As the 2017 deadline for California’s Proposition 47 nears, LA County will ramp up efforts to help the 690,000 county residents eligible for felony sentence reductions.
On Tuesday, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on a motion by Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Hilda Solis to collect data on people who stand to benefit from Prop. 47’s reclassification of six low-level felonies to misdemeanors. The county will also create an inter-agency outreach task force to notify those eligible before the November 2017 deadline, assist with the complex application process, and connect them with crucial reentry services.
Out of the hundreds of thousands who stand to benefit from Prop. 47, LA County Public Defender Ronald Brown said his office has processed and granted 16,702 petitions. An estimated 4,000 petitions have been processed and approved through the alternate public defender’s office. According to a recent survey commissioned by the California Endowment, only 29% of Los Angeles residents were aware of Prop 47.
“If this deadline passes without a significant acceleration in applications,” said Supervisor Solis, “Los Angeles County will have missed a significant opportunity to set people on the road to productive citizenship, and by default, we will make our neighborhoods more vulnerable to potential crimes.”
Supervisor Ridley Thomas added that Prop. 47 offers low-level offenders a powerful (and time-sensitive) second chance. “We must not squander this opportunity, this mandate, to reform our criminal justice system so that it’s less punitive and more humane, with the potential to be healing and transformative.”
The task force will pull from many different county departments and organizations. The California Endowment, Californians for Safety and Justice, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, LA County Federation of Labor, and LA Trade Tech College, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the county’s mental health and public health departments, and at least two community members formerly impacted by incarceration and barriers to successful reentry, among others, are expected to participate in the large-scale effort.
The county will also pursue state legislation to extend the deadline for Prop. 47 petitions past 2017, or eliminate the deadline altogether.
The motion also called for collaboration between the Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Office of Reentry and the LA County Office of Diversion and Reentry to apply for state grants to bolster reentry programs for Prop 47ers leaving lock-up and those who have already been released and are in need of reentry services.
The Supervisors approved the creation of the Office of Diversion and Reentry in August, following the release of a major report from LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey full of recommendations on how to divert the mentally ill from county jails into community treatment. The city’s Office of Reentry was created to formulate programs and policies that “support formerly incarcerated individuals find stability, resources, employment, housing, and reunification with their families.”
“Our communities grow stronger when we show mercy, compassion and understanding for those who have made mistakes in life and deserve a second chance,” said Mayor Garcetti. “It is also our mandate to help them rebuild their lives after incarceration, and today L.A. County took a tremendous step forward on the principle of restorative justice.”
Mayor Garcetti said that the city’s reentry office is ready to get to work with the county “to make a positive impact on the lives of the formerly incarcerated and to make our communities safer, and restore dignity to those who have been marginalized for too long.”
My God, the world has truly gone mad.