NEW STUDY SAYS AGING PRISONERS FASTEST GROWING LOCKED-UP POPULATION

The fact that aging prisoners are a growing issue has been reported on a lot lately as reporters and policy makers start to snap awake to the fact that locking up more people for longer is going to eventually produce a bunch of old guy (and old girl) inmate.

California, with its long troubled prison health care system, is one of the states that cannot help but be hit hardest by the demands of an aging inmate population.

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report that looks at the scope of the problem nationally. Here’s a clip from their press release:

Human Rights Watch found that the number of sentenced state and federal prisoners age 65 or older grew at 94 times the rate of the overall prison population between 2007 and 2010. The number of sentenced prisoners age 55 or older grew at six times the rate of the overall prison population between 1995 and 2010.

“Prisons were never designed to be geriatric facilities,” said Jamie Fellner, senior adviser to the US Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Yet US corrections officials now operate old age homes behind bars.”

All in all, HRW has produced a thoughtful, informative report that surveys the issue, makes some practical recommendations, and then asks a series of questions that challenge us to ask ourselves from a common sense perspective about when imprisonment might no longer be justified or sensible, as certain kinds of prisoners gets older.

Read the whole report here.

The New York Times also has a story on the issue.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF PRISON COSTS: A NEW VERA INSTITUTE REPORT SAYS THE REAL COST OF PRISONS TO TAXPAYERS HIGHER THAN REALIZED

The Vera institute has just released a new report titled The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers. The report shows that however much we think our prisons are costing us as taxpayers—we’re likely wrong. They’re costing us more than we think.

On a state by state basis, the Vera people looked at such extra costs as staff pensions and retiree benefits— and more—that, in many cases, are not listed in a state’s corrections budget.

In California, for example, our corrections budget is $7 billion. But when we look at the full cost, as Vera calculates it, the budget goes up to $7.9 billion—nearly a billion dollars more than our corrections budgets would suggest, bringing the cost of locking up each inmate in our prisons to $48 thousand per year, one of the higher price tags in the nation..

And if we look at the collateral costs of incarceration, (costs that Vera mentions as important, but that they did not cover in this report) the taxpayer’s bill goes still higher:

When a person is in prison, taxpayers may incur additional—or indirect—costs, such as the costs of social services, child welfare, and education, for example. For the most part, these indirect costs are borne by government agencies other than the department of corrections. They are not included in the calculations presented here, however.

Incarcerated men and women also bear economic and social costs associated with prison—as do their families and communities.* As a 2005 study concluded, “Incarceration impacts the life of a family in several important ways: it strains them financially, disrupts parental bonds, separates spouses, places severe stress on the remaining caregivers, leads to a loss of discipline in the household, and to feelings of shame, stigma, and anger.”** Although these costs—typically referred to as collateral costs—are important for policy deliberations, they are no tallied in this report.

LA MAGAZINE EDITOR MARY MELTON TALKS ABOUT WHAT’S MISSING IN LA JOURNALISM

A smart new LA blog called Frying Pan News did an interview with LA Mag’s editor Mary Melton about what the LA Times is doing wrong—and more.

Here’s a clip:

What is missing from the city’s journalistic landscape?

The mainstream press needs to reintroduce beats, cover California and L.A. issues, have more reporters devoted to local politics and politicians. Websites don’t have the resources to do deep reporting.

If you were editor of the L.A. Times, what would you do to change things?

The first thing I would do is hire a fleet of buses and have everyone in the building get on one and go see the city. Too many people at the Times never leave the building. I remember during the 2000 Democratic Convention, which was in downtown. I was working at the Times, and I decided to go over to check it out. I tried to get some folks to come with me, and everyone said, “It’s so far.” What?

I like the bus idea. (But way better to get on public transportation, not that hired fleet.)

THE IDIOTIC “I MIGHT HAVE A TACO” MAYOR GETS MORE THAN 2000 TACOS

The group Reform Immigration for America delivered a whole lot of texts and tacos on Thursday to East Haven, CT, Mayor Maturo—along with an invitation to have an open dialogue with the Latino community in his city, following his insensitive remarks this week.

MSNBC has more on the story-–and the back story:

A Connecticut mayor who sparked a firestorm of criticism for quipping “I might have tacos” when interviewed by a TV reporter about the arrest of four town police officers accused of racially profiling and bullying Latino residents got more than he bargained for.

More than 2,000 tacos were delivered to the office of East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo on Thursday, ordered by people who found his comments insensitive racially offensive. The send-the-mayor-a-taco campaign, which took off via tweets, cellphone texts and social-media shares, was organized by Reform Immigration for America, a group that advocates comprehensive immigration reform.

