by Taylor Walker & Celeste Fremon

WILL SAN JOSE COPS WEAR MINI-CAMS FOR WATCH-DOGGING PURPOSES?

San Jose’s Independent Police Auditor wants her city’s cops to wear small cameras in order to keep the San Jose PD officers accountable for such things as “curb sitting” minorities over minor traffic stops and for unnecessary uses of force. Joe Rodriguez reports for the San Jose Mercury News.

Here’s a clip:

San Jose police officers may be forcing blacks, Latinos and other minorities to sit on street curbs more than others after minor traffic and pedestrian stops, according to the city’s independent police auditor.

LaDoris Cordell said Thursday she wants cops to document the ethnicity or race of everyone ordered to “curb sit” and to record the specific reason for the stop. She also wants officers to wear small cameras on their uniforms to record everything that happens.

“It would be a huge step in building trust between the San Jose Police Department and the community,” she said a few minutes before posting her annual report to the City Council on the Internet.

By the way, the camera in the photo is by the Taser people (who make, you know, tasers). Interestingly, among their their first law enforcement customer for the gadgets are the 150 patrol officers for the Bary Area Rapid Transit (BART).

FLORIDA APPEALS COURT SAYS THAT, JUST BECAUSE AN 80 YEAR SENTENCE FOR A NON-MURDERING KID ISN’T LWOP—IT’S STILL A LIFE SENTENCE.

Thursday a Florida appeals court voted to overturn a juvenile offender’s 80-year sentence for armed robbery with….a pellet gun. The panel of judges ruled that the result of the sentence would be essentially the same as that of a life in prison without parole–which runs counter to the US Supreme Court 2010 decision in Graham v. Florida, which says that a kid can’t serve life without the possibility of parole where no murder was involved.

The AP’s Bill Kaczor has the story.

Here’s a clip:

A Florida appeals court panel said Thursday that 80 years is too long to keep a juvenile locked up for a non-homicide crime.

However, the three-judge panel of the state’s 1st District Court of Appeal also said uncertainty will continue over compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that rejected absolute life sentences for juveniles who haven’t killed anyone until a higher court or the Florida Legislature addresses the issue.

The judges struck down an 80-year sentence for an inmate who committed armed robberies when he was 17.

A term that long is the functional equivalent of life without parole, the appellate judges wrote as they sent the case back to a Pensacola trial court for resentencing. They also urged lawmakers to follow the high court’s guidance and explore how to comply with its opinion.

[SNIP]

The Supreme Court decision doesn’t limit sentence length but says juveniles must get a meaningful opportunity to seek release based on maturity and rehabilitation if they have been convicted of non-homicide crimes. It also doesn’t preclude the possibility a juvenile will spend his or her life behind bars but does “forbid states from making the judgment at the outset that those offenders never will be fit to reenter society.”

Good for Florida’s 2nd Circuit. It would be nice if California prosecutors would stop asking for those same insane sentences for juveniles, with the pretense that they aren’t LWOP, therefor not subject to Graham.

ACCESS TO JUSTICE IS CLOSED DUE TO BUDGET CUTS?

This coming Monday, at 1:30 pm a special American Bar Association task force will hold a press conference in Sacramento to talk about “…the Crisis in State Court Underfunding..”

The task force includes such legal superstars David Boies and Theodore Olson (You know, the guys who’re the lead attorneys on the Prop. 8 challenge, and lead attorneys opposing each other in Bush v. Gore) plus California Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and other luminary types.

Here’s a clip from the ABA press release:

….Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye says California has “closed” signs on courtrooms and clerks’ offices in 24 counties around the state after four successive years of budget cuts totaling $653 million. Despite these cuts, and increasing caseloads, the California judicial budget is on the brink of facing an additional $100 million in cuts if Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s current budget is approved as proposed.

These budget cuts have resulted in reduced availability or elimination of court self-help services, and other cost cutting measures that directly impact the ability of the courts to adequately serve the public. California is not alone, however; 42 states cut funding for their judiciaries in 2011, reducing access to justice for thousands of Americans, according to the National Center for State Courts.

You can read more about the details of the event here.

EDITORS NOTE:

WE ARE HEARTBROKEN TO HEAR ABOUT THE DEATH OF STANISLAUS DEPUTY SHERIFF ROBERT PARIS ON THURSDAY

It’s been a week of tragedies. First the two USC grad students, then the perplexing case of the young Woodland Hills man who, led LAPD officers on an erratic high speed chase before exiting his car and managing to end his life in a storm of police bullets.

And now 53-year old Deputy Robert Paris gets gunned down in the course of duty, serving an ordinary eviction notice.

Rosalio Ahumada of the Modesto Bee has more about Deputy Paris and about the shooting, which also ended the life of a civilian, whose name was not released as of this writing.

