by Taylor Walker

TO CLOSE OR NOT TO CLOSE CA’S COSTLY JUVENILE PROGRAMS?

SF Chronicle’s Marisa Lagos reports on the advantages (and disadvantages) of the state’s controversial juvenile justice programs that the governor proposes to close and the effect that closure could have on the programs’ resident youth.

Here’s a clip:

This is California’s solution to dealing with its juvenile offenders with the most serious criminal backgrounds, who need intensive treatment that county juvenile halls could not provide. The program is expensive, costing state taxpayers $179,400 a year per offender.

Now, the state is contemplating pulling the plug on O.H. Close and three other state-run facilities that serve this population, which represents less than 1 percent of the more than 225,000 youths arrested in California each year. Earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed closing the institutions and sending these offenders back to county juvenile halls. [Editors' note: Actually it would be County probation camps. But no matter.]

The move would fall in line with Brown’s broad goal of shifting state services to the county level, in part to cut back on state spending. But staff members at O.H. Close say the closures would be devastating, and some youths here agree, saying they have received far more effective treatment than they ever got in county juvenile halls.

[SNIP]

Staff and wards at both O.H. Close and N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility next door say closing the state facilities – which would save the state more than $100 million a year – would set California back, and experts warn it could result in far more juveniles being charged as adults and sentenced to state prison.

HOW REHABILITATION ALL BUT VANISHED FROM CALIFORNIA’S PRISONS

California’s prison system has drastically cut its inmate rehabilitation programs and inmates have few incentives to participate in those that remain. As a consequence, most are paroled with no new skills or education, and those with drug or mental health problems don’t have them addressed. The East Bay Express’ Joaquin Palomino examines how all of the above contributes to the states’ disastrously high recidivism rate.

Here’s a clip:

….Under the Determinate Sentencing Law that [Jerry] Brown signed [in 1977], most inmates receive a fixed sentence, and are released from prison after a specified time period. As a result, most inmates no longer need to prove to a parole board — like Bolar did — that they are ready to reenter society, and so they don’t have to work for their freedom. Because of this, participation in reform-oriented prison programs has dropped substantially. “The general prison population doesn’t do shit no more,” Bolar noted. “No jobs, no classes, no therapeutics, no nothing … and when it’s time to go home they go home.”

In addition, funding for prison rehabilitation has been systemically cut from the California Department of Corrections’ budget. In the 1990s, the legislature went so far as to officially change the penal code to say that the purpose of prison was punishment — period. “They took rehabilitation out of it entirely,” noted UC Berkeley law professor Barry Krisberg. “So for the past three decades the system has been guided entirely by retribution. The main problem with the punitive approach is that the vast majority of prisoners are released.”

And today, released inmates are much less prepared for free society. They usually commit new crimes and end up back in prison. According to the most recent state statistics, an astounding 65 percent of released inmates now return to prison. In the past 25 years, that number has fluctuated between 60 and 80 percent.

At the same time, California voters and state political leaders have made it much more difficult for lifers to win their release. During the past three decades, California governors have routinely overturned parole-board decisions, forcing prisoners to spend even more time behind bars, thereby further diminishing the role of rehabilitation.

WHEN A GEORGIA TOWN UNWISELY GAMBLED ITS FUTURE ON AN ICE PRISON

A privately run detention center in a remote Georgia town attempted to revive it’s prison population (and in turn, boost the town’s economy) with immigrant detainees, courtesy of ICE. Now that the prison is again on the brink of closure, Irwin County’s immigrant prisoners endure disturbingly inhumane conditions.

The Nation’s Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville have the story.

Here’s how it opens:

About a mile from the center of Ocilla, Georgia, a two-stoplight town nearly 200 miles south of Atlanta, sits a bleak boxy building surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. A hand-painted sign reads “Irwin County Detention Center.” With 1,200 beds, this private prison is the largest employer in Irwin, a county of 10,000 people. For years it did good business, bringing much-needed jobs to this impoverished part of south Georgia.

But by the middle of 2009 the prison sat nearly half empty. It needed more inmates to keep the business afloat. The facility’s private management company, and the county, began to court today’s most lucrative detention market: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE.

ICE runs the world’s largest immigration detention system, relying heavily on local jails and private facilities in far-flung communities like Irwin County. Rather than operating them itself, the agency leases beds from local jails or contracts with private corporations, such as Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, billion-dollar companies that spend millions on federal lobbying to ensure that the market stays strong. Private companies also inspect and monitor prospective and contracted prisons on ICE’s behalf. These entities are responsible for the health and welfare of more than 33,000 immigrant detainees each day. Immigrants who are detained before deportation can spend anywhere from a few hours to years in custody….

