Tonight: San Francisco DA Candidate Debate

San Francisco District Attorney Candidates Debate – Civil Rights and Criminal Justice Reform
With candidates Sharmin Bock, David Onek, George Gascon and Vu Trinh

Doors open at 6:30pm
762 Fulton Street

Sponsored by Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, ACLU-Northern California, African American Art & Culture Complex, Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Citizen Hope, Equal Justice Society, Equal Rights Advocates, and Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal

This event will be the first opportunity for all three of the major candidates for San Francisco District Attorney to engage in a dialogue with each other, leading civil rights advocacy organizations, and the community about critical issues in criminal justice and public safety policy.

Candidates will be asked to discuss topics such as the disproportionate impact of the criminal justice system on communities of color, alternatives to incarceration, immigration, police misconduct, criminal justice realignment under AB 109, and policies to promote reentry and reduce recidivism.

The leadership of the San Francisco District Attorney is essential in ensuring that the city’s criminal justice system is fair and equitable and fully respects civil rights. The San Francisco DA has also often played a critical leadership role in advocating for progressive and smart criminal justice policies statewide and nationwide.

With the recent Supreme Court case ordering a reduction of nearly 40,000 prisoners from California’s prison system and major changes at the state level re-aligning responsibilities for implementing public safety, the need for bold and innovative leadership on criminal justice policy is especially urgent.

We look forward to seeing you there. If you have questions for the candidates, please post them as a comment below.

Click here for the event flyer : http://www.lccr.com/SFDA_D​ebate_8.3.11.pdf

7/31: SF Chronicle on 2-strikers

Two strikes have large impact on prison population

California’s “three strikes” law is best known for locking up career criminals for life, but the vast majority of offenders serving prison time under the sentencing mandate were actually charged under the less-noticed second-strike provision.

These 32,390 inmates are serving sentences that were doubled as a strike-two penalty, and they account for nearly 20 percent of the state’s prison population. Yet most efforts to reform the law have focused exclusively on the third-strike provision, which carries with it a mandatory 25 years-to-life sentence.

As prison costs in California continue to grow, and the state faces a Supreme Court order to reduce its inmate population by more than 30,000 over the next two years, the tens of thousands of second-strikers appear to pose a bigger challenge to state officials attempting to rein in prison costs than the 8,700 people serving time for a third strike.

“We’re missing the significance of the second strike,” said UC Berkeley’s Barry Krisberg, director of research and policy at the school’s Institute on Law and Social Policy. “It is having an enormous impact on our prison population, and many second-strikers are serving more time than third-strikers, but when people talk about the policy of reforming three strikes, nobody wants to touch the second strike.”

‘Arbitrary’ sentencing

Under the three strikes law, approved by the Legislature and voters in 1994, anyone who was convicted of a serious or violent felony in the past can be charged with a strike if they commit a new felony. Someone charged with a second strike under the law will face double the prison time, regardless of whether the new offense is serious or violent; those charged with a third strike automatically are eligible for a 25 years-to-life sentence.

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi said the law means that someone convicted of petty theft or burglary who had a prior felony could face four to six years in prison instead of two to three years; and someone convicted of armed robbery would spend at least a decade behind bars instead of five years – or perhaps longer if prosecutors added on sentencing enhancements for using a gun.

“The problem with strike sentences is that it’s not based on an individual determination of protecting the public and ensuring that the personal characteristics of the accused are taken into consideration,” he said. “The rationale for second-strike cases really is arbitrary because you’re not making a determination as to whether this person needs to be locked up. It’s a mathematical equation that you’re up against.”

Most past reform efforts have focused on limiting when someone can be convicted of a third strike. Krisberg, however, said the tens of thousands of inmates serving sentences for second strikes demonstrate that piecemeal reform of three strikes will not solve the state’s larger prison problem: “stiff, determinate sentencing.”

“The fact that second-strikers make up such a huge part of the prison population should tell people that that’s where we should focus our energy,” he said.

Reasons behind costs

Critics of the law, seen as the harshest in the nation, often focus their complaints on the most egregious cases, such as people serving life sentences for shoplifting, drug possession and other nonviolent offenses. But the costs of the second strike are significant as well.

