BROWN/STEINBERG PRISON POP. DEAL MOVES THROUGH LEGISLATURE
Wednesday the California Senate passed Gov. Jerry Brown and Senator Steinberg’s compromise plan to request a three-year reprieve from the federal three-judge panel’s order to reduce the prison population by about 9,000 by the end of 2013. (The Sacramento Bee’s Laurel Rosenhall has more on the most recent developments. You can also find back story here, and here, if you missed it.)
An LA Times editorial says that for there to even be a chance that the three judge panel will grant the state’s newest request for more time, state leaders will have to offer up more specifics on exactly how they’re going to fix the broken system. Here are some clips:
The end-of-year compliance date already represents a six-month reprieve from the original June deadline. The three-judge panel with jurisdiction over the case has rejected pleas for additional stays and has expressed, in barely disguised anger, its impatience with the state’s resistance.
So if there is even a wafer of a chance that the judges will grant more time, they will inevitably demand to know just what California plans to do with it. The governor and legislative leaders must demonstrate that any additional grace period would be devoted to a sufficiently profound rethinking and overhaul of the criminal justice system — including sentencing reform, diversion, supervision and rehabilitation — that the prisons would be exceedingly unlikely to be unconstitutionally overcrowded again anytime soon.
That’s why Brown was wise to incorporate Steinberg’s plan into his own.
[SNIP]
In broad strokes, Steinberg’s approach is smart, if not new. But the investment he proposes may be too small to make much of an impact. For the court to accept the joint proposal as a sufficient reason to lift the looming deadline — and for Californians to accept that their government has moved away from rathole spending and thinking toward a system that will keep innocent people safe, spending in line and ex-offenders on the straight and narrow — state leaders must provide more details about how they will change the current dysfunctional system.
Some of the problems to be solved are exasperatingly basic. For example, before they can successfully deal with recidivism, there needs to be general acceptance by everyone in the criminal justice system about what that word means. Do they count only convictions for crimes committed within the first year of release? The first three years? Do they count only convictions that can get the offender sent back to prison, or do they also count those that can result in a short jail stint? Do they count violations of probation that are not crimes? Without such a definition, they will never be able to accurately measure the outcome of any alternative sentencing program, fund the good ones or jettison the bad ones.
NEW LAPD COMMISSION PRESIDENT TALKS POLICE LAPEL CAMERAS ON WWLA?
Wednesday night, KCRW’s Warren Olney, on his show Which Way, LA?, talked with Steven Soboroff, the newly elected president of the civilian commission that oversees the LAPD. Soboroff talks about about his past experience with city bureaucracy, his new position, and what changes he wants for the department moving forward, specifically in the way of lapel cameras. Here’s a clip:
WO: The city is famously beaurocratic. The LAPD—no exception to that. There’s also the union—the LA Police Protective League. In all of the reform years that have passed, only one officer has ever been found guilty of racial profiling. Do you think that’s because there is no racial profiling, or is there something else going on?
SS: I can’t tell you because I wasn’t there for that period of time. I can tell you…that the policies that are in place, and the implementation of the policies that are in place, are the envy of America, of American law enforcement, and even some from other parts of the world…
One of the reasons I’m really interested in the cameras—in the lapel cameras—is he said/she said goes away when it’s on tape and when you can hear it…
WO: You mentioned lapel cameras—you want to see one on every officer. On the other hand, you say that he said/she said goes away. There’s dispute about video recordings of everything, including the Rodney King beating itself, and whether King himself was, in fact, responsible for that and attacked the officers first.
SS: I believe that that was a different kind of video. I think if there had been cameras on each officer…it would’ve probably shown the same thing. But, the sophistication level, and the technology, and the downloading—how these lapel cameras work—change a number of things. It changes behavior of police officers, changes behavior of those that are being arrested, changes the amount of litigation, the amount of settlements, and takes a lot of the guesswork out. And guesswork is expensive in man-hours and expensive in dollars.
WO: You indicated that you want to see the lapel cameras acquired and implemented very soon—it’s taken decades to do this—and you said that you might be able to help raise the money?
SS: …If the department can determine exactly the equipment—the downloading equipment, the storage equipment—determine the regulations…I believe that we can get that equipment…for five or six hundred of these lapel cameras to do a major pilot—it’s probably like 30% of what we would need at full implementation—in a very short period of time. There is no city budget for it, and I don’t want to let that stop something that can be this transformative.
(For just the Soboroff interview portion of the show, go here.)
GROWING SUPPORT FOR REHABILITATING KIDS INSTEAD OF PUTTING THEM BEHIND BARS
Here’s another story that went up while we were dark last week that we didn’t want you to miss:
The Center for Public Integrity’s Susan Ferriss has an excellent piece on the emerging shift away from harsh punitive juvenile justice methods and toward fairer and more rehabilitative strategies and reforms. Here’s how it opens:
The idea of hauling young offenders into court — and hoping lockup will change them — no longer appeals to a host of experts who work in the juvenile criminal justice system. But it’s not always easy for law enforcement, probation officers and even defense attorneys to know what they can do differently to deter kids who are at risk of becoming adult offenders.
As part of a partnership, four centers that offer expertise on reforms have just been given a portion of an infusion of $15 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which has already invested $150 million in juvenile-justice research and reform over nearly 20 years. The foundation’s decision speaks to research-based theories that are gaining traction, which postulate that overly punitive approaches can increase juveniles’ risk of turning into expensive adult inmates.
The new “Resource Center Partnership” was announced in Atlanta in August at the National Conference of State Legislators’ 2013 Legislative Conference.
The centers receiving the foundation money are part of a hub of experts who provide training and consultation in key areas, including mental-health needs for youth and higher quality legal representation to advocate for youth in court.