New Democrat Update - April 2006
MAKING COLORADO’S STREETS SAFER
The primary obligation of any government, the crux of the social contract, is to provide for the safety of its citizens. Governments that cannot ensure public safety will inevitably lose the confidence of the governed and all of the other objectives of such governments become meaningless and unachievable.
Much work remains to be done. Democrats in the state legislature are doing their part by strengthening the criminal justice system. More criminal investigators will be hired and speedier DNA processing - which regularly cracks otherwise unsolvable crimes - is in the works.
Spurred by a tragic case in Aurora, State Rep. Michael Garcia is working hard to make Colorado’s witness protection program much more effective. His initiative will train district attorneys to take full advantage of this important tool, as well as encourage law enforcement agencies and victims’ advocate groups to develop such programs to protect witnesses from criminals.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is providing thoughtful leadership on this issue at the municipal level. Crime data will be collected and analyzed in a much more sophisticated manner, more cops will be put on the streets and authority will be decentralized throughout the police department. So-called “minor crimes” like graffiti, public drunkenness and low-level drug dealing will be addressed before they lead to an atmosphere conducive to dangerous criminal behavior. Citizens will be asked to be much more involved.
Taken as a whole, this set of strategies is known as “community justice” - a comprehensive strategy that values the role that communities play in reducing crime. Community justice programs put more police, probation officers and parole officials, and even prosecutors on the streets and in the neighborhoods that need their help, rather than behind a wall of bureaucracy downtown.
Results across the country have been impressive - higher levels of public safety and confidence, less citizen fear, and cooperative and more productive relationships between residents and the justice and law enforcement systems designed to protect them.
In addition, increased familiarity and trust between citizens and law enforcement has also decreased criticism and hostility from neighborhoods, particularly high-crime areas, where police-community relations have historically been poor. Law enforcement and justice officials who are assigned to specific neighborhoods become integrated into the communities they protect and are less likely to become entangled in the conflicts that lead to allegations of police brutality, abuse of discretion or prosecutorial misconduct.
Another community-based strategy worthy of consideration - "restorative justice" - has also been demonstrated to significantly reduce crime. In a nutshell, restorative justice is a method by which neighborhoods and communities take charge administering justice for nonviolent offenses. Offenders are confronted with the damage they do to their victims - face-to-face when appropriate. The perpetrators are forced to accept personal responsibility for their acts, make retribution and are monitored before and after their sentences are complete to determine if they are prepared for reintegration into the community.
Restorative justice compensates the community by redressing the damage inflicted by crime. Just as important, it reinforces the community's basic values - not just punishing and warehousing offenders in an overburdened corrections system and then ignoring them before and after their sentences.
Criminal recidivism, defined as the rate at which offenders commit crimes after being released from prison, is another huge problem that must be confronted. Convicts who are allowed to leave jail and resume their drug habits are almost destined to reoffend.
To turn that around, probationers and parolees should be required to take regular drug tests and face graduated sanctions with teeth that compel them to kick the habit. Parolees should be mandated to submit to DNA testing as a condition of their release and told that their DNA will be submitted to all state and local databases so that wherever they go, if they commit a crime, they will be caught and punished.
A comprehensive agenda of more law enforcement officials on the streets, effective apprehension and punishment of violent criminals, better protection of crime witnesses, holding offenders accountable to the community and using state-of-the-art crime-fighting tools can help us prevent crime, catch and punish offenders, and minimize repeat offenses.
It will also help achieve the goal of making Colorado the safest state in the nation.
A PATIENT’S RIGHT TO KNOW
Diseases spreading within hospitals result in the deaths of 90,000 patients and infect two million patients annually. In addition to the considerable human tragedy, these hospital-acquired ailments cost individual consumers, employers who provide health insurance coverage, and health insurers an additional $25 billion a year.
As part of the Democrats’ focus this session on accountability, State Sen. “Mo” Keller (D-Wheat Ridge) is pushing an idea that will require hospitals to report their in-house infection data, allowing Coloradans to compare each institution’s rate. The state estimates that the infections required to be reported by Keller’s measure cost Colorado’s Medicaid program $3 million last year. Private health insurance paid even more.
Making this information public should motivate hospitals to do a much better job. In fact, smart institutions will do everything they can to prevent the public embarrassment of high in-house infection rates. Ironically, these very infections actually generate more revenue for hospitals.
Six states - Illinois, Missouri, Florida, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania - require public reporting, according to Consumers Union, which has spearheaded the campaign. A Vermont committee has just recommended to incorporate hospital infections into an already existing annual report on hospital quality.
Pennsylvania is the first state to publish the data for the public to see. The 11,700 infections reported there accounted for 1,510 deaths, 205,000 extra days in the hospital, and $2 billion in additional hospital charges. Seventy-six percent were paid for by Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the Progressive Policy Institute’s Health Policy Wire, “Of Pennsylvania's roughly 290,000 hospital admissions in 2004, 1,119 contracted hospital-acquired infections...The cost of caring for these patients was seven times higher than it would otherwise have been. More importantly, patients who contracted an infection while in the hospital were seven times more likely to die than other patients.”
The legislature should pass, and the governor should sign, this very necessary legislation. Patients deserve nothing less.
“THE PLAN”
A new book, entitled The Plan, authored by Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel and national DLC President Bruce Reed, will detail a set of specific progressive ideas as described by the Wall Street Journal, “for universal health coverage and college education, and initiatives on retirement security and national security, energy, tax overhaul and deficit reduction.” It will be released this Labor Day.
Watch for it.