GARDENING INMATES LESS LIKELY TO COME BACK TO LOCK UP

A growing number of corrections facilities across the US are surprised to find that inmates who participate in gardening programs are significantly less likely to return to prison than the national average predicts.

Pattie Baker writing for Youth Today, has the rest of this terrifically cheering story. Here’s a clip:

The most recent study by the Pew Center for the States and the Association of State Correctional Administrators found the [national] rate of recidivism (percentage of people released from prisons who are rearrested, convicted, or returned to custody within three years) to be 43.3 percent. What may be surprising, however, is that correctional facilities with a few years under their belt with a garden are finding not just reduced recidivism rates, but significantly reduced rates. According to the WorldWatch Institute, Sandusky County Jail in Ohio finds a recidivism rate of only 18 percent from those inmates who participate in its garden program, as opposed to 40 percent for those who don’t. Graduates of the Greenhouse Program at Rikers Island in New York City experience a 5-10 percent recidivism rate, as opposed to 65 percent in the general inmate population. Participants in The Garden Project at the San Francisco County Jail have a 24 percent recidivism rate, rather than 55 percent otherwise.

Jail gardening programs that involve people at even younger ages show promising positive effects in not only reducing recidivism but also helping youth avoid first-time offenses. Sidney Morgan, the Community Works Leader for the Department of Community Justice in Multnomah County, Ore., sees big changes in youth when they work in a garden. Morgan runs Project Sega (which means “to grow”) which provides youth on probation the opportunity to work on a quarter-acre garden to pay restitution for their offenses. Produce from this garden is sold at New Seasons supermarkets in the metro-Portland area, and the participating youth get the opportunity to plant, maintain, harvest from the garden, prep the food, and bring it to market. Morgan says New Seasons will even offer jobs to youth in Project Sega after they are done with probation. Through Project Sega, Morgan claims they learn that they can be successful, and that crime is not their only option.

“I’ve been doing probation work for seven years, and I’ve never seen anything like the reaction and results we get from kids who participate in gardening,” Morgan exclaimed.

STATE SUES OC TO PROTECT SCHOOL MONEY

The State of California filed a lawsuit against Orange County on Thursday to prevent the budget-strapped OC from using education funds ($73.5M worth) to pay other bills, leaving the state to foot the bill for schools. While California would be held to a constitutional requirement for funding K-12, if the court ruled in favor of the OC, community colleges could take a big hit with the loss of county funding.

The LA Times has the story.

Ted Guest at The Crime Report writes about a new DOJ and MacArthur Foundation-funded study, “Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration,” headed by eighteen corrections experts, will study the the nation’s 2.3M prison population (roughly six times that of most other countries). Research will explore possible low-cost, high-social benefit alternatives to current prison policies.

The panel of scholars, chaired by Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, will examine the reasons for the dramatic increases in U.S. incarceration rates since the 1970s, which have produced one of the world’s highest incarceration levels—with more than 2.3 million people behind bars in U.S. prisons and jails at any time

The topic has been widely discussed and analyzed for years by advocacy groups on the left and right, as well as by individual scholars. But the two-year, $1.5 million project, convened by the National Research Council (part of the National Academy of Sciences) represents the first time in recent memory that these issues have been subject to wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary research.

“It now is time to review the state of knowledge—to look at the causes of the high rate of incarceration and the consequences for society,” said Travis, author of But They All Came Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005).

LAUSD BOARD GRITS TEETH….THEN SLASHES AND BURNS: VOTES TO CUT ALL ADULT SCHOOLS….AND A LOT MORE, HOPES THAT A PARCEL TAX & UNION CONCESSIONS WILL SAVE ALL

The LA Times Stephen Ceasar reports:

The Los Angeles Board of Education approved a preliminary, worst-case $6-billion budget Tuesday, a plan that would eliminate thousands of jobs, close all of the district’s adult schools and cut some after-school and arts programs.

But Supt. John Deasy presented a less severe deficit than initially expected to the board and several scenarios that would restore millions in funding and save some programs from either elimination or partial cuts before the budget is finalized. Much of that, however, is contingent on voters’ passing the governor’s tax initiative in November, which he hopes would stave off more education cuts.

“I can say that this budget, even with its clear and present dangers, remains a budget of hope,” said board member Steve Zimmer. Deasy then interjected, “I don’t want to hope, I want to plan.”

The very excellent Tami Abdollah of KPCC has LOTS more.

KCET’S SO CAL CONNECTED GOES INSIDE CHILDREN’S DEPENDENCY COURT, FINDS POTENTIAL DISASTERS

KCET’s So Cal Connected (which has been on a roll in the past year) brought cameras inside LA’s children’s dependency court, and saw a lot that alarmed producer Karen Foshay, and correspondent Jennifer London.

The first of the resulting episodes aired last Friday. The second will air this coming Friday, March 16.

Both episodes demonstrate why Judge Michael Nash’s controversial order to open the court to the press is so important—despite the loud protests by those who thought reporters would trample on the rights of the children whose lives were being decided at these formerly closed proceedings.

