Earlier this month, the LA County Supervisors passed a motion authored by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas that asked the county’s Probation Department to come up with some ideas as to how Probation might improve the way it was handling the more than 5000 newly-released inmates that had been handed to LA County Probation for oversight as part of the new realignment strategy mandated by AB109.

One of the purposes of realignment—in addition to saving the state money— is to rethink the idea of prisoner reentry so that those released receive appropriate rehabilitative services to aid them in succeeding on the outside, rather than simply returning to prison. This means they were supposed to be enrolled in services such as mental health and substance abuse counseling, housing referrals and job training, and other programs of that nature.

Yet, according to reports, LA’s Probation Department has thus far had a dismal record for actually getting the mandated services to those newly-released former prisoners who need them. In fact, since February, probation had reportedly only referred 60% of the former inmates that passed through its doors to services, of which only 15% actually have received treatment.

It was also noted that the Probation Department’s intake “HUBs” to which a newly released prisoner must first report, weren’t properly equipped to refer clients to many of the services necessary to begin with.

Since appropriate reentry programs and services have been shown to greatly improve an individual’s chance to avoid the revolving door back to lock-up, the supervisors moved to direct Probation to come up with some solutions for the various problems outlined, and a goal-laden plan for bringing those solutions to fruition. Plus to help matters along, the motion provided a few suggested methods that Probation might explore.

Probation’s response to the supervisors’ request was posted on Tuesday night, and it isn’t particularly heartening.

It mostly consists a list of reasons why nearly everything the supes asked them to do “isn’t feasible”—-with few if any creative counter-solutions offered.

You can take a look for yourself here.

More on this as we have a chance to analyze it further.

NOTE: AN INMATE AT TWIN TOWERS JAIL DIED AFTER RECEIVING MEDICAL TREATMENT ON TUESDAY

The LA Times’ Robert Lopez posted the story Tuesday night. Details are sketchy. Presumably we’ll know more soon.

SANTA MONICA COLLEGE STUDENTS PROTESTING RATE HIKES PEPPER SPRAYED

(NOTE: Taylor Walker contributed to the following stories.)

Angry over a new system of pricey courses, around 30 not-very-dangerous looking Santa Monica College students tried to enter the trustees meeting on Tuesday night, and got lit up with pepper spray for their trouble.

Stay classy SMC cops. Stay classy.

The LA Times has more on the story as does the AP

SUPERVISORS GET SERIOUS ABOUT REHABILITATION

At Tuesday’s board meeting the LA County Supervisors demanded accountability and clear goals from Probation officials regarding the county’s realignment program instituted this past October. The Supes criticized Probation for failing to insure that the recently released inmates actually turned up at the rehabilitation programs to which they were assigned. (These are the non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offender releasees now overseen by the county, rather than the state, as part of the AB106 “realignment” plan). They noted that, of the 60% of the realignment parolees who have been referred to services like substance abuse and mental health counseling, only 15% have actually been treated.

With a unanimously adopted a motion by Mark Ridley-Thomas, the Supes called for Probation to establish a feasibility plan to explore how to better (and more quickly) get those percentages up. Probation’s deputy chief, Cal Remington, assured the Supes that progress was already being made, that as of now 48% of those in need of mental health services are actually receiving them.

Representatives from several community-based organizations spoke in favor of the motion, however, some urged the county to resist creating a structure of mandates and resulting probation violations that could lead to the re-incarceration of returning prisoners. (A strategy called “flash incarceration”—short, immediate jail terms, such as those being used successfully in Hawaii—was one of those being tossed around.)

Kim McGill of the Youth Justice Coalition praised the motion as a “positive step,” but pointed out that many of those returning are hindered in their efforts to comply. The lack of a valid or government-issued identification card, without which they often cannot access educational, housing and health care services, said McGill. (Simple obstacles like having the money to buy a bus pass to get to rehab programs can, for some of the newly released, seem insurmountable.)

Ridley-Thomas emphasized the importance of addressing the problem now, not later.

“The matter is urgent,” He said. “If we do not see substantially more people receiving the treatment and services they need, no one will be well served; public safety will be undermined and the cycle of recidivism will continue unabated.”

