US DISTRICT JUDGE OKAYS LA COUNTY SETTLEMENT OVER NONCOMPLIANCE WITH AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Dean Pregerson gave the final approval for an LA Sheriff’s Department settlement of a federal class action lawsuit alleging jail conditions that violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Peter Johnson, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, was arrested for petty theft in 2007. Johnson was shot in the spine when he was fifteen, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down and wheelchair-bound. There were no accessible toilets in the inmate reception center, so for more than 8 hours while being booked into jail, Johnson had to sit in his own waste. Neither were there accessible drinking fountains. Jail officials took Johnson’s personal wheelchair and replaced it with a broken jail-issued wheelchair. The seat was falling out, and there were no foot rests, so Johnson’s feet dragged on the floor. And because there were no brakes, Johnson would fall onto the floor when he tried to move from the chair to the bed or toilet.
Although, the battle over the lawsuit raged for the last seven years, the suit has, nonetheless, stimulated the county to make recent major changes to jail facilities’ accessibility for inmates with mobility disabilities.
Sheriff Jim McDonnell told ABC7 on a recent jail visit, “You’ve got to provide a location that is humane. You’ve got to treat people as well as you can treat them. When you look at the environment we’re in–ADA compliance, all of those issues–these facilities were built before any of those rules were in place.”
Here’s a clip from the Disability Rights Legal Center’s announcement detailing the progress:
The settlement has already resulted in significant changes in the massive jail system, including the construction of wheelchair accessible toilets in the Inmate Reception Center, new housing for inmates with disabilities in the jail’s Twin Towers complex, nearly doubling the jail’s capacity to accommodate inmates with mobility impairments, and a new system to deliver working wheelchairs to inmates. The County has also agreed to provide equal access to employment, educational and vocational programs, offer physical therapy in the jail, appoint an ADA coordinator to address complaints from inmates or family members, and create a new ADA complaint system that will allow secondary review of wheelchair accommodations.
In a statement issued Wednesday night, the sheriff’s department said, “As exemplified by the settlement and its approval by the Court, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is committed to complying with the American’s with Disabilities Act, which includes housing mobility impaired inmates in accessible locations in the jails.”
Melinda Bird, Litigation Director for Disability Rights California, talked about the settlement as a “tribute to the persistence and courage of people like Mr. Johnson, who spoke out for the rights of people with disabilities…”
The ACLU SoCal’s Jessica Price said, “This settlement is a huge step in the right direction towards ensuring that inmates with mobility disabilities receive basic accommodations, but it is just the beginning. Now inmates, their family members, the Office of the Inspector General, and the lawyers must be vigilant to ensure these important protections are enforced.”
CDCR’S INSPECTOR GENERAL SEZ DEPT. NEEDS TO REVOKE CONCEALED CARRY PERMITS FOR DRUNKEN, GUN-WEILDING PRISON GUARDS
In a recent report, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Inspector General Robert Barton said many California prison guards are having trouble refraining from drunkenly brandishing their weapons in public, shooting them, and leaving them in their kids’ toy chests (yes, really).
This is the third time Barton has called on the CDCR to put a policy in place to revoke prison guards’ concealed carry permits when they are found to be carrying firearms while drunk.
The Associated Press’ Don Thompson has more on the issue. Here’s a clip:
“Such behavior is not only dangerous to the public but brings discredit to the department,” Inspector General Robert Barton wrote in a report that tracks departmental and criminal investigations of Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation employees…
It’s the third time Barton has made the recommendation in the last 18 months, but the department said in its response that it is still working on “a statewide, comprehensive policy to address the issues surrounding concealed weapons permits.”
Meanwhile, Barton said the incidents keep piling up:
— A correctional officer was found to have a handgun in his pants pocket when he was arrested for being drunk and urinating outside a business.
— An officer was arrested for child endangerment after he drunkenly left guns scattered around his house where his three children could find them, including a loaded firearm in a toy box…
RECORDING STUDIO AN EMOTIONAL OUTLET FOR KIDS IN SF JUVENILE LOCK-UP
The San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department and the nonprofit Sunset Youth Services have teamed up to bring music recording equipment to kids in juvenile detention.
Through the unique program, locked-up kids record their own songs using one of Sunset’s mobile recording studios. The non-profit’s record label, UpStar, is run by at-risk kids and young adults, and has recently expanded into SF’s Juvenile Justice Center. UpStar provides a therapeutic outlet for kids behind bars, as well as those on the outside, to work through their emotions and past traumas.
The San Francisco Examiner’s Laura Dudnick has more on the program. Here’s a clip:
Luis Recinos, director of the Juvenile Justice Center, said the partnership aligns with the center’s goal to give kids as many opportunities as possible while in custody. “Sometimes it takes a program such as this to spark something in them that changes the way that they want to live their lives,” Recinos said.
The recording equipment kept at the Juvenile Justice Center is one of Sunset Youth Services’ two mobile recording studios, which includes a portable sound booth and computer.
The mobile studios are also brought to San Francisco high schools for students to record music on their lunch breaks.
