman of the committee, Mr. Goodlatte, who is now managing the bill; and I…
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I thank the ranking member of the committee, Mr. Nadler, and the chairman of the committee, Mr. Goodlatte, who is now managing the bill; and I certainly acknowledge my fellow Texan and know that he has all good intentions on important legislation dealing with the question of safety and security.
H.R. 2152, unfortunately, has been noted possibly to have requirements that would undermine the privacy of those who participate in the program, who are disproportionately poor Americans, and discourages the use of pretrial service programs in communities across the country because of the punitive measures in this bill. I rise to oppose H.R. 2152 because it is flawed and needs to address the disparate treatment of poor Americans.
I believe the consideration of the issues underlying the bill is timely but, unfortunately, not directed in the right way. The House should examine pretrial services and bail issues with the goal of reforming our Nation's bail system, not for the purpose of protecting the use of money bail which is unfair to the indigent, unproductive, and expensive for American taxpayers.
In fact, in Harris County, we have a money bail system, and a Federal judge, Judge Lee Rosenthal, indicated that it was disproportionately unfair to poor constituents in the State of Texas and, particularly, Harris County. We have been working to come together and have an agreement in our local community on recognizance bonds for individuals who work, and put a certain criteria in.
Mr. Speaker, I can assure you, we are as concerned about the safety and security of our constituents, but it would be inappropriate for us to enhance the commercial bond industry, which I certainly appreciate-- they create jobs and they are businesses--in contrast to individuals who simply cannot afford a money bond.
In this instance, this bill would penalize those entities, those communities that use Federal funds for pretrial release programs if they don't provide all of this data. Now, it might be important to provide this data for someone who is particularly dangerous, but, Mr. Speaker, you know just like I do, those individuals do not get a bond.
So, as I indicated, the Citizens' Right to Know Act would require a State or local government that uses Justice Department grant funding to pay for pretrial services, which are important programs, to report, annually, certain information to the Department of Justice about defendants who participate in the pretrial services program.
The very fact that you are in the program is an indication, in most jurisdictions, that you are not a violent felon. You would hope that you are not a person accused of sex crimes, sex trafficking, human trafficking. Those are matters that can be fixed.
Information that will be required to be reported includes the name of each defendant participating in the pretrial release program and each occasion that the person failed to make an appearance, the record of prior convictions of each participant, and the amount of money allocated for the pretrial services program.
If a unit of government fails to comply with the reporting requirement, it would lose its entire funding under the relevant program for the following fiscal year, penalizing smaller communities, innocent communities that didn't have the wherewithal to provide all that data. Certainly, it would be better spent on making sure that they use the pretrial program efficiently and safely and secure.
The requirements in this bill largely mirror legislative initiatives being advanced by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, in the States, under the false guise of transparency.
Citizens have a right to know what their government is doing. I absolutely agree with that, and I support the reporting of information that will educate us as to what is taking place. As for H.R. 2152, however, I question whether the categories and information that must be reported under the bill are designed to do that or are adequate to tell us about the efficacy of these programs. In addition, the bill requires that this information be made publicly available by the Attorney General.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, NAACP, Human Rights Watch, and Color of Change have written to us opposing the bill and expressing concerns about this publication requirement and the harm to individuals resulting from a sharing of criminal records and personally identifying information. I share these concerns. The groups that I have named have been historic organizations that have dealt with the civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, and constitutional rights of Americans, no matter who they are.
Although the Judiciary Committee adopted an amendment to eliminate the reporting of arrest records of the participating defendants, I see no need to compile and make public information about prior convictions and the failures to appear in connection with identifier-specific defendants--maybe overall numbers, but this would be unnecessary and unproductive.
The main crux of what we should be about is that a pretrial program is a secure and safe program. The levels of a person who can participate should be utilized with guidelines, restrictions, and, certainly, local monitoring. But to penalize an organization, entity, a governmental entity trying to do its best and to be fair and balanced in the criminal justice system based on money bail is something that I would raise the question.
You can document, in Harris County, that we have had an enormously disproportionate impact on individuals with small offenses who have had to go no other route but either jail or money bail. They have no money bail. They are in jail. They could have a legitimate job. They could be a teacher.
We just had an incident with a mother who was placed in--she was, unfortunately, at least the allegations are, that she was driving, unfortunately, in a school zone and had a minute amount of marijuana. Whatever our positions are on that, she was sent to the Harris County jail, of course, lost her job. She was gainfully employed and is, obviously, distraught.
