Sentencing

Sentence Enhancements, LASD Psychologist Accused of Molesting Kids, and One School’s 100% College-Bound Student Body

OPINION – MICHELLE ALEXANDER SAYS TOSS OUT DRUG SENTENCE ENHANCEMENTS

Sentence “enhancements” on the books in California can turn a sentence of a few years into one of multiple decades.

During it’s first Senate vote, at the end of last month, CA Sen. Holly Mitchell’s bill to get rid of the three-year sentence enhancement for prior drug convictions missed winning a majority, because of three Democrats who voted with Republicans against the bill, and five Democrats who abstained.

Sentence enhancements for drug crimes
disproportionately affect poor and minority people, reduce the likelihood of successful reentry, and are representative of a failed war on drugs, says Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and former director of the Racial Justice Project at the NorCal ACLU.

Sen. Mitchell’s bill might return this week to the Senate floor for another vote, and Senate and Assembly members should support the measure “as an important step in the state’s belated journey toward justice and healing in our communities.”

Here’s a clip from Alexander’s op-ed:

Sentence enhancements like these were marketed as deterrents to drug use and sales, supposedly out of concern for the harm drugs cause people. But drastic sentences impede rehabilitation and treatment and worsen the odds of successful reintegration.

There is no evidence that enhanced sentences reduce drug availability or the number of people harmed by illicit drug use. After decades of the war on drugs, it is clear that purely punitive approaches to drug crime are counterproductive. Drug use has not declined, controlled substances are now cheaper and more widely available than ever before, and the death rate from drug overdoses continues to rise.

Here in California, thousands of families have been broken apart and communities throughout the state have been destabilized. Instead of helping those targeted by the war on drugs, we have sentenced them not just to prison but to the lifetime of discrimination and stigma that follows it.

It is no secret that the war on drugs has had a grossly disproportionate impact on people who are black, brown and poor. People of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug violations than are whites, who can typically commit the same acts in upper- and middle-class neighborhoods without criminal consequences. Sentence enhancements based on prior drug convictions magnify these disparities, falling on those who have been unable to successfully re-integrate into society after earlier prison sentences.


LASD NON-SWORN PSYCHOLOGIST CHARGED WITH CHILD MOLESTATION

On Monday, 41-year-old psychologist Michael Ward, a civilian employee of the LA County Sheriff’s Department, was charged with sodomy of a minor under age 10, four counts of committing a lewd act on a child, two counts of committing a forcible lewd act on a child under 14, and three counts of forcible oral copulation or sexual penetration with a child 10 years old or younger. It’s not yet clear how Ward knows the victims—a 9-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl—or where those alleged crimes took place according to City News Service. Ward pleaded not guilty to the 10 felonies.

A statement released by the sheriff’s department called the charges “deeply troubling,” and said that the “allegations were not as a result of contacts he made within the scope of his work with the Sheriff’s Department.”

Ward, whose job involved training investigative personnel, was relived of duty last week. His bail is set at $2 million. If convicted on all counts, Ward faces life in prison.


WATTS SCHOOL SENDING 100% OF SENIORS TO COLLEGE

For the ninth year in a row, all 56 seniors graduating from Watts’ Verbum Dei High School have been accepted to college. About 70% of the students at Verbum Dei, a private Jesuit school, are Latino, and 30% are black. Most will be the first in their families to attend college. The students—all of whom come from low-income households—participate in a work-study program to pay for part of their tuition. The remaining tuition money comes from scholarships, grants, and fundraisers.

You can read more about the school and its students over at LAist.

3 Comments

  • #1: Many decades ago I took Psychology 1A as a General Education requirement for my Baccalaureate, and I well remember what the instructor said about Psychology: It is an elevated form of voodoo.

    Therein lies the answer to your question.

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