Here’s what KCET had to say about episode 2, titled Courting Disaster.

Los Angeles County’s Dependency Court is the largest in the nation, handling 25,000 children. For the first time television cameras were granted access, revealing in graphic detail how deep budget cuts are devastating our justice system and putting our most vulnerable citizens at risk. We profile Judge Amy Pellman who is scheduled to hear 33 family cases in six hours, sometimes deciding a child’s fate in as little as three minutes. We meet parents who have completed counseling programs and are hoping the judge will grant them custody of their son. But other parents are stuck, unable to get into overcrowded programs that are required in order to get their children back.

We see how judges and attorneys often learn the facts of a case only minutes before the case is heard; how attorneys who are supposed to represent 160 children are burdened with 240 cases. More delays and backlogs are inevitable as 300 layoffs and 50 courtroom closures are scheduled to occur in L.A. County, following a statewide $650 million slash in funding.

California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakaueye says “I think its devastating to be told to come back in four months and that we’ll hear your case on child custody. What’s a person to do in four months?”

Hell, we certainly wouldn’t want reporters looking into any of that.

And, by the way, So Cal Connected focused on exactly the sort of thing that has rarely been adequately reported. We will hear about the ghastly tragedy of a child dying at the hands of abusive parents, but we rarely hear about the everyday tragedies that occur when a system with the power to save or ruin the lives of children and families is overburdened.

CA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS OUTLINES NEW POLICIES FOR HANDLING PRISON GANGS, AND FOR CLASSIFYING PRISONERS AS TO RISK

As the CDCR rightly states, California prisons manage “the most violent and sophisticated prison gangs in the nation.” Sadly, yes. That’s about right. And much of that management in the past has been to crack down hard, and then crack down some more.

How has this strategy worked out? Not all that well, actually—at least in the long term. Or as the CDCR put it, “Although this [suppression only] strategy reduced violence in prisons, it lacked prevention, deterrent and interdiction components.”

So what did the CDCR do? To their great credit, after 25 years of ever-more aggressive crack downs, they decided to stop and really examine the problem, and then try to institute the most effective methods to solve it, rather than the methods they’d always used.

Here is the report on the new methods that have resulted.

I’ll tell you about the report in more detail in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that it’s quite smart—and, among other things, gives gang members who are willing, a step-by-step road out that is rehabilitative rather than punitive.

It is also good news to note that, in a separate but related report, the CDCR has redone it’s risk classification system. In short, they found that they were overclassifying and/or misclassifying prisoners, which they discovered did greater damage to the prisoners and to public safety, then did underclassing them. Research showed that prisoners who were overclassified—i.e. put in more restrictive units than their behavior warranted—were more likely to act out, more likely to learn criminal behavior from the truly hard cases, and more likely to do poorly when they paroled. (Here’s the report.)

More on this too at another time. In any case, it’s really, really good to see the CDCR stepping up and doing the right thing in these crucial but difficult areas.

Go CDCR!

PS: It’s important to note that many of these reform elements were requested by the prison hunger strikers of last year, during the hunger strike that began at Pelican Bay’s SHU (Secure Housing Unit) and then spread throughout the system.

PPS: As the CDCR points out, these changes are made possible by the population relief brought by realignment, which is exactly right. Despite all the wailing, realignment is wise and necessary. Change is painful in the beginning, but under Jerry Brown’s governorship, Matt Cate and the CDCR is actually starting to slowly but steadily make genuine progress.

ANIMAL ADOPTIONS UPS—AND SO IS EUTHANASIA IN LA’S SHELTERS

Commissioners resigning, euthanasia is up, three of the five commissioners who oversee the Department of Animal Services have recently resigned thus paralyzing the department, a million dogs are running around LA unlicensed, is LA’s critter oversight a mess? Warren Olney with Which Way LA? wades into the issue.

AUTOPSY SHOWS JAIL INMATE’S DEATH LIKELY CAUSED BY DRUGS GIVEN HIM FOR MENTAL ILLNESS

LAT’S Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard report.

CALIF. PRISON INMATE FINDS HE HAS TALENT FOR SCHOLARSHIP IN HIEROGLYPHICS

Read this very cool Column One story in the LA Times by Thomas H. Maugh II.

Photo by KPCC’s new education reporter Tami Abdollah

Wednesday, Larry Mantle’s AirTalk on KPCC focused on a new strategy that the LAPD plans to take for a test drive as a experimental program. The strategy is called predictive policing and it is already being tried out by the Santa Cruz PD, reportedly with some success. Now Los Angeles wants to give it a try—at least in the form of a pilot program.

Here are some clips from the show:

Police departments have been providing years of historic crime data to mathematicians, who’ve created algorithms to analyze and determine crime patterns. The results are predictions of where and when similar crimes are likely to occur.