Friday’s LA Times contains an editorial that has strong words for Sheriff Lee Baca, who continues to blame his command staff—and anyone else within verbal reach—for the abuse of inmates by deputies scandal that is plaguing the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

Here’s a clip from the editorial:

….In October, Baca was more outraged by a federal investigation into the jails than the allegations of inmate abuse and deputy misconduct that prompted it. He even went so far as to suggest that the FBI was the real source of troubles in the jails, for its conduct in an investigation there. When he finally backed away from accusing the FBI of misconduct, he blamed his command staff for keeping him in the dark about the scandal, yet refused to discipline anyone for it.

Now, one of the department’s top commanders says he did attempt to warn Baca that deputies were using excessive force against inmates, but was ignored….

The Times is referring to Bob Olmsted, the recently retired LASD Commander who told WitnessLA’s Matt Fleischer that he’d attempted to warn Baca and other members of the command staff multiple times about the jail issues, but was rebuffed or overruled each time.

Olmsted also spoke this week to Times’ reporters Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard and gave them the same information about how Baca had failed to heed his warnings. Faturechi and Leonard, in turn, confronted Baca with what Olmsted had said. In response, Baca preposterously blamed Olmsted for not somehow fixing the problem himself—nevermind the fact that top members of Baca’s command staff blew off Olmsted’s concerns, and were in other ways obstructive of reform attempts.

Baca’s excuses regarding Olmsted’s warnings are simply a variation on his earlier, credibility-stretching claims that he had no idea things were so bad in the jails, that the knowledge was kept from him, that he assumed his command staff was handling the problems, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But, okay, let’s say, hypothetically, that what Baca said is in part true, that he’s a delegating kind ‘o guy who trusted his command staff to at least make sure that the jails weren’t teaming with badge-wearing gangs of inmate pounding civil rights violators.

Unfortunately the command staff blithely allowed the aforementioned rogue deputies to run riot through the jails producing a ton of use-of force reports, inmate injuries, the most scathing ACLU report to date, a bunch of high ticket lawsuits—and a nice, big federal investigation.

Bummer.

Now, theoretically, the scales have fallen from Baca’s eyes. So why in the world is the same coterie of command staffers—led by Undersheriff Paul Tanaka—still running the department day to day? Why hasn’t Baca fired at least a couple of their asses, or transferred them, or demoted them, (or whatever it is that ALADS—the LASD union—will allow one to do).

Incredibly, rather than ankling anybody, Baca chose Tanaka and associates to oversee his special task force that was formed to investigate abuse in the jails.

Henhouse meet foxes.

So, what does all that tell us? Well, one thing it suggests is that, for some time, Sheriff Lee Baca has not been, and is not presently, running the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

Or to give it a more positive spin, if Baca is steering the LASD ship, now would be a good time to step up and demonstrate it.

It is my understanding that Baca has, instead, planned yet another trip to the Middle East. He was, I think, to have left December 1—yesterday—returning next week. (I have yet to confirm if he did indeed leave.)

Not the greatest timing, Sheriff.

In the meantime, I’ve heard from some of my LASD sources that the command staff’s inner circle has assured each other that all this jail nastiness will blow over soon, that they are beyond the worst of it, that things will shortly go back to “normal.”

Former LA Times theater critic, Laurie Winer, has ostensibly written a review of James O’Shea’s book, The Deal From Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers, in which he chronicles real estate tycoon Sam Zell’s raping and pillaging of the Tribune Corp. in general and of the Los Angeles Times in specific.

But really, Winer has done something that is far better and more informative than a mere review: She has recapitulated for us—in a releavingly graspable way— the catastrophe for newspapers that was/is Sam Zell, and the events leading up to his wrecking ball tenure that made Zell’s takeover possible. Into all of this, Winer has interwoven her own front row remembrances and observations. We get to feel what it was like to watch the madness close up.

Winer’s essay/review appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books. For any of us who care about journalism, it’s a BIG must read.

Here’s an emblematic clip:

…Zell addressed the staff of the Orlando Sentinel, one of the Tribune newspapers, on January 31, 2008, which was the first time most of the journalists in the Tribune family got to see the man himself. As part of a whistle-stop tour of his new properties, Zell took visible delight in showing off his iconoclastic style to a new industry that, before now, had not had the pleasure. He was primed and ready for his close-up. He took the stage and stood at a lectern, a leprechaun-sized, wizened, bald man with a white goatee and gravelly voice.

According to Zell, “the eleventh commandment is Thou shalt not take oneself seriously.” His public posture was combative but laced with impish mischief; the gleam in his eye suggested he enjoyed being challenged. This may have misled Orlando Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo, or perhaps she had seen the new employee handbook rewritten on orders of Zell. One of its entries read: “Question authority and push back if you do not like the answer. You will earn respect, and not get into trouble for asking tough questions.”

