The May issue of Los Angeles Magazine contains a profile of Father Greg Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries. (And, yes, we’ll link to the profile the moment that it’s out.) Under most circumstances, such a story would be illustrated by a photo portrait. But LA Mag decided to go another way and commissioned a painting of Fr. Greg by Boyle Heights artist, Fabian Deborah, a former gang member and drug addict who now heads Homeboy’s drug and alcohol program.

The painting-as-illustration idea was not so unusual, but Fabian did the thing in secret without telling the priest that he was fashioning his portrait.

I’ve known Fabian for nearly 2 decades, and some other day, we’ll tell the full story of how a near-miraculous art moment, along with Fr. Greg, saved Fabian’s life—and how art kept pulling Fabian back from the brink until he could finally and truly save himself.

For now, here are a few clips of LA Mag’s interview with Fabian Deborah about his secret Boyle-related painting project.

You painted a portrait of Father Boyle for the first time for our profile. Tell us about the artwork.

The painting took me approximately seven days to create and is acrylic paint on a standard 30-inch-by-40-inch canvas. Father Boyle is my father, my teacher, my mentor, and my friend. It’s nice to paint a portrait of your mentor, although it has to be done in the proper manner. I wanted to make sure it was up to par. I wanted to be able to connect him to his roots—the Mission and the housing projects. The [painting represents] the progression of his vision. He doesn’t like to be glorified, but it was an honor for me. I had many wonderful memories as I was placing the paint onto the canvas. I’m just waiting to see his reaction—it’s a surprise he doesn’t know about yet.

Was it hard for you to keep him in the dark?
Oh yes, it was very hard. I felt like going to him many times to get his approval, but I had to go around him and ask coworkers about his likeness with the painting. The responses were great, so that helped me go through with the painting.

How do you hope Father Boyle responds?

I hope he feels the importance of his action when he inspired me to create art back when I was ten years old. Like, “Wow, now he painted me after all these years. I am now a part of his works of art.”

[SNIP]

What does your art say about Boyle Heights?

I think it shines light. As a representative of Boyle Heights, I’m trying to invite the audience to see the beauty within my community, without the stereotypes and the stigma that it has had because of the gangs and violence. There’s a lot of richness and culture as well as the individual. The homie is a human being. When I paint the homie, it’s not to glorify his actions, it’s to return him to humanity. It’s about redemption. It’s a way of healing for me.

EVERYBODY’S SHOUTING AT JERRY BROWN—WHICH IS SORT OF A BAD NEWS/GOOD NEWS SITUATION

Two weeks ago Thursday, a very angry three-judge panel spent a lot of time shouting at—or at least talking harshly to—- the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, about how Brown hadn’t reduced California’s prison population as far as the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling has demanded. There was some mention of throwing Jerry Brown into jail for contempt if he didn’t come up with a plan to get with the program.

All this judicial shouting occurred amidst the ongoing and seemingly constant drumbeat of furious criticism aimed Brown and his AB109 prison realignment plan, which has managed to reduce the prison population by more than 30,000 inmates, by mandating—among other things—-that certain short-term incarcerations be served at a county level, in jail, not in state prison.

The bulk of those serving time in jail, rather than prison, under realignment are drug offenders. In fact a look at the most recent report released by the California Department of Corrections shows that at the end of 2010, about 24,889 inmates convicted of drug crimes were residing in California prisons. By the end of 2012, that number had fallen by nearly half, to 12,364.

Realignment—the policy that, among other changes, shifts certain lower has been blamed for nearly every bad news violent crime or crime rate hiccup, that has occurred since its inception, no matter that, in most cases, there is no factual causal connection. (Some critics have actually suggested the the governor be indicted for some of the crimes committed during realignment.)

A slew of bills have been introduced in the state legislature, all hoping to tweak AB109 in ways that will put more people back in prison.

However, Thomas Elias writing for the Daily News points out how the being snarled at by a trio federal judges may not be the worst thing in the world for Brown as he deals with those who are demanding that he roll back AB109 in order to lock more people up for longer again.

Here’s a clip:

Normally, it’s uncomfortable to hear a federal judge — let alone a panel of three jurists — thunder criticism at one from the bench.

But as usual, Gov. Jerry Brown is different. Prison realignment has drawn more criticism than any other single thing he has done in his second incarnation as governor, even. But the judges’ tirade now provides Brown a convenient scapegoat, one on which he can pin blame for the entire prisoner-release program, and with complete accuracy.

“At no point over the past several months have defendants indicated any willingness to comply, or made any attempt to comply, with the orders of this court,” said the panel of judges, referring to Brown and his administration. “In fact, they have blatantly defied (court orders). ”

The three jurists gave Brown 21 days to submit a plan for meeting their prison population target by the end of this year. If Brown doesn’t simultaneously begin complying with the court order, the judges said, he risks being cited for contempt. So the governor said he would ready a plan to release 10,000 more prisoners in case his appeals fail.

Read the rest here.

(NOTE: a thank you to Elias for writing factually and unhysterically on this issue.)

ASSEMBLY DEMS REJECT FIRST ROUNDS OF ATTEMPTED REALIGNMENT ROLL-BACKS

After decades of general spinelessness on criminal justice reform (and I mean that in the nicest possible way), certain California democrats are energetically slapping down a rash of ill-conceived pieces of legislation that would roll-back parts of realignment.

The chief of those doing the slap-downs is Public Safety committee Chairman Tom Ammiano (D. San Francisco).