EDITOR’S UPDATES:

*ANNENBERG’S NEON TOMMY IS THE BEST PLACE TO GO for rounded coverage of the tragic shooting death of two USC grad students.

*NBC HAS A VIDEO OF WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S HIGH SPEED PURSUIT AND OIS SHOOT OUT DEATH OF A 19 YEAR OLD on the 101 Freeway near Canoga Avenue in Woodland Hills.

Dennis Romero of the LA Weekly also reports.

The video is harrowing to watch as the kid, after reportedly speaking to his mother and to police on the cell phone, suddenly throws a skidding U-turn with patrol cars on his tail, then gets out of his car and sprints out onto the freeway. As he runs, really, to nowhere across lanes, he turns around and twice points something at police, a move that could only have one logical ending.

The video also makes clear how important air support is for officers on the ground in highly volatile instances like this one.

UPDATE: Dennis Romero at the LA Weekly is keeping up to date on this story, which is playing out more and more tragically with additional information.

Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash did a brave and important thing on Friday—and then again on Monday. On Friday he issued a draft order to open the Juvenile dependency courts to the press, allowing fresh air into a system in Los Angeles County that has long been disastrously closed. Then on Monday, he had a hearing on the matter and announced that he planned to make the order permanent.

In case you’ve forgotten, Juvenile dependency courts are the places that hear child abuse and neglect cases.

Nash was originally going to open the courts to the public as well as the press, but he ran into a lot of resistance.

So, according to Friday’s draft order, the courts will remain closed to the public unless a certain set of criteria are met in individual cases. However, the new default position will be that press will be allowed in— unless anyone can show clear cause that having reporters in a hearing will harm a child.

As the order itself states:

Members of the press shall be allowed access to Juvenile Dependency Court hearings unless there is a reasonable likelihood that such access will be harmful to the child‟s or children‟s best interests.

Richard Wexler of the NCCPR—the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform— expressed the view of the many child welfare experts who have been advocating for LA’s court to get some fresh air. Here’s a clip from Wexler’s blog post on the topic:

If Judge Nash proceeds with this order as written, it will be a significant step forward in holding the county Department of Children and Family Services and the courts themselves accountable for what the system does to children and families in Los Angeles. As we explain in our Due Process Agenda, none of the many other state and local systems that have opened these courts has closed them again because all the fears of opponents proved groundless…

Not everyone agrees. Former foster child, Marcy Valenzuela wrote an Op Ed for the LA Times last fall explaining why she felt the courts should stay closed.

Juvenile dependency courts exist to protect children and youths who have been neglected and abused, so it’s shocking that the presiding judge who oversees the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s juvenile division is pushing a plan that puts foster children and youths at risk of further harm.

If Judge Michael Nash’s order stands, vulnerable children, youths and their families, who are already dealing with painful consequences of neglect and abuse, would face the additional burden of proving why the most intimate details of their lives should be kept private.

The primary movers against letting light into the courts, are not child advocates, but the unions for the grown-ups, those who represent the social workers, et al. They have fought hard to keep the hearings secret.

However, Nash is clear on the issue.

There is a lot that is not good [in the dependency courts], and that’s an understatement,” the LA Times reported that Nash said earlier this year at a Sacramento hearing on the issue. “Too many families do not get reunified…. Too many children and families languish in the system for far too long. Someone might want to know why this is the case.”

Exactly.

According to advocates who were present at Monday’s meeting, Nash said he would issue a final order very soon.

AND LEST WE STRAY TOO FAR FROM THE LASD & JAILS…THE LA TIMES EDITORIAL SAYS: YES, LA COUNTY’S JAILS ARE BROKEN, BUT EVERYBODY NEEDS TO THINK BEFORE PRESCRIBING A $1.4 BILLION DOLLAR ONE-DIMENSIONAL, BUILD-A-JAIL FIX

Or words to that effect. Mainly, Monday’s very well written editorial echos what we said last week before and after the board of supervisors meeting, regarding the need to look at the whole picture before rushing off and throwing a billion and a half dollars at jail building.

And by “the whole picture, this includes the suggestions contained in the very lengthy and very smart Vera Institute report on the county’s jail over crowding issue and what to do about it ( a report that was, by the way, ordered and paid for by the county). And it also means waiting to look at the upcoming report on the same issue from jails and prison expert Jim Austin, due in late February.

Anyway, a big thank you to the Times editorial board, who said all of the above more elegantly than we did.

THEN WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF WISE GOVERNANCE….WHAT’S UP WITH GOV. JERRY TRYING TO DO AWAY WITH THE HAYDEN BILL, WHICH HAS PROTECTED CALIFORNIA’S PETS FROM NEEDLESS EUTHANASIA SINCE 1998?