Zach Friend, a crime analyst for the Santa Cruz Police Department, says the crime-fighting system is modeled on methods for predicting earthquake aftershocks. The tool comes from Santa Clara University Professor George Mohler who believes crimes follow similar patterns. Friend, who helped to launch the program in Santa Cruz, says the system works because crimes tend to occur in time and place-based patterns. Santa Cruz officials became interested in the program after the success of a similar pilot by the LAPD.

“You have a crime and there will be after-crimes that occur after that,” said Friend. The technology, he says, has helped Santa Cruz prevent crimes before they happen. Thus far his department has focused on burglaries and vehicle theft.

“The arrests are not the goal here,” says Friend, of how the program is working in Santa Cruz. Preventing crime is the goal.

In L.A., LAPD Captain Sean Malinowski says he’d like to push the envelope further; and next year use the technology to predict violent crimes. Each morning officers using the program enter crime reports into the system, which is already packed with eight years worth of data. The program then predicts 10 potential crime hot spots.

Malinowski says the technology represents a vast improvement to what the department currently uses.

“The instruments we are using seem blunt now, in terms of the kind of specificity we can get with data analysis,” he says. Malinowski says he believes the computer model helps to remove biases.

Marjorie Cohn, Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of law, worried that the program would lead to additional profiling and would provide an excuse for harassment.

My pal George Tita, criminologist from UC Irvine countered Professor Cohn’s concerns with down to earth information.

And, yes, Cohn’s fears could come to pass, but it would be up to LAPD management to keep an eye out for any such Minority Report-like problems.

In truth, on first bounce, the model sounds very promising.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Listen and see what you think.

DEAR SUPERVISORS: YOU’RE WORRYING ABOUT THE WRONG THING

The LA Times’ Rong-Gong Lin II has a story about the LA County Supervisors opining that crime will go up if, as Governor Brown intends, short-timer offenders (people given months-long sentences) serve out their time at the various county jails, rather than being sent to state prison for, say, 3 or 6 months, which is grossly inefficient and needlessly expensive.

The Sups also say that crime will go up if the lower-level offenders who are paroled from prison report, not to a state parole officer, but to a county probation officer (as it was decided would happen last month).

This last, especially, is ridiculous.

Currently, when inmates are released from state prison and transferred to the state parole system, they are given $200 so they can buy themselves a bus ticket home with instructions to contact a state parole officer within two business days.

But county authorities say that system [requiring them to instead contact a probation officer] could allow just-released prisoners to flee without making contact with a county probation officer.

Huh???

Lin notes that the supervisors also expressed some concern that the state won’t fork over enough money to pay for the County’s added responsibility with the short time prisoners and the parolees.

That, my dears, is the one legit worry out of this whole The Sky is Falling and Criminals are Coming to Get Us! routine.. Heck, if the state fails to pay up, we should all march on Sacramento, then plant ourselves outside the governor’s office and refuse to leave until he gets out his metaphorical wallet.

But until and unless we find out that Jerry plans to welsh on his promise to pay the cost incurred by the 58 counties when they shoulder the burden of some of the state’s prisoners and parolees, how about we dial back the crime wave scare tactics.

THE SISTER OF A MURDER VICTIM WORKS FOR JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM

Rebecca Weiker’s essay on the Juvenile Justice Exchange speaks eloquently for itself. Here’s how it opens:

A few months ago I spent the day meeting with a group of family members who have had their lives changed forever by acts of violence. Nobody there would have chosen to be a member of this group — all of us had either lost a loved one to murder, or had lost a loved one in an entirely different way. Many brothers, sisters, sons and daughters were sentenced to die in prison for a crime committed in their youth.

My sister Wendy was a therapist who was passionate about supporting young people with mental health problems. Almost 20 years ago she was murdered by one of her patients. All these years later, I only now am at a place where I can consider this crime from a position of empathy. I understand that I can choose what meaning to make of this experience.

I will never “get over” her death nor do I expect to shed the feeling of loss and deep sadness that comes from not having her in the world. She was truly a bright light in the world. She was my big sister and I looked up to her. I admired her commitment to justice, her warmth, her seemingly endless energy.

But, I believe it dishonors my sister’s memory every time a young person is sentenced to die in prison. In California prisons, nearly 300 youth have been sentenced to life in prison without parole. How can we decide that a young person’s life is entirely without worth when they are still unformed and immature?

Our broken system is far from offering real justice to either victims or offenders…

Note: Weiker is strongly in favor of passing Senate Bill 9, a California law that would give young people sentenced to life without parole the possibility of a hearing to determine if they deserve to be re-sentenced to a minimum sentence of 25-years-to-life.

Photo by Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times prognosticate

SCOTUS REVIEW IS SOUGHT FOR 2 ONLINE FREE SPEECH CASES, ONE INVOLVING STUDENTS AND “DOUCHEBAGS”

(Yes, you’re right, my inner 9-year-old does think it’s funny each time I type the word “douchebag.”)