But professional-quality recording studios at the Sunset Youth Services center on Judah Street at 44th Avenue is where much of the music magic happens. There, in the brightly decorated facility, at-risk youths and young adults are offered hands-on experience recording, mixing, mastering, releasing, distributing and promoting their own music and videos.Sunset Youth Services’ youth-run label UpStar Studios has even produced five albums that are annual compilations of the best work created by musically inclined, at-risk youths.
Through speaking with teens at the Sunset district center — many of whom are on probation — Dawn and Ron Stueckle, who co-founded what would become Sunset Youth Services in 1992, moved forward last year to bring the music to the juvenile inmates.
The program at juvenile hall allows inmates to use the recording equipment three days a week.
“Kids from different units on different days [gather] to record with staff,” Dawn Stueckle said. “What we’re doing right now is giving kids an opportunity to just write their own songs and learn the gear.”
Another male inmate at the Juvenile Justice Center, age 16, has been using the mobile recording studio since it arrived late last year. Before he was in custody, the youth first learned of Sunset Youth Services at age 14 through a friend.
“I grew up kind of troubled, but I always tried to make it better,” the Mission native said. “I didn’t find an outlet up until I came to Sunset Youth Services, where I could finally express all my anger.”
The 16-year-old participated in an internship at Sunset Youth Services before being hired as a studio technician, specializing in beat production.
His lyrics chronicle his personal experiences leading up to his life at the juvenile facility.
“Even tho I’m looked down my name is said thru all my fans / Shot at but never ran and I made another year / three bullets hit my body but I still ain’t got a fear.”“We want the kids to make music they’re proud of ... but our goal is bigger than music,” Dawn Stueckle explained. “Music is the vehicle by which we can gain entry into their lives and begin to earn trust, and earn the right to journey with them and support them over the long haul.”
MERITS OF CAREFULLY LEADING OFFENDERS THROUGH GRADUAL REENTRY HOUSING AND EMPLOYMENT
Vox’ Mark Kleiman, Angela Hawken, and Ross Halperin have a lengthy, but worthwhile essay exploring graduated reentry services (incremental freedom through housing and employment) as a way to greatly reduce mass incarceration and the seemingly neverending cycle of recidivism.
Here’s a clip:
Start with housing. A substantial fraction of prison releasees go from a cellblock to living under a bridge: not a good way to start free life. Spend some of the money that would otherwise have financed a prison cell to rent a small, sparsely furnished efficiency apartment. In some ways, that apartment is still a cell and the offender still a prisoner. He can’t leave it or have visitors except as specifically permitted. The unit has cameras inside and is subject to search. But he doesn’t need guards, and doesn’t have to worry about prison gangs or inmate-on-inmate assault.
Drug testing and sanctions can avoid relapse to problem drug use; GPS monitoring can show where the re-entrant is all the time, which in turn makes it easy to know whether he’s at work when he’s supposed to be at work and at home when he’s supposed to be at home. This makes curfews enforceable and keeps him away from personal “no-go” zones (the street corner where he used to deal, the vicinity of his victim’s residence). GPS would also place him at the scene of any new crime he might commit, thus drastically reducing his chances of getting away with it and therefore his willingness to take the gamble.
The apartment functions as a prison without bars.
In some ways, it’s a fairly grim existence, especially at the beginning: the offender starts off under a strict curfew, allowed out only for work, job hunting, and necessary personal business (food shopping, medical care, service appointments), as well as to meet the correctional officer in charge of his supervision. And he’s required to work full-time at a public-service job, earning a little less than the minimum wage. On top of that, he has to spend time looking for an ordinary paying job (being supplied with appropriate clothing and some coaching in how to do a job search). He never touches money except for small change; he makes purchases as needed with an EBT or debit card, and only for approved items. The “no-cash” rule both makes it harder to buy drugs or a gun and reduces the benefits of criminal activity. Since he’s eating at home, he needs food, some minimal kitchen equipment, and perhaps some simple cooking lessons. (Whether groceries are delivered or whether he’s expected to shop for his own food right away is another detail to work out.)
Minor violations — staying out beyond curfew, using alcohol or other drugs, missing work or misbehaving at work, missing appointments — can be sanctioned by temporary tightening of restrictions, or even a couple of days back behind bars, in addition to slowing the offender’s progress toward liberty. Major violations — serious new offenses, attempts to avoid supervision by removing position-monitoring gear — lead to immediate termination from the program and return to prison. Not, on the whole, an easy life. But it’s much simpler than the challenge of a sudden transition from prison to the street.
Moreover, if you were to ask a prisoner who has now served two years of a five-year sentence (for drug dealing, say, or burglary), “Would you like to get out of prison right now and into the situation I just described?” the odds of his saying “Yes” would be excellent. And if he didn’t, his cellmate would. Indeed, entry to the program could be offered as a reward for good behavior in prison, improving matters for those still “inside” — and those guarding them — as well as those released.
And — this is the central point — the offender’s freedom increases over time, as long as he does what he’s supposed to do.