For instance, on Tuesday, Ammiano led the majority of his committee members to reject a bill that would return to prison sex offenders who violated parole, rather than sending them to jail for a shorter term.

The bill the Ammiano-led vote knocked down was, as the LA Times Paige St. John points out, nearly identical to a bill rejected by the committee last month.

In rejecting the bill, Ammiano expressed concern about the positive gains of realignment being dismantled, while at the same time acknowledging that, under realignment, some county sheriffs are slashing the jail terms of certain parolees far more than is wise.

Here’s what St. John writes on the matter:

[Ammiano] also expressed concern about how county officials decide who to release early from jail, and that California takes a “one size fits all” approach to sex offenders. Ammiano said he plans to file his own legislation on the matter later this year.

“You have identified a problem. There’s no doubt about that,” Ammiano told [Republican Assemblyman Mike] Morrell. “I disagree on your solution.” Morrell’s bill died on a 2-4 party-line vote, with Democrats in the majority.

This is heartening. Ammiano acknowledged that there are, indeed, some problems with the current law that need to be addressed. But he appeared to be looking for fact-based, targeted solutions with which to reform AB109—rather than simply throwing fear-based, reactive “tough-on-crime” bills at the matter, damn the consequences or the collateral damage.

(By the way, I don’t mean to slam Republicans on these issues. While a great many conservative California lawmakers have been annoyingly fact-challenged when it comes to the topic of realignment, on a national level a growing number of conservatives have shown real leadership in criminal justice matters, most notably the Right on Crime movement.)

AND IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT TWO OF THE NEW REALIGNMENT ROLL-BACK BILLS ARE AUTHORED BY DEMOCRATS

A bill authored by Sacramento Assemblyman (D) Ken Cooley would send “drug traffickers” to prison, not jail—which on the surface sounds…reasonable. (I mean, whom among us wants big time drug traffickers to be given mere wrist slaps.) On the other hand, we’d like to drill down into this one a bit, and do some fact checking. In the meantime, Melody Gutierrez of the Sacramento Bee reports on Cooley’s bill, which would provide sentencing enhancements for certain kinds of drug dealers.

(Now see that’s a red flag right there: Sentencing enhancements. In California, we have not had a problem giving big time drug dealers big bad sentences. To the contrary, our prisons are loaded with small time drug dealers doing big nasty sentences. So what is it exactly we need to “enhance” anyway? Once WLA has had a chance to poke around a little bit, we’ll have a better idea if this bill has merit, or is playing to the cheap seats.)

Cooley also plans to co-introduce a bill that would send certain parole violators back to prison. WLA will be looking into that one too.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF REALIGNMENT….CUSTODY CANINES

With all the noisy grandstanding about the need to roll back the purported evils of realignment, what usually gets lost is the fact that a large part of the purpose of AB109 is for certain inmates and parolees to be taken out of the hands of the state and put in the care of the various counties. The reason for this (in addition to lowering the state’s prison populations like SCOTUS told us we must do—or else), is the belief that the counties are potentially better able to help these inmates and parolees succeed as they leave custody and reenter our communities. Rehabilitation and reentry is a task at which the state has roundly and repeatedly failed (hence our high recidivism rate, which led to our out-of-control prison population). AB109 challenges the counties to step up and do better.

Some counties, like San Francisco, have managed to coordinate their various agencies—probation, the sheriff’s department, and the rest— in order to grab hold of the challenge with some good early results.

Other counties (like LA)…not so much.

Nevertheless, there are a few bright spots. Which brings us to….Custody Canines.

MCJ’S JAIL DOGS

Right now, thirty-six Los Angeles County Jail inmates are participating in what is called the Custody Canine Program, housed—of all places—at Men’s Central Jail. Inmates volunteer for the 3-5 week program that teaches them to train dogs. Each of the dogs that come to the program has languished unwanted at a kennel or shelter. The idea is for the inmates to take these rejected critters and, through intensive training and interaction, to prepare them to be successfully adopted.

The program was started in August of last year in partnership with Belmonte’s Dog Training and Equipment, whose professional trainers provide the requisite instruction for the incarcerated humans who in turn work with the orphaned dogs. The participants, who are all part of the Sheriff Lee Baca’s Education Based Incarceration program, stay in 18-person dorms, with one dog to a dorm—meaning that everybody gets to take regular turns at hound duty.

The program kicks off at 6:30 a.m. each day, with a different person from the cell working with the dog every half hour, thus helping with the beast’s socialization, while both human and canine are gaining skills.

Custody Canine is funded through the Inmate Welfare Fund, which in turn is funded through the proceeds from inmate vending, commissary, and collect phone calls. (The “bonus” that the department receives every year for its collect phone call contracts amounts to big bucks.)

Similar programs are housed in various prisons around the nation, and have been widely praised for their success in rehabilitating troubled dogs, while helping inmates reconnect with themselves in such a way that increases the likelihood that they will succeed after they are released. However, few if any such programs have been tried in county jails, making LA’s Custody Canine unique—and promising.

KTLA also did a short story on the Custody Canine Program that’s worth watching to see the inmates and dogs working together.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve not seen the program up close, but WLA plans to visit Custody Canines in person in the next few months as we survey various county programs that work with AB 109 prisoners and parolees—in LA County and elsewhere in the state. We’ll let you know what we see.

CAN SMART PHONE TECHNOLOGY IMPROVE AMERICA’S INCARCERATION POLICY?