In any event, there Zell is in Orlando, telling his staff about the necessity of making money, how that would be our top priority going forward. Fajardo did what none of us attempted with Mark Willes; she stood up and asked her new boss about his view on “the role journalism plays in the community, because we’re not the Pennysaver, we’re a newspaper.” Zell placed both hands on the podium and bent his elbows, as if he wanted to push it forward. “I want to make enough money so that I can afford you,” he said, his irritation mounting. “It’s really that simple. You need to in effect help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want and that therefore generates more revenue.” Fajardo immediately broke in, “But what readers want are puppy dogs,” she said, as the courage drains from her voice. “We also need to inform the community.” Zell cut her off, his right hand gesticulating forcefully. “I’m sorry but you’re giving me the classic, what I would call, journalistic arrogance, by deciding that puppies don’t count. … What I’m interested in is how can we generate additional interest in our products and additional revenue so we can make our product better and better and hopefully we get to the point where our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies and Iraq. Okay?”

The audience, some of whom applauded, might have been momentarily perplexed by Zell’s concept: That, like a kid who must endure being “grounded” before he can go to parties again, a newspaper would have to sell its very soul so that, at some undetermined point in the future, it might be allowed to go back to being a newspaper again. If anyone was busy contemplating the conundrum of Zell’s argument, he might have missed the day’s dramatic high point, which occurred when Fajardo turned around to sit back down. Zell had two more words for her. They were: “Fuck you.”

Fortunately, it lives on YouTube.

I watched the video of this event over and over. What mesmerized me was the sight of a man so unprepared for his come-to-Jesus moment that he had no idea it had arrived. Where Murdoch had his ducks in place in a formation that any dictator might envy, Zell had only his anger at everyone who had ever criticized him, who had ever doubted that accumulating wealth, by itself, was proof of ethics, intelligence, or general marvelousness.

Now read the rest. Immediately, if possible.

Raging Against the LA Times Book Section cuts, an upbeat story about helping Foster Car kids get to college, a seemingly unnecessary court decision, a weird move by the City Attorney….and more.

RAGING AGAINST THE CUTS: TOM LUTZ CALLS THE LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW “FREELANCER” LAYOFFS FOR WHAT THEY ARE

It literature is important to you at all. Read this, damn it! Here’s a clip:

The Los Angeles Times proudly announced last week that it was as dedicated as ever to book coverage — “we have not changed our commitment,” said Vice President of Communications Nancy Sullivan. Sullivan was speaking to Publishers Weekly’s Wendy Werris, explaining that a new round of layoffs in the section and the cutting loose of the book section’s freelancers was not to be taken as a sign of what it clearly was: a further contraction of the section’s purview.

“Freelancers” in this case means not just those of us who have written the occasional review for the Times over the years but the new class of non-employees, the many people who used to be on staff and were laid off before being rehired as freelancers, like Susan Salter Reynolds; book columnists Reynolds, Richard Rayner, and Sonja Bolle were among those let go. Reynolds is a prime example of the new class of the gradually dis-employed: she has been writing succinct, insightful reviews for the Times for the last 23 years, usually three pieces a week, although often adding a fourth or even fifth in the form of a more in-depth review or feature (she is a woman who clearly does not sleep). For the first 21 of those years she was a staff writer, but for the last two she’s been a freelancer. The difference was a deep cut in pay, the loss of health insurance and a retirement plan, and the outsourcing of her office to her own house. The workload remained the same.

BREAKING THE CURSE OF FOSTER CARE TO HELP KIDS IN THE “SYSTEM” GET TO COLLEGE

This story by Martha Groves of the LA Times will both break your heart and give you hope. Here’s how it opens:

For foster children, the prospect of ever completing college is remote: 24% of the general population will someday wear a university cap and gown, but fewer than 3% of all foster children ever earn a degree.

But a privately funded pilot program at UCLA hopes to improve the odds.

The First Star UCLA Bruin Guardian Scholars Summer Academy is a 5 1/2-week program that sponsors and fundraisers hope will one day develop into a year-round boarding school for college-bound foster children in Los Angeles County.

On Friday, 14-year-old Thalia and 23 other foster youth celebrated their “graduation” from the program’s first session.

The incoming ninth-grader brushed up on math, wrote poetry, learned to meditate and visited Disneyland, Universal Studios and a Nickelodeon TV set. In the bargain, Thalia and the other participants each got a laptop computer, a flip cam — and four University of California college credits.

“This program took me to another place,” Thalia said….

Read the rest here.

SO WHAT REALLY IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HOT WEATHER AND VIOLENCE?

Wired Magazine takes a look at what science has to say about rising temperatures and rising crime stats and how one may or may not affect the other.

A HIGHLY POLITICAL (AND POSSIBLY ILLEGAL) MOVE BY CITY ATTORNEY CARMEN TRUTANICH?

The LA Times’ Jack Leonard reports on Carmen Trutanich’s $2 million check caper and DA Steve Cooley’s reaction.

DEAD PEOPLE CAN’T BE SUED FOR PUNITIVE DAMAGES

Okay, this probably doesn’t rise to the level of a Must Read. Rather it is an interesting oddity that the Iowa Supreme Court got dragooned into having to render a ruling on this seemingly obvious issue. The Des Moines Register has the story. Here’s how it opens:

The Iowa Supreme Court Friday affirmed a long-standing prohibition on winning punitive damages from dead people and issued a two-month suspension to a Des Moines lawyer with a track record of mishandling clients’ money.