For one, offenders sentenced in the future under three strikes won’t be eligible to be diverted to local jails – even if their most recent crime is nonviolent – under Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment plan, which calls for keeping more low-level inmates in the community. Those sentenced under the law also stay in prison longer, because they are only eligible to earn a fraction of the “good-time” credits that other inmates may accrue.

“That’s (one) big difference with strike cases – even if it’s a nonserious felony, they have to do 85 percent of their sentence,” Adachi said.

Additionally, anyone sentenced under “three strikes” is likely more expensive to house, because under state prison policies, their long sentence automatically classifies them as a higher-security inmate, even if their latest offense was not violent.

Punishment questioned

Jeanne Woodford, a former Corrections Department chief who spent most of her career as a correctional officer, then warden at San Quentin Prison, said the “three strikes” law has unquestionably helped drive the state’s prison crowding and spending problems, in part because higher-security inmates must be housed in cells, rather than dormitory-style situations. She said those sentenced under the second strike provision are a bigger issue for state officials than those in prison for a third strike.

“Some of these guys are literally serving 60, 70 years – more time than three-strikers,” she said. “The bottom line is that we really do need to look at our sentences. They are just so all over the place that people could commit a very serious crime and get less time than a second-striker who did something far less serious. To be a deterrent, the sentencing system has to be consistent.”

Krisberg agreed, pointing to a report he authored in 2008, which concluded that the biggest driver of California’s growing prison population isn’t the number of criminals behind bars, but the amount of time they spend there. He calls “three strikes” the coup de grace of the determinate sentencing movement, which began in the 1970s and grew over the years to include not just tougher penalties but also fewer opportunities for early release if inmates behave well.

How much is enough?

Longer sentences are especially troublesome when it comes to second-strikers, he said, because they are often eligible for sentencing enhancements on top of an automatically doubled sentence.

“If you get enhancements then a double penalty, you could end up serving 40 years, and it’s not subject to (appeal) – they have to serve all their time,” he said. “It comes back to the issue: What’s enough time? Sometime along the way we’ve changed the assumption about what’s proportionate, what’s fair, what people deserve.”

Second-strikers also have the potential to drive up prison costs in future years because they tend to come to prison in their 30s and 40s and often have decades-long sentences – setting the stage for growing medical costs as they age. A 2010 report by state auditor Elaine Howle concluded that on average, people sentenced under the law receive a sentence nine years longer than they would have without three strikes, at a cost of $19.2 billion to taxpayers. Nearly half of that additional cost, $7.5 billion, is spent on people whose most recent strike is for a nonviolent felony.

The report also found that a small, severely ill portion of the prison population accounts for 25 percent of the approximately $2 billion the state spends on inmate health care every year.

Aging inmates tend to cost more, said Nancy Kincaid, a spokeswoman for the federal receiver in charge of medical care in state prisons. And, she said, those who are severely ill often have to be treated at hospitals outside prison walls – at an even higher cost to taxpayers.

“Our largest driver of costs is outside contract medical care, at $390 million a year,” she said. “Those inmates are the ones that are … here long-term and are going to age and likely die in prison. The majority of medical costs come after age 60.”

E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/30/MN0F1KFC2T.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1TorYKwjk

The Benefits and Discontents of Incremental Reform

A few recent events have made me think about the advantages and drawbacks of reforming the correctional system incrementally, that is–by “fixing” one aspect of it at a time. Two things in particular came to mind.

The first is the tension between death penalty activism and life imprisonment, or long-term imprisonment, activism. Last year, at the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty meeting, I talked about the perils limiting activism only to the grounds that would “work”, such as innocence and cost. In the same meeting, Senator Mark Leno, for whose good intentions and immense contributions to correctional reform I have much respect, said that  abolishing the death penalty would not hamper public safety, as we could still throw dangerous convicted felons into prisons for the rest of their lives. This idea, of limiting the struggle to the death penalty under  the assumption that life imprisonment was somehow okay or even advisable, worked well in a room in which people were gathered as a narrow coalition – there were representatives of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation in the room, as well as law enforcement agents who oppose the death penalty but are otherwise on board with law and order policies. So, politically, narrowing the struggle to “just” the death penalty is necessary to bring together all these groups of activists. However, narrowing the focus of the struggle to the death penalty under the argument that life imprisonment in a supermax facility, say, under SHU conditions, is not as bad, is a severe blow to the struggle against isolation, debriefing, and other humiliating conditions suffered by inmates who were not sentenced to death–precisely the conditions leading to the hunger strike, now entering its third week. Is this why the strike is getting so little press coverage? Because, in California, it is now politically easier to stomach a potential death penalty abolition than humane conditions for presumed gang members? Both of these goals are worth fighting for, and I wonder whether patience and incremental gains here will be to the inmates’ advantage or detriment.

