After 25 years on the bench, Pamela Alexander prepares for a new challenge
by Barbara L. Jones
Council proposes framework for justice
As Hennepin County District Court Judge Pamela Alexander prepares to take on its top leadership role, the Council on Crime and Justice recently marked its 50th anniversary with the publication of “Justice, Where Art Thou? A Framework for Minnesota’s Future.”
The report predicts high population growth between now and 2030 among groups that historically have been associated with high crime rates, and correspondingly high arrest and imprisonment rates. Based on current trends, by 2030, “[M]innesota will experience more crime and more arrests … even though it will be spending far more on incarcerating its population. This is not an acceptable solution either financially or socially,” the report states.
The “framework” recommends:
• An unprecedented commitment to educating all youth;
• Universal access to effective mental health and drug addiction treatment;
• Having more fathers actively involved in raising children;
• Eliminating the legal barriers that flow from a criminal record; and
• Restoring Minnesota’s historical correctional model of “just” consequences within a rehabilitative and restorative framework.
The report also states that the framework will require Minnesotans to “build bridges across racial, ethnic and socio-economic divisions in new and effective ways — ways that have so far escaped us. But failure is no longer an option. We are at a tipping point. It is time to act, and act together.”
The report is available at http://www.crimeandjustice.org/.
When Pamela Alexander joined the bench in 1983, she was the first African-American women judge in Hennepin County, and it was about time, she said.As Hennepin County District Court Judge Pamela Alexander prepares to take on its top leadership role, the Council on Crime and Justice recently marked its 50th anniversary with the publication of “Justice, Where Art Thou? A Framework for Minnesota’s Future.”
The report predicts high population growth between now and 2030 among groups that historically have been associated with high crime rates, and correspondingly high arrest and imprisonment rates. Based on current trends, by 2030, “[M]innesota will experience more crime and more arrests … even though it will be spending far more on incarcerating its population. This is not an acceptable solution either financially or socially,” the report states.
The “framework” recommends:
• An unprecedented commitment to educating all youth;
• Universal access to effective mental health and drug addiction treatment;
• Having more fathers actively involved in raising children;
• Eliminating the legal barriers that flow from a criminal record; and
• Restoring Minnesota’s historical correctional model of “just” consequences within a rehabilitative and restorative framework.
The report also states that the framework will require Minnesotans to “build bridges across racial, ethnic and socio-economic divisions in new and effective ways — ways that have so far escaped us. But failure is no longer an option. We are at a tipping point. It is time to act, and act together.”
The report is available at http://www.crimeandjustice.org/.
“There were a lot of women who could have been the first; there were a lot of qualified women who were passed over,” she said. “It’s a sad commentary that in 1983 you’re going to have your first African-American woman.”
When Alexander leaves the bench next month to assume the top spot at the Council on Crime and Justice, she will be involved in making policy about race, crime and children — issues that have motivated her throughout her career.
Presently serving in juvenile court, Alexander is the lead Hennepin County judge for the children’s justice initiative, a statewide project to make child abuse and neglect proceedings more effective for children. Some of the changes that the project has brought about are improved studies of family members other than parents who can care for the children and family group conferencing where the entire family can meet and confer about the children.
The CJI does require that most cases move along very quickly and doesn’t always result in parent-child reunification. There are a number of terminations of parental rights, which generally go up to the Court of Appeals. The program is controversial in some communities because of the disproportionate number of children of color in the system, she said. “But I think that we do try as best we can to make sure we look at family members or people who are considered kin [and] have a close relationship with the child. We try to make the transition as seamless as we can. But sometimes you do have to terminate on some people,” Alexander said.
Strict scrutiny
But Alexander paid a price. Sen. Paul Wellstone put her name forward for the federal bench in 1994 but the nomination withered because she had been labeled an “activist” judge. She eventually withdrew.
But the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Commission eventually agreed that the disparity was indefensible and now the guidelines have eliminated the disparity between sentences for crack and for powder cocaine. The new guidelines apply retroactively as well as to cases going forward. The decision brought Alexander’s prescience to light.
Although the federal government now has recognized her position, Alexander does not exactly feel vindicated because she has believed all along that she was right. “I wondered what took them so long,” she said.
“The more important issue is, there are a lot of inmates who were sentenced unfairly, and what’s going to be done to vindicate them,” she said.
The silver lining in that drug-sentencing cloud turned out to be the creation of drug courts, first in Hennepin County and then throughout the state, Alexander said. In Minnesota, there were so many downward departures from the guidelines that judges began to question the sentences and look for alternatives, she said. Drug courts provide a cheaper and more effective alternative to incarceration and also recognize that drug addiction is an illness, she said.
Racial justice, children’s interests
Alexander will be able to pursue her dedication to issues of racial justice and children’s interests in her new spot. “It hits on everything that means a lot to me,” she said.
The council launched the Racial Disparity Initiative in 2000, which included 17 separate studies addressing why the racial disparity in the state’s criminal justice system is twice the national average. Its conclusions — ranging from findings on racial profiling by police to barriers to re-entry to society after prison to the consequences of imprisonment on the offenders of children — inform the paths that Alexander plans to take.
Alexander gets particularly worked up about projects involving children. Citing the council’s research showing that 80 percent of children whose parents are incarcerated wind up in trouble with the law, she intends to address solutions for those children. Similarly, Alexander is interested in a family-focused re-entry program for offenders, including mentors and counseling for the entire family of the offender.
Another area of interest is the health issues, including communicable diseases, that surround families where a member has been incarcerated, Alexander said.
What excites Alexander, after 25 years on the bench, is a chance to put all that experience to work and a chance to advocate. She will miss her colleagues but expects that she will continue to work with the courts.
One thing that will be different: people may not call her judge any more. “People will have to learn my name,” she laughed.
