Press Releases

Bob Krause, Democratic candidate for US Senate, today issued the following statement regarding issues greatly affecting the African American community in Iowa and the nation on the occasion of the birthday of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 15.

"I am blessed to have the same birthday as Martin Luther King, Jr. For those of us who did not or do not know and feel the struggle for greater civil rights in America, his birthday on January 15 offers a moment of remembrance to those ideals of freedom and equality as espoused in our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence.

In Iowa, I have heard many speeches refer that refer the "firsts" in civil rights that we have created as a state. These include Iowa's first state Supreme Court decision on freeing runaway slaves in Iowa, the first Black military officer training school at Fort Des Moines, providing a quality education at Iowa State University for the great African American agronomist George Washington Carver and, more recently, our Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Iowa on gay marriages utilizing equality-focused language in Iowa's Constitution going back to 1858.

This proud history shows that we as a state -- as well as we as a nation - have set ambitious goals of equality and brotherhood, and that we honor them through this national holiday. There is little doubt that we view equality before the law and equality in practice as pivotal building blocks of our social order.

But Dr. King's birthday also provides the occasion for us to look at a stain on the conscience of the people in our state. It is a stain that threatens to undermine our past good works and to shamefully mark our present in addition to weakening our future as a diverse and thriving state.

The stain to which I refer is this: We are incarcerating our African-American neighbors with rapidity and a thoroughness that would have embarrassed even the infamous Sheriff Bull Connor during the freedom marches in Birmingham during the struggle for civil rights.

Today, 42 years after the death of Martin Luther King, Iowa has a per capita incarceration rate for blacks that is fourteen times the incarceration rate for whites. The sad result is that a quarter of Iowa's prison population is African American -- in a state where only 2% of the population is African American. In fact, few are aware that we have one of the most disproportionate minority incarceration rates in the entire nation!

To his great credit, former Governor Tom Vilsack acted to correct the huge disparity that remains in voting rights for African Americans by restoring voting rights to felons who successfully complete their terms of incarceration. However, criminal records themselves constitute a significant barrier to full integration into society.

Cumulatively, they act to destroy family relations, create undue economic hardship and may, in fact, contribute to the incarceration cycle. That black men nationally have an 18% unemployment rate and that young black men nationally have a 30% unemployment rate may be symptomatic of what is occurring with the disparity in the criminal justice system.

Today, we should ask ourselves, 'What are the underlying causes of this disparity?' Are our African American neighbors, by their own right, so venal as to deserve such treatment? Or, as is likely, is there something in our social fabric that has been responsible for creating this gross disparity? While punishment must fit the crime, we have too often unintentionally created traps that have had horrendous effects on African Americans -- especially young African American men

While all this may be a surprise to many Iowans, it is a simple recognition that we cannot rest on our perception of ourselves as a fair and just people. We must move forward to reduce this inequality through positive action, so that Iowa may be regarded in the future as an ever-more friendly place for individuals of all faiths, colors and beliefs.

To this end, I pledge today that, when I am elected to the United States Senate, I will develop a comprehensive strategy for alleviating the Iowa incarceration disparity. I also pledge the following steps to create an ever more fair society:

• Do what I can to encourage and ensure state compliance with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) provisions concerning disproportionate minority confinement (DMC).
• Propose a national study to create an implementing plan to scope the nature of the problem and to create a time-lined strategy to overcome the problem.
• For states with significant disproportionate minority confinement, propose special awareness analysis and training for members of the criminal justice system to break undercurrents of unintentional or systemic racial profiling -- not only at the point of arrest -- but throughout the criminal justice system at the various administrative and judicial gateways.
• Require that states which are significantly above the national average of disproportionate minority confinement create a state-based plan to reduce the disparity by at least 50 % within five years of the plan's certification while insuring that justice is done for victims of crime.
• For states with significant disproportionate minority confinement, propose a series of measures and programs -- and to include funding -- in both the judicial system and the educational system for early intervention concerning youthful behavior that places children and teens at risk of falling into the criminal justice system. The intervention will propose both emergency and long term treatment and prevention strategies.
• Propose requirements that states with significant disproportionate minority confinement create action plans to provide targeted behavior modification programs for teen offenders and first and second time offenders.
• Propose strong measures to strengthen community efforts to identify and break up criminal neighborhood gangs that are drug and gun related and that encourage repetitive criminal behavior. Because of the phenomenon of a state-wide increase in the use of weapons by drug gangs, this will include the establishment a special Alcohol Tobacco and Firearm (ATF) unit for Iowa to work with local gang task forces to trace the origination of weapons seized in connection with criminal arrests.
• Strengthen school and community activity grant-based alternatives for teens that focus on rewarding positive behavior.
• Propose programs to reduce recidivism in the African American prison population through enhanced job skill training and placement and post incarceration counseling as well as incentives for the provision of jobs, especially by minority owned small businesses."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, January 14, 2010

Contact: Keith Dinsmore
573-230-5360
keith@krauseforiowa.com