Ahem…

The Student Press Law Center reports that the lawyers for two cases that involve online communication by students, and First Amendment rights, hope that the US Supremes will agree to hear their cases. Both address similar issues and have the potential to set precedent. Here are the rundowns on the cases, as reported by SPLC:

CASE 1: The Right to Mock in MySpace

“J.S.” was a student at Blue Mountain Middle School in Pennsylvania in 2007 when she was suspended for 10 days after creating a MySpace profile mocking the school principal, James McGonigle. Her parents sued the school district on her behalf for violating her First Amendment rights and their due process rights to discipline their child as they wished.

Both the district court and a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit found in favor of the school district. However, when the full Third Circuit court reheard the case along with an extremely similar one, Layshock v. Hermitage School District, it found in favor of the students in both cases.

CASE 2: The…er….Douchebag Matter

On April 25, a panel of judges from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Connecticut student Avery Doninger’s First Amendment rights were not violated when she was prevented from running for class office, and later prevented from accepting the office she was elected to by write-in ballot, after calling school administrators “douchebags” on her blog in 2007.

The Second Circuit determined that the district had been “objectively reasonable” in their decision to punish her for her blog post. It granted the district immunity from the lawsuit but did not address whether Doninger’s rights were violated.

Doninger attorney John Schoenhorn wrote in an email that he intends to ask the Supreme Court to hear an appeal in this case as well because the conflict between the Second Circuit and Third Circuit’s decisions could create confusion.

Here’s a more detailed account of the Doninger case.

Let us hope that the Supremes take on or both cases as the arguments will be interesting.

LAUSD AND THE NEW HOMEWORK POLICY

The LA Times Howard Blume writes about the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new homework policy, and how it is not a simple wrong/right matter.

Here’s how it opens:

Vanessa Perez was a homework scofflaw. The Marshall High School senior didn’t finish all of it — largely because she worked 24 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop.

Alvaro Ramirez, a junior at the Santee Education Complex, doesn’t have his own room and his mother baby-sits young children at night. “They’re always there and they’re always loud,” he said, explaining his challenges with homework.

The nation’s second-largest school system has decided to give students like these a break. A new policy decrees that homework can count for only 10% of a student’s grade.

Critics — mostly teachers — worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.

Some educators also object to a one-size-fits-all mandate they said could hamstring teaching or homogenize it. They say, too, that students who do their homework perform significantly better than those who don’t — a view supported by research.

But Los Angeles Unified is pressing forward.….

IS THE LOCKE TAKEOVER BY GREEN DOT WORKING? A REPORT CARD

It’s been three years since Green Dot Charter Schools fought for and won the right to take over and try to transform LAUSD’s desperately failing Locke High School. So how is the grand experiment doing?

An LA Times editorial says the progress is not exactly dramatic, yet it is slow, steady and in small increments.

That’s what I’ve heard too. In my experience, however, some miracles occur, not in a blinding flash of light, but in slow motion. Yet they are miracles nonetheless. Maybe the changes at Locke could be said to fall in that category.

Let us hope so.

The editorial is a good one. Here’s a clip. But read it all.

How did Green Dot do at stemming the tide of students who disappear from campus into lives usually plagued by high unemployment and low wages? Solidly better, but not the quick and extraordinary transformation everyone had hoped for. Not yet, anyway.

Charter schools are not the ultimate solution to bad public schools; rather, the solution lies in improving public schools so that they have adequate resources, good teachers and a stimulating curriculum. Like many charter operators, Green Dot has had financial help from outside foundations, help that isn’t available to most public schools.

Still, well-run charter schools have played a valuable role in pressuring public schools to improve, and they can be a lifeline to students who are sinking in crummy neighborhood schools or, in many cases, leaving school far too soon. In the case of Locke, the switch appears to be working, albeit more slowly and haltingly than Green Dot expected.

The charter operator deserves praise for its massive and earnest effort at Locke. It was the first charter school in Los Angeles to accept all of the students within its attendance boundaries, just as public schools do, rather than restricting enrollment and accepting students through a lottery. Students who choose their charter schools are motivated to follow the rules and achieve; public schools take all comers. The Locke takeover served as the model for L.A. Unified’s Public School Choice initiative, in which new schools and some failing schools were turned over to outside groups that filed the most promising applications. Some of those were groups of teachers, others were charter schools. All had to follow Green Dot’s example and admit all students within their enrollment boundaries.

BILL WANTS TO ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY IN CALIFORNIA

Don Thompson of the AP has the story. Here’s how it opens:

A state lawmaker on Monday introduced a bill seeking a public vote on whether California should abolish capital punishment and convert death sentences to life in prison, citing a study that said most condemned inmates die of suicide or old age despite billions in taxpayer costs.

Democratic Sen. Loni Hancock, of Berkeley, said the state can no longer afford the cost of trying capital cases, defending them through a lengthy appeals process and housing inmates in the nation’s most populous death row.

