CLARKSVILLE'S 'KEEP OUT' POLICY

Over the last few years, several federal courts have considered cases
of individuals who have been banned from public housing
developments.

In many of those cases, the legal question is narrowly drawn: Does
government, in a crime-fighting effort, have the right to impose rules
that keep certain individuals away from public housing, or do those
rules represent an unconstitutional infringement of the right to move
about freely and choose one's own associates?

Yet there was nothing narrow about a recent case that emerged from
Clarksville. The case involved Mikie Ash, an ex-offender who served
time on a cocaine charge. Two years after his release from prison, Ash
was charged with trespass by the Clarksville police after he tried to
visit his 7-year-old daughter, who lives with her mother in a
Clarksville public housing development.

Despite the fact that Ash had served his time and wanted to be a
responsible parent, he ended up on a list of individuals banned from
Clarksville's public housing. Yet what was most irksome about Ash's
appearance on that list is the fact that Clarksville had no specific
standards about who should be prohibited from public housing. Both the
housing officials and Clarksville police testified in court that the
list was developed on a case-by-case basis.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell ruled that Clarksville's
practice of not posting criteria used to keep someone off public
housing property was arbitrary and unconstitutional. He pointed out
that Clarksville's case-by-case practice didn't spell out whether all
convicted felons were banned, didn't have a time limit for a ban and
didn't include exceptions for the ban.

Courts have given public housing officials great leeway to ban some
people from housing property as a crime prevention measure. Some
housing developments ban former felons, including drug dealers.
Campbell's ruling emphasized government's need to create those policies.

But what Campbell rightly called unacceptable is the lack of a written
policy. There was no way for an individual to determine whether he is
banned from public housing except to go to a development and see if he
is arrested.

Officials must be able to keep dangerous people away from public
housing. But they must also clearly define who is dangerous with
policies that are objective, that are spelled out and that are aimed
at a category of offenders, not at an individual.