As we near the end of 2012, we at WitnessLA believe there is quite a bit to be thankful for within the social justice sphere–breakthroughs, big wins (and smaller wins), opened doors, and steps in the right direction. Here are fifteen items on our list, in no particular order:

1. We’re thankful to Senator Leland Yee for drafting SB 9, the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, and to Gov. Brown for having the good sense to sign the bill that gives certain juvies serving life-without-parole the possibility of a second chance.

2. We’re thankful that Californians passed Prop 36, the three-strikes reform legislation.

3. We’re thankful that California’s education system will not have to find out what would have happened if Prop 30 had not passed.

4. We’re thankful for the rigor with which the members and staff of the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence approached their task, which led to a strong set of findings, and a thorough list of recommendations.

5. We’re also thankful for the many LASD people—present and former— who have courageously come forward: to us, to the LA Times, to the commission and to those guys and girls on Wilshire Blvd.

6. We’re thankful to Judge Michael Nash for shining light on Child Dependency Court proceedings by allowing media access, and to the 2nd District of the California Court of Appeals for denying petitions against Judge Nash’s decision.

7. We’re thankful for the passage of marijuana laws in Washington and Colorado as steps toward rectifying the harm done by a failed drug war.

8. We’re thankful for SCOTUS’ ban of mandatory juvenile life-without-parole sentencing. (It’s one step in the direction of banning juvie LWOP altogether.)

9. We’re also thankful to SCOTUS for ruling preposterously long sentences for youth unconstitutional.

10. We’re thankful for the wise and important findings of the California State Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color created by Assembly speaker John Perez, and chaired by Assemblyman Sandré Swanson.

11. We’re thankful that, slowly but surely, the US is making progress toward equal rights for the LGBT community (shout out to Washington, Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota).

12. We’re also thankful to Gov. Brown for making CA the first state to ban gay conversion therapy for youth.

13. We’re thankful for all those who are pushing for zero-tolerance reform in LAUSD schools and across the nation.

14. We’re thankful to SCOTUS for striking down most of the harsh AZ immigration law, SB 1070.

15. We’re thankful that, a year after the program commenced on Oct. 1, 2011, people are finally starting to talk sense about California’s prison realignment process—rather than painting it counter-factually as a plot to endanger public safety by releasing prisoners early. (We are particularly grateful to the LA Times Rob Greene for snapping some of the worst fact-offenders out of their stupor.) We’re also thankful for the programs that are starting to spring up in various counties that see realignment as an opportunity, rather than a burden.

A CALIF JUDGE’S DECISION THREATENS THE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT

The LA Times’ Jim Newton has a column that is an absolutely essential read —unless you trust every single one of our government agencies and public officials to scrupulously and without fail behave in a right and good and true manner all of the time.

The column relates the experience of Tim Crews, the editor/publisher of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, a twice weekly newspaper that serves Glenn County. Evidently Crews believed that the local school district had used public funds to improperly influence an election. So to look further into the matter, he attempted to obtain certain documents under the Public Records Act, which is what most reporters would do under the same circumstances. The district predictably dragged its feet. Eventually, the paper and the district wound up in court over some of the documentation, and the judge decided against Crews.

Now here’s where the whole thing gets worrisome. Here are some clips from Newton’s column that explain the heart of the matter:

Up to that point, the case was fairly unremarkable, one of thousands of disputed but ultimately resolved Public Records Act requests that wind their way through public agencies and courts every year. But then the judge in Crews’ case, Peter Twede, did something extraordinary: He concluded that Crews’ request had been frivolous, and he ordered Crews to pay not only his own legal bills but those of the school district. For the privilege of obtaining documents that were his legal right to have, Crews was ordered to pay more than $100,000, an amount later reduced to $56,000.

If the judgment stands — Crews has appealed — it would have a devastating effect on the newspaper, which only has about 2,800 paid subscribers. “It would wipe us out,” Crews told me last week.

It would do more than that. If upheld by the appellate courts, the judgment would radically alter the contours of the Public Records Act in California. Imagine if every time citizens asked for records under the act, they faced the possibility of having to bear not only their own legal expenses but also those that the agency might run up defending itself. Who could afford such risk?

The consequences of Crews’ case are so far-reaching that a number of organizations have come to his defense, including the First Amendment Coalition (on whose board I serve without compensation). William T. Bagley, who wrote California’s public records law while in the Assembly in the late 1960s, has also filed an amicus brief in support of the editor.

[BIG SNIP]

All that is reason enough to be troubled by the action of the judge in the Crews case. But the potential damage to the public extends well beyond Glenn County and even beyond the Public Records Act itself.

If upheld, this ruling would fundamentally reorient the relationship between the people of California and those who represent them. It would require members of the public to put themselves at risk to learn about their own government. It would recast government agencies and elected officials as immune from public scrutiny rather than accountable through that scrutiny.

As the Public Records Act itself states: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them.” For that reason alone, Crews deserves to win and his paper to survive.

