UPDATE ON REFORM BILL FOR KIDS IN SOLITARY

A bill that would define and limit the use of solitary confinement for kids in juvenile facilities—SB 61, authored by Sen. Leland Yee—made it through the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday and is scheduled to be voted on by the Senate next week.

Here’s a clip from the update from Sen. Yee’s office:

In 2011, a CDCR internal audit found that youth were often locked up in their cells for over 21 hours a day. In one 15-week period, there were 249 incidents of solitary confinement, and in one case, a youth received only one hour out of his cell in a 10-day period. In local juvenile facilities, there have been reports of youth locked up in isolation for 23 hours a day.

“I felt completely unwanted and unnoticed” said Tanisha Denard, who was held in solitary confinement as a juvenile. “It is by far the worst feeling I have ever experienced.”

“The mission of the juvenile justice system is to offer youth an opportunity for rehabilitation while also promoting public safety” said Dr. Laura Abrams of UCLA. “The use of solitary confinement is counter to these goals. Not only does solitary confinement undermine rehabilitation efforts, but also as the potential to return a young person to society with exacerbated trauma and mental illness that can manifest in violence toward self or others.”

FYI, here are some of the provisions of SB 61:

- Define solitary confinement as the involuntary placement in a room or cell in isolation from persons other than staff and attorneys.

- Provide that solitary confinement shall only be used when a minor poses an immediate and substantial risk of harm to others or the security of the facility, and all other less restrictive options have been
exhausted.

- Provide that a minor or ward shall only be held in solitary confinement for the minimum time necessary to address the safety risk.

- Empower existing county juvenile justice commissions to report on the use of solitary confinement in juvenile facilities.

(For more recommended reading, Sen. Yee has an excellent editorial on the bill over at U-T San Diego.)

METRO STOP AT CULTURALLY IMPORTANT LEIMART PARK

The LA Metro board finally approved funding for an underground metro station in historic Leimart Park, an significant addition to the Crenshaw line that LA Supe. Mark Ridley-Thomas has been pushing hard for since 2011, along with outgoing LA Mayor Villaraigosa.

KPCC’s Corey Moore has the story. Here’s a clip:

The action comes a day after the L.A. City Council committed $40 million in Measure R funds for the station in the culturally historic African American community. And now, the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will fund the rest, which in total, amounts to $120 million.

Outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed to make this happen, along with L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who sponsored the motion. MTA members voted in favor, 10 to 1. Metro plans to choose a contractor for the project next month.

HARMFUL IMMIGRATION REFORM AMENDMENTS DISCARDED

Several discriminatory immigration reforms were shot down earlier this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee, including an amendment authored by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have banned undocumented immigrants suspected of gang affiliation from becoming legal citizens, even if they had no criminal record. Another rejected amendment by Sen. Grassley would have allowed law enforcement officers to profile based on nation of origin.

Here’s a clip from gang intervention non-profit Homies Unidos Director Alex Sanchez’s letter to supporters:

Thank you for standing up for justice and dignity. Your calls to the Senate Judiciary Committee members helped to defeat three dangerous amendments to the immigration reform bill: Sessions 32, Grassley 43 and Grassley 49. These amendments sought to increase and normalize the practice of racial profiling by law enforcement in our communities. Session’s amendment would have mandated 287(g) nationwide, while Grassley’s amendments would have penalized young people accused of gang membership and allowed profiling based on national origin. Thank you for pushing back against these harmful amendments. We could not have won this without you.

Despite the good news, Graham 3 passed. The amendment requires additional screening for individuals applying for “registered provisional immigration” (RPI) status who are from certain regions or countries deemed national security threats by the Department of Homeland Security. This will likely target individuals from predominantly Muslim, Arab, South Asian and Middle Eastern countries and is a setback against the fight to end racial profiling.

LA Times’ Sandra Hernandez has more on the defeat of Grassley’s amendment targeting suspected gang members. Here’s a clip:

Deporting immigrants who have serious criminal records makes sense as a matter of public safety. The Times’ editorial page has supported such policies. But Grassley’s amendment wouldn’t have furthered that goal. Instead, it sought to exclude immigrants who are suspected of gang membership from legalizing simply because their names appeared on a gang database or on an injunction.

Los Angeles pioneered the use of gang injunctions and databases as a way to help neighborhoods plagued by violence regain control of their streets. But these lists and civil restraining orders aren’t perfect tools. Individuals can find themselves on such lists because of factors like tattoos, style of dress or identification by an informant.