The second is SB9, the Fair Sentencing of Youth Act, which for all its noble purpose and fancy name affects the sentencing of very few juveniles in CA, and less than 3,000 nationwide should it become national policy. Happily, SB9 recently passed 5 to 2 in the Assembly Public Safety Committee meeting; that is a very good thing, and it may make a meaningful difference in the lives of the few young men and women behind bars with no glimmer of hope for freedom in their future. However, as some blog commentators mentioned here in the last few days, the proposal is limited in effect to those juveniles, rather than giving more hope to juveniles sentenced to life with parole (say, 25 to life) or to otherwise lengthy sentences. Both groups of inmates – and the second group is, of course, more numerous – are worth fighting for, and again, I hope the incremental system will work to the benefit of the second group over time.

Changes and reform in criminal justice policies have historically been incremental. SB9 would not have existed without Roper v. Simmons, after which many activists may have asked themselves why it made sense to separate the fight . Similarly, the current proposal to end the death penalty in CA would not have come to life without years of moratoria and incremental struggles about amounts of this or that drug. And none of this would have been achieved, in my opinion, without the mundane, gray backdrop of the financial crisis, serving as a constant reminder to activists and disinterested citizens alike that we cannot afford mass incarceration and punitive extravaganzas. The current hunger strike in Pelican Bay, which I hope will finally start attracting more media now (mainstream news coverage of this event of seminal importance has been pitiful, with the exception of the L.A. Times), might not have come into existence had the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata not given inmates hope for change.

So, the revolution will not come in a shiny parade. It will happen stone by stone, proposal by proposal, shutting down the mechanism not because all policymakers will suddenly come to the realization that what we have done is excessive, brutal and inhumane, but because we will gradually be unable to afford more and more pieces of the puzzle. It will be less dramatic, but the end result will be no less gratifying, and it is still worth fighting for, step by step, brick by brick.

Making Sentencing Reform a Priority

Sign this ACLU-California petition at
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageNavigator/CN_petition

Save Money and Increase Public Safety

To Governor Brown, Senate President Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Perez:

As you work to solve the long-term budget deficit, please make sentencing reform a top priority. Sentencing reform will help balance the budget, balance our priorities, and balance the scales of justice.

Two simple sentencing reforms would save California taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually:

  1. Make possession of small amounts of drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony.
  2. Make low-level, non-violent property offenses misdemeanors instead of felonies.

These two reforms fit with your realignment plan by keeping state prison for violent and serious offenses. But they provide additional benefits – lowering court costs, shortening sentences and saving both state and local dollars that can be used for public safety, drug treatment, social services and public schools and universities.

You have the power to bring back balance to the State of California.

Monday Protest in Sacramento

click to enlarge text

This Monday, supporters of the striking inmates will meet at the CDCR headquarters in Sacramento.

Previous statements from CDCR denied the existence, or minimized the size, of the strike. Now, it appears that CDCR is admitting that thousands of inmates are striking. The disappointing bit, however, is that the interpretation by the authorities completely misses the point. Look at this odd CDCR statement in the Chronicle: 

Prison administrators said the 676 remaining inmates who have refused meals since the strike began July 1 probably synchronized their statewide effort through organized criminal networks.


“This goes to show the power, influence and reach of prison gangs,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “Some people are doing it because they want to do it, and some are being ordered to do it.”

What is being missed here is that, as opposed to the common race-related segregation and animosity within walls, this strike uniquely bridged people of different races. Probably, as in any form of public protest, there is leadership, and it would not be a big surprise if leaders are charismatic and had leadership status prior to the strike. What is remarkable here is CDCR’s refusal to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Why would thousands of people in deplorable conditions make their conditions even more deplorable by risking their health and well being in refusing food? Maybe the actual substance requires institutional attention? No, let’s just say “gangs”, and it will make the demands of thousands of people incarcerated in abysmal conditions disappear.