This issue has direct application to such things as the reporting that WitnessLA has been doing on the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department. Take Matt Fleischer’s recent story about Pay-to-Play in the LASD: without the donations information and other documentation obtained through the Public Records Act, that story and others like it, could not have existed.

And because WLA and other smaller publications like it—and private individuals, for that matter—are operating without the benefit of big staffs and big budgets (and funds set aside for just such legal issues), the threat of having to pay tens of thousands in legal bills if a judge happens to whimsically decide that a government agency doesn’t have to fork over certain paperwork, cannot help to have a cooling effect. Plus, it gives public agencies who’d like to withhold documents for less than stellar reasons a nasty little tool to use against pesky reporters and members of the public who try to hold them accountable, but who don’t have deep pockets.

In any case, stay tuned. We’ll let you know when we know more.

ANTI-BULLYING PROGRAM DEEMED GAY-PROMOTING PLOT”

First the good news: 77 LA County Schools are participating in Mix It Up at Lunch Day, the most schools of any area of the nation. Mix It Up at Lunch Day, which will take place October 30, is a national pro-tolerance, anti-bullying school program that was started over a decade ago by the Teaching Tolerance project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here’s how their website explains it:

In our surveys, students have identified the cafeteria as the place where divisions are most clearly drawn. So on one day – October 30 this school year – we ask students to move out of their comfort zones and connect with someone new over lunch. It’s a simple act with profound implications. Studies have shown that interactions across group lines can help reduce prejudice. When students interact with those who are different from them, biases and misperceptions can fall away.

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Around 2500 schools participate nationally

But then here’s the bad news: A conservative evangelical group called American Family Association, has whipped itself into a frenzy over Mix-It-Up-at Lunch Day, which it calls a “nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools.”

Naturally AFA has told its followers to inform school administrators that they will be keeping their kids home on Oct. 30 in the hope of getting schools to cancel all this ghastly Mixing-it-up.

According to a New York Times story by Kim Severson, after the AFA began pressuring, 200 schools cancelled the program,. Here’s a clip from Severson’s story:

The program, started 11 years ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center and now in more than 2,500 schools, was intended as a way to break up cliques and prevent bullying.

But this year, the American Family Association, a conservative evangelical group, has called the project “a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools” and is urging parents to keep their children home from school on Oct. 30, the day most of the schools plan to participate this year.

The charges, raised in an e-mail to supporters earlier this month, have caused a handful of schools to cancel this year’s event and has caught organizers off guard.

“I was surprised that they completely lied about what Mix It Up Day is,” said Maureen Costello, the director of the center’s Teaching Tolerance project, which organizes the program. “It was a cynical, fear-mongering tactic.”

WHEN KILLERs ARE KIDS, A CASE FROM THE POV OF A VICTIM’S FAMILY

Sunday’s NY Times features a story by Ethan Bronner that looks at a case in which a 15-year-old boy killed his 15-year-old girlfriend who was pregnant with his child. The article explores the point of view of the once-young killer and also looks at the tragedy from the perspective of the sister of the victim, each of whom could be affected by the SCOTUS decision handed down this past June that found the mandatory sentencing of juvenile murderers to term of Life without the possiblity of parole to be unconstitutional. To be clear, the Suprmes didn’t find Juvie LWOP to be cruel and unusual as a whole, only the mandatory handing down of the sentence without considering the individual killer and his or her circumstances, state of mind, et al.

The decision, which is being treated as retroactive by some states, could mean that a lot of LWOP cases will be reconsidered to see if there should have been an examination of the murderer’s actions, background and circumstances, rather than having a sentence simply applied automatically.

Here’s a clip from the story, which talks about how painful opening such cases could be for families of the victims.

“I go over it pretty much every night,” said Mr. Bailey, now 34, sitting in his brown jumpsuit here at the Fayette State Correctional Institution in western Pennsylvania, where he is serving a sentence of life without parole for first-degree murder. “I don’t want to make excuses. It’s a horrible act I committed. But as you get older, your conscience and insight develop. I’m not the same person.”

Every night, Bobbi Jamriska tries to avoid going over that same event. Ms. Jamriska, Kristina’s sister, was a 22-year-old out for a drink with friends when she got the news. Ten months later, their inconsolable mother died of complications from pneumonia. Weeks later, their grandmother died.

“During that year, I buried four generations of my family,” Ms. Jamriska said at the dining room table of her Pittsburgh house, taking note of her sister’s unborn child. “This wrecked my whole life. It completely changed the person I was.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: I found it a bit distressing that the reporter wrote that the Supremes outlawed Juvenile LWOP altogether and no editor managed to catch the fairly large error, which would seem to be something one might fact check if one is writing about the affect of the freaking case. The story is still worth reading, but really, New York times.

Yes, the governor signed the bill at the last possible minute. (Today was the cutoff.) But sign it, he did. We are grateful.