Prison Recidivism? There’s an app for that! Or, at least, there could be soon.

Among the many tech-entrepreneurs and innovators who gathered at SXSW in Austin, Texas for sessions, presentations, and pitches at the Next-Big-Thing-packed interactive media conference that is one of SXSW’s most popular features, a presentation by a tech thinktank focused on how prisons can use digital technology to reduce recidivism, was one of those that stood out.

The public radio show, “The Takeaway” has the story. Here’s a clip:

The consulting firm, Deloitte, and its think-tank, GovLab, led a discussion on alternatives to the brick-and-mortar prisons low-level criminals are sent to. Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC radio’s New Tech City said two consultants from Deloitte suggested the U.S. keep low-level criminals out of prison, using smart phone technology.

Kara Shuler, senior consultant for Deloitte, suggested “virtual incarcerations,” where nonviolent, low-level offenders are taken out of prison cells with support and monitoring that keeps both the community and the offender safe.

Nonviolent, low-level offenders cost as much as other prisoners, or more, because spending time in prison can put them at risk for committing worse crime in the future. In New Jersey, it costs more to keep someone in prison for a year than it would to send them to Princeton University, Zomorodi said.

The SXSW panelist told the story of an inmante named Frank, who was charged with marijuana possession.

Rather than give Frank a prison sentence, he could be virtually incarcerated, receiving badges or points via a smart phone for accomplishments like keeping a job and making it to his counseling sessions, Zomorodi said.

When a court determines a low-level criminal is a good candidate for the smart phone program, they would be equipped with an ankle-monitoring device to track them with GPS, and given a locked smartphone with specific apps related to their needs, Shuler said.

“Frank’s app might be Breathalyze, an app that detects the eye movements in the camera on your phone,” she said.

A key to the success of such a program, said its proponents, is choosing appropriate candidates for it.

NEWSPAPER WOMEN SHOT DURING DORMER NIGHTMARE GET THEIR TRUCK (OR AT LEAST $$ TO BUY IT)

In case you didn’t see that there was, thankfully, a resolution to Wednesday’s crazy situation in which the newspaper women, whose truck was shot up by the Los Angeles Police Department during the search for Christopher Dorner, couldn’t take the replacement truck that the LAPD wanted to give them, unless they paid a bunch of income taxes on said vehicle. The solution? The LAPD is giving the women $40,000 in cash, and the women can buy their own truck, no taxes involved.

KPCC’s Erika Aguilar with Mike Roe have the rest of the story.

FOR SCOTUS CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS, GAY RIGHTS MAY BE HIS DEFINING MOMENT

Jess Brevin of The Wall Street Journal has an intriguing story about the complexities Chief Justice John Roberts is facing as he and the court move toward hearing the gay marriage cases late in March. (If you’re not a WSJ subscriber, you can get past the paywall for this particular article through Google News.)

Here’s a clip:

Chief Justice John Roberts preserved one of President Barack Obama’s main legacies—and helped forge his own—by largely upholding the president’s health-care law last year. Now, the two leaders’ places in history are entwined again, as the Supreme Court prepares to hear two gay-marriage cases later this month.

After years of equivocation, Mr. Obama in recent months has planted himself firmly in favor of gay marriage, and his administration is now asking the court to strike down separate federal and state laws withholding marriage rights from same-sex couples. “American attitudes have evolved, just like mine have, pretty substantially and fairly quickly, and I think that’s a good thing,” Mr. Obama recently told ABC News. In 2012, for the first time, a slight majority of Americans favored same-sex marriage, according to data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, with young people especially supportive.

[BIG SNIP]

Chief Justice Roberts doubtless knows “that history is going in a certain direction,” even if he isn’t persuaded that the Constitution requires invalidation of laws denying recognition to gay marriages, said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University. If that leads him to side against Mr. Obama’s position, it could place the chief justice in “a tragic kind of position—knowing how a decision they believe is correct today is going to look bad 15 years down the road.”

As is customary, Chief Justice Roberts had no comment regarding pending cases, his office said.

Supreme Court history is littered with rulings that were later viewed as retrograde, if not obviously in error. In 1944, the court upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans—leading to a congressional apology in 1988. And in 2003, the court overturned its own 1986 decision that had permitted criminal punishment for gay sex. That 2003 opinion, by Justice Anthony Kennedy, flatly declared that the prior decision “was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.

But history’s direction can confound expectations. At the time of the high court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, abortion appeared to be gaining broader support. Four decades later, the procedure’s morality remains fiercely disputed, and some—including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who favors abortion rights—suggest the court’s intervention triggered a backlash against wider acceptance of abortion rights….

There’s more, so read on.

40 YEARS OF ROE V. WADE MARKED WITH RALLIES AND COUNTER RALLIES IN SF AND ELSEWHERE

THere were rallies marking the 40′s anniversary of Roe v. Wade all over the county this past weekend. Matthai Kuruvila from the San Francisco Chron has an account of the rally and counter rally in San Francisco. Here’s a clip:

The account of the events in San Francicso. Abortion activists on each side of the issue converged on San Francisco Saturday, creating parallel universes testifying to what 40 years of reproductive rights have wrought.

At Justin Herman Plaza, pro-choice activists danced and spoke about liberating women from the horror of back alley abortions conducted by coat hanger-wielding quacks.

Before legal abortions, what might happen to you “was a terror in the back of your mind,” said Chris Malfatti, 64, of San Francisco, who knew someone who lost her fertility to an illegal abortion.