BOY SCOUTS END EXCLUSION OF GAY YOUTH

The Boy Scouts of America voted Thursday to end their policy banning gay youth from participating in the program. There is still a ban on openly gay adults acting as leaders, and gay youth can still be forced out of the group when they turn eighteen, but this is a welcomed step in the right direction.

NY Times’ Erik Eckholm has the story. Here’s a clip:

The decision, which followed years of resistance and wrenching internal debate, was widely seen as a milestone for the Boy Scouts, a symbol of traditional America. More than 1,400 volunteer leaders from across the country voted, with more than 60 percent approving a measure that said no youth may be denied membership “on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

The top national leaders of the Boy Scouts had urged the change in the face of vehement opposition from conservative parents and volunteers, some of whom said they would quit the organization. But the decision also put the scouts more in tune with the swift rise in public acceptance of homosexuality, especially among younger parents who are essential to the future of an institution that has been losing members for decades.

The decision is unlikely to bring peace to the Boy Scouts as they struggle to keep a foothold in a swirling cultural landscape, ensuring continued lobbying and debate in the months and year to come. The group put off the even more divisive question of whether to allow openly gay adults and leaders, and those on both sides of the debate predicted that, with the resolution’s passage, the Boy Scouts would soon be forced to start allowing gay adults, whether by lawsuits or embarrassment at the twisted logic of forcing an Eagle Scout who turns 18 to quit.

 
LOUISIANA LEADS THE WORLD IN INCARCERATION RATES

Louisiana has more people behind bars per capita than anywhere else on earth, with a rate of one in 86 residents incarcerated. From the for-profit prisons that keep their facilities over-crowded to keep cash flowing, to the minimal rehabilitation opportunities at the local level, to the preposterously lengthy prison sentences–New Orleans Times-Picayune’s eight part series sheds light on the poor infrastructure that makes Louisiana the prison capital of the world.

NOLA’s entire series is worth reading, but here is a clip from Part 4: Unusual Punishment:

Brian Martin is serving 24 years behind bars — without the possibility of parole — for a car burglary. The 22-year-old had two other burglaries on his record when he was arrested near Abita Springs on June 8, 2011, after stripping a BMW of its stereo and steering wheel. If charged as a three-time offender, he could have received life without parole. His attorney, Doyle “Buddy” Spell, persuaded prosecutors to consider only the two most recent car break-ins, taking a life sentence off the table, but doubling the 12-year maximum for a first-timer.

Martin, a drug addict with a mop of unruly blond hair, will be 46 when he is released from prison in 2036. “I would suggest that we just threw away a life and that the punishment did not fit the crime,” Spell said.

Sentences of several decades, or even life, for nonviolent crimes are not unusual in Louisiana. The state’s prisons are filled with Brian Martins — petty criminals who in another state would have received a much shorter sentence or no jail time at all. Unusually tough sentencing laws are one major reason Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

“We see the only goal that is being reflected accurately might be retribution,” said Katherine Mattes, a professor at Tulane Law School and interim director of the university’s Criminal Litigation Clinic.

In Texas, no bastion of liberalism, a two-time car burglar would be guilty of a misdemeanor and sentenced to a maximum of six months. California’s famous three-strikes law does not kick in unless at least one of the crimes was a rape, murder, carjacking, residential burglary or other major felony. There, Martin would have received no more than a year behind bars.

In Louisiana, about 160 habitual offenders whose most recent crime involved nothing more harmful than marijuana are serving 20 years or more. More than 300 people serving life without parole in Louisiana have never been convicted of a violent crime.

LONG BEACH MAN EXONERATED OF RAPE CONVICTION

Brian Banks was cleared of a 2003 rape conviction with help from the California Innocence Project. His accuser, Wanetta Gibson, was secretly recorded admitting the accusation was false during a meeting with Banks. Now Banks suing California for his false imprisonment.

KPCC’s Patt Morrison had Brian on the show to tell his story. Here’s a clip:

Banks, who was 17 at the time of his trial, pleaded no contest to the charges in order to avoid the possibility of facing 40 years to life in prison in a conviction. He spent six years in prison and was under very restrictive parole until his accuser was recorded saying she wasn’t raped and that she is afraid of coming forward because she might have to return the $1.5 million her family won from the Long Beach Unified School District in a civil suit.

“I received a Facebook friend request last year from the woman who accused me of raping her, where she wanted to reconnect and, in her words, ‘let bygones be bygones,’” said Banks. After receiving this message, Banks hired a private investigator to set up and record their meeting, in which his accuser admitted to falsely accusing him. “From there I took that information to the California Innocence Project, who accepted my case. The rest is history, and here I am today, a free man,” said Banks.