Rather than ramble on about the importance of SB9, the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, yet again, I’ve reprinted in its entirety, the statement from the office of bill’s sponsor, Senator Leeland Yee.

And, for those of you who are going to start shrieking about social justice advocates caring only about “criminals” and not about the victims, here’s the deal:

Fortunately for all of us, the application of compassion and simply decency to a situation isn’t a zero sum game. It’s not an either/or proposition. Thankfully, toughness and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Okay, enough said. I’m climbing off my soapbox. Here’s the story:

Today, Governor Jerry Brown signed Senator Leland Yee’s Senate Bill 9 – the Fair Sentencing for Youth Act – which will give youth serving life without parole an opportunity to earn a second chance.

Approximately 300 youth offenders have been sentenced to die in California’s prisons for crimes committed when they were teenagers. SB 9 will give some youth sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) a chance to earn parole after serving at least 25 years in prison.

“I commend Governor Brown for having the courage, understanding, and leadership to sign SB 9,” said Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo), who is a child psychologist. “The Governor’s signature of SB 9 is emotional for both the supporters and the opposition, but I am proud that today California said we believe all kids, even those we had given up on in the past, are deserving of a second chance.”

The United States is the only country in the world where people who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crime serve sentences of life without parole.

Under Senate Bill 9, courts could review cases of juveniles sentenced to life without parole after 15 years, potentially allowing some individuals to receive a new minimum sentence of 25 years to life. The bill would require the offender to show remorse and be working towards rehabilitation in order to submit a petition for consideration of the new sentence.

“SB 9 is not a get-out-of-jail-free card; it is an incredibly modest proposal that respects victims, international law, and the fact that children have a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults,” said Yee. “The neuroscience is clear – brain maturation continues well through adolescence and thus impulse control, planning, and critical thinking skills are not yet fully developed. SB 9 reflects that science and provides the opportunity for compassion and rehabilitation that we should exercise with minors.”

“SB 9 becoming law speaks volumes for who we are as a society – that we value our children,” said Yee.

Supporters of SB 9 included child advocates, mental health experts, medical organizations, faith communities, and civil rights groups. In recent weeks, SB 9 also gained high level support from the Democratic Leader of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, as well as a number of law enforcement leaders including San Francisco’s police chief, sheriff, and district attorney.

“In California, a sentence of life without parole is a sentence to die in prison,” said Elizabeth Calvin, children’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Teenagers are still developing. No one – not a judge, a psychologist, or a doctor – can look at a sixteen year old and be sure how that young person will turn out as an adult. It makes sense to re-examine these cases when the individual has grown up and becomes an adult. There’s no question that we can keep the public safe without locking youth up forever for crimes committed when they were still considered too young to have the judgment to vote or drive.”

In California, prosecutors and judges have some discretion on whether to pursue LWOP for juveniles. However, several cases call such discretion into question.

One such case involves Christian Bracamontes, who was 16 and had never before been in trouble with the law. One day when Christian’s friend said, “Hey do you want to rob this guy?” Christian replied in what can only be described as a quintessential adolescent response, “I don’t care.” When the victim refused to comply with his friend’s demand, Christian said he thought the bluff was called, and he remembered turning away and bending down to pick up his bike and leave, when he heard a gunshot.

The prosecutor offered a lower sentence, but in Christian’s teenage mind he could not see how he would be responsible for the other person’s actions and he turned down that deal. The DA was quoted in the newspaper as saying, “It’s hard for teenagers to understand concepts like aiding and abetting.” Christian was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A report published by Human Rights Watch found that in many cases where juveniles were prosecuted with an adult for the same offense, the youth received heavier sentences than their adult codefendants.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, Human Rights Watch found that life without parole is not reserved for children who commit the worst crimes or who show signs of being irredeemable criminals. Nationally, it is estimated that 59% of youth sentenced to life without parole had no prior criminal convictions. Forty-five percent of California youth sentenced to life without parole for involvement in a murder did not actually kill the victim. Many were convicted of felony murder, or for aiding and abetting the murder, because they acted as lookouts or were participating in another felony, such as a robbery, when the murder took place.

One prosecutor who has publically supported Yee’s bill, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said, “I recognize the ability of young people to reform their behavior and be rehabilitated as they mature. SB 9 holds youth responsible for their actions. It creates a rigorous system of checks and balances, and provides a limited chance for young offenders to prove they have changed – both to a judge and to a parole board.”

California also has the worst record in the nation for racial disparity in the imposition of life without parole for juveniles. African American youth are serving the sentence at a rate that is eighteen times higher than the rate for white youth, and the rate for Latino youth is five times higher.

Each new youth offender given this sentence will cost the state upwards of $2.5 million. To continue incarcerating the current population of youth offenders already sentenced to life without parole until their deaths in prison will cost the state close to $700 million.

BROWN SAYS AB1270, THE PRESS ACCESS TO PRISONS BILL, WOULD GIVE CELEBRITY STATUS TO CRIMINALS

In vetoing AB1279, the sunshine law that would have allowed greater press access to Californi’s state prisons, Jerry Brown used the same rationale that a list of previous governors have used in axing similar bills.