She cited a study prepared by Judge Arthur L. Alarcon of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell that calls the capital punishment system “a multibillion-dollar fraud on California taxpayers.”

Their analysis, to be published next month, estimates California has spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. In that time, California has executed just 13 inmates, which works out to $308 million per execution.

“Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons,” Hancock said in a statement. “California’s death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our state; it is helping to bankrupt us.”

Yeah. What she said.

NBC San Diego also has a report on the bill.

EVEN DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, CALIFORNIA KEPT ITS PARKS OPEN, BUT ALL THAT CHANGES IN SEPTEMBER

Speaking personally, I am still having a hard time believing that the state’s scheduled parks closure will truly occur, but Timothy Egan’s NY Times Op-ed brings home the mind-numbing reality that California may really shutter some of its most irreplaceable and historic sites.

For a few months, still, you can see the sunlit room where the author of “Call of the Wild” wrote his daily thousand words before noon, and walk under redwoods and wild oaks on his 1,400-acre Beauty Ranch, where he pioneered “sustainability” before anyone was pushing $20 plates of arugula with a such a claim.

It belongs to you and me — the ranch, the cottage, the pond, the stone scraps of an old winery — an inheritance that is now being dismantled. California created the state park idea with Yosemite in 1864, before it was a federal reserve; it is destroying it in 2011 with a plan to permanently close one-fourth of its parks.

Along with 69 other sites, Jack London State Historic Park will be shuttered, gates locked, and left to meth labs, garbage outlaws and assorted feral predators. Nearly 50 percent of all of California’s historic parks are on the closure list. This is not a scare tactic from the state. Parks go dark starting in September.

Even during the Great Depression, when this state had 30 million fewer people, California somehow found a way to keep its parks and heritage sites open.

The nuclear option is being executed to reach a budget cut of $22 million mandated by a failed state that is forcing lethal whacks for all, even with an improved budget forecast. That’s right, $22 million — one-fifth the price of a recent sale of a single private mansion in Los Altos….

(Meanwhile, though, the feds say that closing some of our parks may be illegal. May it be so.)

THE PSYCHOPATH TEST, REDUX

Last month we learned that there was such a thing as a Psychopath test, and that it was being administered in American prisons (California prisons included) to help determine if an inmate should ever be granted parole—a use that has horrified the test’s inventor.

With all this in mind, naturally, Ira Glass and his This American Life team figured they all oughta take the test. In this week’s show, they have the results—plus a lot more on this whole testing-for-psychopathy issue.

Listen to the show here.

GOVERNOR JERRY ASKS THREE-JUDGE PANEL FOR MORE TIME THAN THE MANDATED 2 YEARS TO LOWER THE STATE’S PRISON POPULATION

As long as Jerry has a concrete plan and a solid timetable—which he seems to—he will likely get the extension.

The LA Times has the rest of the story.

PS: On the topic of the Brown v. Plata Supreme Court decision, the NY times’ Linda Greenhouse has an interesting take on the ruling and where it fist into an historical context.

DEAR OC D.A TONY RACKAUKAS, THE US CONSTITUTION IS YOUR FRIEND (AT LEAST IT BETTER BE IN THE FUTURE)

Last month a federal judge slapped some stringent limitations on Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas’s use of gang injunctions—an issue that is generally hard for average person to understand or care about.

But with an editorial this past weekend, the LA Times skillfully outlined the issue, and why it should matter to the rest of us. I understand that the LAT’s Sandra Hernandez was the primary author of the unsigned editorial. Brava, Sandra!

Here’s a clip:

Earlier this month, a federal judge put the brakes on Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas’ reckless attempt to enforce an anti-gang injunction against dozens of men and women who never had the opportunity to challenge his designation of them as gang members.

Injunctions are a unique kind of restraining order that bar gang members from engaging in certain activities, such as congregating, wearing particular clothes or going out after 10 p.m. Their goal is to reduce a gang’s ability to control the streets by putting limits on its members’ behavior — generally activities that would be legal if done by anyone else. In some cases, injunctions can be a highly effective tool in loosening a gang’s grip on a neighborhood. But because they impose harsh limits on an individual’s freedom, such restrictions must be subject to court review.

[SNIP]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California sued on behalf of the alleged gang members and won. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank put it bluntly: “In sum, their constitutional rights were violated.”

At the very least, Rackauckas’ office failed to follow the law. If prosecutors believe suspected members of a gang pose a danger to the community, they have an obligation to present evidence of that to the court before limiting people’s lawful activities. Instead, prosecutors made a unilateral determination of guilt.

DON’T SHOOT THE NEIGHBOR’S CAT UNLESS YOU’RE PREPARED TO PAY THE VET BILL SAYS STATE APPEALS COURT

The SF Chron has the story:

The market value of a stray cat with a crippling pellet wound is zero, or close to it. But for his devoted owner in Brentwood, a male tabby named Pumkin was well worth the tens of thousands of dollars it took to save his life and restore some of his mobility.