Justin Brooks is the defense attorney handling Banks’ case. He said that in the history of the California Innocence Project, they have never taken a case of someone who had already been released from prison.

The Daily News has the story on Banks’ lawsuit against the state, and includes a video of the emotional hearing. Here’s a clip:

Brooks said that Banks is entitled to $100 a day for every day he was falsely imprisoned under State Law 4900.

If successful, the lawsuit against the state of California would net Banks about $188,500.

Banks, a football standout at Poly, had been heavily recruited by colleges, and had a verbal offer for a scholarship at USC.

KIDS FROM MORE AFFLUENT COMMUNITIES WITHIN LAUSD MAY BE BETTER PREPARED FOR THE SATS

Andrea Lopez, 17-year-old LA Youth writer, felt extremely under-prepared for the SAT prep course she attended at UCLA. Lopez was surprised that she could be one of the top students in her grade, and still be so far behind other students from the same school district. Like many other kids in minority communities, she began to worry that her Sylmar public school education was not adequate enough to get her into a good college.

Here’s a clip from the LA Youth story:

I thought I had a great vocabulary, but I had never heard words like “spurious,” “cogent” and “plaudits.” It’s disappointing that the schools I’ve been to didn’t give me as good an education as these kids. Usually I’m proud of getting some of the best grades in my classes, but I was jealous of what these students knew.

I realized that these kids probably grew up with parents who spoke English and used impressive-sounding words. But having Spanish-speaking parents, I learned most of my grammar and vocabulary on my own. I’ve never been ashamed of having parents who weren’t born here or didn’t graduate high school but sometimes I wish they were more educated so they could help me in school.

Be sure to read the rest of Andrea’s story–it has a very inspirational ending.

Nearly 20 years ago The California Wellness Foundation was one of the first organizations of consequence to promote the recognition that violence was not merely a crime problem. It was a serious public health issue.

As part of their focus on the topic, every year Wellness puts on a Violence Prevention Conference at which around 300 people drawn from all over the state gather to discuss the myriad complex facets of this problem that so deeply affects the health and well being of California’s communities.

Among those who attend are directors of programs that address some aspect of the issue, a smattering of law enforcement (This year Deputy Chief Pat Gannon, head of LAPD’s South Bureau, was on a panel), academics, researchers, and other experts in the field.

Each year at the conference, Wellness presents three Peace Prizes, which honor three people with a $25,000 cash award….”in recognition of his or her outstanding efforts to prevent violence and promote peace in their local communities.” The 2011 winners were Ray Balberan, Priscilla Carrasquilla, Manuel Jimenez, all of whom work in different capacities with former gang members and/or kids who are headed that direction. (You can read more about the winners here).

The topics vary from year to year. This year, the subject of realignment came up frequently in public discussions and in private conversation. Another big conference topic was juvenile probation. The Chiefs of Probation for Alameda and Yolo counties were both on a panel. In fact, Alameda County’s Chief of Probation, David Muhammad, was one of the conference’s two keynote speakers and his straight talk about what works and what doesn’t for lawbreaking kids had direct and urgent implications for LA County’s troubled juvenile camps. (I’ll have much more to say about David Muhammad in a later post.)

The other keynote speaker—the one who opened the conference—was LA’s own Father Greg Boyle.

I’ve posted some (very) rough iPhone video snippets from his speech. Please ignore the recurring hand-held jiggles and the less than felicitous framing, and just give yourself and treat and watch. As speakers go, they don’t get any better than Fr. Greg.

As the first clip below opens, Greg is talking about an encounter with a particular Homeboy Industries staffer. He also covers why he may title his next book “Barking with the Choir,” and why we must stand with the despised and the easily thrown away.

This next clip, #2, contains a story about homeboys and texting.

(NOTE: I turned off the video before the story of texting homeboys was over, so quickly switched it back on for the 55 second tag to the tale that you’ll find below.)

You’ll find one more instructive (and funny) homeboy story here in clip #4.

This next video opens with a short talke featuring the actress Diane Keaton at the Homegirl Cafe, and ends with…well…..just watch it.

Even for some reason you don’t want to watch to all six videos, do watch this last one, # 6. It’s only a little over five minutes long. I’ve heard Greg tell the story encased in the clip many times, but I still can’t hear it without crying off all my eye makeup. Thursday night was no exception.

