Street roots., August 26, 2016, Page 4, Image 4

News
Page 4
Street Roots • Aug. 26-Sept. 1,2016
P H O T O B Y E M IL Y GREEN
A participant in the Black Male Achievement initiative’s Sum m er Youth Experience helps M ultnomah County Commissioner Loretta Sm ith onto the stage. Smith kicked off Saturday’s
event, aimed at educating policy makers and the community about reforms the youth would like to see made to Oregon’s mandatory m inim um sentencing law.
Black youths take aim at Oregon's mandatory-minimum law, Measure 11
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF W R ITER
he message resonating from the
outdoor stage on Aug. 20 was clear:
It’s time for Oregon to stop
automatically trying juveniles as adults,
condemning them to long prison sentences
with no chance at early release.
“The two main problems with charging
juveniles as adults,” 21-year-old Ryan Seed
stated into the microphone, “are the
increase in recidivism rates and the cost.”
Seed is one of the 20 high school and
college students who invited community
members and policymakers to Northeast
Portland’s Woodland Park that afternoon for
an unveiling of reforms they would like to
see made to Oregon’s mandatory-minimum-
sentencing law, Measure 11.
The students are all young, black men
who were given their choice of public
policies to delve into as part of their
participation in Portland’s Black Male
Achievement (BMA) Summer Youth
Experience, an opportunity offered to black
males participating in Multnomah County
and Worksystem’s summer job placement
program for young people.
Seed, an intern with BMA, explained that
T
his peers picked mandatory-minimum-
sentencing policy as their focus for the past
six weeks because it was a topic that hit
close to home.
“We’ve had a couple youth who were
affected by Measure 11, or had people in
their circles who were affected by Measure
11,” he said.
In Oregon, juveniles age 15 and older are
automatically tried as adults when they are
charged with one of 21 person-to-person
violent crimes that fall under Measure 11.
These crimes range from second-degree
assault and robbery to manslaughter and
murder. If convicted, a juvenile with no
record would face the same lengthy
mandatory minimum sentence that an older,
career criminal would face for the same
crime. The sentences range in length from
70 months to 25 years.
Stephon Hartley was one of the young
men who’s been personally affected by the
law. He’s worked as an intern in the
Portland’s Office of the Mayor for the past
two years.
Hartley remembers that when he was a
small child, an uncle he was “super close
with” suddenly disappeared. He found out
later it was because he had been convicted
of a Measure 11 assault crime.
“I was 13 when he came back into my life,
and he was a completely different person.
He was institutionalized. It was kind of hard
to connect with him for a couple of years,”
Hartley said. “You have this memory of a
person - happy, smiling - and then they are
thrown away for
" It's very evident that w hile
something, for a long
amount of time, and then Measure 11, as a remedy
they come back
daring the decade of the
completely different”
war on crim e, seemed to
He said this personal
make sense, seemed to b rin g
experience is why he
comfort, It m ined lives and
believes inmates should
m arginalised fam ilies and
have the opportunity to
com m unities."
shorten their sentences
with good behavior.
KEVIN MOD1CA,
P O R T LA N D PO LICE C A P T A IN
“That’s just one of the
policy recommendations
we have that’s near and dear to me,” he said
Portland was one of 11 cities selected in
2013 by the League of American Cities to
take part in the BMA initiative, a program
aimed at improving outcomes for black men
and boys by developing strategies aimed at
education, violence prevention and family
strengthening, while also involving youth in
local government and civic engagement It’s
See MEASURE 11, page 5