By Victoria Middleton | As the opening of the legislative session on January 12 approaches, it’s hard to forecast what will be accomplished at the Statehouse.
The year 2015 was marked by shocking events – the Emanuel church massacre, a spike in police shootings, evidence that excessive force is used even against school students — that put South Carolina in the national spotlight. Whether our elected officials will be moved to take action as a result remains to be seen. The revulsion against racism and violence felt by so many of us in South Carolina may lead to positive change. Speaking realistically, the legislative session is short and the agenda is packed.
Unfortunately, it is packed with measures that neither advance public safety nor ensure equal treatment under the law for all South Carolinians. Some bills would even promote intolerance and discrimination based on race, ethnic origin or other personal qualities. Not one but at least three measures are aimed against refugees who are fleeing terrorism in their home countries. Some bills aim to protect civil servants who refuse to provide government services to others based on their sexual orientation. Others would exclude some of our fellow South Carolinians from protection against hate crimes.
The one area where we might have looked for bipartisan progress would be in advancing bills that aim to reform historic biases in our criminal justice system. Measures that would eliminate the exception for children to be tried as adults, reduce detention for violation of status offenses, and make it easier to expunge minor offenses from the record – all of these are smart reforms to replace the “tough” approach that has filled our jails and prisons. These changes would make it possible for more people in our state to stay in school, apply to college, and hold a job. There is support across the political spectrum for those broad goals.
But to reach the goal, we have to agree on intermediate steps, and that won’t be so easy. We have to be willing to confront problems in our institutions and not just blame a few bad actors. We need to examine shortcomings and implicit biases in the justice system at multiple points. For one, criminalizing student misconduct all too often results in school pushout that unduly affects children of color. The arrests captured on cell phone video at Spring Valley High School in October raise questions about training and policies governing the role of law enforcement in school discipline. Several bills currently in the Statehouse would promote better policies, less policing in schools.
Further, it’s not sufficient to dismiss and prosecute individual officers for excessive use of force. Our legislators can and should protect citizens’ right to record the police, while ensuring that video from police dashcams and body cameras can appropriately be accessed by the press and public. Following a year in which our state logged a record number of police shootings, most notably in Seneca, Columbia, Walterboro and North Charleston, we deserve to see real progress in reforming police practices.
Our hope for 2016 is that our legislators will be moved by the tragedies of the past year to make enacting these reforms a priority. There is increasingly broad acceptance of the goals served by the “smart justice” movement, but we need our legislators to exercise the political will to pass reforms that will achieve them.
Victoria Middleton is executive director of the ACLU of South Carolina.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!