Diversion of Justice (Page 1 of 3)

“You do the crime, you do the time” is the most common approach to the criminal justice system in the United States—the obvious consequence of behavior deemed illegal in our society is time served behind bars or on death row. The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world.

Between 1985 and 1995, states and the federal government opened one new prison a week to cope with the mass influx of prisoners, many of whom were non-violent offenders caught in the trap of three-strikes laws, mandatory sentences, and inflexible drug laws. In 2000, the number of people under some form of penal control in the U.S. exceeded the number imprisoned in Stalin’s gulags, and incarceration rates continue to rise annually.

The trend is particularly acute in the South, with more people on death row than any other region and the highest incarceration rates in the nation for both youth and adults. Young people of color are disproportionately represented in these alarming national figures, according to Critical Resistance, a grassroots group that addresses criminal justice issues. Black people are incarcerated at a minimum of four times the rate of whites in the South, and every Southern state in the region imprisons Latinos at a higher rate than whites, according to the group.  

This singular and discriminatory policy utilizing incarceration as the sole tool of our criminal justice system has not resulted in decreases in crime, and its effect is devastating on families and communities, which are often marginalized racially, socially, and economically before ever coming into contact with the criminal justice system. Knox County public defender Mark Stephens and the Community Law Office want to change that. He is seeking to counteract the negative effects of the system’s traditional punitive approach with an innovative model of holistic representation that attempts to address the issues in the defendant’s social environment that led to the criminal behavior. Stephens said the model isn’t popular in today’s “tough on crime” political climate, but it works.

“Are we going to deal with people in an abstract, intellectual context and not get to know who they are or why they did what they did and just impose this harsh, draconian criminal justice system?” Stephens asked, “Or are we going to get to know who they are and what can we do to change that conduct so that they’re able to realize all of the hopes and the dreams that they have, and society can realize the tremendous asset they are? As a society we don’t care to look at it that way, there’s such a lack of interest in discussing the effect of what it is we’re doing, and I think it’s unfortunate.”

Stephens was re-elected on Aug. 3 to his third consecutive eight-year term as public defender. He said his career has been a natural progression from working as a prosecutor for the district attorney’s office to entering private practice and ultimately serving in his current position.

“As a prosecutor, I was making decisions about whether people would go to a penitentiary or not, and I rarely felt I had enough information about the scenario to be making these kind of decisions that affect people’s lives forever. It gave me a perspective that convinced me I didn’t want to be a career prosecutor, and I wanted to go back and do criminal defense work,” Stephens said.

He has held the position of Knox County public defender since the office was established in 1990 and established the Community Law Office in 2001 following years of experience with the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of our current system.

“The effort now at the public defender’s office is to try to look at the effects of the system and look at the individual, try to identify what got you into the system, is there something we can do to help to get you out, and if there’s not, if it’s bigger than that, are there community resources that we can try and connect you with,” Stephens explained.

This social services component is a significant aspect of the Community Law Office, which offers voluntary programs designed to empower clients to identify the problems in their lives. The office provides services addressing issues of substance abuse, mental and behavioral health, employment, education, and leisure activities. The office also offers free programs for youth and the community such as “Communication through Art” and “Education through Experience” for youth ages 11-19 living in the Empowerment Zone, or for clients, siblings of clients, Juvenile Court clients, and youth at risk.