Katheryn Smith of Politico covered the events in DC.

RELEASE OF CORONER’S REPORT FUELS CONTROVERSY OVER CULVER CITY MAN SHOT MULTIPLE TIMES BY DEPUTIES

The newly released autopsy report on the shooting death by sheriff’s deputies of Jose De La Trinidad shows that De La Trinidad was shot 7 times, all from the rear, five of the shots striking the Culver City father in the back.

The LA Times Wesley Lowery has more on the story. Here’s a clip:

A Culver City man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies after a pursuit in November was struck by bullets five times in the back and once each in the right hip and right forearm, also from behind, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Times.

Jose de la Trinidad, a 36-year-old father of two, was killed Nov. 10 by deputies who believed he was reaching for a weapon after a pursuit. But a witness to the shooting said De la Trinidad, who was unarmed, was complying with deputies and had his hands above his head when he was shot.

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating the shooting.

De la Trinidad was shot five times in the upper and lower back, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s report dated Nov. 13. The report describes four of those wounds as fatal. He was also shot in the right forearm and right hip, with both shots entering from behind, the report found.

“Here’s a man who complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies,” said Arnoldo Casillas, the family’s attorney, who provided a copy of the autopsy report to The Times. He said he planned to sue the Sheriff’s Department…

THE PRICE OF A STOLEN CHILDHOOD

In a deeply affecting story for this week’s New York Times Magazine Emily Bazelon writes about two young women with the first names of Nicole and Amy who, as children, were sexually abused, with their rapes recorded on video and distributed to thousands of men. In the cases of Nicole and Amy, however,the court has ruled that they can both obtain monetary restitution from those who downloaded the videos of them to mitigate the harm that was done to them. Bazelon’s article explores, among other things, if financial restitution actually helps victims of child pornography.

Here’s a clip:

The detective spread out the photographs on the kitchen table, in front of Nicole, on a December morning in 2006. She was 17, but in the pictures, she saw the face of her 10-year-old self, a half-grown girl wearing make-up. The bodies in the images were broken up by pixelation, but Nicole could see the outline of her father, forcing himself on her. Her mother, sitting next to her, burst into sobs.

The detective spoke gently, but he had brutal news: the pictures had been downloaded onto thousands of computers via file-sharing services around the world. They were among the most widely circulated child pornography on the Internet. Also online were video clips, similarly notorious, in which Nicole spoke words her father had scripted for her, sometimes at the behest of other men. For years, investigators in the United States, Canada and Europe had been trying to identify the girl in the images.

Nicole’s parents split up when she was a toddler, and she grew up living with her mother and stepfather and visiting her father, a former policeman, every other weekend at his apartment in a suburban town in the Pacific Northwest. He started showing her child pornography when she was about 9, telling her that it was normal for fathers and daughters to “play games” like in the pictures. Soon after, he started forcing her to perform oral sex and raping her, dressing her in tight clothes and sometimes binding her with ropes. When she turned 12, she told him to stop, but he used threats and intimidation to continue the abuse for about a year. He said that if she told anyone what he’d done, everyone would hate her for letting him. He said that her mother would no longer love her.

Nicole (who asked me to use her middle name to protect her privacy) knew her father had a tripod set up in his bedroom. She asked if he’d ever shown the pictures to anyone. He said no, and she believed him. “It was all so hidden,” she told me. “And he knew how to lie. He taught me to do it. He said: ‘You look them straight in the eye. You make your shoulders square. You breathe normally.’ ”

When she was 16, Nicole told her mother, in a burst of tears, what had been going on at her father’s house. Her father was arrested for child rape. The police asked Nicole whether he took pictures. She said yes, but that she didn’t think he showed them to anyone…..

The idea of the kind of restitution Bazelon’s story describes is not without controversy. It seems that, as terrible as such crimes are, creating tough laws that don’t also capture in their net the wrong people along with the predators, can be challenging, as Jennifer Bleyer of Slate points out.

THREE STRIKERS NEWLY RELEASED FACE A MULTITUDE OF CHALLENGES, OFTEN WITH NO HELP

Tracey Kaplan at the Contra Costa News has the story. Here’s a clip:

In an unforeseen consequence of easing the state’s tough Three Strikes Law, many inmates who have won early release are hitting the streets with up to only $200 in prison “gate money” and the clothes on their backs.

These former lifers are not eligible for parole and thus will not get the guidance and services they need to help them succeed on the outside, such as access to employment opportunities, vocational training and drug rehabilitation.

The lack of oversight and assistance for this first wave of “strikers” alarms both proponents and opponents of the revised Three Strikes Law — as well as the inmates themselves.

“I feel like the Terminator, showing up in a different time zone completely naked, with nothing,” said Greg Wilks, 48, a San Jose man who is poised to be released after serving more than 13 years of a 27-years-to-life sentence for stealing laptops from Cisco, where he secretly lived in a vacant office while working as a temp in shipping and receiving.

[SNIP]

“We want these people to succeed,” said Michael Romano, director of Stanford’s Three Strikes Project. “We don’t want them committing crimes and creating more victims.”

Proponents say the main reason they didn’t foresee the situation is that the rules regarding parole changed significantly — after officials had already approved the ballot language for Proposition 36.

Under California’s realignment of its criminal justice system, the role of supervising most nonviolent offenders is shifting in stages from the state to county probation officers. But neither the realignment statute nor the Three Strikes Law made provisions for monitoring released strikers.