Now a state appeals court has issued a first-of-its-kind decision in California, ruling that whoever shot Pumkin can be required to pay his medical expenses.

(MY NOTE: One would think so! You mean prior to this ruling, if someone deliberately shot my cat—or very nice wolf-dog— I couldn’t sue???)

“The people that perpetrate these crimes against domesticated animals are going to have to pay,” said Kevin Kimes, whose lawsuit against his backyard neighbors was revived by the ruling. “Maybe, over time, people will start to think twice.”

Colin Hatcher, a lawyer for the neighbors, said Kimes has no evidence that they shot his cat and they’re prepared to go to trial.

Read the rest here.

PRISON INDUSTRIAL NATION?

The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)—the nation’s largest private prison provider—announced some very healthy first quarter profits on Wednesday.

(Second quarter is expected to be higher.)

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MEANWHILE…LAUSD TELLS TEACHERS TO TAKE DAY OFF AND PROTEST

GOOD Magazine has the story. Here’s a clip:

Just how bad is California’s education budget crisis? In an unprecedented move, the Los Angeles Unified School District plans to dismiss students early on Friday, May 13 so that teachers and other school staff can protest proposed cuts to education. In fact, the nation’s second largest school district is in such a financial crisis that they’re actually working with the local teacher’s union, UTLA, to make the protest happen—a very rare thing.

Teachers originally planned to hold their anti-cut demonstrations in the morning before school and during the first hour of classes. But Superintendent John Deasy and other district officials suggested shortening the school day and moving the protests to the afternoon so that the administration of state standardized tests won’t be affected. Deasy has also pledged that teachers can protest the state cuts to schools “without loss of pay or other consequences.”

Why is LAUSD being so accommodating? California’s schools have already endured almost $20 billion in cuts over the past three years. If state legislators don’t agree to put a measure on an upcoming election ballot to extend the taxes that fund schools, there will be an additional $2.3 billion in cuts. LAUSD alone is looking at a deficit of almost $408 million this year. This spring more than 5,000 teachers and 2,000 other district staff received layoff notices.

The LA Times’ Jason Song has more.

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AND IN A TANGENTIALLY RELATED STORY, EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS IN PRISONS ARE FEW EVEN THOUGH BENEFITS ARE MANY

Research has repeatedly shown that prisoners who obtain post-secondary degrees are much less likely to recidivate or to commit crimes on their release—and more likely to get jobs. (Inmates in educational programs are also less violent when on the inside.)

However, a study released Wednesday by the Institute for Higher Education and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that only 6 percent of those incarcerated in the US were enrolled in vocational or academic post secondary programs last year.

California is one of the the 13 states that is listed as having such programs, but after talking with the CDCR head, Matthew Cate earlier this week, it became clear that, whatever the state’ may have once had in the way of ed programs, nearly all have now been cut.

The Wall Street Journal has more on the survey.

THE REAL COST OF CALIFORNIA’S BUDGET CUTS: WHO IS HARDEST HIT?

Annenberg’s Neon Tommy has begun a series on the specific effects of some of the California state budget It offers precisely the kind of reporting we need in order to assess what the state’s proposed budget cuts specifically in human terms.

For instance, if we hear that Governor Jerry Brown has as so far taken $861 million out of the Mental Health Services Act, what does that mean? Whom will that affect. And what do those cuts mean to the rest of us?

And what about the cuts to subsidized child care? If those subsidies are yanked, will people just make do? Or will some parents be unable to work without those subsidies?

These are precisely the kinds of questions that the Neon Tommy reporters and editors have attempted to answer in their series California in Crisis: How the Budget Debacle Screws Social Services.

For instance, there is a story by Ryan Faughnder about the effects of the cut on a Culver City mental health clinic.

And there is another story by Jennifer Whalen that shows how the cuts affect working poor parents in need of subsidized child care.

Good stories, all.

Let’s hope that Neon Tommy reporters continue to explore these crucial budgetary topics.

THE PROBLEM OF SCOTUS AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT
UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky writes about the recent Supreme Court case that has declined to allow prisoners to recover damages when prosecutors withheld evidence that likely resulted in their conviction.

FINALLY, A CLASS ACTION SUIT ABOUT EXCESSIVE, RACE-BASED PRISON LOCKDOWNS

Mass, extended lockdowns in California prisons have been getting more and more frequent. And yet there was no reporting on the matter and, it seems, no legal action.

Until now. On Wednesday a class action lawsuit was filed. KPCC’s Julie Small reports:

Here’s how it opens:

Attorneys for prison inmates sued California Wednesday in federal court to end race-based lockdowns in state penitentiaries. Prisons lock down inmates after riots to quell the violence, investigate the cause – and isolate the inmates involved. The law gives prison officials a lot of discretion to use lockdowns – but there are limits. KPCC’s Julie Small reports the class action lawsuit alleges that race-based lockdowns violate inmate rights.