I hate to say it; her allegations are that she was raped in the Harris County jail, sad to say that. But the point is, just think if she could have been released on her own recognizance and/or a small amount in a pretrial release program. Not given that opportunity, she was taken in and, unfortunately, suffered these unfortunate consequences.
Members submitted amendments to the Rules Committee to address some of these concerns and also to encourage States to eliminate monetary bail, but none were made in order for consideration on the floor today. That is unusual, a closed rule on a Judiciary Committee bill that is the arm of decency as relates to decency, dignity, liberty, justice, and freedom.
Those are very important elements to the American people, and, certainly, the amendments should have been at least given consideration for the Representatives of the people of the United States in the people's House to debate these amendments. That was not the case, so we have a closed rule. I am baffled by that.
Instead of considering this bill, the House should be taking up legislation to encourage States to end the practice of requiring money bail, a practice that disparately impacts the poor and most vulnerable in our society.
For instance, I am a cosponsor of H.R. 1437, the No Money Bail Act of 2017, which would reduce Justice Department grant awards to States that do not eliminate money bail and would also eliminate bail at the Federal level. Instead of considering H.R. 2152, we should be advancing legislation such as H.R. 1437, or, minimally, both bills should on be on floor at the same time.
Again, this is no attempt to undermine how we secure our communities. I certainly take no backseat to the fact that our families, communities, police officers, and people in the criminal justice system should be protected, and those who have been given the benefit of a pretrial release should adhere to the rules that are there; but I can see no reason to be punitive to the local governmental entities as relates to not reporting names and all those details, including prior convictions, et cetera, et cetera.
What is the Federal Government going to do, say, if you have two prior convictions, you can't be in the pretrial release program? That is a local, State issue as opposed to a Federal issue, and what you are doing is connecting desperately needed criminal justice dollars from the Department of Justice to communities that may be trying to do their best.
With the version of H.R. 2152 that was reported out of the Judiciary Committee, we are not doing that, unfortunately. Therefore, I oppose the bill and hope that the House will soon take steps to do something about the real problem: our Nation's unjust money bail system.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. He is a dear friend. As we debate this question, I think it is a very important moment as we look at comprehensive criminal justice reform.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), the ranking member of our Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me indicate and reemphasize points that I made and, as well, points that Mr. Johnson made.
This will have a disparate impact, and what strikes me of great concern is that this amendment was, in essence, a closed rule.
I submitted an amendment that would basically gather data--which, I think, is what the proponent of this legislation wants--to ensure that pretrial release is working, to show that people who would be a threat to the community are not running without restraint, and to show the number of people who would appear for their appearance, if you will, in court who were beneficiaries of the pretrial release program. Those are all good elements, but it concerns me, again, that we don't have any clear parameters of whom this will hurt.
And also, small communities are dependent upon Federal grants. Their structure may not be the best, and so, if you are now asking them for reporting of individual names and past offenses, I beg the question of the value of that information.
What we really should have is aggregate numbers of who, under the pretrial program, is able to or is, in essence, not meeting the criteria and is breaking the agreement and commitment they have to either appear or to stay in a certain area. That is important information, and I think the DOJ could utilize that in an aggregate form.
Why are we giving names that will remain in the DOJ database for someone who may ultimately go back to work, as this mother may go back to her family and her life would hopefully--even though she experienced a tragedy in the jail and lost her job, let's hope that she has a future.
But if she were caught in this bill, would her name now be in the database? I have not researched her case. It seems that this might have been her first offense, but it certainly was a minor offense with a small amount of marijuana. As the facts evidence, it was the jurisdictional, the geographic area that she was in that caused the greatest trouble.
So the other side of it is that money bail is another issue that we should have looked at. We should have put both bills on the floor of the House because there is a movement across the Nation to begin to address, again, disparate treatment of money bail--not on the issue of race, but on the issue of economics.
So the person working in the fast-food place is in jail and, most likely, loses their job. We know that people who work in fast-food are mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers taking care of families, and being in jail does not help them take care of their family. You can be assured--unlike maybe other positions where you can say I was on vacation or that you didn't even stay in jail because you had the money to get out of jail--you cannot say you are on vacation for a couple of days or that you were nothing because you are right out back at work. You are fired.
