Tomorrow, March 22 at 9:30 am, the Senate Budget Sub-committee for Public Safety will be hearing testimony on the Governor’s juvenile justice realignment proposal. The location is Room 113.
New SHU Regulations Published by CDCR
CDCR has just published their new regulations pertaining to the placement of inmates in SHU units and the process followed to get out of the SHU. The regulations do not say so explicitly–rather, they claim to rely on a report from 2007–but their timing cannot have been coincidental, given the promises given to hunger strikers at Pelican Bay and elsewhere.
The regulations group known gangs into two risk groups, referred to as STGs in the report. New gangs can be assigned to an STG through documentation about their activities.
As to the process of validating inmates as gang members, CDCR currently groups people into Gang Members and Gang Associates. The report adds two new categories: Suspects (folks not officially validated) and Monitored (folks who are in the process of disentangling their association with the gang and returned to general population). The current sources required to tie a given inmate to a gang remains essentially the same, except that the reliability/weight of sources is assessed based on a number of “points”, and a certain number of “points” is required for each category. Symbols are assigned two points; debriefing (snitching) sources are assigned three points; harder evidence, like documents and photographs, are assigned four points. Self confession is assigned five points, and conviction of an offense, as well as tattoos or body marks, entails six points.
It seems that the great novelty in the report is the gradual debriefing system it sets up. When gang members who went through the validation process are assigned to the SHU, they are to be shown a “gang diversion video” and instructed on the multi-step process required for leaving the SHU. Moving from step to step could take at least a year, as offenders have to show that they are progressing from step to step (currently, there is only one step, and there is a minimum of six years at the SHU). The passage of each step entails special privileges, such as television, phones, and packages of personal property. While inmates may study and take college exams on all levels, folks on Step 3 are eligible for enhanced rehabilitation programs, including anger management and group meetings.
Another important point has to do with gang groupings. STG-I gang members are routinely placed in the SHU, while STG-II gang members would only be assigned to the SHU if they were involved in severe and repetitive criminal activity.
The debriefing process is demystified, including the provision of the following information:
Reason for disavowing the gang
History of the criminal gang
Identity of other known gang members
Leadership structure within and outside of the prison Identity of person(s) ordering gang incidents
Reasons for gang incidents (if known) Gang symbols
Codes
Mail drops
Communication networks (mail, phones, notes, visits, etc.)
Enemies
Crimes (escapes, narcotics trafficking, weapons, etc.)
Misuse of legal and or religious programs
Associates/suspect information (family, friends, etc.) providing support for the gang. Community gang activities
Future plans for the gang
Should this plan be approved, it remains to be seen whether it has a salutary effect on SHU population and practices.
Update to the Realignment Report Card
Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB, curbprisonspending.org) published a very helpful report ranking counties’ realignment plans back in October when realignment took effect. Now CURB has issued a new, updated report card comparing 12 large counties’ realignment schemes. Take a look at this vital info! http://curbprisonspending.org/?p=1391
BREAKING NEWS: Felon Disenfranchisement Policy Challenged
Today, several Californian civil rights organizations filed a new lawsuit with the First District Appellate Court, arguing against Secretary of State Deborah Bowen’s policy of disenfranchising all felons, including those who, after realignment, serve time in jail.
And… CCC is involved! A group of criminal justice scholars, represented by yours truly, will be filing an amicus brief shortly in support of the lawsuit.
Here’s what is going on: As some readers may know, Californians imprisoned in state institutions, or on parole, are disenfranchised, but jail inmates and probationers have a right to vote. The realignment, as we know, puts many formerly imprisoned felons in county jails, for part or all of their sentence.
The legal language gives the right to vote to all inmates who are not “imprisoned”. Nonetheless, the California Secretary of State interprets the law as if the felons who will be doing time in jail should remain disenfranchised, and instructs the inmates accordingly. Several inmate rights organizations are now petitioning the Court of Appeals for an original writ, asking that voting rights be extended to everyone serving time in jail or on post-jail community supervision, whether felon or misdemeanant.
We are putting together an amicus brief on behalf of criminal justice scholars to support the petition. The main argument in the brief is that the Realignment was informed by a perspective of reentry and community-based corrections, and as such should encourage civic engagement. We also argue that jails, especially post-Realignment, are the ideal setting for encouraging reintegration through civic rights. The Realignment gives us the opportunity to make that argument on sound legal ground at least with regard to non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offenders doing time in (or out on supervision from) county jails.