Former California senator Tom Hayden (and current critter owner) explains everything. (See above video.)

Yes, yes, we’ve heard that the legislative analyst says that doing away with this bill will save the state money. Okay, sure. And having no shelters at all will save the state even more money. BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT A GOOD IDEA.

Raise fees. Whatever. But do not even think of trying to vaporize the law that prevents precipitous critter euthanasia—which could, in turn, mean that if by some chance our four-footed family members get lost, get out of the house for an unscheduled walkabout, or get separated from us by some unforeseen force majeure, they could be killed dead before we’ve had the chance to track them down.

No. Not a workable solution, Jerry.

Seriously—Ask yourself, WWSD? What would Sutter do?

Okay, see? I rest my case.

BROWN WANTS TO SHUT DOWN THE STATE’S JUVENILE PRISONS, BUT SHOULD WE?

The short answer is YES. They’re preposterously expensive and they’re a mess that seems immune to fundamental reform.

However, shutting them down must be done wisely or it will simply result in more kids being tried as adults and so shoved instead into the adult prison system, as the Bakersfield Californian points out in an editorial.

The plan doesn’t appear to provide clear safeguards that would keep juveniles convicted of lesser crimes out of adult prisons. What if the counties, deep in their own budget problems, can’t accommodate them? Will these kids end up in adult facilities? Will counties lean toward prosecuting more youth offenders as adults to avoid having to house them? Will they be tempted to not prosecute them at all?

The NY Times also looks at some of the disagreement on the issue:

Joaquin E. DiazDeLeon, a former Fresno gang member, spent two years inside California’s juvenile prison system. What he found there, he said, was no better than the streets he came from.

Instead of rehabilitating young offenders, he said, correctional officers spent most of their time separating rival gangs. Violence was so pervasive, he said, that he kept his gang affiliation just to protect himself.

“Basically you’re being thrown in a box and expected to change,” said Mr. DiazDeLeon, 21, now a student at City College of San Francisco.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent proposal to eliminate California’s Division of Juvenile Justice was billed as a way to cut $242 million from the state budget. It was also the culmination of a decade-long effort to shut the state’s troubled youth prison system, which for years has been plagued by violence, abuse and decaying facilities.

CLARENCE THOMAS FAILED TO DISCLOSE WIFE’S EARNINGS

The LA Times’ Kim Geiger has this head-shaker of a story. Here’s the opening:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed.

Common Cause also says that Ginny Thomas was paid a salary in 2009 by a group called Liberty Central. But again in 2009, Justice Thomas checked the “NONE” box.

“Without disclosure, the public and litigants appearing before the court do not have adequate information to assess potential conflicts of interest, and disclosure is needed to promote the public’s interest in open, honest and accountable government,” Common Cause President Bob Edgar wrote in a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Do we think this is an oversight? Nope. Not really. One year maybe. But six? Although it’s admittedly hard to know what exactly Thomas was thinking with such a bone-headed move.

THE CLEMENCY QUESTION OF HAMEDAH HASAN

Lisa Ruth, at the not normally bleeding-heart-liberal Washington Times, asks—quite rightly—why President Obama hasn’t given clemency to Hamedah Hasan, the mother and grandmother whose case typifies the nation’s War on Drugs sentencing madness.

Ruth writes that presidential commutations are rare, but that sometimes justice demands them:

One stand-out in the more than 3,000 requests for Presidential commutation is Hamedah Hasan, a mother and grandmother serving her 17th year of a 27 year federal prison sentence for non-violent crack cocaine conviction. She has no prior criminal record.

In 1991, Ms. Hasan was arrested for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, after three other known drug traffickers implicated her as the “manager” of the conspiracy to sell 5.9 kilograms of crack cocaine. They received lighter sentences for their cooperation with authorities. Police never found any drugs on Ms. Hasan, nor did they find any drugs in her house. Despite repeated stake-outs, they did not observe her selling, using, or possessing drugs of any kind.

Mandatory federal sentencing guidelines put Ms. Hasan in jail for life. The requirements at the time included a 100:1 ratio for crack cocaine to regular cocaine. In other words, if you had one gram of crack, your punishment was equal to having 100 grams of cocaine.

Changes in the Sentencing Guidelines later reduced her sentence to 27 years.

Ms. Hasan has applied for Presidential commutation of her sentence, and has received an outpouring of support.

The ACLU now represents Ms. Hasan due to the strength of her argument. The application included more than 50 letters of support from community leaders, prison chaplains, advocates, friends and family.

One letter is from the federal judge who sentenced Ms. Hasan, the Honorable Richard G. Kopf, U.S. District of Nebraska. Part of his letter reads:

“…I can say, without equivocation, that Ms. Hasan is deserving of the President’s mercy. I have never supported such a request in the past, and I doubt that I will support another one in the future. That said, in this unique case, justice truly cries out for relief.”