In the case of Estate of Johnny Vajgrt vs. Bill Ernst, justices ruled 6-1 to affirm a Marshall County court ruling that blocked Ernst from obtaining more than $2,300 from the estate of Vajgrt.

The case involved a 2005 incident where Vajgrt sought and received permission from Ernst, a neighbor, to enter onto Ernst’s land and remove a fallen tree near the confluence of Burnett Creek and the Iowa River. Vajgrt removed both the tree, which he feared would serve as a dam and cause flooding on his land, and roughly 40 other live trees on Ernst’s property.

Vajgrt died in 2008, nearly five months before Ernst sued to recover damages for the diminished value of his property. A district court judge awarded $57.50 per tree but refused to grant punitive damages because Vajgrt had died….

Read the rest here.

Over the Weekend the LA Times editorial board ran a stellar essay that righteously slams the LA County Supervisors for their refusal to turn over reports to a state auditor examining the reasons behind the deaths of children in various counties who died while being overseen by the Department of Children and Family Services, their refusal couched in a preposterous claim of attorney/client privilege.

Here is a clip from the heart of the well-reasoned editorial:

The county’s in-house lawyers and outside law firm assert that child death files are protected by the attorney-client privilege. That absurd and outrageous justification for non-disclosure is laughable, or would be, were the consequences not so tragic.

First, many of the files are not privileged at all. The DCFS conducted internal reviews of child deaths, which were then forwarded for review and approval to the county counsel’s office. An after-the-fact sign-off by lawyers cannot and does not render a document privileged. Otherwise, the Board of Supervisors would be able to sit on every ostensibly public record in its possession simply by sending it to its lawyer’s office for a rubber-stamp.

Second, even files that arguably are privileged could and probably should be released. The privilege belongs not to the lawyers but to the client — Los Angeles County — which can waive its prerogative, and should do so, in the public interest. It is true that the county’s interests are articulated by the five elected supervisors, but those supervisors have increasingly focused on their own needs rather than those of the vulnerable children, grieving families, responsible taxpayers and hosts of others they are elected to represent. They too often ask their lawyers for advice on how to avoid outside critique and — surprise — are told that the matters they discuss with counsel are privileged and beyond disclosure. It’s a boot-strapping argument that locks the public and, in this case, the state out of their proper oversight role. It perpetuates the county’s continuing failure.

The actual rationale for stonewalling the state audit became apparent in a letter from the county’s outside counsel: “Further, your office’s demand that the county produce self-critical documents, and subject them to the bureau’s critique, threatens to destroy the very type of child protection — unfettered self-evaluation — that this audit seeks to promote.”

That says it all. The only evaluations of the county will be those it performs itself, and the results of those evaluations will remain known only to the county. Not since the days of Chief William H. Parker’s Los Angeles Police Department has this region seen an institution steeped in such arrogance, insularity and contempt for public accountability. None of the other counties being audited — not Fresno, not Sacramento, not Alameda — have objected to the state’s request for child death files.

Yet what was especially notable about the editorial is that it also subtly took to task its own coverage of these deaths with this surprising—and very accurate—paragraph:

Child deaths from abuse and neglect are fraught with emotion and can result in sensational headlines, in newspapers like this one, to which supervisors feel compelled to respond. One more study of fatalities, such as the state audit demanded after the killing of Seth Ireland, steeps policymakers in a swamp of exceptional failures and worst cases. It makes it easy to forget that data show overwhelmingly that outcomes are better for children who stay in their homes — even with families struggling with poverty, even in neighborhoods with inadequate schools — than for those removed by well-meaning or backside-covering county agencies. It makes it easy to forget that the county’s most effective and most economical response to children in trouble is to help their families with resources and programs to cope with their challenges….

This writing is especially appreciated by those of us who have long worried that the nature of the Times coverage of these terrible deaths of children would cause lawmakers to pressure DCFS to take more kids into foster care and to fail to help poor but essentially loving parents to strengthen themselves so that they and their children might thrive.

(It wasn’t too long ago that an LAT editor used the pages of the paper to attack me and journalist advocate Daniel Heimpel for making the very same point but in greater detail.)

In any case, this important editorial was badly needed. A large thank you to the LA Times editorial board for their forceful and intelligent writing.

“He has literally saved lives,” a former Baghdad colleague of Salar Jaff’s told me, after he heard that Jaffe, the longtime LA Times Baghdad Bureau Manager, was among those on the hit list for the latest round of the paper’s layoffs. “Ask anybody who’s worked with him, Salar is really beloved.”