Truth be told, I lived this story along with Greg. I was very close to the kid in the tale known as “Puppet,” and even closer to his girlfriend. I remember that Greg was out of state when all this happened. Thus I was the one who rushed to the hospital to hold down the fort, emotionally speaking, in those first hours.

Despite the pain of it, this story is—as are all Greg’s stories—about hope, and about why the issues talked about at last week’s conference matter so very much.

On Wednesday, the California Wellness Foundation announced it had named Kaiser Permanente executive Dr. Diana Bontá as President and CEO.

Why am I telling you this?

Because the Wellness Foundation is unique in California in that, for 19 years, it has funded—to the tune of $125 million— such projects as gang violence reduction programs, juvenile reentry strategies, and a long list of other juvenile justice issues when few others wanted to take a chance on the kind of at-risk populations that these essential programs served. In short, they have demonstrated their deep commitment to the problems and challenges that we crazy juvenile justice fanatics care about and, as a consequence, lives have been saved, futures altered for the better.

Thus when Wellness’s outgoing president, Gary Yates—always a champion of the foundation’s violence reduction initiatives— announced he was leaving, there was much discussion about whether the new Prez—whomever he or she was—would support the same kind of programs.

Word is that with Dr. Bontá, Wellness has found a winner, who, in addition to her executive experience, is a skilled and passionate advocate for the health and well being of the state’s underserved and marginalized communities and residents.

So, welcome to Dr. B!

Yesterday— 30 years ago—Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated, sparking El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.

For the first time in all those 30 years, El Salvador has commemorated his murder—as the LA Times reports.

And for the first time, an El Salvadoran government leader-–in this case the president—apologized for the assassination. The WaPo has that part of the story.

(A SIDE NOTE: Romero, if you remember, was one of those objectionable characters whom the Texas textbook revisers recently scrubbed from the state’s school curriculum.)

Here is how Garrison Keillor writes about Romero’s importance for Writer’s Almanac.

Romero was appointed San Salvador’s archbishop three years before, in 1977, at a time when violence in El Salvador was rapidly escalating. The conflict was largely one of class warfare: the landed wealthy — who were aligned with the rightist government and paramilitary death squads — against the impoverished farm workers and other laborers who had begun to ally themselves with leftist guerilla groups looking to overthrow the government.

Romero had a reputation for being bookish, conservative, and even for discouraging priests from getting involved in political activism. But within weeks of becoming bishop, one of his good friends was killed by the death squads. His friend was an activist Jesuit priest named Rutilio Grande, who’d been devoted to educating peasants and trying to bring about economic reforms. He was gunned down on his way to a rural church, along with a young boy and elderly man he’d been traveling with. It was a clear moment of conversion for the previously apolitical Oscar Romero, who suddenly felt that he needed to take up the work his friend had been interrupted from doing.

Romero canceled Masses all around the country that week, and invited all to attend the funeral Mass on the steps of the National Cathedral, which he presided over along with 100 other priests. One hundred thousand people showed up at the cathedral for the funeral. He also broadcast his sermon over the radio, so that it could be heard throughout the country. He called for government investigation of the murders going on in rural areas, and he spoke of the reforms that needed to happen in El Salvador: an end to human rights violations, to the regime of terror, and to the huge disparity in wealth, with the landed classes getting rich from the labor of the poor. He announced to his congregation that he wanted to be a good pastor, but he needed everyone’s help to lead.

He was called to Rome. The Vatican didn’t approve of his activism.

Read the rest of this entry »

(NOTE: The HP ad above was featured on the same page that contained Emily Bazelon’s Slate article below about the sexting and cyberbullying cases, and the juxtaposition struck me as…..um….amusing.)

LOOK, I TOO THINK JOHN YOO IS IN LEAGUE WITH SATAN, BUT GET A GRIP!

A group of lawyers and law students are demanding that Deputy Attorney General David Carrillo, who works in AG Jerry Brown’s office, drop his plans to teach a constitutional law class with the UC Berkeley professor John Yoo next semester.

In case you’ve dozed off on the matter, John Yoo is the guy who wrote the infamous torture memos to justify the actions of the Bush administration when he was a US Justice Department lawyer from 2001 to 2003.

The SF Chronicle has the story. Here are some clips.

By instructing a class with Mr. Yoo, you are helping to legitimize his illegal and unethical actions,” organizations led by the National Lawyers Guild said Tuesday in an open letter to Deputy Attorney General David Carrillo, a doctoral candidate and instructor at the university’s Boalt Hall law school.

They asked Carrillo either to teach the course by himself, if the school will allow it, or to leave it to Yoo. Signers included the law school’s chapter of La Raza Law Students Association and the Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture.