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC OF IMPRISONMENT, THE LATEST ON BRADLEY MANNING AND HIS SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

The Guardian has the story. As you read the clip below, remind yourself that Manning has been kept in solitary confinement for six months—although he has yet to be convicted of anything at all.

Supporters of Bradley Manning, the army private suspected of leaking confidential documents to WikiLeaks, were thwarted in an attempt to deliver a petition protesting his treatment when US Marines took a sudden interest in traffic law.

David House, a friend of Manning’s, and Jane Hamsher, founder of the Firedoglake blog, were stopped by guards at the Quantico Marine Corp base in Virginia where Manning is being held, on Sunday when House planned to make a regular visit to see Manning.

The pair also wanted to deliver a petition with 42,000 signatures protesting at the conditions Manning is being held under, including solitary confinement and round-the-clock watch which his lawyers describe as unfair and abusive.

But despite having visited the base to see Manning on several previous occasions, yesterday the pair were stopped by military police and Hamsher’s car impounded after guards found the vehicle’s license plates had expired and Hamsher was unable to produce insurance papers.

After nearly two hours the pair were released – but too late to see Manning during the military brig’s visiting hours, denying the prisoner of his sole weekly respite from solitary confinement.

Now that we have had some time to reflect further on outgoing governor Arnold Schwarznegger’s reduced sentence for Estaban Nunez, the son of his business ally, former Assembly Speaker, Fabian Nunez, the whole thing looks far worse, not better.

On Sunday, the LA Times’ Jack Nolan examined the issue in a story about the 29 inmates in the last year alone who had served lengthy prison sentences, who were deemed appropriately punished and rehabilitated by the notoriously hard core California parole board that they were granted parole.

However, none of those 29 inmates were actually released because Arnold spiked their parole, countermanding the decision by the board (a group that has never been known for its warm and fuzzy liberalism).

Here’s a clip:

They, like former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s son Esteban, participated in crimes that left a victim dead but did not deliver the fatal blows.

And like the younger Nuñez, 11 of those inmates had no previous criminal record, according to orders from the governor’s office in 2009, the most recent year for which records are publicly available.

Among the reasons Schwarzenegger frequently gave for reversing the parole board — a panel appointed by his office and dominated by former police and corrections officers — was that the victim had been killed over something “trivial.”

In addition, the offender had demonstrated “callous disregard for human suffering,” often by fleeing the scene and leaving the victim to die, as Nuñez did after he and his friends drunkenly attacked a group of strangers on a San Diego street in 2008 after being denied entrance to a fraternity party.

Schwarzenegger laid out circumstances strikingly similar to those of the Nuñez case in a June 2009 order overturning the parole board’s decision to free Sieu Ngo, who had served 16 years for his role in a gang assault at Fullerton High School.

Like Nuñez , Ngo was 19 at the time of his crime. It was September 1992 when he and four friends chased and beat a rival gang member, Angel Gonzalez. During the attack, one of Ngo’s accomplices pulled a gun and shot Gonzalez once in the back, killing him. And like Nuñez, Ngo then hopped in a car with the others and hit the road.

In the Nuñez case, the politician’s son had stabbed one victim in the stomach while a friend fatally stabbed another in the heart. Then they drove to Sacramento and threw their knives in a river. Ngo’s group drove to Washington state, where they were arrested a month and a half later, according to Schwarzenegger’s order.

Schwarzenegger acknowledged that Ngo, who is serving 16 years to life, had maintained “supportive relationships with family and friends” during his time in prison and had a job offer waiting for him if he got out. But the former governor argued that Ngo still failed to take full responsibility for his actions, a trait he had demonstrated after the attack by fleeing to another state, Schwarzenegger wrote.

Eighteen months after ordering Ngo to stay in prison, Schwarzenegger cut Nuñez’s sentence by more than half, from 16 years to seven. Nuñez had served six months at the time and would not have been eligible for parole until roughly 2023….

(Read the rest here.)

The people in Dolan’s story suggest a stark inconsistency in Schwarzenneger’s policy.

Yet in all the cases he mentioned someone was murdered.

But what about the California kids tried as adults and given lengthy sentences for crimes in which no one died, no one was seriously hurt, and in which they were not the prime participant in the first place? What about those cases?

Why were those young inmates not as deserving as Estaban Nunez?