Most specifically, Jaff, who is Iraqi, was the Times’ journalist who was integral to keeping other reporters safe during the worst days, months and years in Baghdad. He talked people out of dangerous situations, smoothed the way for them when things got dicey, told them where they could go, and where it was too perilous, headed off potential trouble. This often meant that, as an Iraqi citizen, he was the one at the bureau who took the greatest risks of all to make sure that the reporters in his charge could function in what was, for a long period, one of the deadliest of places on earth for journalists.

Yet Jaff was much more than a skilled fixer. “I think most reporters would acknowledge Salar was an important, often uncredited analyst who guided them through their knowledge deficits as they told the story of a place they did not understand,” explained the former Baghdad reporter.

We as readers benefited greatly as a consequence”

Jaff reportedly had no advance inkling that the ax was falling his direction. “The bureau was like a child I helped raise,” he told friends after he received news of his layoff.

So after all these years of risk and loyalty what did the Times cost-cutters do? They reportedly fired Jaff on the first day of Ramadan.

Stay classy, LA Times. Stay classy.

Here is Jaff’s last story for the paper.

Salar Jaff is now awaiting a visa in the hope of immigrating to the US.

UPDATE: JAFF’S FAREWELL NOTE TO THOSE HE WORKED WITH IS BELOW:

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is with mixed emotions that I send this email. As some of you know, those are my last days at the Baghdad Bureau; I want to say that I truly enjoy working with all of you here at Los Angeles Times – Baghdad Bureau, and learned a lot from a lot of you. In the near future , don’t know exactly when, but eventually will happen, we might meet in the States, that I applied to the IOM resettlement program,trying to start a new life there, and to give a better future for my two daughters, Medya and Meena, and to be away from inflaming Baghdad.

During the last 10 years I spend at the paper, I tried my hard to make ends meet and prepare a good office foundation to make easy for folks to achieve their journalistic tasks properly. And thanks god, I was able to do so that Baghdad Bureau got a lot of appreciation and respect, among other media organization in Baghdad, and great stories were written from here.I am very proud of the role i did in Baghdad Bureau.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to all of my friends and colleagues, who I worked with during hard times in Baghdad. I have learned a great deal from you and will miss you all. It has been a great pleasure working with you all, hoping to meet you in the near future.

Warmest regards.

Sincerely,

Salar Jaff

On Tuesday, July 12, the LA County Board of Supervisors will prepare to decide who will supervise the approximately 13,000 parolees yearly who will now be LA County’s responsibility starting on October 1.

In the past all parolees—felons coming out of prison— have been supervised by the state. But, as part of the strategy to balance California’s budget, while also reducing the number of inmates who cycle in and out of the state’s benighted and overcrowded prisons by better helping them reenter our communities, all state parolees who are the so-called non-non-nons—non-violent offenders, non-sex offenders, non-serious offenders—will be supervised by California’s 58 counties.

In Los Angeles, the matter of who exactly will do the supervising is an open question. In 57 out of California’s 58 counties, the answer is simple: that job will fall to the logical agency already equipped to supervise and help rehabilitate lawbreakers—namely each county’s probation department.

However, in LA—which incidentally has by far the largest number of these “realigned” parolees—there are two agencies bidding for the job, and for the pile of funds that goes along with it.

Those agencies are LA County Probation, headed by Donald Blevins—and the LA County Sheriff’s Department, with Sheriff Lee Baca doing everything he can to get the nod.

WHO IS VOTING FOR WHOM?

Right now the Sups are reportedly leaning toward handing the responsibility to Lee Baca and the LASD. If the Sups go Baca’s direction, they will be agreeing to a system that exists no where else in the U.S.. (The folks who arrest parolees for stepping outside the law are generally not also the one’s who help advise, oversee and rehabilitate them. It’s—how to put it?—a very weird conflict of interest.)

Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Gloria Molina are reportedly voting for Baca’s plan (with Ridley-Thomas wishing to give the Sheriff a tryout period, not an indefinite commitment). Mike Antonovich is the only one of the Sups who is thought to be leaning toward giving the responsibility and the money to Probation and Blevins. Don Knabe is thought to be in the Sheriff’s column. Zev Yaroslavsky was leaning toward the Sheriff, but may be wobbling still has yet to decide. [<---NOTE: My initial info had Zev somewhat in the Sheriff's column, but looks like I had it wrong. His vote is reportedly still in play.]

Interestingly, although the majority of the Supervisors are considered likely to vote in favor of the Sheriff, the majority of the Sups most knowledgeable deputies are reportedly pushing for Probation to be given the 13,000 parolees to oversee.

This latter fact is very telling.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

I realize for many of you, this entire decision sounds like a colossal yawn. But bear with me.

As I mentioned above, part of the idea for the statewide switchover, is that local agencies can do the supervision for less money than the state can. But even more importantly, the locals can do it more effectively—which is crucial. A huge portion of the state’s unmanageable and intolerably expensive prison population is made up of repeat visitors. The majority of those who return to our locked hotels, do so not for new crimes, but for technical violations of their parole.