Indeed. For years, California’s recidivism rate has been stuck at abysmal levels, with approximately 65% of parolees passing through the revolving door back in prison within three years of release.

Good that the realignment issue is getting attention early.

Nice story from the LA Times’ Jenny Deam on how Colorado is managing to close a $184M prison facility built in 2010 thanks to a steadily declining prison population—thanks, in part, to a enlightened attitude toward rehab and alternative sentencing . Here’s an excerpt:

The 316-bed prison, called Colorado State Penitentiary II, is the fourth correctional facility in Colorado ordered closed in the last three years because of a dwindling prison population. At its peak in July 2009, the state’s inmate population was 23,220. As of February, it had dropped to 21,562. A decrease of 900 more inmates is expected by June 2013.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported that the overall prison population in the U.S. had declined for the first time in four decades.

Tom Clements, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, said the state was part of a seismic shift in attitudes in the U.S. about the wisdom of locking up nonviolent offenders for long periods.

In some states, decades of get-tough sentencing have given way to alternatives to prison. They include probation and parole, mandatory drug treatment, mental health care and community supervision such as halfway houses, GPS ankle bracelets and regular drug testing.

Research has shown that if alternatives are well implemented and include good supervision, repeat offenses can be cut by 30% and the cost is about one-tenth of the $30,000-a-year average for housing a prisoner, Gelb said.

“This is not about being soft on crime or being hard on crime,” Clements said. “This is about being smart on crime.”

THE EXTRAORDINARY MEANNESS OF “HOLIDAY ON ICE”

This is a story from last week, but in case you missed it: Displaying a bout of shocking callousness, the Republicans in the House Judiciary committee dubbed the hearings on the new guidelines for immigration detention issued last month…as Holiday on Ice, implying that being locked up in ICE detention is a vacation.

This after novelist and essayist Edwidge Danticat wrote an scathing OpEd for the NY Times with regard to this flip title and callous attitude.

Here’s a clip:

The flippant title of the hearing shows a blatant disregard for the more than 110 people who have died in immigration custody since 2003. One of them was my uncle Joseph, an 81-year-old throat cancer survivor who spoke with an artificial voice box. He arrived in Miami in October 2004 after fleeing an uprising in Haiti. He had a valid passport and visa, but when he requested political asylum, he was arrested and taken to the Krome detention center in Miami. His medications for high blood pressure and an inflamed prostate were taken away, and when he fell ill during a hearing, a Krome nurse accused him of faking his illness. When he was finally transported, in leg chains, to the prison ward of a nearby hospital, it was already too late. He died the next day.

My uncle’s brief and deadly stay in the United States immigration system was no holiday. Detention was no holiday for Rosa Isela Contreras-Dominguez, who was 35 years old and pregnant when she died in immigration custody in Texas in 2007. She had a history of blood clots, and said her complaints regarding leg pains were ignored. It was no holiday for Mayra Soto, a California woman who was raped by an immigration officer. It was no holiday for Hiu Lui Ng, a 34-year-old Chinese immigrant with a fractured spine who was dragged on the floor and refused the use of a wheelchair in an ICE detention center in Rhode Island….

Then here’re are the letters to the editor in response to what Danticat has written.

HUNDREDS PROTEST THE UNWISDOM OF LAUSD’S PLAN TO ELIMINATE ADULT ED—COMPLETELY

In the budget presented to the LAUSD board last month, the $$ allocation for Adult Education was not just slashed, it was eliminated altogether.

On Tuesday afternoon, around 300 adult ed students demonstrated to protest the proposed vaporizing of the classes that more than 300,000 adults in Los Angeles County depend on for a multiplicity of reasons—highest among them, affordable job training and/or retraining for those out of work.

LAUSD has 35 adult education centers, which include 24 community adult schools, six regional occupational centers, and five skills centers, which offer hugely popular skills and jobs training courses.

Some of the skills center courses, in particular, are so coveted for the quality of their training classes, that they have huge waiting lists.

When I watched the State of the Union during which President Obama harped repeatedly on the importance of job training, I imagined adult ed teachers all over Los Angeles shouting back at their TVs: “Tell that to LAUSD!”