TAKE, FOR EXAMPLE, THE CASE OF MICHAEL DUC TA

In 2000, Michael Duc Ta was a bright, 16-year-old who tested in the highly gifted range but was also a boy with problems, mostly due to a lousy home life. According to court records, Ta often clashed with his dad, a Vietnamese immigrant who reportedly smacked Ta’s mom around on a regular basis, and then smacked his son whenever Ta tried to intervene. Things got bad enough that Ta ran away several times, and once tried suicide. He also got himself expelled from school on two separate occasions for bouts of acting out—the first time, from elementary school for setting off a stink bomb. The second expulsion, years later, was for fighting, and caused Ta to be transferred to Valle Lindo, a continuation high school in El Monte that was loaded with gang members. As with most continuation schools in LA County, Valle Lindo’s students were an edgy group that tended to Balkanize along racial lines: Latino’s hung with Latino’s, Anglos with Anglos and so on. Ta hung out mostly with other Asian students, many of whom happened to be gang affiliated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cell phones have proliferated (illegally) inside prisons for several years. But now Monday’s NY Times has a particularly thorough article on a newer lock-up phenom—namely the advent of smartphones behind bars.

Here are some clips:

Although prison officials have long battled illegal cellphones, smartphones have changed the game. With Internet access, a prisoner can call up phone directories, maps and photographs for criminal purposes, corrections officials and prison security experts say. Gang violence and drug trafficking, they say, are increasingly being orchestrated online, allowing inmates to keep up criminal behavior even as they serve time.

“The smartphone is the most lethal weapon you can get inside a prison,” said Terry L. Bittner, director of security products with the ITT Corporation, one of a handful of companies that create cellphone-detection systems for prisons. “The smartphone is the equivalent of the old Swiss Army knife. You can do a lot of other things with it.”

The Georgia prison strike, for instance, was about things prisoners often complain about: They are not paid for their labor. Visitation rules are too strict. Meals are bad.

But the technology they used to voice their concerns was new.

[SNIP]

The recent rise in smartphones raises larger issues for prisoners and their advocates, who say the phones are not necessarily used for criminal purposes. In some prisons, a traditional phone call is prohibitive, costing $1 per minute in many states. And cellphones can help some offenders stay better connected with their families.

Mike, the Georgia inmate who was part of the recent [Georgia prison] strike, said he used his to stay in touch with his son.

“When he gets off the school bus, I’m on the phone and I talk to him,” he said in an interview on his contraband cellphone. “When he goes to bed, I’m on the phone and I talk to him.”

Some groups are encouraging prisons to embrace new technology while managing risks. Inmates are more likely to successfully re-enter society if they maintain relationships with friends and families, said David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It shows that even if they are closed institutions, prisons are still part of the larger society,” Mr. Fathi said. “They can’t be forever walled off from technological changes.”

NOTE: As someone who has long gotten regular collect calls from correctional institutions in the course of my work, I have been able to watch the unfolding of the contraband phone—and smartphone—phenomenon, thus have seen close up that there are genuine social benefits along with the obvious liabilities that concern prison administrators.

AND SPEAKING OF PRISON: ARNOLD MAKES USE OF EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY ON LAST DAY IN OFFICE

Governor Schwarzenegger has pardoned some people and reduced the sentences of others, including Sara Kruzen, who at 16 killed her former pimp (and for whom various human rights groups have long advocated), and 22-year-old Esteban Nunez, son of former Assembly Speaker and GFOA (Good Friend of Arnold), Fabian Nunez.

In the case of Esteban Nunez (whom you can read about here and here) while I am glad that the governor shortened one young man’s sentence, I cannot help but wish that some of the other young men who will be languishing much longer behind bars for far, far lessor offenses, had access to similarly well-connected champions.

photo from Switched.com

It is going to be tempting for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger not to sign AB 12, the bill now sitting on his desk that will extend the age limit for a kid to remain in the foster care system from 18 to 21.

It’s a good bill, no one disputes that. But it will cost money. And in this dreadful budget season no California politician wants to be seen as spending extra taxpayer money on anything, at all, ever, if he or she can help it.

Of course, everybody who does the numbers points out that it will cost more, in the long run, if we don’t extend help to foster kids. (High incidence of homelessness, joblessness—and so on.)

Now in an op ed for the Daily News, award-winning journalist-turned-foster-care advocate, Daniel Hempel asks the governor—and the rest of us—to think about all the positive societal and fiscal benefits that can accrue if California does enact AB 12.

Here’s how Hempel’s essay opens:

There Shalita O’Neale sits, big belly, 10 days away from her first child. She is smiling, brimming under the hum of overcooled air being pumped through the vents of an old building in East Baltimore.

On the sill of a window, which separates the world she has built in her executive director’s office from the rough outside, sits a photo. It is of her, then 19, standing next to Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state.

O’Neale was a member of the first class of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Foster Youth Intern program, which has in the years since placed dozens of former and current foster youth in the offices of members of Congress. It was one of myriad connections she made after her 18th birthday.