Romano said the issue is now being litigated in Los Angeles County, where a prosecutor claims strikers should be supervised by probation officers. But even if they are, he said, many counties lack the resources to help the mostly male population of former lifers make a successful transition….

Photo of San Francisco rally for 40 years of Roe v. Wade by Christine Duong

According to State Senator Ted Lieu, around 800 California parolees who were assigned GBS monitoring have either cut off their devices, or never kept their appointments to get the things put on the first place.

With these GPS scofflaws in mind, Lieu told KPCC’s Rina Palta, that there needs to be a bigger, badder consequence for not wearing your GPS on when you’ve been assigned one. In January, Lieu plans to introduce a bill to fix the matter.

Here’s a clip from Palta’s story in which Lieu explains the problem:

“It is not a crime, it is a parole violation, and you will get up to 180 days in county jail,” Lieu said. He notes: “when you count in the overcrowded county jails and good time, sometimes they don’t serve any time or sometimes it’s just a few days.”

Under California’s realignment policy, most parole violations are no longer punished with prison time, to avoid overcrowding. But Senator Lieu wants to change the law in this case. He plans to introduce legislation next month to make it a felony to cut off a GPS monitor. Lieu says the threat of serious prison time would be a powerful deterrent.

Frankly, I completely agree. As we’ve made clear here at WLA, we believe that realignment is a positive step forward in much needed corrections and parole reform. BUT, there are parts of realignment that are going to need a lot of fine tuning, this business with the GBS devices being a prime example.

(Non-revokable parole is another important reform that still needs some rejiggering as this new proposal from the LA County Board of Supervisors indicates. But lets us hope that we do it with a scalpel, not a meat cleaver wielded in response to the latest crime. More on that soon. In the meantime, the Daily News has this report)

TUESDAY MORNING I WAS ON AIRTALK WITH LARRY MANTLE, briefly discussing Senator Lieu’s proposed bill.

You can find the podcast here. I’m in the second half of the segment, after my pal Frank Stoltze.

(However, as you will note, I was so stuffy-headed and miserably cold ridden that, at one point, I suddenly called Larry Mantle “Warren”—as in Olney. Note to self: Avoid doing live radio after taking large doses of over-the-counter cold medicine.)

UNLIKELY NEW BFFs UNITE OVER PUSH FOR BETTER REENTRY PROGRAMS & NO NEW JAILS IN CA REALIGNMENT

No labor union in California has been more obstructive when it comes to criminal justice reform than the CCPOA—the prison guards’ union.

And few foundations have been more progressive and reform minded on the topic of criminal justice and prison and parole policy than the Rosenberg foundation.

That’s why it’s very cheering to see the prez of the CCPOA, Mike Jimanez, and the prez of Rosenberg Timothy Silard collaborating on a push for reform as evidenced in this Sacramento Bee Op Ed written jointly by the two men..

May it be a sign of things to come

Here’s a clip:

In polls and with their votes, Californians are sending a strong message that they are ready for the state to move in a new direction when it comes to public safety.

With realignment, local law enforcement has an unrivaled opportunity to lead us in this new direction, but the jury is still out on whether local officials will take up this challenge by adopting strategies that will make neighborhoods safer while maximizing scarce resources.

It’s been more than a year since the state – prompted by a major corrections crisis and a directive from the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce prison overcrowding – instituted realignment. In doing so, the state finally acknowledged that simply putting more people in prison was not the answer to its public safety woes. In fact, the Legislature recognized that California must reduce prison overcrowding and invest its limited resources to support programs and practices proven to keep people safe.

The state also gave local law enforcement and county officials the power to solve a problem that has plagued California for decades – how to keep our communities safe by stopping the revolving door of recidivism. Unfortunately, so far, many counties seem to be choosing to replicate the decisions that left the state’s criminal justice system broken in the first place.

Today, more than half of California’s counties are investing funding they received from the state to build or expand their local jails. Only a few are making real investments in proven crime-fighting strategies, such as re-entry centers, supervised pretrial release, rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration – evidence-based practices that would lessen jail overcrowding and increase safety for California communities…..

THE HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES 5K IS THIS SATURDAY: WHERE YOU CAN….STAY IN SHAPE, HELP SAVE LIVES, GET A COOL T-SHIRT!

Honestly, this is a great event!. However, if you really, really don’t want to run, you can sponsor runners, or just donate to one of So Cal’s most important and life-saving organizations.

It’s on Saturday, December 15, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. (runners check in at 6 a.m,), at Los Angeles State Historic Park

You can find the rest of the info here.

BEFORE THE NEW PRINCIPAL ARRIVED, GARFIELD HIGH HAD 100 SUSPENSIONS A YEAR. LAST YEAR THEY HAD ONE

When Principal Jose Heurta came to big, historically gang-troubled Garfield High School in 2010, his first move was to get rid of school suspensions.

Heurta mandated that, instead of tossing a misbehaving student out of school for a day or a week, thereby causing the student to fall even farther behind in his or her classwork, instead the staff would reach out to the kid and spend time with him or her.

Now So Cal Connected has done a terrific story on the exceptionally sane approach that is getting very heartening results. Brian Rooney reports with Karen Foshay producing.

Here’s a clip from the show’s transcript:

Last school year there were just over 700,000 suspensions throughout the California public schools. Kids sent home as punishment about one for every nine registered students. So you might be surprised to hear that at Garfield it was one. Just one suspension last year.