Since the state’s parole agencies have, for a variety of reasons, done a consistently hideous job of helping parolees get back on their respective feet—as our ghastly recidivism numbers reflect—the fact that a new agency in California’s largest county will have an opportunity to rethink parole policy using the best practices from other states who are doing a better job that we are….well, it’s a genuinely significant opportunity.

And we’re in danger of blowing it.

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

The most hellish part of the decision the Sups must make, is that both Probation and the Sheriff’s Department are agencies with humungous problems. So there is no really great choice.

Probation is still frighteningly inept at reforming its deeply troubled juvenile probation facilities, places that in too many cases are actively doing harm to kids. Yet, Probation’s adult services, while far from perfect, are generally reasonably functional. Plus they are the services most directly analogous to those required in overseeing parolees.

As for the Sheriff’s Department, despite Lee Baca’s popularity and his genuine belief in rehabilitation, his jails are such a mess they have attracted a brand new federal investigation. (Problems at the LASD facilities will be further evidenced by WitnessLA’s two-part investigation into the LA County Jails that will run later this summer).

Most importantly, law enforcement is not, for a thousand reasons, the right agency to run a parole system.

The LA Times has an unsigned editorial in Tuesday’s paper (written by Rob Greene and Sandra Hernandez) and it gets to the crux of the matter very, very well. Here’s a clip:

The tragedy of the county’s predicament is that the arrival of new state parolees ought to be an opportunity to focus on the reentry of these ex-prisoners into society. It should fall to churches, mosques and synagogues, to nonprofit organizations, to schools, but above all to county government to ensure that those leaving institutions and reentering their neighborhoods do so in a way that maximizes their chance to become productive and law-abiding citizens.

Even the parolees expected to come to Los Angeles County — those whose crimes were nonviolent, non-sexual and relatively low-level — are more likely than the state’s population at large to be sick, addicted, mentally ill, poorly educated and unemployable. Given that California’s state prison system has disinvested in prisoner care and rehabilitation, the parolees are unlikely to come home any better prepared to lead productive lives than when they went in. Indeed, the failure of the state’s parole efforts is one of the best arguments for turning this responsibility over to local governments, which at least have a fighting chance.

Los Angeles County has done little to prepare for this opportunity, and it must now suffer the consequences of its past mismanagement. Forced to pick between two troubled agencies, it should take the one that at least encompasses the mission. The county employees best experienced and oriented toward that task are probation workers.

Sheriff’s deputies are not.

IF PROBATION WANTS THE GIG IT NEEDS TO FIGHT FOR IT

It hardly helped Probation’s case that while Sheriff Baca was making doing one more round of enthusiastic pitches to explain why he should be given the parolees, making it clear to all concerned that he really, really wanted the job, Probation Chief Blevins spent last week in San Diego at a conference for Chief Probation Officers, no doubt a worthy event, but not when so much is at stake.

When I talked to Blevins last month about the soon-to-be-reassigned parolees, he was clear, persuasive and articulate about the ways in which Probation could potentially make a difference in the lives of thousands of released prisoners. It is perplexing that he has not been aggressive in making a strong case to those who actually vote on the matter.

Frank Stoltze at KPCC and Dennis Romero at the LA Weekly and Robert Faturechi of the LA Times have also reported on the issue so read and listen.

NOTE: I’M MOSTLY TWEETING, AND BARELY DOING ANY BLOGGING WHILE I’M AWAY IN MT (BACK JULY 25), BUT THIS ISSUE WAS TOO IMPORTANT TO LET SLIDE BY

UPDATE: It appears that the Sups won’t vote today as there is a brand new 37-page analysis from the County CEO’s office on the competing plans and it shows that the Sheriff’s plan will cost substantively more (in the tens of millions of $$) than that of Probation, a wrinkle that the Supervisors need time to consider.

Tracy Webber of Pro Publica, formerly a Pulitzer winner from the LA Times, has posted an essay about what it was like, in 2003, to be thrust into reporting on the growing story that would-be governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had serially groped a lot of women who worked on his films. In the light of the Mr. Shwarzenegger’s most recent admissions, not to mention the whole, awful DSK matter, it is interesting to read Webber’s recollections and musings on the subject of “When Powerful Men Cross Lines.”

She remembers, among other things, how much fury and criticism the reporting on Arnold’s purported gropings engendered—not toward Arnold, but toward the journalists, the paper, and the women who had, despite their trepidations, agreed to tell their stories.

Eventually 10,000 readers would cancel their subscriptions to the Times.

Reading Weber’s essay, I remembered how then LA Weekly columnist Bill Bradley would accuse the LA Times editors of being willing pawns of “democratic operatives.” I also recalled Jill Stewart writing in the Daily News that the Times deliberately hold the story so that the charges could not be refuted before the election. Schwarzenegger-friendly local radio hosts would cavalierly and falsely trash the reputation of a stuntwoman who was one of those who said that Arnold had molested her. (Nikki Finke, who reported on the dirty tricks against the woman, was one of the few who went against the Schwarzenegger defending, Times-trashing current.)