Oh, please. I’m all for prosecuting Yoo. If someone can find a legal way to wrap the law around him and squeeze a bit, that’d be excellent. (Unfortunately, I don’t think they can.)

But, otherwise, if some nice liberal guy from the AG’s office wants to teach with him, leave them the heck alone. Good education—particularly a law school education—-thrives on differing points of view.

IN FLORIDA, CLEMENCY IS NOT DEAD

The horrible murders committed by Maurice Clemmons , and the subsequent attacks on Mike Huckabee, have not exactly encouraged the notion of clemency. Nevertheless, Wednesday a Florida woman named Jennifer Martin who was serving 16 years for manslaughter, was set free by a four person parole board that included Florida governor Charlie Crist.

ABC news has the details.

The video of Martin’s first day out is from the St. Petersburg Times.

THE 9TH CIRCUIT, THE SUPREMES & THE “PERILOUS FRONTIER OF CYBERLAW”

(I just like writing that: “….the perilous frontier of cyberlaw.“)

Anyway, regarding the two new Supreme Court cases we’ve already talked about here: the Ontario cop sexting case, and the issue with the rights of mean kids who cyberbully, Slate’s legal writer, Emily Bazelon, has written a good column that explores the two cases recently accepted by the Supremes, and notes that the California’s 9th Circuit of Appeals is smack in the middle of both of them. In each instance, the judges of the 9th came down on the side of the rights of the individual.

(In the case of the mean girls, I think they’re right. In the case of the sexting cop…. hmmmmm… maybe yes, maybe no.)

In any event, Baselon’s column engages in an informative discussion of both cases. Here’s a clip:

Before Jeff Quon got a pager from the Ontario Police Department, where he’s a sergeant, he signed a blanket statement that he had he had “no expectation of privacy or confidentiality” when using city equipment for e-mail or the Internet. But then his supervisor put in place an informal policy that undercut the official one. The supervisor told cops who had the pagers that they could send 25,000 characters worth of text messages a month and then after that, pay for the extra messages—and if they did, avoid an audit. Quon went above the character limit a few months in a row, paying each time. Then his chief started to wonder about whether Quon was wasting time on the job and asked the pager service for the texts. It turned out that lots of them were notes about sex Quon had written to his girlfriend. Quon sued, arguing that the search of his texts was a violation of his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches at work.

In June 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with him. He had a reasonable expectation of privacy, the court said, given what his supervisor told him about paying for extra messages—the department’s “operational reality.” The court also found that there were other, less intrusive ways for the police chief to figure out whether Quon was frittering away his time: Warning him ahead of time to quit sending so many messages, asking him to count the characters himself, or asking him to cross out the personal parts before the department reviewed them.

This ruling, by Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw for a panel of three judges, implicitly recognizes that company pagers and e-mail accounts often turn into personal ones. Sometimes, that saves employees’ time: If I’m not toggling back and forth between my Slate e-mail account and Gmail, my day is more streamlined (or so I tell myself). If your boss says you can use company technology for your own business, then you should be safe from unnecessarily intrusive searches—even if he’s contradicting some official blanket disclaimer in which you signed away your privacy rights without really paying attention.

SF SUPERVISOR CHRIS DAILY DROPS F-BOMB ON GEORGE GASCON’S HEAD

Also in the SF Chron, it seems that new San Francisco police chief, George Gascon, was roundly cussed out by Supervisor Chris Daly.

(Gascon, if you’ll remember, a longtime LAPD cop, used to be the Assistant Chief under Bill Bratton. Before he took the SF job, Gascon was rumored to be the front runner to replace Bratton as the L.A.C.O.P. So we in LA we are justified as viewing him as one of ours.)

In any case here’s a clip that explains the situation:

Supervisor Chris Daly got up from his seat, approached Gascón, cut him off to introduce himself and was heard dropping the f-bomb as he left the chambers in a huff. Gascón looked surprised, said it was nice to meet Daly and continued testifying.

[SNIP]

Apparently Gascón hasn’t reached out to Daly since taking the job several months ago, despite his focus on cracking down on drug dealing in the Tenderloin, the heart of Daly’s district.

“I don’t know if it’s good politics or not, but if I was a new department head, I would certainly reach out to every decision maker,” Daly told us.

He said he appreciates the focus on the Tenderloin, but disagrees with the “nickel and diming” approach of going after low-level users which is overcrowding jails and causing the Sheriff’s Department to go over budget. He’d like to see the bigger fish nabbed instead.