They say that if reporters are allowed to request interviews with specific prisoners, this inevitably means that high profile bad guys like Charlie Manson will quickly become media stars.

It is a rationale that has perplexed most of the journalists who would be those actually going into the prisons to report had the governor signed the bill on Sunday. The last thing most of us would wish to do is to rush to interview the Charlie Mansons of the world.

Regrettably, however, there is a small group of reporters who would.

In any case, it’s back to the drawing board on the necessary concept of bringing more light and thus more accountability to California’s prisons

A PUSH TO REIN IN THE HIGH COST OF INMATE CALLS

Because of the type of reporting I do, for over two decades, I have gotten occasional collect calls from prison and jail inmates.

With the exception of maybe the cost of using certain satillite phones, these are the most expensive phone calls in the world.

I can call China less expensively than the cost of accepting the average call from a California state prison.

And even with the already usurious per minute rates in place, the phone companies seem to find ever more devious ways to levy additional charges.

Take, for example, the experience I had last week when I wanted to be able accept a collect call on my cell phone while I was out of state in Montana.. The call was coming from inmate in the LA County Jail system whom I’d heard wanted to talk to me.

In order to accept the call, the Globel Tell Link operator cheerily informed me I had to prepay a minimum of $25 just to have the possibility of accepting a single call on my cell, no matter how short that call might end up being. (My landline is set up to accept collect calls on a normal basis, with a extra charges tacked on to my monthly phone bill for any collect calls I might receive. However, my cell phone isn’t. But since I was away from my home office, the cell was the only alternative if I wanted to accept this guy’s call.)

I explained to the operator that I only would be accepting a single call on a single occasion, and that it was unlikely to be long. And I wasn’t 100 percent sure, that the call in question would come through at all anyway. Plus I was already a Globel Tel Link customer on my home phone. Surely, I said, I could buy maybe $10 worth of prepaid minutes, instead of $25?

Nope, said the operator. It was $25 or nothing. She further informed me that if I failed to use up that $25 credit in, I think it was 90 days, the credit went dead and could no longer be used to cover calls at all. Globel Tel Link would simply keep the money.

Part of the problem is that, since each county or state contracts with a single phone company, there is no competition; it’s a take it or leave it situation for mothers, fathers, wives and husbands, sons and daughters hoping to keep in touch with their incarcerated family members, but for whom the cost of accepting calls quickly becomes prohibitive.

(Did I mention that the states and counties are getting multimillion dollar legal kick backs from the phone companies that have these big bucks contracts?)

Now, however, there is finally some real movement to change all that.

Sunday’s NY Times has an editorial calling for those changes in clear, no-nonsense terms.

Here’s a clip:

Members of Congress and civil rights groups are pushing the Federal Communications Commission to rein in telephone companies that, in many states, charge inmates spectacularly high rates that can force their families to choose between keeping in touch with a relative behind bars and, in some cases, putting food on the table.

The time is long past for the F.C.C. — which has been weighing this issue for nearly a decade — to break up what amount to monopolies and ensure that prisoners across the country have access to reasonably priced interstate telephone service.

The calls are expensive because they are placed through independent telephone companies that pay the state a “commission” — essentially a legalized kickback — that ranges from 15 percent to 60 percent either as a portion of revenue, a fixed upfront fee or a combination of both. According to a new report by the Prison Policy Initiative, a research group based in Massachusetts, depending on the size of the kickback, a 15-minute call can cost the family as little as $2.36 or as much as $17.

Prison officials and phone companies that defend the system of commissions say that extra charges are necessary to pay for the security screening required when inmates make calls. But this presents no problem in New York State, which banned the kickbacks several years ago and required its prison telephone vendor to provide service at the lowest possible cost to the inmates and their families…..

Read the rest. It’s ridiculous that these policies are still in place—punishing the families in our communities who can least afford it.

NEWT GINGRICH AND OTHER CONSERVATIVES URGE JERRY BROWN TO SIGN SB9, THE JUVIE LWOP BILL

As the clock ticks down on the bills that remain on Governor Brown’s desk, late-ish last week one piece of legislation got some welcome support from some unexpected sources when the San Diego Union Tribune ran an op ed by former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan, a former Republican leader of the California State Assembly, and president of Justice Fellowship, urging the governor to sign SB9, the bill that would allow the possibility of eventual parole after 25 years for some of those inmates who’ve been locked up for life for a crime committed when they were kids as young as 14 years old.

The governor has until the end of this month to sign—or not.

Here’s a clip from Newt and Pat’s excellent essay:

…Teenagers often don’t make very good decisions. Our laws take this into account in many ways: We don’t let young people drink until they are 21, and they can’t sign contracts, vote or serve on juries until they are 18.