It was repeatedly suggested that the women’s testimonies were exaggerated, that they were no big deal. But even after the Times stopped working on the story, women kept coming forward, very, very tentatively to tell their own Arnold stories. I know because some of the women contacted me because this or that person told them that I was a trustworthy journalist. I remember I connected up two of those women—both very credible sounding—to one of the other Times reporters working with Weber on the project, Charlie Ornstein, I think it was. But by that time, the storm of criticism had rained down on the paper and they had all but pulled the plug on additional work on the story.

Here’s a clip from Weber’s essay:

The week’s news about the sexual conduct of politically powerful men gives me a queasy feeling of déjà vu.

As the French agonize over whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s star power quashed past allegations, I can respond cynically: Yes, that probably happened. But we should not automatically assume that timelier reporting about Strauss-Kahn’s sexually aggressive behavior (including an alleged violent incident in 2002) would have slowed the 62-year old Socialist’s march towards the French presidency.

I speak from experience.

Eight years ago I was dragged scowling and complaining into an investigation of allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger – the leading candidate for governor of California – had sexually harassed and molested women, including those who worked on his movies.

A team of reporters for The Los Angeles Times, where I then worked, had been pursuing the story for weeks and were about to publish a first piece. With the election days away, I was pulled in. At the time I was deep into an investigative project about a troubled Los Angeles hospital that had a history of harming or even killing its patients. Digging into The Terminator’s salacious back story seemed a tawdry detour…..

Steve Lopez also has a look back at the 2003 groping stories—and the reaction to them.

NOTE: Light posting this morning due to a pile of conflicts and a very sad funeral I must attend. However it’s worth mentioning that Steve Cooley has officially said he won’t seek reelection, and officially endorsed firmly someone other than Carmen Trutanich. More on all this as time goes along.

As most education watchers know, on Sunday, the LA Times released its second round of its controversial value added teacher rankings.

This new round appears to be a more finely tuned model with more elements controlled for in trying to determine what “value” a teacher “added” to the rise or fall of a student’s test score.

Nevertheless, last month, when there was still time to head off the publication of the rankings, a group of city leaders hoped to do just that. In a letter signed by new LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, LAUSD board president, Monica Garcia—plus Elise Buik, President & CEO Los Angeles Unified School District United Way of Greater Los Angeles (which has become active in education reform) and Gary Toebben, Pres & CEO of the LA Chamber of Commerce.

The letter (which you can access here) “urgently” requested that the Times “give serious consideration to not publicly release individual teacher “value-added” or academic growth over time (AGT) ratings.”

The Times mentioned the letter prominently in its story on Sunday’s release of the ratings, but went ahead and made the searchable database available.

Alexander Russo, whose This Week in Education column for Scholastic is always worth reading, got hold of the actual letter. (The Times declined to give it to him citing “privacy” concerns but someone from inside LAUSD forked it over without a blink.)

It wasn’t unusual that LAUSD tried to talk the Times out of posting the new Value Added scores. But the fact that the United Way and the Chamber of Commerce signed on too was interesting.

The Deasy and company letter pointed out that LAUSD’s own value added model is different than the one the Times is using, a fact that will cause confusion for teachers and parents, the letter said.

However, the letter’s main point was to say that, whichever model was used, the scores should be part of private conversations with teachers to help them improve, not placed into publicly searchable databases.

Hoping to find out why the United Way and the Chamber of Commerce had signed on to the letter, I spoke with Alicia Lara, United Way LA’s Vice President of Community Investment.

“We think the value added discussion is an important one to have,” Lara said. “The issue we have with the LA Times is outing the teachers.”

The problem with making the Times-generated rankings public, she said, is that Value Added is only one “data point” in determining teacher effectiveness. But when the Times published the scores, “it led people to believe that those scores are the only important data point in evaluating teachers. This meant that people went to the site and used it as the only source of information on teacher effectiveness, which it isn’t at all.”

Lara also called the controversy over the publication of the scores “a distraction from the larger question of of what the role that value added models should play in teacher evaluations, and how they can best be used to improve teachers’ professional practice.”

“We need to be talking about what the consequence ought to be for those teachers who don’t show improvement.”

The Times’ teacher evaluations may have gotten the discussion going, said Lara. “But is it the right discussion?”

This weekend the glorious LA Times Festival of Books will be held at its new location on the USC campus, after 15 years at UCLA.

The line up of authors and other intriguing panelists is, as usual, excellent. (You can find the Saturday and Sunday schedules here.)

Both days are filled with more great events than you can possibly fit in.