Unlike most states across the country and in our home state of California, Maryland didn’t cut O’Neale off at age 18 simply because she was a foster youth, a fiscal burden rather than human being. Instead, the state continued to subsidize her housing and waived her school tuition.

“I started meeting people in college, making connections,” she says. “If I was out on my own, I couldn’t have done that.”

And what that has done for her individually and for thousandssof other foster youths in states like Maryland, Illinois and New York is at the crucible of the decision Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now weighs. California is poised to tap into federal funds to extend foster care to the 4,500 youths who age out of the system every year at 18 to age 21 The bill, AB 12, which would accomplish this, hurtled through the state Sssembly and Senate and now awaits the governor’s signature by the end of the month.

If the governor does indeed sign AB 12 it would mean that one-eighth of the nation’s foster youths – 65,000 – would, in one fell swoop, be offered the same chance that O’Neale has built a life on. .

Read the rest.

Photo by Frederic Larson / The Chronicle

AND WHILE HE’S GOT THE SIGNING PEN OUT…

The governor should sign AB 1602 and SB 900–the health care-related bills that Anthem and others are fighting mightily to kill.

ON A TANGENTIALLY RELATED TOPIC—A FEDERAL APPEALS COURT RULED TUESDAY THAT FLORIDA’S GAY ADOPTION BAN IS INDEED UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Here’s your Thursday moment of sanity.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld upheld a 2008 ruling by a Miami-Dade judge, who found “no rational basis” for the 3-decade ban when she okayed the adoption of two young brothers by a gay couple.

The AP has the story.

TERESA LEWIS EXECUTION TO GO AHEAD

On a decidedly less cheery note, the Virginia execution of Teresa Lewis is slated to take place Thursday night, despite thousands who want to know why the state feels it needs to kill Lewis, while the guys who actually committed the murders are serving life sentences.

Interestingly, when SCOTUS voted not to grant a stay to Lewis, the only two justices who voted in favor of the stay were Sotomayor and Ginzberg—both women. Elena Kagan, however, broke gender ranks and voted against. (Not that it means anything. It’s simply intriguing to note, as Doug Berman points out.)

File this under: it’s about damned time. Here’s what the press release from Equality California said:

The California Assembly today [Monday] passed an Equality California-sponsored bill (AB2199) that would repeal a particularly offensive section of the California Welfare and Institutions code, which instructs the State Department of Mental Health to conduct research into the “causes and cures of homosexuality.” The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), passed with bipartisan support and a unanimous vote.

“Sexual orientation is not a matter of choice any more than one’s height, and neither can be changed,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “We are thrilled with the passage of this vital bill, as all Californians regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, deserve to be treated equally and with dignity and respect.”

The code implies that being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is harmful and that LGBT individuals can and should be cured, in direct contradiction with an enormous body of research that demonstrates otherwise.

“It’s discriminatory, it’s insulting and it has to go,” Lowenthal said. “Sixty years is more than long enough

Actually 60 years as way too long, but this reparative bill is a very good thing

SHOULD WE RISK MAKING CALIFORNIA’S PRISONS BIG BIZ?

(Short answer: No.)

In his State of the State speech on Wednesday (Schwarzenegger’s last) the governor was impassioned about wishing to spend more on higher education that we do on prisons, which is very laudable.

However, there is one surefire way to cut the corrections budget in order to free up money for our CSUs and UCs: When we send people to prison, we need to do what is necessary to insure that, when they get out, they don’t come back again. We’ve got a 70 plus percent recidivism rate in the state. Imagine if we could cut that by a third; what a fiscal difference that would make!

We also need sentencing reform. (Just yesterday, one of my lawyer friends told me about the case she’d witnessed earlier in the week in which two women who were sentenced to 32 months in prison for stealing what was, at the most, $25 worth of pillowcases from Walmart. Lock them up, sure. But for more than 2 years? Not smart. )

But is the governor proposing any such reforms? Nope.

He’s got another way to reverse the corrections v. college budget problem. He wants to privatize the California prison system.

This is…how to put it?… a truly hideous idea. Think a profit-driven Blackwater running the state’s lock ups. (Do we really want to actively incentivize NOT rehabilitating prisoners?)

Here and here you’ll find some of what happened when federal immigration facilities got privatized.

State Assemblyman Ted Lieu has it right:

Religious institutions across the board condemn private prisons as both inhumane and ineffective. The Presbyterian Church USA stated that “Since the goal of for-profit private prisons is earning a profit for their shareholders, there is a basic and fundamental conflict with the concept of rehabilitation as the ultimate goal of the prison system . . . for-profit private prisons should be abolished.” Catholic Bishops in a resolution stated that “We bishops question whether private, for-profit corporations can effectively run prisons. The profit motive may lead to reduced efforts to change behavior, treat substance abuse, and offer skills necessary for reintegration into the community.

