Blog Apr 12, 2012
Adult realignment and the county jail building boom
Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union released an insightful, comprehensive report on county plans for a massive jail expansion using funding allocated through Assembly Bill 109 and Assembly Bill 900. AB 109 is the adult realignment bill that shifted responsibility for supervising low-level offenders (non-non-non’s) from the state to the county level along with $367 million for first-year implementation. Adult realignment in California comes at time when public opinion is shifting…
This Thursday, April 12th, 2012 , residents of San Francisco will have an opportunity to discuss the impact of the war on drugs in the city and make recommendations as to what should be done to address it. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission is holding a public hearing on The Human Rights Impact of the War on Drugs in City Hall room 416, at 5:30 pm to discuss the impact of drug policy on the city’s individuals and families. Interested members of the public are encouraged to attend…
A new Pew research poll released last week shows that voters across the U.S. are overwhelmingly in favor of reducing prison spending and support shifting resources to community supervision rather than incarceration, specifically for low-level offenders. The national poll also shows that voters prioritize reductions in recidivism as the primary “end goal” of corrections, even if it means offenders spend less time behind bars and more time in rehabilitative programming. Public…
During the March 22 California Senate Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety , the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility was repeatedly discussed in testimony and public comment. For many of California’s reform-minded criminal justice advocates, the facility is both a paragon of dysfunction and demonstrates a need as well as an opportunity for meaningful change. CJCJ and others have previously condemned the institution for its inability to address inhumane living conditions, and a culture of…
While commentators led by no less than President Obama have blamed violent crime on “the entire generation of young men in our society” and have warned us to fear young black men in particular, those Americans more thoughtful than politicians running for office, exploitative interest groups, sensationalist reporters, and racist fear-mongers know that “entire generations” don’t commit violence; individuals do. If the individual approaching you is a black teenaged male, how much more likely are…