So to help you with this pesky dilemma, I’ve devised 7 TIPS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE LATFOB

In no particular order they are:

TIP #1: GO TO SEE MY PANEL (Yes, this is a self-serving pitch, but it’s also a really good panel). Specifically, I am moderating a panel on Sunday, at 2 pm at Taper Hall 101. It’s called History: Democracy and Its Discontents, and the LATFOB folks gave me a GREAT threesome to interview: Barry Siegel, Scott Martelle, and Thaddeus Russell—all of whom have written books that tell of crucial yet unreported times in American history that have deep resonances for the health of our democracy now.

For instance, I’ll be asking my brilliant pal Barry (Siegel) about his book, Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets, which reads with the depth and pacing of a novel as it relates how the American government began its obsession with state secrets—starting with the Supreme Court case that jump started the now, it seems, ever-expanding habit of hiding away any paperwork that might prove inconvenient to those in power.

And then there is Scott Martelle and his book, The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, which just came out this month and tells the story of the 1949 trial of 11 of the mouthpieces of the then minuscule American Communist Party.

The third panel member is Thaddeus Russell, who I’ll ask about his outrageously original A Renegade History of the United States, a book that tells of many of the unlikely people who affected the course of American cultural and political development, but whose tales of influence rarely seem to turn up in most history books.

It’ll be a dynamic exchange, I promise. So y’all come on down.

Okay, now that the personal pitch is out of the way, here are the other six tips:

TIP # 2: GO TO SEE ANY AND ALL PANELS THAT INVOLVE TOD GOLDBERG. Tod is moderating two on Sunday, and he’s on a third one on Saturday. I don’t think anybody except for LAT book reviewer David Ulin is on that many panels. There’s a reason for this. Tod is fantastically entertaining. By “entertaining” I mean, eye-leakingly funny. Plus he’s really, really smart and…really, really….you know…. literary.

TIP #3: GO TO SEE FATHER GREG BOYLE on Sunday at 11 am at Bovard Auditorium being interviewed by LA Times columnist Steve Lopez. Father Greg is really as good as it gets as speaker. Last year at the FOB, Warren Olney interviewed him and, during one of Greg’s stories, Warren started to tear up, with a quiver in the voice, and all. Most of those in the audience were teary too. But Warren Olney’s a pro’s pro, so you’ve got to really have something unusually moving to say to get Warren to cry.

TIP# 4: GO TO SEE EGGARS AND SMITH—TOGETHER AT LAST. On Saturday, David Ulin will interview musician Patti Smith and writer/novelist/publisher Dave Eggars. at 12:30 at Bovard. No, I have no idea why in the world those two are being interviewed together, but it’s a weirdly inspired idea. I’m betting the combo will alchemize something that you will miss at your own peril. (Yes, I know alchemize isn’t a verb.)

TIP #5: IF YOU’RE A DAVID FOSTER WALLACE FAN (or even if you’re not), GO TO SEE Ulin again at 4 pm on Saturday, this time moderating a panel on DFW and The Pale King with Bonnie Nadell, Wallace’s longtime agent, DT Max, the guy who is writing a book about Wallace (and who wrote that heartbreaking New Yorker piece), and Michael Pietsch, DFW’s editor and the guy who had to knit together the piles of incomplete and fragmented manuscript pages that Wallace left after his suicide, into a….book. (This will be sold out, so get a ticket now, or show up on Wednesday and just camp out for three days. I really don’t think this is too extreme a plan.)

TIP #6: GO TO ANY PANEL FEATURING SOMEONE NAMED AMY. It’s a good basic rule. The Amy strategy will, for example, get you to a couple of panels with the fabulous Advice Goddess and author, Amy Alkon, or with witty Texas grrrll novelist, Amy Wallen, or with the soulful and gifted nonfiction writer, Amy Wilentz, or with the incandescently talented poet, Amy Gerstler.

Alternately, I recommend going to any panel with the word MYSTERY in its title. So Cal has produced some fine mystery writers from Raymond Chandler forward, a vein of literary genre gold that continues to get richer, and the array at this year’s LATFOB is a satisfyingly bright and shiny one—Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, T. Jefferson Parker, and more.

TIP # 7. WALK INTO ANY PANEL RANDOMLY. Seriously. I’ve done this many times over the years and never been disappointed. There are so many wonderful conversations that will take place in front of microphones over that two day period, it’s hard to go wrong.

On Saturday Janet Fitch talks to T.C. Boyle; Robin Abcarian interviews Andrew Breitbart; Garrett Graff of the Washingtonian, Eric Alterman of the Daily Beast and the Nation, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Nation’s editor/publisher all talk about Obama; Jennifer Egan and other fictionistas talk about breaking boundaries in fiction—and I have only slightly dented the surface,

On Sunday, the LA Times’ Carolyn Kellogg moderates Publishing: the New Shape of the Book. featuring Tom Lutz, the editor/publisher of the about-to-launch Los Angeles Review of Books, along with Ethan Nosowsky, editor-at-large, Graywolf Press, …..and…. Oh, you get the picture.

Just plan to go, whatever you do.

We can talk about non-literary news tomorrow.