We heard reports that Daly said “F- you, F-you!” as he left the chambers. So was the f-bomb directed at Gascón? “I was muttering to myself, yes,” Daly confirmed. “I think probably it was more like f-ing a-hole. It wasn’t directed at him, and you know, I’m sure very few people could hear it.”

Evidently it was more than a few.

SHOULD SEX OFFENDERS BE BARRED FROM CHURCH?

That’s the question that Time Magazine and a convicted sex offender name John Nichols and his attorney are asking. Here are clips from the Time story.

North Carolina is a proud member of the so-called Bible Belt of states that take their religion seriously. So some eyebrows were raised when James Nichols was arrested for attending church.

His offense? Nichols, a convicted sex offender, had chosen to worship at a church that has a nursery where kids play while their parents pray. Now Nichols, 31, who only recently got out of prison, is fighting back, challenging the legality of a new law that took effect in December prohibiting registered sex offenders from coming within 300 ft. — nearly a football field’s length — of any facility devoted to the use, care or supervision of minors.

Read the rest.

LAPD’S NEW HEADQUARTERS STILL NEEDS A SNAZZY NEW NAME

The new headquarters for the Los Angeles Police Department is open for business even if every single person isn’t yet moved out of the old and into the new.

But, while there is more boxing, packing and unpacking ahead, the so-called Police Administration Building has at least already had its literary debut. (It is featured in Nine Dragons, the new Michael Connelly novel released earlier this week.)

The official dedication ceremony will be later this month.

In the meantime, the LA Times’ Patt Morrison gives a nice little run down about some of the building’s featires. But she also makes the point that the new LAPD building needs a name. I agree. And it shouldn’t be the Police Administration Building.

She writes:

C’mon, LA — New York has ”One Police Plaza,” and even though it sounds like a name dreamed up by a studio production design team, it’s a whole lot better than ”police headquarters.”

Mayor Tom Bradley was a cop himself, but with his war with Chief Daryl Gates during his mayorship, he’s too contentious a figure to have his name on the LAPD’s building. ”Parker Center” is out of the question; the city would sooner name its new edifice after Pretty Boy Floyd. It’s possible that in time, the city might name the building after Bratton, but I expect City Hall is pretty wary of going that route.

In the meantime, you know that if the city doesn’t come up with a name, Angelenos will, on their own, find some nickname, and nicknames, once they stick, are almost impossible to get un-stuck.

Suggestions?

Well???

THE DAMAGE WROUGHT BY ZERO TOLERANCE IN SCHOOLS

Friday’s NY Times has a good editorial on the abuses of over-the-top Zero Tolerance policies.

Here are clips:

Zachary Christie is back in his first-grade class. Delaware’s largest public school district has rescinded its order to punish him (and send him to a disciplinary school) after he came to class with a Cub Scout camping utensil that contained a small foldout knife.

This was a painful experience for the 6-year-old, and we are relieved that the school district has now amended its overly zealous disciplinary code. But far too many other communities are inflicting even greater damage on young children: handcuffing them or shipping them off to juvenile court for getting into minor skirmishes or for being unruly or disobedient at school.

In 1994, Congress required states to pass laws mandating expulsion for students who bring firearms onto school property. But many states overreacted and began to criminalize minor offenses.

More here.

Since no one else has the good sense to make a fuss about the state’s absurdly penny-wise-and-pound-foolish plans to lay off around 800 teachers and support staff in California’s prisons, members of Service Employees International Union Local 1000 are doing their best to call attention to the stupidity of cutting or reducing programs that are proven to help prisoners stop returning to prison (thereby saving WAY more money than could possibly be saved by cutting the teachers).

The Fresno Bee has the story.

(Jerry Brown and protesting against insurance companies—after the jump.)

Read the rest of this entry »

ARNOLD STEPS IN TO SAVE STATE PARKS—BUT MAYBE NOT FOR THE REASON HE SAYS

This past Friday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the budgetary breach with a plan to miraculously rescue 100 state parks from closing (the same 100 he had personally and unilaterally elected to close, but okay. A niggling point).

The story is that the governor brought out his budget crunchers and told them to go forth and find enough savings elsewhere to be able to keep the parks open with minor cutbacks and partial closures to a few parks. Not a perfect solution but much better than shuttering 100 of California’s precious public wildland spaces. That, Arnold! Such a problem solver!

But what, one wonders caused this sudden change of heart?

Could it maybe have been the looming threat of nasty lawsuits and the possible loss of millions of dollars in federal grants?