The LA Times has more on Tuesday’s demonstration.

Here’s what I wrote in 2009 about the reasons NOT to put adult ed on the chopping block.

SO FAR THE MUCH FEARED BOGEYMAN OF CALIFORNIA’S REALIGNMENT PROGRAM HAS BEEN “BENIGN,” ACCORDING TO LA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT

KPCC’S “On Central” has the story.

But the bullet points are: crime is still down and the jails aren’t being overrun. Obviously, this is early in the program. However, these are good signs that perhaps the sky isn’t going to come crashing down after all.

IS OHIO KEEPING AN INNOCENT MAN ON DEATH ROW?

The Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Cohen examines the troubling death row case of Tyrone Noling.

Here’s a clip:

….There are several legitimate reasons why Noling deserves a new trial, especially in a state with a long history of wrongful capital convictions. There are a lot of flawed capital convictions all over the country — pick a state, any state, where the death penalty is still a priority for prosecutors and you’ll find such a case. But a closer look at this case reveals virtually all of the system’s main flaws at one time and in one place. The only thing missing from the story is racial bias, which likely would have only made things worse. (As of September 30, 2011, there were 148 inmates on Ohio’s death row, 65 of them white males like Noling.)

UPDATES ON OR7 AKA JOURNEY, OUR NEW LONE CALIFORNIA WOLF

It seems everyone is fascinated with OR7, the young grey wolf who wandered into California on December 28—the first wild wolf to be on California soil in 88 years

Patt Morrison is a devoted critter person, so it was natural that she would do a show on the wolf updating us on his most recent activities.

It seems OR7 has at least two Twitter accounts. (Here and here.)

And now both the New York Times and Time Magazine have done slightly giddy articles on Mr. OR7. (As well they should.)

WASHINGTON STATE AND COLORADO WILL LIKELY HAVE POT LEGALIZATION PROPOSITIONS ON THE NOVEMBER BALLOT

Reuters has the story. Here’s a clip:

Pot legalization supporters have argued for decades that prohibition has failed to curb pot use, and that the policy enriches drug cartels, hurts casual users and deprives governments of a potentially lucrative source of tax revenue.

Now, they see momentum on their side, pointing to an October Gallup Poll that found a record 50 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana use, up from 36 percent five years before.

The poll also found 62 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 back legalization, and that the young are driving the shift in attitudes.

“There’s a set of factors that suggest both the Washington and Colorado initiates have a better chance of winning than any of the initiatives that have happened before,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

“But that said, even with a majority of likely voters in both states saying they favor legal marijuana, we know in the final stretch there’s always a small percentage that get nervous or scared off or fearful of change,” he said.

The cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is a profile of Judy Clark, one of a group of militant radicals who, in 1981, tried to rob a Brinks truck and ended up killing two police officers, and one of the Brinks guards, before getting caught. Clark was one of the getaway drivers for the group. As it turned out, she was an inexperienced and untalented driver and so managed to smash the car in which she and two of her crimeys were escaping into a concrete wall, at which point she and they were arrested.

Clark compounded her mistakes by insisting upon representing herself in trial and hectoring the jury with phrases like “Revolutionary violence is necessary, and it is a liberating force.”

As a consequence, she was sentenced to 75 years in prison—more than several of her co-defendants, most famously, Kathy Boudin, who let her private attorney do the talking. Boudin got 20 to life, and is already out, while Clark has thus far done 30 of her 75-year sentence.

The NYT Mag story on Clark and her subsequent “transformation,” written by former Village Voice investigative reporter, Tom Robbins (not to be confused with the novelist), is clearly intent on making the case for Clark’s release, without actually saying as much. Robbins, who knew Clark in her pre-Brinks robbing days, is much too smart a journalist to be that obvious (even if the NY Times editors would go along with it, which they wouldn’t). Instead, he makes the case that she has changed profoundly. And certainly by all accounts Clark seems to be a very positive force at Bedford Hills, the maximum security women’s prison where she has been for the past three decades.

(Read the article for the details.)

