Social Justice Shorts

A NEW BAIL HEARING FOR ALEX SANCHEZ TODAY

Attorneys have managed to get a second bail hearing for Alex Sanchez. It will take place this afternoon.

This time, Sanchez attorneys will present over $1.2 million in sureties, 120 letters of support, and the offer of the deeds to four properties by friends and supporters. The hope is to convince a judge that Alex does not pose a flight risk or danger to his community, so that the judge might set a bail—any bail.

In the more than three weeks since his arrest on June 24, Alex has been kept in solitary confinement 23 hours per day in a federal facility in Los Angeles. He has not been allowed visits by his wife, Delia, or his three children.

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DOES HAWAII HAVE THE ANSWER TO SOME OF LA’S JAIL PROBLEMS?

As the discussion over county budgets and what jail to close continues, a five year old pilot program called HOPE Probation (Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement). HOPE is an interestingly structured probation-instead-of-incarceration strategy that was launched in 2004 in Hawaii is being put forth by some public policy experts as a strategy LA might want to try out to save money AND to reduce recidivism for drug offenders. (My former prison warden pal, David Winett, pointed me toward the program.)

An article written by respected UCLA public policy profs, Mark Kleiman and Angela Hawken (Hawken also teaches at Pepperdine) explains the program and the rationale behind it.

Here’s a quick clip:

Probation would be a great alternative to incarceration — if anyone knew how to get probationers to comply with probation rules. Now there’s reason for hope. A novel program in Hawaii is demonstrating that it is possible to re-invent community supervision in a way that helps probationers toe the line, cuts recidivism, and curbs their flow to over-crowed jails and prisons. By closely monitoring probationer behavior and rapidly punishing violations with relatively mild sanctions — typically a few days in jail — the program provides much-needed structure to offenders whose lives are often in disarray.

Read the rest to see how the program has been working.

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FREE LA CHARTER SCHOOL OFFERS FREE GED & DIPLOMA PREP

During this bleak education summer in which most of LAUSD’s summer school programs have been canceled, The Youth Justice Coalition’s charter school (Free LA Charter High School), is offering free classes in GED prep and diploma equivalency test prep.

(For more information call Chrystal at (323) 235-4243)
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LOS ANGELES NAMED THE NATION’S MEANEST CITY

On Tuesday, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless issued a report that named Los Angeles as the nation’s “meanest city” when it comes to treatment of the homeless. LA’s climbed to the top of the mean ladder because of the LAPD’s crackdown on Skid Row. (LA was 18th last time the list was made in 2006.)

In truth, on one hand the “Safer Cities Initiative” did make the area of Skid Row undeniably safer and less crime ridden. On the other hand, there was widespread criminalization of the homeless by certain officers during the height of the initiative—resulting in a lawsuit and a legal settlement with the ACLU.

Here’s the full report.

(In fairness, other officers were excellent and then-Central Division Captain Andrew Smith is a smart and decent guy who made himself very accessible to Skid Row’s population.)

PS: Tuesday morning the ACLU announced a large new lawsuit filed against Santa Monica for “harassing and arresting the homeless, while faiing to provide enough shelter beds. (The LA Times has more details.)

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