Governor Schwarzenegger vetoes AB 1900, which would prohibit the shackling of pregnant inmates. The reason? “CSA’s mission is to regulate and develop standards for correctional facilities, not establish policies on transportation issues to and from other locations. Since this bill goes beyond the scope of CSA’s mission, I am unable to sign this bill”.
Students, faculty and staff at UC Berkeley, my alma mater, are protesting fee hikes and layoffs today. Interestingly, one of the advertised rationales behind the protest is the comparison of yearly funding per student ($14,000) to the funding per inmate ($49,000).
Earlier this year, the Legal Analyst’s office examined a gubernatorial proposed measure to limit correctional expenditure to 7 percent of General Fund support and to set a minimum of 10 percent for California public universities. LAO found the measure artificial and fiscally unwise. However, the bottom line stands: Our expenditures are an expression of our social priorities.
I wonder if the students protesting this morning realize that the expenditures per inmate do not mean an intimate investment in inmates’ vocational and educational future, and that two thirds of the expenditure per inmate are medical costs, unevenly distributed among the inmate population and addressing primarily the needs of elderly, frail inmates, often incarcerated for unnecessarily lengthy periods. I also wonder what the students perceive as an appropriate solution for “evening out” the odds.
It was at UC Berkeley where I was privileged to study with Malcolm Feeley, Jonathan Simon and Frank Zimring, and was introduced to mass incarceration in the United States as an important social problem. I support the UC Berkeley struggle for funding, and my hope is that those participating in that struggle, who perhaps are reading us this morning, will realize that the university cuts are part of a broader flawed expression of social priorities.
The two candidates for Attorney General, a position which would provide its holder with plenty of influence over criminal justice policy in general and incarceration rates in California in particular, are Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. The Chron summarized the candidates’ exchange in a televised debate. Unsurprisingly, the media has portrayed Cooley’s traditional “tough on crime” approach as clashing with Harris’ “smart on crime” innovations.
Lest the death penalty issue, which is a bone of contention between the candidates, throw you off, Harris is a tough law enforcer, far from being soft on crime. Moreover, while her overall approach to criminal justice emphasizes evidence-based measures and tackling roots rather than symptoms, there have been some gaffes. This year, for example, we’ve seen Harris endorse some measures that we found questionable, such as the (unenforceable) prohibition for sex offenders to join social networking websites and the truancy courts. While the latter measure tackles a phenomenon closely associated with crime rates, there is little evidence that scolding parents in court will do the trick. Nevertheless, Harris has proven to be a thoughtful, impartial, collaborative policymaker, who among other things endorses San Francisco’s Clean Slate program–a rare collaboration between the Sheriff’s department, the DA’s office and the PD’s office.
Cooley’s criminal justice policy does appear to be more traditional, but the L.A. District Attorney’s office has some community collaboration programs (including one for monitoring truancy!). It also devotes energy to combating gang activity. His campaign seems to include, so far, some of the familiar symbolic tactics, such as using victims as symbols of fear and highlighting controversial issues such as the death penalty to his advantage.
For the readers who may not have caught this SF Chron piece, it provides some information about the crime policy of different candidates for Oakland Mayor. It makes for a fascinating read; and interestingly, not all the candidates are uniformly knee-jerk-tough-on-crime-for-the-sake-of-it.
City Councilwoman Jean Quan says the city needs to preserve its community policing efforts, bolstering neighborhood-based programs that many credit with cutting crime. She voted to keep some of those programs even at the expense of officers’ jobs.
Former state Senate leader Don Perata is willing to throw many such programs out the window if it will keep more cops on the force, a stance that has earned him the support of the police union.
And City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan points to economic development strategies that could provide jobs for residents, rather than more funding for the Police Department, as the surest way to cut crime.
In other Oakland news, it appears that Johannes Mehserle, convicted of involuntary manslaughter in relation to Oscar Grant’s shooting, is seeking a new trial. The relevance of his new evidence to the issue of his guilt seems rather tenuous, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
People often ask me about our “bear behind bars”. The idea behind our logo was to communicate that, until the correctional crisis is solved, the entire state of California is imprisoned. The graphic itself is Chad Goerzen’s and is an original creation for this blog. It was also the logo for our conference in March 2009. The reason I mention this is that I have just encountered a copyright infringement situation in which our logo was used for an event invitation without our knowledge or permission. In the future, dear readers, please refrain from using our logo, and if you’d like to do so with attribution, please email us to ask permission.
UPDATE: The offending party apologized and removed our logo from their website. Thanks!
Yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Senator Mark Leno’s Senate Bill 1449, which reclassifies possession of less than one ounce of marijuana as an infraction.