Private prisons are also dangerous, both to prisoners and to the public. In 2003 a report by Grassroots Leadership detailed a range of failures by CCA, [Corrections Corp of America] a for-profit private prison company, including: failure to provide adequate medical care to prisoners; failure to control violence in its prisons; and escapes.

Legislators are, thankfully, skeptical. (And the union—the CCPOA—is aghast. For once I agree with them)

HOW FAR DO HABEAS RIGHTS EXTEND?

Last year three detainees being held in the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base 40 miles north of Kabul, Afghanistan, challenged whether the Habeas rights accorded prisoners in Guantanamo should extend to other prisons where the U.S. is holding captives. In response, Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the detainees whose circumstances, he said, justified access to U.S. courts to challenge their ongoing detention. The Justice Department appealed the ruling, and the appellate case came to court this week.

Thus on Thursday, three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struggled to parse out what was really meant by the Boumediene decision, which in 2008 granted Habeas rights to those held Guantanamo.

SCOTUSBlog has one good analysis of the parsing that is taking place.

Then the story in Friday’s WaPo describes the decided uneasiness with which the three judges are grappling with the lower court’s decision.

And if you still want more, the Blog of the Legal Times has a nicely pithy take on Thursday’s arguments.

TWO MORE JUVENILE LIFERS

On Wednesday, two young men, Steven Menendez, 17, and Jose Garcia, 19, were given sentences of 50 to life for the 2007 murder of 16-year-old Danny Saavedra, who was playing basketball when he was shot. Menendez and Garcia were 14 and 16 years old when they got into a car with a 26-year-old gang member who did the shooting. Menendez and Garcia have always contended they had no idea that the gangster was up to until the firing began, that he told them the group would “go look for girls.”

The Youth Justice Coalition and some other juvenile advocacy groups have been following Menendez and Garcia’s case very closely, and were very disheartened by the sentencing.

The mother of the murdered boy feels justice was served.

The LA Times Molly Hennessy-Fisk has written a short but well-balanced story that points beyond itself to the question of whether we are really better off for handing out such long sentences to juveniles offenders such as Menendez and Garcia.

“HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU”

And in what is far and away my favorite legal decision of the week, on Thursday a panel for the 2nd Circuit opined about what constitutes a “significant romantic relationship.” The case had to do with a condition of parole for a middle-aged guy with no previous record of domestic violence, sexual offenses, or anything related, who had been labeled a sex offender when in the course of an unrelated arrest for some financial shenanigans, cops found among the guy’s porn collection, three DVDs of child porn. (Okay, so, yeah, that does certainly legally qualify him as a sex offender.)

The problem came when, as a condition of his parole, the guy, whose name is Lamont Reeves, was required if he entered into a “significant romantic relationship,” to notify the object of his affections about the nature of his offense.

Mr. Reeves appealed that portion of his parole conditions. The 2nd Circuit judges sided with Reeves, and mentioned both Jane Austin’s Mansfield Park and the film, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” among other works to make their collective point. To wit:

We easily conclude that people of common intelligence (or, for that matter, of high intelligence) would find it impossible to agree on the proper application of a release condition triggered by entry into a “significant romantic relationship.” What makes a relationship “romantic,” let alone “significant” in its romantic depth, can be the subject of endless debate that varies across generations, regions, and genders. For some, it would involve the exchange of gifts such as flowers or chocolates; for others, it would depend on acts of physical intimacy; and for still others, all of these elements could be present yet the relationship, without a promise of exclusivity, would not be “significant.” The history of romance is replete with precisely these blurred lines and misunderstandings. See, e.g., Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro (1786); Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Thomas Egerton, 1814); When Harry Met Sally (Columbia Pictures 1989); He’s Just Not That Into You (Flower Films 2009).

Well said, 2nd Circuit! (The full opinion may be found here.)

(Thanks to the always wonderful Howard Bashman at How Appealing for the legal and literary discovery.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed to grow wiser at the 11th hour and did not make good on his threat to veto hundreds of bills in an effort to bully still warring legislators to come together long enough to craft a state water policy. (It was a tactic that the governor has used throughout his tenure with little success.)

Instead, although the governor did veto 229 bills, he signed 478—among those signed were three forward looking bills that were were seen as surprising and welcome victories by gay, lesbian and transgender communities.

Summaries of the three bills are as follows:

-The Marriage Recognition and Family Protection Act clarifies that same-sex couples who married out of state before Nov. 4, 2008 are considered married in California. Same-sex couples who have married or will marry out of state after Nov. 5, 2008 will gain all the rights of marriage in California, with the sole exception of the designation of “marriage.”

