Mark Hopper has lived in Waterloo all of his life, except for the time he spent in prison in Minnesota and California. He considers his more than eight years in prison to be a blessing because he changed his outlook on life. Yet, he said he feels unfairly punished despite serving his time because the Waterloo Police Department seized $60,000 of his cash and assets in connection with some of his crimes. The seizure, he said, ultimately cost him a building. “If you did anything, they want to take everything,” Hopper, 42, said.
ByKimberly Rapanut, Brody Ford, Morgan Wallace, Kelsey Collesi and Jeff Uveino / News21 |
“I thought Des Moines, Iowa, was gonna be better. But, you know, if you don’t change something, you’re going to still fall into the same thing you’ve been doing.” Melvin Gaye, Iowa juvenile offender. The history of police in America is a story of repeated promises to change from its gatekeepers, yet people of color, adolescents and other vulnerable populations say they continuously bear the brunt of its shortcomings. This report is part of Kids Imprisoned, an investigation of juvenile justice in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. For more stories, visit kidsimprisoned.news21.com.21 special report
Youth in America are criminalized every day, with racial and socioeconomic disparities further increasing their likelihood of being policed, arrested or killed by law enforcement.
ByJana Allen, Layne Dowdall, Haillie Parker and Chloe Johnson / News21 |
For a kid locked up, the Prison Rape Elimination Act is discussed but not always taken seriously, said Davossi Wisdom, 21, of Des Moines, Iowa, who was in and out of juvenile detention centers and jails since he was 9. A special News21 report.
ByKatherine Sypher and Anthony J. Wallace / News21 |
As a child in the United States, justice often depends on where you live, the color of your skin, which police officer arrests you, or which judge, prosecutor or probation officer happens to be involved in your case. Juvenile courts across the country processed nearly 750,000 cases in 2018. About 200,000 of these cases involved detention – removing a young person from home and locking them away, according to data from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
This report is part of Kids Imprisoned, an investigation of juvenile justice in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. For more stories, visit kidsimprisoned.news21.com.21
Depending on where a young person lives, a crime like simple assault or gun possession could lead to a customized rehabilitation program with help from mentors. It also could mean confinement in a group home, where kids wear their own clothes and counselors call them by their first names.
ByMikhayla Hughes-Shaw, Nicole Sroka and Victoria Traxler / News21 |
Teenagers and youth across the country commit the same types of crimes – carrying a weapon, drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana and fighting – but even as the number of incarcerated youth has declined, disparities affecting young people of color have continued to grow. This overrepresentation of minority youth is only half of the picture, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed, along with other reports.
This report is part of Kids Imprisoned, an investigation of juvenile justice in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. For more stories, visit kidsimprisoned.news21.com.21
Youth of color account for 28% of the U.S. population in 2017, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. However, they represented 67% of offenders in residential placement, according to Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Joshua Rovner, a senior advocacy associate for the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., said there isn’t a significant difference between the crimes committed by youth of different ethnicities. The overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system originates from systemic inequalities.
“There are differences, but none of the differences are big enough to explain the differences in arrests,” Rovner said.
He said the disparity gets worse at every step through the juvenile justice system.
Nationally, Black youth are five times more likely to be detained or confined than white youth, the Sentencing Project reported.
Fewer than half of the vehicles from the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s two largest law enforcement divisions were equipped to give officers the option of locking up weapons in those vehicles with designated equipment such as locking rifle racks or handgun vaults as recently as May 2019, an IowaWatch investigation revealed. Vehicles purchased since 2017 have locking devices to secure firearms beyond locking a vehicle’s door or trunk. The Department of Public Safety declined for safety reasons to provide updated numbers of vehicles with the capability. “Information regarding security and storage of weapons is a significant officer safety concern,” Catherine Lucas, general counsel of the Iowa Department of Public Safety wrote to IowaWatch in a response to a public records request in late September. Adam DeCamp, Division of Criminal Investigation special agent in charge, said a vehicle is secure when its doors are locked.
Internal firearm policy directives for the Department of Public Safety obtained by IowaWatch did not show any policy for the safe storage of handguns in an unattended vehicle.
The December 1986 murder of Mount Pleasant’s mayor at a City Council meeting taught his successor, former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the value of faith and confidence to confront challenges, Vilsack said in a new IowaWatch Connection radio interview. A disgruntled resident shot and killed Edward King and wounded two City Council members, shouting obscenities about a dispute the resident had with the city. “That experience indicated to me that the community was willing to come together,” Vilsack said in the interview. “It also taught me the important role in public life of being willing to listen, and being close to people, and giving them the opportunity to share with you their hopes, their aspirations, their concerns, their irritations.” Vilsack established “mayor’s hours” after King’s death in the city’s public library after a failed attempt at City Hall — people were reticent to go to where the murder happened, Vilsack said — to talk with people about municipal concerns in Mount Pleasant.
David prevailed over Goliath in the famous tale from long ago using an unconventional weapon, his sling and a few stones. These days, river rocks aren’t a potent weapon. Now, it might just be the spotlight. And the spotlight was shining brightly last week in Iowa when an Associated Press reporter cracked open 32 years of cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church’s Sioux City Diocese. Randy Evans
STRAY THOUGHTS
Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.
Scientific and anecdotal evidence suggests that a person who abuses animals also has a higher likelihood of hurting other people. And that insight has begun fueling a push, at the state and federal levels, to slap a no-gun penalty on anyone convicted of animal cruelty, this Fairwarning.org report tells us.
Good things are expected after some groundbreaking changes in recent years at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville, Iowa. Chicago Reporter shared its story with IowaWatch.