A very evident case is the gentleman who was wealthy in Texas--a very renowned case--found in a hotel room in Galveston. He had decapitated his roommate's head and disposed of it--is my recollection. I stand to be corrected if my recollection is not correct--in the Galveston Bay, and because he could post a $100,000-plus bond, Mr. Speaker, he was released. Put that on any poor person, and we would be aghast at even how this person got bond set. But he did. Ultimately, he was acquitted in that case. I still shake in my boots.
So the issue is there is more to this than giving names and putting it in a database in the DOJ for persons who may never commit another offense in life. Money bail contributes, again, to the unnecessary detention of many low-risk pretrial defendants, inappropriate release of high-risk defendants who have financial means--as I just indicated, a person who decapitated a person's head--unwarranted financial burdens on low-income communities, and the gamble of placing public safety in the hands of a bail bonding industry that will always profit before the public good, a real point to the unfairness of the money bail.
Yet you would deny funds to small towns that are doing pretrial release, or even big counties and cities that are trying to do their best, but they need these Federal funds. Find another way for us to be able to assess what is going on.
Wealth-based detention has disastrous consequences: overcrowding of local jails, lost jobs, lost housing, poor sanitation and medical care, broken families, and it drains local budgets.
In many cases, an arrestee may be held longer in jail while awaiting trial than any sentence she or he would likely receive if convicted. Right now, in my own county and other big counties around the Nation that have not corrected that, they are doing that right now: causing innocent people to plead guilty to offenses that they did not commit in order to shorten the lengthy pretrial detention. Individuals who are detained are not able to assist their attorneys in the investigation of charges against them, resulting in many wrongful convictions and longer sentences.
So I only offer this thought so that we can have a viable discussion on the money bail issue and the disparate treatment that this legislation--though, not intended--would bring about when you ask communities to give the names and prior convictions of persons who may have had one or two marijuana or DUI--which all of us abhor-- convictions. But the privacy issues are a concern, and the lack of debate on the impact of money bail and its unfairness are not being discussed, and the lack of a rule that allows amendments, I think, concerns me.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Human Rights Watch, and Color of Change, who expressed their opposition to this legislation.
May 8, 2018.
Vote ``No'' on the ``Citizens' Right to Know Act of 2017'' (H.R. 2152)
Dear Representative: On behalf of The Leadership Conference
on Civil and Human Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), the NAACP, Human Rights Watch, and Color of Change,
we urge you to vote ``No'' on H.R. 2152, the ``Citizens'
Right to Know Act of 2017,'' as the House considers this
bill. This legislation raises serious privacy concerns for
the civil and human rights community given the personally
identifiable data that is to be collected and publicly
reported by the federal government. The bill also undermines
efforts to eliminate or reduce jurisdictions' reliance on
money bail systems. We urge the members to instead consider
H.R. 1437, the ``No Money Bail Act of 2017,'' and other
bipartisan efforts to encourage the elimination of money bail
systems.
The Citizens' Right to Know Act Raises Privacy Concerns
The Citizens' Right to Know Act requires jurisdictions
receiving funds from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to
report to the Attorney General the names, arrest records, and
appearance failures for those participating in DOJ funded
pretrial services programs. The legislation allows the
Attorney General to make public the names, arrest records,
and failure appearances that jurisdictions report. Except for
a clause that subjects the data ``to any applicable
confidentiality requirements,'' the bill does not provide any
explicit privacy protections for those whose personally
identifiable information has been collected by the federal
government and is subject to public release. The bill
requires that the Attorney General penalize noncompliant
jurisdictions by denying them 100 percent of the DOJ grant
program funds that are used to support pretrial services
programs.
While we appreciate the need for the federal government to
collect and report data, personal privacy interests must be
balanced with public interests. When personally identifiable
information is being collected and publicly reported, we
believe that such information should be obtained and
disseminated only with individuals' informed consent. We also
believe that the potential to harm individual reputations
should be considered when arrest records are publicly shared.
We are troubled that the Citizens' Right to Know Act would
collect and publicly report personally identifiable
information of individuals participating in pretrial services
programs--individuals who have not been convicted of a crime
given their pretrial status.