-The LGBT Domestic Violence Programs Expansion Bill will leverage funding for same-sex domestic violence services, helping to sustain the critical organizations that serve the LGBT community in this area.

-The Harvey Milk Day Bill establishes in California the first day of recognition for the slain civil rights hero. Harvey Milk Day will be May 22 of each year, Harvey’s birthday.

In particular, many seemed surprised and heartened by the governor’s signature on the Harvey Milk Day Bill—a bill that he had vetoed in the past. Milk is the second Californian, after naturalist John Muir, to receive the honor.

“We are grateful to the Governor for signing these critical and groundbreaking measures into law and rising above partisan politics to improve the lives of LGBT Californians,” said Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors. Equality California is the largest gay-rights organization in the state.

The Harvey Milk Day bill marks the first time in the nation’s history that a state will officially recognize and celebrate the contributions of an openly LGBT person with an annual “day of special significance.”

“Californians will now learn about Harvey’s amazing contributions to the advancement of civil rights for decades to come,” Kors said. “He is a role model to millions, and this legislation will help ensure his legacy lives on forever.”

Yep, this is indeed a very good thing.

MID-MORNING POST SCRIPT: I admit, and I’m not happy about this, that I didn’t truly understand of the significance of Harvey Milk until I saw the Sean Penn movie. But then, however belatedly, I really got it.

Now, as a Californian, I’m thrilled that we will be able to officially celebrate the life and work of this astonishingly brave, remarkable and prescient man who, by example as a civil rights hero, was not merely a role model for gay and lesbian kids so long desperately in need of one, but who also pointed the way to a better, braver, saner, more compassionate way of living for every single one of us.

And thank you to Arnold, for doing the right thing. Seriously.

Before the storm broke over the resignation of LAPD Chief Bill Bratton,) there was another storm brewing in the state capitol about whether Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger exceeded his vested authority with his recent line item budget vetoes.

I have been wondering the same thing. Last week several democratic legislators and advocacy groups did more than wonder. They got legal opinions.

One of the first to bring his lawyer into the mix was assembly member John A. Pérez, the Democratic Caucus Chair. Here is part of what he wrote to the Caucus about the opinion he got back from attorney Stephan Kaufman: (His and the attorney’s full letters are here):

Members I am writing to inform you that I have sought legal counsel to render an analysis on the actions Governor Schwarzenegger has taken with his blue-pencil. Preliminary analysis from my attorney is that the vetoes appear to have exceeded the Governor’s authority under Article IV, Section 10 of the California Constitution. In short the Governor’s vetoes exceed the authority granted under the California Constitution. The Governor has clearly violated his authority and the constitution.

I want to be clear, not only are his actions heartless, but more importantly his actions are illegal.

Yesterday the LA Times ran an editorial that also questioned those line item vetoes and today they have a full blown news article on the challenges, plus the response from Arnold’s own lawyer, who counters that the governor’s vetoes were perfectly legal.

Here are some clips from the LAT editorial:

….Schwarzenegger’s blue-penciling amounts to something beyond run-of-the mill line-item vetoes. It raises troubling questions about the power and purview of the governor and about whether he can take for himself some of the authority to impose midyear spending cuts that he has tried, and failed, to win at the ballot box. California needs to know the answers.

Remember that the Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a budget in February. That spending plan proved insufficient after voters rejected a May 19 tax-and-reform package and as revenue fell well short of earlier projections. But the February budget was in place, with appropriations adopted by the constitutionally required two-thirds supermajority.

Last month, lawmakers sent Schwarzenegger a package of appropriations and cuts, and no one disputes the governor’s power to veto any of the appropriations. But he also vetoed some of the cuts, not to reject them but to deepen them — to, in effect, use the opportunity presented by the Legislature’s majority-vote cuts to reopen appropriations that the Legislature made, and that he signed, in February. But if an appropriation requires a two-thirds vote, and if a cut is adopted on a simple majority, how can it be deemed an appropriation?

Good question. Or is it instead, a violation of separation of powers.

Former state senator Sheila Kuehl put up her own essay last night with details of the governor’s draconian line item cuts, and what she thinks of the way their legality. (Answer: nothing good.)

Remember, these were his own blue-pencil cuts, never agreed to or heard by any legislator. In many cases, these were the services that an exhausted Sen. Steinberg and Speaker Bass were convinced they had saved earlier in the week.

SNIP]

Many in the Capitol are of the opinion that the Governor broke faith with the Democratic leadership, who believed they had protected the most vulnerable from further devastation. Trust is definitely out the window.

Look for this issue not to go away.