California’s High Desert State Prison in north eastern Lassen County, is a maximum security facility. Following a violent incident there in the warden locked down a group of African-American inmates for 18 months. One of them, Robert Mitchell, stayed in the double-bunked cell he shared with another inmate–24 hours a day – seven days a week. Prison Law Office attorney Rebekah Evenson who is representing Mitchell says the type of discriminatory deprivation the inmate suffered is common in California prisons—and illegal.

This week the Pew Center on the States delivered another of its large and important reports on the state of incarceration in America.

it’s called State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of American Prisons.

(In the past, the Pew Center has looked at how many Americans are behind bars, and who those Americans were in terms of age and ethnicity.)

This time, Pew focused on the frequency with which those who are imprisoned and later released into American communities return to prison.

PEW broke out the figures state by state, in order to look at which states had the highest return rate.

The two winners—if you can call them that—are Minnesota and, of course, our own prison benighted state. But, while both Minnesota and California have return rates that hover around 60 percent, MN has a prison population of slightly over 5,000, we have close to 120,000 men and women behind bars.

Also, as Pew notes, the majority of those Californians who return to prison, don’t go back for a new crime, but for a technical violation of their parole.

It doesn’t help, said Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project, that many states, California among them, do not incentivize parolees making a successful transition from prison to becoming a productive community member.

Here’s what Gelb told CNN:

Right now, incentives are mostly backwards. When offenders are breaking rules, supervising agencies win by sending them back to prison and getting them off their caseloads. That needs to be flipped so agencies get rewarded with a share of savings when they reduce returns to prison,” Gelb said.

YES, BUT DOES IT MAKE US SAFER?

One of the things the PEW researchers looked at with this report is public safety. Are we safer because we send so many people back to prison over and over again? PEW says no. Those states like New York and Oregon that have worked to provide the kind of programs, interventions and alternative sentencing that decreases recidivism, have seen their crime rates drop.

And of course there is the money savings. According to PEW, if California cut its recidivism rate by 10 percent, it would save the state at least $233 million. (Likely the savings would be substantially more since PEWs was working with 2005 prison prices.)

Prisons are often the forgotten
element of the criminal justice
system until things go badly. Catching the
guy and prosecuting him is really important
work, but if we don’t do anything with that
individual after we’ve got him, then shame
on us. If all that effort goes to waste and
we just open the doors five years later, and
it’s the same guy walking out the door and
the same criminal thinking, we’ve failed in
our mission.”

Minnesota Commissioner of Corrections Tom Roy
April 7, 2011

CAN OREGON’S MODEL BE….WELL….A MODEL?

The PEW study points to Oregon as being one the states that has been the most successful at intelligently addressing the recidivism problem. But can methods used in a less populous, less diverse state like Oregon be re-tailored to fit places like Florida and California?

If our lawmakers had the will it would be nice to find out. In any case, here’s an overview of Oregon’s strategy:

Read the rest of this entry »

The California budget situation is anything but easy. Yet, at least we finally have a clear-eyed governor who is taking hold of the problem in a tough, even handed manner.

Still many of those in the legislature—specifically the Republican leadership— insist on playing party politics, rather than coming together to do what is best for the state in these dire times.

Brown has warned that without the additional taxes he hopes to get on the ballot (and hopes that California voters will pass into law), the already draconian cuts he has proposed will go far deeper than most Californians have really grasped.

On Wednesday, we saw a preview of the future that Brown is describing with the news that, in addition to the drastic fiscal surgery already in Brown’s budget, a startling $800 million more must be slashed out of the state’s community college system.

The LA Times’ Carla Rivera has some of the specifics:

Facing a state funding cut of up to 10%, California’s community colleges will enroll 400,000 fewer students next fall and slash thousands of classes to contend with budget shortfalls that threaten to reshape their mission, officials said Wednesday.

The dire prognosis was in response to the breakdown in budget talks in Sacramento and the likelihood that the state’s 112 community colleges will be asked to absorb an $800-million funding reduction for the coming school year — double the amount suggested in Gov. Jerry Brown’s current budget proposal.

As it now stands, the budget plan would raise community college student fees from $26 to $36 per unit. The fees may go even higher if a budget compromise is not reached.

During a telephone news briefing, California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott said the funding cuts, under either scenario, would be a tragedy for students and a deep blow to the state’s economy….

MEANWHILE….. the San Francisco Chronicle reports that, even without Brown’s budget cuts—or the bigger, badder cuts that no additional taxes could bring—a new study found that nearly half of the state’s community college students reported being unable to enroll in courses because classes were full — nearly twice the rate of community college students nationwide.

Additional details are here.

If the class situation is that bad now, how in the world can the system function with the new cuts coming its way?