Existing law provides that, except as authorized by law, every person who possesses not more than 28.5 grams of marijuana, other than concentrated cannabis, is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $100. This same penalty is imposed for the crime of possessing not more than 28.5 grams of marijuana while driving on a highway or on lands, as specified.
Existing law provides with respect to these offenses that under specified conditions (1) the court shall divert and refer the defendant for education, treatment, or rehabilitation, as specified, and (2) an arrested person who gives satisfactory evidence of identity and a written promise to appear in court shall not be subjected to booking.
This bill instead provide [sic] that any person who commits any of the above offenses is instead guilty of an infraction punishable by a fine of not more than $100. This bill would eliminate the above-described provisions relating to booking and to diversion and referral for education, treatment, or rehabilitation.
A preemptive move against Prop 19? The “civil unions” of marijuana, which are “almost like legalization, but not exactly”? Unclear. It is important to keep in mind, though, that prior to this amendment of the Penal Code, marijuana possession of less than an ounce was a misdemeanor punishable by a fine, a fact that many Californians were not aware of. It is therefore unlikely that this measure will have any impact, positive or negative, on usage patterns and rates.
Yesterday, our Hastings Criminal Justice Film Club watched the excellent documentary Very Young Girls, examining teenage prostitution in New York City, and especially the vulnerability of the girls and their fragile dependence on their pimps. This morning’s Chron highlights a similar phenomenon in California.
Peter Doesburg of Upland in San Bernardino County told The Daily Breeze of Torrance Thursday that he believes his daughter was abducted by Leroy Bragg, 34, while she was in Los Angeles a few months ago.
Vice officers arrested Bragg on Tuesday after a foot chase. He pleaded not guilty Thursday to trafficking of a minor, solicitation and other crimes in the abduction of another 13-year-old girl. He was being held on $1.3 million bail.
Upland police said Thursday they don’t have evidence that Bragg kidnapped Doesburg’s daughter, but believe she was abducted by people she knew.
“These subjects are believed to be associated with a group of individuals from the Los Angeles area involved in the exploitation and prostitution of young girls,” Upland police Sgt. Greg Signorio said in a statement.
Doesburg said she was arrested last week in Los Angeles and returned home, but disappeared again because Bragg allegedly made threats toward her family if she did not return to work for him. He said she might not be aware that Bragg is in jail.
“Come home,” Doesburg said. “Everything’s OK and we will protect you. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
She described living in apartments with other girls who have been forced to meet with men for money and were beaten if they could not meet their quotas, he said.
These cases raise a number of questions about criminalization of special populations. As is the case in many US states (though not necessarily so in all countries), prostitution itself, not just pimping, is a crime. Section 647(b) of the CA Penal Code makes it a misdemeanor to–
(b) . . . solicit[s] or . . . agree[s] to engage in or . . . engage[s] in any act of prostitution. A person agrees to engage in an act of prostitution when, with specific intent to so engage, he or she manifests an acceptance of an offer or solicitation to so engage, regardless of whether the offer or solicitation was made by a person who also possessed the specific intent to engage in prostitution. No agreement to engage in an act of prostitution shall constitute a violation of this subdivision unless some act, in addition to the agreement, is done within this state in furtherance of the commission of an act of prostitution by the person agreeing to engage in that act. As used in this subdivision, “prostitution” includes any lewd act between persons for money or other consideration.
This means that the girls, who incidentally would be legally beneath the age of consent for all other sex, are committing a misdemeanor by engaging in commercial sex. As you can see, the Johns are committing an offense, too. Incidentally, this offense does not carry automatic registration as a sex offender, but in some cases judges might order such registration. Some lawyers offer legal advice for Johns; for the girls, such legal advice is useless because of their young age and dependence upon the pimps for their livelihood. Many of the girls are very deeply attached to the pimps, which doesn’t help. That makes them, in effect, more victims than offenders. Combine this with family lives and, frequently, drug problems, and you have a bundle of problems, which are not cured by criminalizing and prosecuting girls for the symptom.
It is a very tricky situation to legislate. In 2008, San Franciscans voted against Prop K, which called for legal prostitution in the city. While some thought it healthy to allow sex workers access to medical services and unionization, this would not solve the problem of underage sex and of exploitation. The other tricky aspect of all of this is prosecuting the pimps, often very difficult without the girls’ testimony. The Alameda County DA’s office is making efforts to shift their energy away from the girls toward the pimps and johns, including necessary changes in legislation.
Our attention to sex trafficking emerged as we learned of it as an international phenomenon. It appears, however, that it is a problematic and important issue on the domestic arena, as well. One hopes that organizations such as GEMS manage to survive in these difficult times.