But there is one area in which we ignore teens’ youth and impulsiveness: our criminal laws. Our laws often ignore the difference between adults and teens, and some youngsters are sentenced to life in prison without parole (LWOP). Despite urban legends to the contrary, this law has no exceptions: A teen sentenced to LWOP will die in prison as an old man or woman. No exceptions for good behavior, no exceptions period. No hope.

You might expect that these LWOP sentences are limited to the “worst of the worst,” but that is not the case. A young teen can be a bit player in a crime, e.g., act as a lookout while his buddies go in to steal beer from a convenience store. None of them is armed, and there is no plan for violence. Then it all goes haywire. The clerk pulls a gun, and one of the kids tries to grab it away. In the struggle that ensues, the gun goes off and the clerk dies.

Under California’s “felony murder” rule, every person involved in that crime, no matter how minor their role, is equally guilty of murder, even if they did not plan or expect a murder to occur. According to the fiction of our law, the lookout is as much to blame as the person who pulled the trigger. About 45 percent of the inmates serving LWOP for a teenage crime were not the person who caused the death. Yet they will die in prison of old age, with no chance for release.

But should these youngsters die in prison for something they did when they were so young? Wouldn’t it be better to re-evaluate them after serving a long stretch in prison and consider whether they have matured and improved themselves?

We are conservative Republicans, and we believe that some people are so dangerous that we must separate them from our communities. That is what prisons are for. But sometimes we overuse our institutions. California’s teen LWOP is an overuse of incarceration. It denies the reality that young people often change for the better. And it denies hope to those sentenced under it…..

Such common sense is refreshing. Let’s hope that the governor sides with facts rather than the fact-challenged diatribes of those lobbying against this bill that is a long time coming.

AND IN A RELATED STORY, MONTANA CONSERVATIVES WORK FOR THE END OF THE DEATH PENALTY

The Great Falls Tribune has the story. Here’s how it opens:

A conservative political group opposed to the death penalty is calling for an end to capital punishment in the wake of a recent court ruling that found the state’s method of execution unconstitutional.

“Conservatives dislike waste and inefficiency. That is why we should cast a critical eye when the state is involved with the business of executing people,” said former Republican state Sen. Roy Brown of Billings.

Brown is on the advisory committee of Montana Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

“When it takes over 20 years and hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars for extra legal fees and court costs, it is obvious that the process is full of waste and inefficiency,” Brown said.

Brown worked across the aisle with Democrats in the state Senate in past legislative sessions to try to end the death penalty in Montana.

ADVOCATES’ FINAL PUSH FOR GOV. BROWN TO PASS SB9

SB9 advocates are making one last push to urge Governor Brown to sign the bill into law. This piece of legislation would allow some of those sentenced to life without parole as juveniles a chance to request parole. (For WitnessLA’s most recent posts on SB9, go here and here.)

Vicky Lindsey, director of a support system for families of murder victims called Project Cry No More, has this to say about SB9:

On behalf of hundreds of families I work with who grieve every day for our murdered children, we believe that justice in our courts will contribute to the building of peace and justice in our streets. All youth deserve a chance to prove that they have changed and an opportunity to earn their release.

Giving youth a Life Without Parole sentence does not relieve my suffering as a victim. In fact, it contributes to the feelings of hopelessness in our neighborhoods. The violence will end when we look beyond revenge, to love all youth and have faith in their ability to give back to their families and communities.

It would be easy for me to be trapped in the anger immediately following my son’s murder. But, I choose instead to embrace youth and families, and urge them to stop the violence, to get involved while their loved ones are still alive – as I often say, to “get involved by choice not by force.”

Today, I hope that everyone will have the same ability to forgive, and to build a better future for California’s youth. All youth are better than their worst day. If we throw youth away, then we are also throwing away our own opportunity to heal and to end the violence that has caused so many families a lifetime of pain.

The Youth Justice Coalition has info and resources for those who want to encourage the governor to sign SB9. The same advocates are urging the governor to sign AB1270 which would lift the media ban in prisons. That contact information can be found here.

AN AMERICAN HABEAS ATTORNEY TELLS OF THE HORRIFYING LIFE—AND DEATH—OF HIS CLIENT AT GUANTANAMO BAY

Gitmo detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif died on September 8th after ten years of incarceration and legal battles during which the U.S. government provided no concrete evidence of Adnan’s association with enemy forces. Marc Falkoff, one of Adnan’s habeas corpus attorneys since 2004, stresses the need for the U.S. to discontinue use of Guantanamo Bay, asserting that the unjust detention killed Adnan in the end. Here’s a clip from Falkoff’s Op-Ed for the LA Times:

On Sept. 8, one of my nightmares came true. Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a client of mine who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba for more than 10 years, died alone in his cell. His tragic death will surely be greeted with a shrug by some, but it should prompt all of us to reconsider our decision to continue the operation of our infamous offshore prison camp.

Adnan was brought to Guantanamo in January 2002 on suspicion of being associated in some manner with enemy forces in Afghanistan. It’s hard to say exactly what the U.S. military thought Adnan had done. Over the years, the government made allegations and then abandoned them.