Yep. Looks like it. In another one of his excellent essays on state and national parks, civil rights lawyer and City Project head, Robert Garcia, pointed out rather presciently, just before Arnold had his come-to-Jesus cost cutting session, that it had been recently been brought to Schwarzenegger’s attention that closing the parks would cost a hell of a lot more—in legal bills and funding losses—than keeping them open.

Here’s a clip:

[The National Park Service] told the governor in June that state park closures would violate the contracts the state signed to receive $286 million in federal funds for 67 parks under the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and could jeopardize hundreds of millions more in future funds. The land for another six state parks could also revert to the federal government. (Read the NY Times article.)

Months after the plan to close state parks was announced, the department’s lawyers finally got around to analyzing the law earlier this month in a memo that was promptly leaked and posted on the Internet. (Read the Mercury News Article on the memo.)

The memo outlines about eight reasons why closing state parks would raise serious problems under contract, property and environmental laws…..

[Here's the rest of Garcia's essay. And here's the memo.]

PS: Try to catch Ken Burns series on the National Parks before it’s over. It’s fantastically good.

THE SUPREMES CONSIDER THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF LWOP KIDS WHO DID NOT COMMIT MURDER

In Monday’s LA Times, David Savage gave a preview of the case that the Supreme Court will consider in November to determine whether or not life without parole for minors who didn’t kill constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, “The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles.”

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

[SNIP]

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court’s tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Here, by the way, is a past look at California’s LWOP kids.

UC PRESIDENT MARK YUDOF TO ALL UNDERLINGS: YOU’RE DEAD TO ME

Okay, he didn’t say those words exactly, but in last week’s NY Times interview, University of California president Yudof said some things that were a bit flip sounding given how drastic the cuts have been at the state’s UCs.

For instance there was this:

….Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening. I listen to them.

(“…like being a manager of a cemetery?” Okay, so faculty and staff are either dead to him—or the undead. Hard to tell.)

And, regarding his salary (Yudof makes $540,000 plus $228,000 a year toward his pension plan, plus an annual $120,000 housing allowance, totaling: $888,000 a year), when asked what he thought about the suggestion that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, ($400,000), Yudof said:

Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?

Yudof may or may not be good for the UCs (there are a lot of people lately weighing in on the NOT side of things)—but, given the hits the university system, its employees and its students are taking, a little diplomacy would go along way, dude.
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THINKING OF STAFON JOHNSON

This isn’t a social justice issue, but many people—myself included— are sending positive thoughts the direction of USC running back, Stafon Johnson, who went though 6 hours of surgery Monday after a weight room accident in which a weight bar fell on his throat.

THE INCARCERATION GENERATION

According to federal data, on any given day 1.5 million American children have a parent in prison, usually a father. Yet, until now there have been few studies on the affect of parental incarceration on kids. (I can attest to this, because I’ve made a point of ferreting out the studies that do exist.)

Finally, the hole in the research is beginning to be filled, reports an excellent New York Times article on the subjectthat ran over the weekend. Here are a couple of representative ‘graphs but the whole piece, written by Erik Eckholm, is worth reading:

The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.

“Parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel, and distinctly American, childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents,” said Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who is studying what some now call the “incarceration generation.”

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THE NEWEST CONSERVATIVE ARGUMENT FOR ABOLISHING THE DEATH PENALTY

Conservative strategist Richard Viguerie has become the latest person to vocally to jump to the growing anti-death penalty camp with a thoughtful essay in this month’s Sojourner’s magazine. Being a conservative, says Viguerie, he doesn’t believe that a moratorium should be imposed by the courts, but has another idea, that is state-based, not federally imposed.

On how society would ever get to the point of abolishing the death penalty, if it were to do that, I have my conservative views. It must be done in a way consistent with our constitutional system. That means it cannot be imposed by the courts or by the federal government (except for federal cases). In my opinion, the Constitution does not grant the federal government the authority to ban the death penalty in the states. That must be left to the people’s representatives in their respective states, which also means that judges must not take it upon themselves.

This is why I am joining my friend Jim Wallis in a coalition of liberals and conservatives calling for a national moratorium and conversation about the death penalty, so people can study, learn, think, pray if they wish, about whether or how the various state death-penalty systems should be changed. I hope you’ll join us.

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MONTANA’S SQUABBLING PRO-LIFE COALITION

Montana’s Right to Life advocates are trying to pass a “personhood” amendment to the state’s constitution in order to precipitate a Supreme Court challenge aimed at overturning Roe V. Wade. But—as is often true with advocates if any ilk, right or left—they are thus far fighting too much with each other too agree on a strategy.