As Robbins notes, Clark has drawn to herself a long list of people pleading for clemency in her behalf, several of whom are very persuasive.

Speaking personally, however, I find I have a slew of mixed feelings about this matter.

Sure, I believe the warm looking, grey-haired, school-teacherish white lady has likely done enough time. Moreover, many of the prison officials who know her well describe her potential as a positive force who could better contribute to society on the outside, rather than being locked up on the public’s dime.

And the truth is, we incarcerate way too many people in this country for way too long. It is a practice is corroding our collective soul as well as our state budgets.

But—again just speaking personally—there are quite a number of people I’d put on the clemency list ahead of Clark. Yet none of them happens to be a cozy-smiled, well-educated, white woman.

They are instead former gang members whom we are content to put on the throwaway list.

(I’d wager that most working public defenders have their own special shortlist of former clients they’d put on the clemency list. Ditto prison chaplains, and so on.)

One more thing: I’d have felt a lot more comfortable with Robbins’ article if he and the Times’ editors thought to spend just a paragraph or two on the three victims: Edward O’Grady, Waverly Brown, and Peter Paige—all of whom had kids.

I’m just sayin’.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC OF RACIAL DISPARITIES IN INCARCERATION….LEGAL SCHOLAR MICHELLE ALEXANDER EXPLAINS THE NEW JIM CROW

In the last two years, Michelle Alexander’s important book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, has been the #1 must read for criminal justice advocates.

Monday, NPR’S Fresh Air ran an interview with Alexander for Martin Luther King Day. The broadcast is worth listening to in its own right. And, by happy coincidence, it is also a good contextual framework with which to view the NY Times Judith Clark story.

Here’s a clip from Fresh Air’s write up on the show.

Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were relegated to a subordinate status for decades. Things like literacy tests for voters and laws designed to prevent blacks from serving on juries were commonplace in nearly a dozen Southern states.

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

Just listen.

…THEN ON THE ISSUE OF PEOPLE GETTING OUT OF PRISON IN GENERAL…..

Former Daily News editor of the Daily News, Ron Kaye, wrote an Op Ed for the Glendale News Press about his friend Nyabingi Kuti, a community organizer and activist with the MLK Coalition, who is working to bring together reentry services and programs for those getting out of prison.

Here’s a clip:

…..the governor’s “realignment” plan that started Oct. 1,…has a lot of people worried that it will trigger a huge surge in crime after years of decline. After all, without effective rehabilitation programs re-entry into society is tough, which is why we have a 70% recidivism rate.

Many local politicians and law enforcement officials figure are howling for more money to hire more cops and build more county jails.

But others like Nyabingi {Kuti] are working hard to develop alternatives to jail and tough policing to actually turn realignment into a creative opportunity to bring resources together to help the “formerly incarcerated” — a preferred term for ex-convicts — stay out of trouble and lead productive lives.

Right—which is exactly what realignment can be—a creative opportunity. Let us hope more people in the city and county see fit to similarly rise to that challenge.

AND…LAST BUT NOT LEAST: THE LA TIMES CALLS FOR A CHRISTOPHER COMMISSION FOR THE COUNTY JAILS

It’s good that an LA Times editorial calls for a thorough review of the situation in the LA County Jails by the new Citizen’s Commission—a la the Christopher Commission.

(I believe that’s what WitnessLA called for early last March, but okay, why quibble?)

But then the Times editorial goes on to say….nothing new. They say that the commission “….could determine whether the deputy culture inside the lockups is part of the problem. It could consider whether rookie deputies, whose first job out of the academy is as jailers, receive appropriate supervision. And it could identify the shortcomings that allow excessive use of force to go unpunished….”

Y’think??? What the Times fails to mention, and what WitnessLA has repeatedly pointed out, is that the root elements that have allowed all of the above problems to flourish begin well upstream of the symptomatic issues that the Times ticks off.

Fortunately, I think there are at least a couple of people on the commission who know where and how to look beyond the symptoms.

Photos of Judith Clark: (right) Nan Goldin for The New York Times. (left) Associated Press.

NOTE: LIGHT POSTING TODAY—DUE (HAPPILY) TO HOLIDAY SLOWDOWN….BUT….