[SNIP]

We don’t yet know how Adnan died, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was by his own hand. He had sought release from Guantanamo by attempting suicide several times before.

It’s also possible his death was caused by the cumulative effect of a decade’s worth of intermittent hunger strikes, which were his only way to protest the injustice of his indefinite detention and the harshness of his treatment at Guantanamo.

Either way, his death was caused by his detention.

PAVING THE WAY FOR PROTECTING LGBT PRISONERS

A small group of correctional institutions are taking a lead in protecting the gay and transgender incarcerated population from rape and discrimination. A nationwide broadcast from the National Institute of Corrections will air November 7th presenting effective practices to protect LGBT incarcerated and the institutions that are successfully implementing them. (You should be able to view the broadcast here.)

The Crime Report’s Katti Gray has the story. Here’s how it opens:

With jails and prisons federally mandated to curb sexual assaults against homosexual and transgender inmates, a handful of correctional facilities have emerged at the forefront of innovative practices designed to protect what is one of the most vulnerable groups behind bars.

The National Institute of Corrections (NIC), citing studies that show lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inmates are 13 to 20 times more likely to be raped than incarcerated heterosexuals, plans to spotlight those practices Nov. 7 in a nationwide broadcast that corrections officials can view live. The public eventually can access the broadcast on the institute’s website.

One of the institutions leading those efforts is the Denver Sheriff Department, whose director, Gary Wilson, began raising the issue when he took the job two years ago, around the time federal officials began seeking public comment on what then were proposed safeguards for gay and transgender inmates.

“We wanted a policy that [would] ensure that transgender people who came into our custody were treated fairly with the equal amount of [protections] as other inmates,” said Capt. Paul Oliva, who began developing the program in February 2011 with the help of experts and advocates from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities and civil rights lawyers.

(Make sure you read the rest, as there’s lots of good information and links!)

PHOTO BY Youth Justice Coalition

Is Jerry Brown really considering vetoing SB9, the bill that would give some of those sentenced as juveniles to Life Without Parole a chance of a chance to one day leave prison?

Elizabeth Calvin, Human Rights Watch’s well-respected Children’s Right Advocate, says she’s worried.

When the bill finally was passed by the state assembly two weeks ago, supporters of the legislation figured that was pretty much the ball game. A done deal.

Sure, SB9 still had to go through a procedural vote in the state senate. But the senate had never been the problem. In the last three years, AB9 made it through the senate several times without a hitch, but then got stopped short when it hit the assembly, where otherwise sensible lawmakers got cold feet and sat out the vote, because of the loud protestations of victims’ rights groups and law enforcement unions, both of which are lobbying forces with piles of money to throw against a candidate who crosses them.

Then, finally, on August 16, the bill passed in the state assembly for the first time.

Juvenile justice advocates were ecstatic.

As predicted, it sailed through the senate the following week.

All that remained was for the governor to sign it, which surely Jerry would do. Right?

However, on Wednesday morning, a bunch of panicked emails from youth advocacy groups began to show up in my email box. The messages all urged supporters to call the governor and plead with him to sign the bill into law.

I figured this was just advocacy overkill, but wanted to make sure, so I called Human Rights Watch’s Elizabeth Calvin to ask her what was going on.

Calvin told me she thought the veto risk might be real.

“In my conversations with the governor’s staff,” Calvin said grimly, “they mentioned…..concerns.”

“Like what concerns?”

“Well,” she said, “Number one, Jerry’s worried that, with realignment just getting started, if he signs this, he’ll end up being known as the guy who let lots of criminals out of prison.”

“But…realignment doesn’t let anyone out of prison,” I sputtered. “Like, nobody. It lets zero people out early. All it does is to send certain low-ish level offenders to jail when they’re convicted, whereas before realignment, those same people would have served their time in state prison. In other words, the counties now lock ‘em up instead of the state. Realignment also transfers some parolees to county oversight, but they don’t get out early or anything…”

“Look,” Calvin interrupted. “I know that and you know that, but it’s the….”

“...perception,” I said, my tone now as grim as hers.

“Right. It’s the perception.”

“They said it would be easier if we just brought the bill back a year from now…”

I groaned.

“You said that was number one of the governor’s concerns,” I said. “Is there a number two?”

“Number two is that the Sacramento-based victims rights groups are very vocal. And so are the law enforcement unions.”

“Uh, huh,” I said, thinking of the LAPD union’s recent push to get Brown to ax the bill (which WLA covered here and here).

“PORAC has told the governor that defeating this bill is their number one priority.”

PORAC—for those who don’t keep up on every law enforcement acronym, is the Peace Officers Research Organization of California. They’re a good organization that advocates for law enforcement. If you’re a politician, they’re very handy people to have backing you, and very unfun to have against you.

They backed Jerry, not Meg Whitman, for governor. One presumes he’d like to have their backing the next time around.