If you, too, are upset, and can make it to Sacramento on Monday, make your voices heard.

Edited to update: It appears that an attempt to negotiate with striking inmates has been made. CDCR has promised it would conduct a “comprehensive review” of SHU. Unsatisfied and displeased with these vague statements, inmates continue striking. Mediators report some of the strikers have lost 25-35 pounds and their health is deteriorating.

Leveraging Brown v. Plata to Achieve Correctional Health? Humonetarianism from Vera’s Michael Jacobson

Today’s Bloomberg News features a piece by Michael Jacobson of the Vera Institute of Justice, who is making points akin to the ones we made in the aftermath of Brown v. Plata. Yes, the decision was limited to the issue of medical services, but it is a grand opportunity to heal California’s broken corrections. Here are his operative suggestions:

Fortunately, there is a way to deal with this influx safely and humanely. Over the past three decades, jurisdictions across the U.S. have ensured that only those who present a genuine threat to public safety fill prison beds, while those who can thrive with supervision and services in the community get the help they need. California officials can begin emulating three steps, starting immediately:
— Statistical analysis has made it possible to accurately predict who is likely to commit new crimes and who isn’t. California officials, especially at the county level, should put in place risk assessment instruments based on this data to decide who needs to be held and who can be supervised safely in the community. Research has shown that overpunishing offenders who present little risk will in many cases turn them into real threats to public safety. Scarce taxpayer dollars need to be used explicitly for strategies and programs that we know will reduce crime, and not increase it.
— Invest in a network of community-based services that can serve those released under supervision, including formerly incarcerated people. Workforce development programs or drug treatment can go a long way toward ensuring that people can remain safely in the community. For instance, in a multiyear evaluation of the Center for Employment Opportunities, a transitional jobs program for former prisoners based in New York City, the nonpartisan education and social policy research organization MDRC found significant drops in recidivism, with the strongest reductions for former prisoners who are at the highest risk.
— Strapped local officials should resist the understandable temptation to use the money that accompanies redirected inmates and parolees for other needed programs, including general services that are being cut. Although public safety need not be as expensive as we currently make it, it can’t be done on the cheap. Besides, the Justice Reinvestment Initiative of the Department of Justice is designed to show that a shift in spending from incarceration to policies like those listed above actually makes communities safer.

As we argued elsewhere, one of the dangers of cost-oriented discourse is its fallacies in encouraging long-term health of the correctional system and its proclivity toward panicky, immediate solutions. The key to leveraging the cost argument to achieve correctional health is to think smarter, not faster.

News from Pelican Bay

Image courtesy: SPCR (full story here)

Yesterday’s protest at UN plaza was an inspiring and uplifting event, even as it reminded us of the horrifying, hellish conditions inmates are subject to at SHU units.

Anti-death-penalty activist, author and journalist Barbara Becnel gave us some news about friends inside, as did a number of family members and friends. It’s not easy to go without food or drink in prison, let alone under an isolation regime, in which food is one of the few things you have to look forward to. Health is deteriorating, but the men are determined to go all the way with the strike, said Becnel, because “we are already dead.”

Some of the publications I read, as well as evidence from visitors and family members, suggests that the CDCR publicized its 4th of July menu, which included items the inmates had not seen in a long time, in an effort to break the strikers’ spirits. And some former SHU inmates spoke up about their horrifying experiences in small, metallic, windowless cells, where they were locked for 23 hours a day save for a “dog run” for an hour.

The full formal complaint, including the inmates’ demands, can be read in this issue of Prison Focus (or, in a nutshell, here). The inmates ask for an end to collective punishment and “behavior modification”; for solid evidence, rather than conjecture, in labeling an inmate as a gang member; for an end to the abysmal, pshchologically harmful isolation regime; for adequate food; and for adequate programming. These are not demands for privileges, but rather for basic human rights.

Reports on the scope of the strike are misleading. Moreover, several newspapers have not even picked up the story. Please, inform the uninformed. Even in the era of Brown v. Plata, something must be done. Favorable decisions from the Supreme Court mean nothing if the outcome of relief isn’t felt in the darkest corners of the California correctional machine.