ANYBODY GOT EARLY SIGN POSTS ON CRIME AND REALIGNMENT?

KPPC’S Julie Small reports that California’s prison population has dropped by 8000, mostly in response to California’s realignment strategy that began on Oct 1 and has resulted in the transfer of thousands of prisoners from state lock-up facilities to California’s counties.

Here’s a clip from Small’s report:

The number of inmates in California prisons has dropped by 8,000 since “realignment” took effect Oct. 1. Court papers state officials filed Thursday indicate the change. Officials reported the new numbers Thursday under a federal court order to reduce crowding in the prisons.

In its monthly status report to the court, officials said the state prison population dropped by 8,218 between Oct. 5 and Dec. 7.

California prison officials say the transfer of low-level felons to county officials that began in October will allow the state to meet a court-ordered reduction a month after a Dec. 27 deadline.

The state’s prison population has declined from a record high of 173,000 in 2006 to the current population of 135,000. But many prisons remain packed with almost twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold….

University of Ohio Law prof Doug Berman, of Sentencing, Law and Policy, also noted the drop and wondered in a post, if California was experiencing a “big new crime wave in California in recent months?”

The court order resulting in these prison reductions is the one upheld by the Supreme Courtin Plata earlier this year despite strenuous objections and dire warnings of Justices Alito and Scalia and others about a likely spike in crime as a result. I am thus wondering, given that it appears that California is going to be soon complying with this court order, if there is developing evidence of a new crime wave.

The question is particularly relevant in Los Angeles where approximately 40 percent of the “realigned” prisoners have landed, and will continue to land, causing a list of city officials like DA Steve Cooley and others to predict that crime will go up.

Admittedly, it hasn’t been all that long—nevertheless, do we have any early indications, one way or the other?

(NOTE: I can tell you that, far, overall crime is down this year over 2010, but I don’t, as yet, have a month by month breakdown for these past few months.

As Berman points out, nuanced analysis of crime stats would likely tell us a lot, because not every county and/or municipality is handling realignment the same way.

I sincerely hope that there is an on-going effort to track the public safety impact of the prison population reductions in California, especially because it seems that different localities are responding to the influx of former prisoners in different ways. The process of prison realignment is thus creating a kind of post-prison community reentry natural experiment, and I would expect spikes in crime to vary in different localities based on both the nature of the offenders returning to the community and also how the communities are responding to the return of these offenders.

Only a few months into the realignment plan, it is surely to early to have clear or conclusive evidence on the public safety consequences of Plata and its aftermath. Still I am very eager to hear any early reports, especially from anyone actively working on these issues, about what we might know on this front so far.

Yep. Me too.

60 MINUTES OCCUPIES THE BANKS AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

In the past months, CBS’s 60 Minutes has done a couple of excellent, aggressive and utterly enraging reports by Scott Pelley on the banking business, the mortgage crisis, and the like—asking repeatedly why the Justice Department hasn’t filed charges one any of these folks.

The most recent such report was this past Sunday.

The Occupy movement could do worse than to study these segments for talking points.

TEXAS MAN CONVICTED OF MURDERING WIFE, FREED AFTER 25 YEARS – PROSECUTORS WITHHELD CRUCIAL EVIDENCE

The LA Times Molly Hennessy-Fiske and David G. Savage have the story. Here’s how it opens:

The case of a grocery store clerk wrongly convicted of murdering his wife has rocked the legal system across Texas, and not just because an innocent man served 25 years of a life sentence.

Supporters of Michael Morton, who was set free in October, say he might never been convicted if a prominent prosecutor had shared significant evidence with the defense at the time of the trial.

“Mr. Morton was the victim of serious prosecutorial misconduct that … completely ripped apart his family,” said Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project in New York, which represented Morton in his appeal.

On Monday, Morton and his lawyers plan to ask District Judge Sid Harle to take action against the lead prosecutor in the case, Ken Anderson, now a county judge.

The case highlights what critics say has become a recurring problem in Texas and across the nation: prosecutors concealing evidence that could undercut their cases.

Yeah. Sign me on as one of those “critics.”