But does that require the veto of a bill that, when you get past the alarmist rhetoric, is just a very sensible and humane piece of legislation that corrects a matter that needs correcting, I suspect the governor knows all that. But will politics win out anyway?

“This is not good,” I said.

“No,” she said.

We’ll let you know more as we know more.

UPDATE: TALKING TO PORAC

I was not able to speak to PORAC’s president, Ron Cottingham, before I posted this story. However, Mr. Cottingham, who is also a member of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, did kindly call me back this morning and we had a wide-ranging chat about the ins and outs of the issue.

The bottom line is that PORAC is, indeed, strenuously opposing the bill.

The reasons he cited were much the same as the LAPPL—the LAPD union-–had listed, most of which I recognized as having come from the main victims’ rights lobbying group opposing the bill.

Yet I found Cottingham to be a bright, thoughtful person who, while appropriately protective of PORAC’s law enforcement membership, was also genuinely interested in the facts of the matter. He wanted, for example, to know how many of those convicted as juveniles would have been eligible for the death penalty for the crimes of which they were convicted. It was a question I couldn’t answer.

He also was under the impression that everyone given juvenile life had been through a thorough a complex vetting process before they were tried as adults. I told him that, no, after Prop. 21, DAs could “direct file,” meaning they could file on kids as adults without having to go through a juvenile court process known as a “fitness hearing.” Well, what percentage of the LWOP juveniles fell into that direct file category, Cottingham wanted to know. Were they the exception or the rule?

I had no definitive stat for that either.

I had enough information to be able to disabuse him of certain false notions he had about the bill, and he listened thoughtfully. On certain other parts of the topic, we agreed to disagree.

After I got off the phone, I realized the question I should have asked Mr. Cottingham: Had any of those who were advocating for the passage of SB9 called PORAC? Or was he just hearing from victims rights groups, who like many advocacy groups, tend to shave the dice on their facts and figuers?

If the latter was true, why had none of the juvenile justice experts managed to sit down with the various law enforcement unions to explain why SB9 was not a threat to public safety, or a slap in the face to the work of cops?

Maybe PORAC, the LAPPL and others would still come out against bills like SB9, but maybe not. As I said, while Ron Cottingham would certainly always have a law-enforcement leaning, he was interested in more than knee-jerk positions. He was interested in facts.

I wondered why no one in the juvenile justice reform camp had thought to provide him with the detailed facts of the matter before now.

Photo from the Office of the Governor.

No. The LAPPL leadership isn’t suddenly clasping SB 9—the Juvie LWOP reform bill—warmly to its collective bosom.

But, in response to our post yesterday, it has removed the biggest errors from its pitch to members and others, to contact Governor Jerry Brown and urge him to veto the legislation in question.

We appreciate the union’s willingness to make the correction and to do it so quickly.

IN CASE YOU’RE UNAWARE OF THE KERFUFFLE, TO RECAP:

Tuesday night, the union sent around an email to its members and friends hectoring them to urge Jerry to veto SB 9, the bill that would give some people sentenced to life without parole for crimes they committed when they were teenagers, at least the slim possibility of one day getting to leave prison before they die.

Inmates who had committed certain kinds of particularly horrific murders—those involving torture or the killing of a peace officer, firefighter or public official—would be excluded from even the possibility of eventual parole, no matter how remorseful and rehabilitated the inmate, or how steller his or her behavior in prison over the decades.

However, when the LAPPL powers-that-be sent out their initial pitch against the bill on Tuesday night, their big selling point was the notion that SB 9 would result in the release of cop killers. They even detailed the particularly vicious shooting of a detective by someone they insisted that SB 9 would set free.

Of course, the bill allows for no such thing. If anything, it strengthens the certainty that no kid killers of police officers will ever be released for any reason.

WitnessLA called them out on this (and some of their other statements) in a story Wednesday morning.

We felt the issue was important. On one hand, we didn’t think Jerry would veto the bill. But we do know he is very mindful of his relationships with the state’s public safety unions. Thus we would hate to have had him get a flood of anti-SB 9 emails—based on a lie.

And so we were heartened when, on Wednesday mid-morning we heard that, having read our story (and likely noted that LA Observed and others linked to it), the LAPPL got upset at the news of its mistakes.

As a consequence, we heard, there was a flurry of unhappy phone calls, et al, in and around the union’s offices. Finally it was decided; they’d remove the statements in question from their online pitch.

There is some overheated prose remaining, plus some arguable inaccuracies here and there. And the union still opposes the bill.

But they are now doing so far more honestly.

And that’s always a good thing.

We’ve said it before — more than a dozen times. A child, even a bad one, should not be sent to prison for life without any chance at parole. It’s a mark of societal fear and a lust for revenge. Some younger criminals may indeed be so incorrigible that they should never go free, but after he or she has been behind bars for a quarter of a century, a judge, and a parole board, should be able to consider release.

