A Great Act - Public Safety & Rehabilitation Act of 2016

Great news! An incredible act called the Public Safety & Rehabilitation Act of 2016 (PSRA) is trying to improve public safety, and save California taxpayers money by reducing frivolous spending on our correctional system. One pivotal point of this act, is to transfer the power back to the judge and away from the District Attorney, to decide whether a minor of 14 years of age or older should be tried as an adult. Key factors have to be considered when making this decision such as: the minor's family and school life. It has to be a clear process to decide the outcome of the minor’s life.

Next, for those who are incarcerated with non-violent offenses, Public Safety & Rehabilitation Act of 2016 will add funds for rehabilitation, and will give credit for completion of educational programs with an early release. Ultimately, it is the next step to improve Prop 47.

Altogether, 1 million signatures need to be collected in order for this act to make it on the ballot in November. Governor Brown supports and is willing to sign this act, but requested 100,000 signatures by the end of April 2016 be gathered.  

Equally important, collaborative help is needed for the collection of the mandatory signatures from all that are in support of this act. Let’s be overt, prison reform is needed in the state of California, and this is a productive step towards obtaining that goal. 

For more information or to support the (PSRA) contact Vanessa Rhodes at vanessarhodes@gmail.com or visit SafetyandRehabilitation.com.

By: 

Porscha N. Dillard

Special Project Coordinator 

Time For Change Foundation

Court Rules that Denial of Sentencing Relief to Juveniles is Unlawful

The 4th District Court of Appeal, in a stunning rebuke to San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, today ruled that Proposition 47’s sentencing reclassification provisions apply equally to children and adults.

San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis had sought to deprive juvenile offenders of the retroactive relief the initiative provides. Her office argued that juveniles are not eligible to have their past offenses reduced to misdemeanors, even though adults convicted of the same felonies may petition for such relief.

“Bonnie Dumanis, in her ongoing quest to mete out the harshest punishments to the most vulnerable San Diegans rather than pursue smart justice, disregarded the will of California voters and asked the Court to treat juveniles with misdemeanors as if they were felons,” said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, director of the ACLU of California’s Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Project. “Had her unsupported reading of the law been upheld, it would have given prosecutors across the state the authority to do what many would consider unthinkable – criminalize children more harshly than adults.”

Proposition 47, a measure which passed with nearly 60% of the vote in November 2014, ended felony sentencing for six petty crimes, including simple drug possession and petty theft, and created a resentencing process for those certain felonies to be retroactively reclassified as misdemeanors.

The ACLU argued that denying juveniles the resentencing relief provided to adults with identical offenses, and denying these juveniles similar relief to that provided to juveniles charged after the initiative went into effect, violates juveniles’ equal protection rights under the California and U.S. Constitution.

“Today’s ruling makes the future a little brighter for many young people in San Diego. The Court recognized that juveniles have the same rights as adults under Proposition 47 and may petition to have eligible felony adjudications reclassified as misdemeanors. Such relief opens up doors in education, employment, and the military, and will assist those facing any future criminal or immigration proceedings,” said Chessie Thacher, an attorney at Keker & Van Nest. “Keker & Van Nest is very pleased to have been involved in this outcome and hopes the Court’s well-reasoned decision sets the stage for consideration of this issue across the state.”

It would be absurd for adults to enjoy rehabilitation as misdemeanants while children are punished with felony records and all the collateral consequences. “Doing so would not only run contrary to the rehabilitative purpose of the juvenile justice system, but would be an abdication of a district attorney’s responsibility to seek justice,” said Dooley-Sammuli. “And the Court has now confirmed it is unlawful, something that our district attorney should have known.”

After Proposition 47 passed and went into effect, a juvenile, Alejandro N., and 75 other children petitioned the court to ask that their offenses be reclassified as misdemeanors, thus minimizing the myriad negative consequences of a having a felony on their records. California and San Diego voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative that included the expressly retroactive resentencing and reclassification provisions in order to achieve the broadest relief possible for nonviolent, non-serious offenders.

The children’s cases were joined by the superior court after District Attorney Dumanis opposed them, arguing that Prop 47 should be read to treat child offenders more harshly than adults.

This is now the law of the state of California.

Via: https://www.aclunc.org/news/court-rules-denial-sentencing-relief-juveniles-unlawful

Justice reform paying off sooner than expected

When Gov. Nathan Deal prompted the Georgia General Assembly to undertake sentencing reform for the adult criminal justice system (to be followed the next year by juvenile justice reform), he acknowledged that he didn't expect to see any substantial changes for a few years. In terms of the state prison population, that's certainly the case so far. In fact, the state inmate count actually rose slightly from the end of 2010 through last year.

At the county level -- for many offenders, the entry point to the criminal justice system -- it's a different story, the kind of story Deal and the legislature hoped the reforms would tell.
According to a Tuesday report by Walter C. Jones of Morris News Service, the state's overall county inmate population has decreased by almost 10 percent, just in the year since sentences for many nonviolent crimes were reduced.

Even the jails that are crowded beyond their intended capacity are fewer in number -- from 31 in 2010 to just 19 last month.

The sentencing reforms were a post-recession response to a corrections system that had swollen beyond the state's ability to afford it. Years of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, passed by politicians who wanted to look tough on crime and didn't think very long about the consequences, had put more people behind bars than the state could handle.

And the overflow, of course, spilled down to the county jails, where state inmates are often held for years. (In 2010, the report notes, 14 percent of county inmates were awaiting transfer to state prisons; that's down to just 8 percent today.)

Deal's idea, and the whole philosophy behind sentencing reform for adults and juveniles alike, was to divert those convicted of less serious crimes to local supervision, especially in the case of drug- and alcohol-related offenses, and spend that money on treatment rather than incarceration.

In many cases, alternative sentencing is a judgment call. Rep. Jay Neal, R-LaFayette, who chairs the House State Properties Committee, was quoted in the Morris report as saying the evaluation of offenders before sentencing is a key to success of the program: "When you're able to match the sentence with the offender, you're going to get better outcomes."

The long-term outcomes will be measurable not just in jail and prison populations and their effects on budget lines, but also in overall crime and recidivism rates. The first obligation of criminal justice is public safety, and sentencing overhaul is not really reform if its prevention and/or deterrent value doesn't eventually work its way to street level.

That said, these earlier-than-expected returns suggest common-sense corrections to our corrections system were long overdue. What a shame that it always seems to take an economic crash or some other crisis to get us there. 

via Ledger-enquirer.com