603 NEWS 603 Diversity: NH News Briefs A journalistic look at our state of diversity from the reporters at the Granite State News Collaborative.
Land Acknowledgement Bill Fails As cities and towns throughout the state celebrate their 400th settlement anniversaries over the next few years, HB 1357 would have included a symbolic acknowledgement in state law that New Hampshire now stewards what are Native homelands. “Our state history is diverse, spanning through times of war and peace and we cannot discuss the formation of this state without the inclusion of the Indigenous land occupation and contributions,” Denise and Paul Pouliot of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People, who helped draft the bill language, said in a statement to legislators who were considering the bill. Paul Pouliot said the legislation is consistent with what many churches, museums, schools and other institutions have already done by adopting land acknowledgement statements.
But, HB 1357 was killed in the House March 16 after a 183-151 vote. The Executive Departments and Administration committee had previously recommended the bill fail on a 10-8 vote. Chair Rep. Tony Lekas, a Hudson Republican, wrote in the committee report that while it’s It is “indisputable fact that there were peoples in the land which we now know as New Hampshire,” the committee was concerned the bill might be construed as an avenue for land claims in years to come — “We can’t know how it will be seen or used in the future.” He added that the committee received testimony from a tribal genealogist with concerns about which specific indigenous people should be included in the acknowledgement. “If people want to acknowledge and honor the peoples who were here before us it would be more effective to organize public celebrations of that history. That will likely be more
One local attempt to study the impact of bail reform never happened, highlighting NH’s data problem In 2019, the state of New Hampshire set out to measure the impact of a bail-reform law that took effect a year earlier. It was an important question. Since the law’s passage, supporters and critics have argued over its effects. Police have said too many defendants are missing court dates or committing new crimes while out on bail. The ACLU and other advocates say those claims are largely anecdotal, without real data backing them up. The state-commissioned
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study could have provided some answers. But it was never done. In March 2020, the Pretrial Justice Institute — the Maryland-based organization the state had contracted with for the analysis — withdrew because it couldn’t get the data it needed, according to a letter the Collaborative obtained through a public-records request. “Due to difficulties experienced by the jails in providing us the data needed to do our analysis, we have not been able to
begin the project,” Tenille Patterson, one of the organization’s executive partners, wrote to the N.H. Department of Justice’s Grants Management Unit. “Moreover, it appears that those difficulties cannot be overcome in a way that would allow the project to proceed.” Bail reform is often cited by racial and social justice advocates as necessary for a more equitable criminal justice system. The study would have analyzed jail populations before and after the 2018 law,