Rooney [to Huerta]: You came here mid-year and there were more than a hundred suspensions, and immediately you said, “No more suspensions?”

Huerta: Right. I talked to my team. And that’s off the table. I know what it’s about. These kids need to be in school. For us to help a kid, we need them in school.

Rooney: The vast majority of suspended students in California are Black and Latino. This school is 99 percent Latino.

[HUGE SNIP]

Rooney: Last year, Garfield’s academic performance score jumped 75 points. The graduation rate last spring was just over 79 percent, three points better than the state average, and eight points better than the entire Los Angeles Unified School District.

Huerta: There’s gotta be trust in there with the teachers, the parents, and the students that everybody’s on the same team, that everybody has the same focus, which is students’ achievement.

Go Principal Huerta! Go Garfield!

RESOLUTION PROPOSES HANDCUFFING LAUSD’S SUP’T DEASY WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING OUTSIDE FUNDING TO HELP THE BUDGET-STRAPPED DISTRICT. (THE HORROR!)

Samantha Ottman at the LASchoolReport has the story:

A controversial item on the LAUSD School Board agenda this week proposes drastically limiting Superintendent John Deasy’s ability to seek funding for the district by applying for public or private grants.

The resolution, initiated by School Board Members Richard Vladovic, Bennett Kayser, and Marguerite LaMotte, aims to give the school board veto power over grant applications made by the school superintendent in amounts over $750,000.

According to a source with knowledge about LAUSD grant applications, Supt. Deasy has been awarded about $120 million dollars for the district through grants so far.

Because of the split on the school board between union-backed board members and supporters of reform-minded Deasy, the effect would be to severely limit the district’s ability to attract foundation and federal money.

Really, LAUSD board? You’re really are going to be that power-grabby and control freaky?

This questionable resolution will come before the board on Tuesday.

(You can read it here on the board’s meeting agenda, at Item 35.)

Today, Friday, KQED together with the Center for Investigative Reporting wraps up their excellent and informative week-long series called PRISON BREAK that is all about realignment and the changing face of California’s criminal justice system .

The half hour segment that will air tonight at 7:30 pm, is in two parts. The first part is an remarkably detailed overview of the issue—reported by my friend Michael Montgomery—that will give you a clear idea of what realignment is all about, what challenges and opportunities it presents, and the myriad ways it could affect the health and well being of our state and of our individual counties.

The second half of Friday’s program features twinned interviews with the District Attorneys from California’s two most populous cities—LA’s Steve Cooley and San Francisco’s George Gascon. (It should be noted that, as the former Assistant Chief and head of operations of the LAPD, under Bill Bratton, Gascon knows LA pretty well too.)

As they are questioned by KQED’s Scott Shafer, Cooley and Gascon and square off over the value—or lack thereof—of realignment—and come down on two very different sides of the question.

Cooley displays the most law-and-order side to his personality as he portrays realignment as an unfolding disaster.

In contrast, Gascon comes across as a man with a more nuanced view of the future of criminal justice, and a broader grasp of the possibilities that realignment presents.

And finally, the videos at the top of this post are extra two clips from the outtakes of Friday night’s show in which Cooley and Gascon agree about the proposed 3-Strikes reform, Prop. 36, and then disagree mightily on the topic of the death penalty, and Prop. 34, the ballot measure that would end the death penalty and replace it with life without parole.

LA HAS A NEW, MUCH NEEDED EDUCATION BLOG

There are few things of more consequence in this city and county than education. And yet, although we have good education reporters in LA (Tammy Abdollah at KPCC, Howard Blume at the LA Times, plus various people at the LA Weekly), for whatever reason, the cumulative coverage has not had the depth, rigor and edge that the subject demands.

Not since Bob Sipchen ran the School Me blog for the LA Times (that the Times, in it’s infinite wisdom, chose to drop) has there been anything approaching the fine grain work we really need here on an day-in-day-out basis.

That’s why it is such very good news that we now have a new player on the field in the form of an independent education blog called: THE LA SCHOOL REPORT

The extremely smart and talented Hillel Aron will be writing it. Highly respected veteran education wonk and journalist/author, Alexander Russo, is editing. Journalist and television news producer and executive, Jamie Alter Lynton is the founder/ publisher.

And may I say in response to this bit of info: WOOOO-HOOO!

I don’t know Ms. Lynton, except by reputation. But I do know Hillel and Alexander, and—I promise you—this is a good team.

The timing could not be better. As cuts to education continue to go ever deeper, there can be no business as usual. Innovative solutions are needed. And good reporting will help to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The need for a watch-dogging press that holds the various facets of our educational system accountable has never been greater. Ditto a press that points to small, promising green shoots of progress.

The LA School Report is also surfacing at a time when the State Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color wrapped up its year’s worth of hearings with a report that revealed—among many other things— that African-American and Latino school kids are more likely than white kids to be suspended, and to drop out, and kindergartners of color are more than three times as likely as their white playmates to believe they lack the ability to succeed in school.

So how do we address those problems on which the health of our communities and our city depends? Good education reporting can help.

And so…. Welcome LA School Report! We’re very glad to see you!

KQED EXAMINES CALIFORNIA’S REALIGNMENT STRATEGY, AND EXPLAINS IT TO THE REST OF US – PART 1

Last October, California began the grand experiment known as realignment, a strategy that shifts responsibility for a certain slice of our convicted law breakers away from state custody and oversight, transferring the responsibility for oversight instead to California’s various counties.