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SARAH PALIN & THE WISDOM OF THREATENING TO SUE THE PRESS

As most of you likely know, on Sunday Sarah Palin’s attorney Thomas Van Flein released a letter in which he threatened to sue blogger/radio personality Shannyn Moore for saying on MSNBC that there had been persistent rumors that Palin was about to be indicted by the Feds for naughty monkey* doings around the building of the Palin’s Wasilla home.

(The LA Times put an end to the rumor with a report that an FBI spokesman said it had no such plans to indict, that Palin was not under investigation, and that the speculation was baseless.)

Press reacted to this threat with hilarity and/or delighted defiance ["THERE ARE RUMORS.

There. I said it. Sue me"]

Read the rest of this entry »

PRISON INMATES WORRIED ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS TOO—-AND FOR GOOD REASON

A column in the Milwaukee Journal by Eugene Kane reports exactly what I’ve been hearing from the guys who call me collect from prison. Men who will be coming out of lock-up in the coming months are worried sick about what the sliding economy means for their job prospects.

Here’s what Kane found:

An inmate at the Racine Youthful Offender Correctional Facility had a pointed question.

He might be released by the end of the year and wanted to know if the job situation would be improved by the time he got back on the streets.

Frankly, I didn’t know what to tell him but advised him that he shared the same worries of many Americans, including those who are not currently incarcerated.

In many ways, we’re all in the same boat.

My visit to the Racine prison last week to speak to a group of about 60 inmates revealed that many prisoners are concerned about the economy because they realize they have more strikes against them than most job applicants.

They are right to worry. Sixty-five percent of American employers say they won’t hire somebody with a felony record—and that’s in times of prosperity. When money and jobs are in short supply, I’d hesitate to even guess what percentage would be willing to give a job to a parolee.

Even more troubling, the jobs programs around Los Angeles who have traditionally given work to parolees—places like Homeboy Industries—are themselves hanging by a thread because of the loss of their usual funding sources.

I don’t know what to tell the guys who call me. I really don’t. I don’t want them to lose hope.

But a month ago there was a 300 person waiting list for Homeboy’s solar panel installation training program as you can see on this Good Morning America broadcast. Now that list is even longer.

So what is going to happen when there are no jobs to be had by those who desperately need and want to start their lives over?

It is not a happy thought—for them or for us.

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SARA JANE OLSON…RICH LADY’S PAROLE RULES?

In Sunday’s New York Times, author Caitlin Flanagan talks about why Sara Jane Olson should have to do her parole time in California not in her nice Tudor house in Minnesota, where she can return to doing…dinner theater.

(A topic that I covered here, last week.)

She makes some good points and does so eloquently.

(I liked the piece on its own merits. But since Flanagan quoted me for her essay—and quoted me correctly—admittedly, I was even more positively disposed.

Anyway, read it.

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LA TIMES AND NY TIMES TELL REPUBLICANS BLOCKING FED $$$ FOR EXTENDED UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE TO GET A GRIP!

The New York Times told the increasingly irritating Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry of Texas that they were “putting ideology ahead of the needs of their constituents” in refusin to take the Federal aid offered to help those out of work in their respective states.

And here’s what the LA Times said this morning:

Imagine the federal government offering California more than $2.5 billion to help its unemployed workers. You’d think that lawmakers would leap at the money, especially with the unemployment rate climbing to 10.5% in February. And yet when the Assembly took up a bill last week to make the state eligible for the aid, resistance from Republicans left the measure one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed for speedy passage. Proponents plan to bring a new version of ABX3 23 to the Assembly today, and lawmakers shouldn’t hesitate to pass it.

Lawmakers and governors who would say no to easing the suffering of the unemployed of their state—-our state—-need a reality check. And soon.

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LA COUNTY PROBATION-RUN GROUP HOMES FOR KIDS…..GENERALLY FAIL TO HELP THE KIDS IN THEIR CARE

The LA Times reports a new RAND study on the subject that followed 450 kids who had been in these group homes. RAND found that, seven years later, most of the kids were not doing very well.

And how shocked are we? Not very. Helping kids requires that you actually, like, help them—which most of these places don’t.

“We cannot say that these group homes failed to improve anyone’s life, but the large number of poor outcomes we observed raises questions about whether the juvenile justice system is as effective in rehabilitating
delinquent youths as it should be,” said Rajeev Ramchand, the study’s lead author, according to The Times.

On most days in LA County there are 3000 kids in such homes.