On Tuesday, the state Assembly is reconsidering SB 9, a bill to put California among the ranks of civilized societies by ending juvenile life without parole sentences. Finally, Assembly, put this matter to rest, pass the bill and send it to the governor.

Or, as we have said previously:

Jan. 16, 2008:

But of all the inequities of a dysfunctional penal system and harsh state laws, few can touch our predilection for discarding the lives of children who commit crimes before they’re old enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions….

And he goes on from there with nine more snippets of nine more Times editorials on the topic—all of them impassioned and all particularly satisfying to read today— in the light of Thursday’s good news.

Obviously, we’ll be tracking this bill the rest of the way—with our fingers firmly crossed for a sane outcome.

Okay, now back to Taylor for the rest of today’s postings.

NO MORE LETTERS TO SD JAIL INMATES

A new policy to extend to all seven San Diego jails bans inmates from receiving letters. Inmates will be restricted to postcards and email communications beginning September 1st.

CBS has the AP story. Here’s how it opens:

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore has a message for jail inmates: No more letters.

The sheriff announced Wednesday that letters for inmates at the department’s seven jails will be returned to senders starting Sept. 1. It is an effort to prevent contraband from entering cells.

Cmdr. Richard Miller says drugs, weapons and needles have been hidden in letters. He recognizes that letter-writing is an inexpensive way to communicate, but says safety concerns prevailed.

CA REALIGNMENT UPDATE: NINE MONTHS IN….SOME INTERESTING QUESTIONS ARISE

A new report by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice reported that in the first quarter of realignment there were 39% less prison admissions than when realignment began, and 26,480 fewer total prisoners. However the CJCJ notes that, in the second quarter, things begin to get more complicated as, in some counties. admissions rose—with the biggest increase in non-marijuana drug offenses.

Here’s a clip that describes what they found:

New quarterly figures released by CDCR show that during the first 9 months of realignment there has been a 39% overall reduction in new prison admissions as of June 30, 2012, and a drop of 26,480 in the prison population as of August 8, 2012, compared to October 1, 2011. Realignment was designed to redirect non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenders from incarceration in state prison to the supervision of local jurisdictions. Within the first 9 months of realignment, CDCR has already progressed two-thirds of the way toward the goal of reducing inmate populations by 40,000 by 2017.

However, the initially steep reductions in prisoners may be almost over, and further cuts may prove harder to achieve. The second quarter of 2012 actually brought an increase in new admissions. From March through June 2012, 8,352 inmates were admitted to California prisons, an increase of 306 over the 8,046 admitted in January through March. A contributing factor to the increase was an additional 2 days in the 2nd than in the first quarter.

[SNIP]

The biggest increase in admissions, by far, was in new felon admissions for non-marijuana drug offenses, which rose by 22%, while property offender numbers rose by 6% and violent offender numbers remained the same.

So how to account for those admissions increases?

In the report’s conclusion, CJCJ explores possible explanations for this small but curious reversal of trends, and offers one explanation that their analysts believe is the most plausible—and that assuredly deserves further investigation:

Here’s a clip from that section:

….prosecutors in certain jurisdictions could be exploring
ways to avoid realignment mandates by charging more defendants with those offenses still eligible
for state imprisonment. For example in November 2011, Los Angeles District Attorney, Steve
Cooley, announced he was teaching his staff “to ‘scour’ criminal records to make sure they note any
prior offenses when they file new charges, and to make sure that new charges include offenses
categorized as serious, violent or sexual when possible” (Lagos, 2011). Whether as a result of
deliberate policy or for other reasons, Los Angeles’s prison commitments rose by 135 from the first
to the second quarter of 2012, reversing the county’s previous decline.

Definitely worth exploring further.

GRAY WOLVES MAY RECEIVE PROTECTION AS A CA ENDANGERED SPECIES

With the arrival (and extended stay) of OR-7, the lone wolf who wandered into CA from Oregon in December, has come concern that gray wolves need to be given California endangered species status. The Department of Fish and Game commission will vote on the issue in October, and hopefully pave the road for future CA wolves.

Summit County Voice’s Bob Berwyn has the story. Here are some clips:

Responding to a petition from wildlife conservation advocates, the California Department of Fish and Game last week recommended the endangered species status to the state’s fish and game commission, which will vote on the issue in October.

California is grappling with the issue against an interesting backdrop. A lone wolf that wandered from Oregon continues to roam the wild northeastern quadrant of the state, and wildlife advocates say there’s room for more. At the same time, the federal government is considering removing wolves from the endangered species list on other parts of the country.

[SNIP]

“We’re glad the Department of Fish and Game agrees that the gray wolf deserves consideration for protection under the California Endangered Species Act,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center’s endangered species director. “California has hundreds of square miles of excellent wolf habitat, but if wolves in the state are going to increase from one to many, they need the protection of the California Endangered Species Act.”

“California needs a road map for recovering wolves,” said Greenwald. “Wolf populations in neighboring states will continue to expand, and more wolves will almost certainly show up in California. These wolves will need protection when they arrive.”