I will post the finished brief after filing. For now, here’s a link to the petition.
Examining Realignment: How Will We Know if it’s Working
Join the Association for Criminal Justice Research for its 75th Semi-Annual Conference March 22-23 at the Lion’s Gate Hotel in Sacramento (McClellan Campus). The theme is Examining Realignment: How Will We Know if it’s Working? Speakers include: Matt Cate, Diane Cummins, sheriffs, chief probation officers, DAs and judges, representatives from the LAO, PPIC, RAND, the Senate and many other organizations. For complete program information, scholarship applications, and registration, please contact Rebecca Blanton at rblanton@library.ca.gov.
New Paper on Realignment
Our friends at the Warren Institute have published a new paper by Rebecca Sullivan Silbert, titled Thinking Critically about Realignment in California, which you can read in full here. The nice thing about this publication is its clear and understandable language; Silbert breaks down technical complexities and makes this policy change much more accessible for all of us. Here are some highlights.
Silbert starts by delineating the difference between county jails and state prisons prior to realignment, including implications of jails’ smaller size, mandatory parole for state prisoners, and state costs stemming from the return to custody of parolees.
The paper then discusses overcrowding in state prisons, which it attributes to four factors: The gradual increase in sentencing, the labeling of more crime as violent and serious, the inability to cope with addictions and mental illness, and the mandatory parole mechanism with the potential return to prison for violations.
The main changes due to realignment are concisely discussed. They include serving one’s sentence in jail; split sentences between prison and jail, at judicial discretion; having some state prisoners come under the auspices of community post-release programs in lieu of state parole; and sending parole violators to jail in lieu of prison.
The report then goes on to discuss the level of readiness of county institutions for the task of incarcerating more people and for longer terms, as well as the concerns about the medical and mental health needs of the new county inmates. Silbert then brings up concerns about “charging up” as well as about defense attorneys negotiating state prison because of the shorter post-sentence supervision implied.
The report does not discuss juvenile realignment, but there are plenty of other sources of information on that.
Aging Inmates Cared For by Other Inmates
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| Photo courtesy Todd Heisler for the New York Times. |
This weekend’s New York Times features an article on the California Men’s Colony, where some inmates–some of them convicted killers–care for elderly inmates suffering from dementia.
The story has a financial angle, too. Teaching some inmates to care for others is a cost-saving measure, in addition to its other virtues; but it is also a reminder of the expenses involved in incarcerating aging inmates, whose lifestyle makes them age faster than non-inmates, as found in this report from Vera Institute of Justice.
With many prisons already overcrowded and understaffed, inmates with dementia present an especially difficult challenge. They are expensive — medical costs for older inmates range from three to nine times as much as those for younger inmates. They must be protected from predatory prisoners. And because dementia makes them paranoid or confused, feelings exacerbated by the confines of prison, some attack staff members or other inmates, or unwittingly provoke fights by wandering into someone else’s cell.
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Props to Zafir Shaiq for the link.
Death Penalty Abolition Bill – to Ballot
SAFE California, a voter initiative to abolish the death penalty and replace it with life without parole, has succeeded in collecting the necessary 750,000 signatures to place the initiative on the ballot. So, come November 2012, California voters will have the opportunity to join Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
Death in Corcoran
A recent episode of Democracy Now! features an inquiry into the death of Christian Gomez, 27, an inmate at Corcoran State Prison, who passed away six days after the beginning of the hunger strike. His sister, Yajaira Lopez, is calling for an investigation to what happened inside the prison and for conditions to be drastically improved. “When he did get [to Corcoran State Prison], he did explain to us that he was participating in a hunger strike,” Lopez explains. “They were fighting for fair treatment.”
Also interviewed is Carol Strickland of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition and Prisoners With Children, who reports having heard that “people were not getting medical care who were on hunger strike and that that’s been something that we saw previously, as well, that the medical care is withdrawn, in many ways. Medications are stopped, and people are not being cared for adequately. And one has to ask, how can this man basically drop dead, you know, after only
a few days of a hunger strike, when he’s under medical care?”
Mendocino Snuffing Medical Marijuana Experiment
Yesterday’s NPR story on Mendocino County’s medical marijuana regulations is an especially good illustration of the practical effects of the conflict between federal, versus state and local, criminal laws.
“All of it left County Board Chairman John McCowen exasperated. ‘It means it’s going to go back underground. It’s going to become more dangerous. It’s going to become more profitable for the black marketers,’ he says. ‘I just don’t see that this represents progress.'”