The immediate purpose of realignment is to lower the population of the state’s overcrowded prison system, in response to last year’s Supreme Court decision, which demanded that our policy makers find a way to drop said population or the court would do it for us (and we likely wouldn’t like their strategies).

The secondary purpose is to lower our dreadful state prison recidivism rates (which would, in turn, over time, lower the prison population), the assumption being that the counties can do a better job at rehabilitation and reentry than the beleaguered state.

So, after less than a year, how’s it going?

KQED, together with the Center for Investigative Reporting, have just launched a series that aims to tell us just that.

First, KQED’s Matthew Greene gives us a mini-primer on the in’s and outs’ of the R word.

Then my very smart pal, veteran criminal justice reporter, Michael Montgomery, has a report on the differences in the way that San Francisco is responding to the added jails population, as compared to Fresno County.

For instance, in Fresno Nontgomery finds the system already getting overwhelmed. Some of the realignment inmates he talks to tell him they wish they could got to state prison instead of doing their time closer to home, in the county jail. They said that in jail, there is far less opportunity to better one’s self.

“There are no programs here,” one heavily-tattooed young man says. “No school, no education. There’s no jobs. This yard is once a week, every Monday, for one hour. That’s it. No sunlight, no fresh air.”

When asked where would they prefer to be, prison or jail, one Fresno inmate answers, “I’d rather go to prison myself.” All the other inmates agree. They’d rather be in state prison.

The theory behind realignment is that putting non-violent offenders closer to home increases their chances of rehabilitation. But for now at least, Fresno’s jail is stretched to capacity. Margaret Mims, the Fresno County sheriff, says they weren’t prepared for the influx.

“It was disappointing that we were hit so hard so fast with many more inmates, says Mims. “And we’re all scrambling to figure out how we’re going to deal with it.”

Yet here is what Montgomery heard from San Francisco inmates:

Unlike some other counties such as Fresno, San Francisco is investing most of its realignment money in rehabilitation.

Randy Nichols is serving time for drug charges. He says he spent 27 years in and out of prison, only to end up at the San Francisco county jail because of realignment.

“When I go to state prison I don’t know if I’m getting out…alive,” says Nichols. “When I come here I’m able to work on myself, be myself.”

The next installment will look at Los Angeles.

AS WE PREDICTED LAST WEEK, THE MUCH STALLED SB9—THE BILL THAT WOULD GIVE LWOP KIDS AT LEAST AN OUTSIDE CHANCE AT ONE DAY GETTING PAROLED—GOES TO JERRY BROWN’S DESK

After three years of being shot down in California’s Assembly, State Senator Leland Yee’s bill that would allow some kids convicted of murder as juveniles to at least apply for parole, passed in the assembly last week, and sailed through the state senate on Monday, 21-16. It is now headed to the governor’s desk for his signature.

Here’s a clip from the Sac Bee’s quickie rundown on what the bill means:

The bill by Democratic Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco would allow some murderers to petition for a hearing to have their sentence changed to 25 years to life, allowing them to later petition for parole. Several conditions would apply: They would have to have been under 18 when they committed a murder that got them life in prison with no possibility of parole. They also would have to have already served at least 15 years of their sentence, and wouldn’t be released until they had served at least 25 years. And they would have to have been convicted with at least one adult co-defendant.

Some criminals would not be eligible — those with a history of violence before the murder conviction, those who had tortured their victims, and those who had killed a firefighter or law enforcement official.

Yee said the bill would only apply when offenders showed remorse and when “it is a very clear case where an individual has made amends and demonstrated that they are not going to re-offend.”

Again, this perfectly sensible bill took three years to pass. But pass it has.

Now it’s up to Jerry.

OH, AND OAKLAND’S POLICE DEPARTMENT MAY GO INTO FEDERAL RECEIVERSHIP AND THEIR EXISTING FEDERAL MONITOR IS UNDER INVESTIGATION

I was in the Bay Area last week, part of that time in Oakland, where I learned that, not only is the Oakland Police Department laboring under a federal consent decree (a circumstance that LA knows well), things have gotten so weird that they’re actually teetering on the edge of being forced into federal receivership—which would make Oakland the first U.S. city to have its police department snatched from its control.

AND if that wasn’t trouble enough, Monday the news broke that the federal monitor (the person who keeps an eye on the department to see if the requirements of the consent decree are being met) is being investigated for….oh…just read the story yourself.

It’s a mess. as Matthew Artz from the Oakland Tribune points out. Here’s a clip:

….Deputy City Attorney Jamilah Jefferson wrote that the city is “duty-bound” to review the “potentially damaging” allegations concerning “communications between the court monitor and city officers” and asked U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson to seal all documents in connection with the investigation.

On Monday, the city filed a revised motion and asked that Friday’s motion be withdrawn and sealed because it contained “confidential and sensitive information that … should not be part of the court’s public record.”

Speculation is that the accusations stem from one or more meetings that included Warshaw, a former deputy drug czar in the Clinton Administration, and City Administrator Deanna Santana. Santana said she couldn’t comment on what happened because it is part of a personnel investigation. Warshaw could not be reached for comment Monday.

Henderson has tentatively scheduled hearings for December to consider stripping the city control of the police department because of its failure to fully comply with reform measures spelled out in a 2003 agreement that settled the Riders police misconduct case…

It’s not at all clear what the monitor did, as no one will say, but Artz quotes one source as telling him that he knows of no problem with Warshaw, the monitor, other than the fact that city officials really don’t like his reports.