The Citizens' Right to Know Act Undermines Bail Reform Efforts
The Citizens' Right to Know Act is inconsistent with
efforts to reform money bail systems, like the No Money Bail
Act, which many of our organizations support. By collecting
and reporting only certain data about pretrial services
programs and those participating in them, the Citizens' Right
to Know Act will depict a one-sided picture of pretrial
services programs and participants. For example, the
legislation's focus on when an individual has failed to
appear promises a negative narrative around the pretrial
stage. If this bill were serious about measuring the true
impact of pretrial services programs, it would collect a more
robust data set and not that which is of interest only to the
bail bonds industry.
We support bail reform that corrects the injustice of
basing a defendant's release on how much money the person
has. Instead of considering the Citizens' Right to Know Act,
Congress should take up the No Money Bail Act of 2017. This
legislation would incentive jurisdictions to reform their
money bail systems using federal resources. The No Money Bail
Act would build safer communities, stronger families, and a
fairer criminal justice system by ensuring that people who
are innocent in the eyes of the law are not deprived of their
freedom because they cannot afford money bail.
For the above described reasons, we urge members of the
House to vote ``No'' on the Citizens' Right to Know Act.
Instead, we encourage the House of Representatives to give
serious consideration to bail reform bills through
legislative and oversight hearings on the issue.
Sincerely,
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,
American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Human Rights
Watch, Color of Change.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am clear and I think my colleague Mr. Johnson is clear on the pretrial release versus the money bail, but in many instances, pretrial release may have a negative impact on a poor, alleged actor of criminal activity as the money bail system. But this will add additional pain and lack of promise.
As I said, my amendment was to have the aggregate number of those who did not appear. That is viable and important information. You could have it by counties, small towns, villages, and cities to indicate what the impact is of pretrial release.
What strikes me as a concern is to have names and prior convictions, because it becomes part of a DOJ database and these persons may never commit another crime. They might have been in the hospital, maybe they get back and say why--I don't know what it means if you didn't make the first one and they got information that Mr. Smith was in the hospital, didn't have a lawyer, is coming back, but his name has already been sent out. And then you are going to penalize the local jurisdiction for the Federal funds that they are so desperately in need of.
By the way, I am grateful that in the omnibus that we recently passed, we plussed up all of those numbers. And I can assure you, our communities are jumping for joy in the work that they have to do in criminal justice reform or to secure or to make safe their communities, particularly, our police officers for whom I have championed the COPS on the Beat, and I just wish we could really plus that program up because it is a very viable program that we had from the 1990s.
So taking money away is going to be, in this instance, when there could be a positive alternative to giving the information, something that I would be concerned about.
I have already mentioned the issue that wealth-based detention has disastrous consequences: overloading the local jails, the lost jobs, the lost housing, poor sanitation, medical care, broken families, and draining local budgets. So let us have a moment on the floor that we can discuss the reform of money bails, as was done in the Federal court in the Southern District of Texas.
In closing, I would like to reiterate that this bill is, as they say, an effort at finding a problem. It is important that we promote transparency and accountability in government, but this bill does not move in that direction. I am willing to extend my hand of friendship to my friend from Texas. We will see where this bill goes.
But we know what it may really do. The bill was written for the purpose of burdening pretrial services programs, publicizing the sensitive information of defendants who are charged with but not convicted of a crime--and I think that is an important element; you really do deserve privacy if you are just an accused and not yet convicted--and in order to undermine the efforts to reform the money bail system.
That is why civil rights organizations have written to oppose this bill. I would like to think that they would be willing as well to work with us and come halfway to address the question of the money bail disparate treatment, discriminatory impact. By the way, it is not just a racial disparate treatment; it is a poor people's disparate treatment; it is a working people's treatment, when they don't have money.
We have heard the stories. They put up grandmother's house, their house, and it becomes a real tall mountain to climb. The money bail has been harmful and, in some instances, shameful in what it has done to poor, working families. And instead of considering the
bill that would help us reform that, we should be considering--rather, this bill with the ask of private information. I would like to see if we have to have this bill to do it in aggregate. No names on it would be very helpful. And we should be advancing legislation to eliminate the placing of financial conditions on someone's release from jail pending trial, which is taking money away from the local jurisdiction.
The bill today does that, and I think that we can work to do better. And I am not pleased to be opposing, but I would ask my colleagues to consider all that I have said about bail reform and disparate treatment and how we can best handle the needs of finding out who leaves pretrial release and who doesn't. Let's just get the numbers.
Mr. Speaker, I will be voting against this bill. I ask my colleagues to join me, and I yield back the balance of my time.