Lucy McBath Asks Legal Expert About 'Over-Criminalization' Of Marginalized Communities

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During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) spoke about the over-criminalization of minority groups within the judicial system.

Transcript

00:01The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member, Ms. McBath, for her five minutes.

00:05Thank you, Mr. Chair.

00:07Mr. Fox, as you know, minorities and members of marginalized communities often face barriers

00:13to assessing legal resources, including legal representation, knowledge of their rights,

00:20understanding the legal system or the means to navigate a really complex legal system

00:26and making them far more vulnerable to unjust prosecution and punishment.

00:31Can you kind of just expound a little bit with us today and explain how over-criminalization

00:36exploits these disparities?

00:38Yeah, sure.

00:39So if you look at, you know, the federal inmate population right now, it looks like it's about

00:43156,000 people.

00:45That's a lot, considering that the federal government actually doesn't have that much jurisdiction

00:49over crime.

00:50It's mostly quintessential state law, so there's a lot there.

00:52If you look, it's 35% black when the population's 14% black, 31% Hispanic when the population's

00:5819% Hispanic.

00:59A lot of these laws, it's just, you know, they want to go after people that have limited

01:03means, that have less resources to fight back, so that way they, you know, they're able to

01:07sort of go after, you know, people that they think are easy targets.

01:13And as was mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of the people that are in federal prison

01:17are low-level, you know, drug offenders, nonviolent drug offenders.

01:21These are not people who actually need to be incarcerated, who need to be in the system.

01:26We spent, you know, about $182 billion over the course of a year incarcerating 200 million,

01:32or sorry, 2 million people.

01:35And frankly, all this does is undermine people's trust in the system.

01:39There are, you know, jurisdictions in certain cities in the country where the clearance rate

01:43for violent crimes is at or near zero.

01:46I think everyone wants violent crime solved, but when you're harassing people over things

01:51that most people would agree shouldn't be crimes, you sort of undermine the legitimacy.

01:56People are not willing to call the police.

01:58They're not willing to testify for the prosecution.

02:00You know, when there's a lot of these communities, D.C. being one of them, that are both over-policed

02:05and under-policed at the same time, meaning that there's a lot of officers per capita, yet

02:11the crime rates are still pretty high because the arrests are for low-level offenses that

02:14people just really don't want to be involved with.

02:17Thank you for that.

02:18And Mr. Tolman, how does the investigation of minor crimes reduce the effectiveness of

02:24law enforcement personnel and prevent them from addressing violent crimes?

02:30You kind of touched upon it a little bit earlier, so if you could spend a little bit more time

02:34telling us about that.

02:35Yeah, we are not using our resources for the most important crimes, the crimes in which we

02:41need to be afraid of an individual rather than just mad at an individual for what they did.

02:46It's ironic that the one particular AUSA was referred to by Mr. Fox earlier.

02:51I actually had a case against him, and it was an individual who owned an aquarium that

02:56brought in the wrong type of fish and was saddled with a federal felony.

03:03Did not know that he brought in the wrong type of fish, and the paperwork was one of the

03:08issues.

03:09That happens every day in this country.

03:10We can talk about the crimes that are not being, you know, that we laugh at.

03:14Many of those crimes are being used by bureaucrat prosecutors.

03:19I'm very proud of the work that I did, but the number of cases that I wish were actually

03:24aimed at the violent individuals in our communities.

03:27We've stopped working and being part of gang task forces across this country.

03:32We've limited the use of the federal resources on sex trafficking and human trafficking.

03:38We've got to get back to being good partners to our state police and law enforcement officers

03:44who have the primary responsibility on violent crime.

03:47Thank you for that.

03:48And then also, can you kind of explain how statutes that were meant to target our kingpins,

03:56like you just said, violent crime, like the mandatory minimum drug statutes that we

04:01have yet to meaningfully reformed, that's easy for me to say, how they end up sweeping in the

04:09low-level offenders?

04:11Well, absolutely.

04:12We are in a really backward system right now.

04:16We are using oftentimes higher-level individuals in a drug distribution ring to cooperate and

04:22get credit against lower-level individuals.

04:25I prosecuted many drug cases, and we rarely ever were able to get intel on the upper levels

04:33and actually take down drug conspiracy rings.

04:37Instead, we utilized what we could in order to get low-level individuals who simply did

04:43not have the knowledge, and we didn't take the time or the patience because we didn't have

04:47the resources to investigate those conspiracies and those drug rings and cartels properly.

04:53Thank you so much.

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