Photo by SteveCof00 licensed under Creative Commons

NEW CA BILL WOULD EXTEND TATTOO REMOVAL SERVICES TO FORMER PROSTITUTES AND VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

A new California bill seeks to provide free tattoo removal services to former prostitutes and others branded by tattoos meant to identify them within the sex trade. (Homeboy Industries is currently providing the service for free.)

Megan O’Neil has the story for the Pasadena Sun. Here’s how it opens:

A man’s name is scrawled across Krystal Lopez’s neck in black lettering like that of a centuries-old manuscript.

It is a bitter souvenir for the 18-year-old Pasadena resident, who has worked hard to sever ties with the former pimp who inspired it and the lifestyle it represents. She has started laser treatments to have the tattoo removed at Los Angeles-based Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit supporting ex-gang members that provides the service for free.

Lopez doesn’t fit the Homeboy profile, though. She has never been in a gang, and as a result, she and others like her are deep in the queue.

“There are girls I know who have three different people on them,” Lopez said. “There is a huge waiting list for [removal services]. The priority is always the gang members.”

The wait soon may be pared down. Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) is shepherding through the California Legislature a bill that would expand the pool of people eligible for state-facilitated, federally-funded tattoo removal services to include those tattooed for identification in human trafficking or prostitution.

SIXTY PERCENT OF DOCTORS AT LOUISIANA STATE PRISONS HAVE BEEN DISCIPLINED

Nine out of the fifteen resident doctors at Louisiana state prisons have received sanctions by the state medical board for criminal activity ranging from drug dealing to sex crimes.

The Times-Picayune’s Cindy Chang has the story. Here’s how it opens:

Of the 15 doctors working full-time at Louisiana state prisons, nearly two-thirds have been disciplined by the state medical board for issues ranging from pedophilia to substance abuse to dealing methamphetamines.

Two have served federal prison time. Five are still on probation with the medical board and have restrictions on their licenses, including bans on prescribing controlled substances. Altogether, nine have received the rare black mark of a board sanction.

Louisiana state prisons appear to be dumping grounds for doctors who are unable to find employment elsewhere because of their checkered pasts, raising troubling moral questions as well as the specter of an accident waiting to happen. At stake is the health of nearly 19,000 prisoners who are among the most vulnerable of patients because they have no health care options.

About 60 percent of the state’s prison doctors have disciplinary records, compared with 2 percent of the state’s 16,000 or so licensed medical doctors, according to data from the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners. The medical board is aware of the prison pipeline — in fact, a board-employed headhunter has sometimes helped problem doctors get prison gigs.

“Aside from being unethical, it is dangerous,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, a physician and director of health research at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “You’re winding up having people who don’t have any choice being where they are, getting taken care of by people with demonstrable previous records and problems with the way they practice medicine.”

NADER’S THOUGHTS ON THE BROKEN PRISON SYSTEM

Ralph Nader’s new opinion piece for the Register Citizen explores the problems within the current prison system and the corruption of the privatized prison industry. Here’s a clip:

Ever visit a major prison? The vast majority of Americans have not, despite our country having by far a higher incarceration rate per capita than China or Iran. Out of sight is out of mind.

Imagine the benefits of the average taxpayer touring a prison. The lucrative prison-industrial complex would definitely not like public exposure of their daily operations. Prison CEOs have no problem with a full house of non-violent inmates caught with possession of some street drugs (not alcohol or tobacco). Our horrendous confinement system cannot change when it clings to perverse practices such as cruel, costly, arbitrary, mentally destructive solitary confinement (again, the highest in the world, see: http://solitarywatch.com/). Corporate profits drive the prison system’s insanity.

Indeed, for the giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), times are booming. CCA builds their prisons or buys or leases public prisons from financially strapped governments. Barron’s financial weekly can always be expected to give us the Wall Street perspective. In a recent article titled “Ready to Bust Out,” writer Jonathan R. Laing (http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111903882904577477001345171564.html) is bullish on CCA stock. He thinks it could double to more than $50 a share if the company were to convert to a real estate investment trust (REIT).

Mr. Laing writes that CCA has cost advantages over the public-prison sector, paying lower non-union wages and using more automated technology. Besides, the company is a tough bargainer when it buys or operates public prisons. One CCA condition is that the facility must have 1,000 beds, can’t be more than 25 years old, and get this, “the contract must guarantee a 90 percent occupancy rate.” A guarantee backed by taxpayers no less, unless, that is, the clause works to put more prisoners in jail for longer sentences.

The Barron’s article adds that CCA is counting on “the old standby of recidivism to keep prison head counts growing, filling its empty beds.” To the impoverished rural communities where these prisons are located, it’s about needed jobs.

The criminal injustice system has many faults, other than an inadequate number of beds filled with convicted corporate crooks. As the Justice Roundtable (http://justiceroundtable.com/), composed of a collation of over 50 national organizations, declares, “The current punitive system depletes budgets without making society safer…The Archaic system must be reformed to be rehabilitative, just and accountable.”

How naïve! Don’t these experienced people know that first they have to change the purposes of this system? Instead of wanting more prisoners and treating them in such ways that when they get out they are too unskilled and damaged to overcome the society’s exclusionary pressures that half of them end up back in jail, they should be training these prisoners to be contributing members of society. But that’s the problem of the gigantic prison machine that thrives on returning prisoners.