A Bill on the RISE!

Have you heard!?! Senator Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) introduced SB 966, the Repeal Ineffective Sentencing Enhancement Act (The RISE Act) for prior drug convictions. The RISE Act will abolish expensive and fruitless sentencing improvement, emulating the Legislature’s and voters’ unity to essentially dismantle from mass incarceration; in order to invest back into the vast need of public services for the communities.

The objective of SB 966 is to:

• Save California taxpayers money to reinvest back into the needed community-based programs
• Reduce the racial disproportion within the criminal justice complex
• Address the severe sentencing
• Re-establish balance back in the judicial proceedings
• Abstain the ruthless punishment towards individuals that endure substance abuse disorder

Not to mention, SB 966 wants to show that the deteriorated pursuit has demonstrated and become immensely expensive; by defrauding state and local appropriations that should be disbursed to social and health providers, schools, and channels that veritably diminishes drug use.

Altogether, incarceration can progress to a higher amount of crime by damaging family and community dynamics. For the many individuals who re-enter back into society from incarceration, are challenged with overwhelming barriers in seeking employment, housing, and education.

In the long run, elongated sentences do not reduce recidivism, nor does it impede on the distribution, use, and recovery of drugs.

By:

Porscha Dillard

Special Project Coordinator

Time For Change Foundation

Obama bans the box!

On Monday, President Obama is announcing a new order to reduce potential discrimination against former convicts in the hiring process for federal government employees.

It is a step towards what many criminal justice reformers call “ban the box” – the effort to eliminate requirements that job applicants check a box on their applications if they have a criminal record. While the rule was once seen as a common sense way for employers to screen for criminal backgrounds, it has been increasingly criticized as a hurdle that fosters employment discrimination against former inmates, regardless of the severity of their offense or how long ago it occurred. Banning the box delays when employers learn of an applicant’s record.

Obama is unveiling the plan on a visit to a treatment center in New Jersey, a state where Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed a ban the box bill into law last year. Hillary Clinton endorsed ban the box last week, while Republican Sen. Rand Paul also introduced similar federal legislation, with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, to seal criminal records for non-violent offenders.

The White House says it is “encouraged” by such legislation in a new statement, but emphasizes the president’s order will take immediate action, mandating that the federal government’s HR department “delay inquiries into criminal history until later in the hiring process.”

President Obama spoke to several federal prisoners about that very approach in July, when he was the first sitting president to visit an American prison.

“If the disclosure of a criminal record happens later in a job application process,” he told them, “you’re more likely to be hired.” Obama described what many studies show – that when many employers see the box checked for an applicant’s criminal record, they weed them out without ever looking at their qualifications.

“If they have a chance to at least meet you,” the president continued, “you’re able to talk to them about your life, what you’ve done, maybe they give you a chance.”

About 60-to-75% of former inmates cannot find work within their first year out of jail, according to the Justice Department, a huge impediment to re-entering society.

Research shows the existence of a criminal record can reduce an employer’s interest in applicant by about 50%, and that when white and black applicants both have records, employers are far less likely to call back a black applicant than a white one. As a 2009 re-entry study in New York city found, “the criminal record penalty suffered by white applicants (30%) is roughly half the size of the penalty for blacks with a record (60%).”

Obama’s move also comes in the wake of a growing movement for criminal justice reform – from broad calls by groups like Black Lives Matter to a specific campaign on ban the box that ranged from half the Senate Democratic caucus to civil rights groups to artists like John Legend.

On Monday, Legend told MSNBC, “We applaud the President’s decision to end this unfair bias against people who have served their time and paid their debt to society. We hope that Congress and state legislatures across the country will follow suit.”

The President is announcing several other measures Monday, including public housing and money for re-entry programs, and he is speaking about prison reform in a speech and an exclusive interview with NBC Nightly News Anchor Lester Holt.

Via: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-bans-the-box 

California public safety overhauls show promise, but problems remain

A contentious program that shifted control of some state prisoners to local governments dramatically reduced the prison population in California, but the decrease was not enough to meet a federal court order, according to a report released Monday.

It was only after statewide voters last fall approved reduced penalties for certain drug and property crimes that the prison population fell below the mandated target, said the new analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California. It has remained there since January, more than a year ahead of schedule.

Public safety realignment, launched four years ago, was considered one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s largest political and policy hurdles since he returned to the Governor’s Office in 2011. Brown, responding to the prison reduction order, argued that local authorities were better positioned to deal with alleviating the overcrowding crisis. But his critics, including law-and-order Republicans and some in law enforcement, asserted the changes would lead to a spike in crime.

PPIC makes no wholesale claims about the efficacy of the program. However, it provides a snapshot of its early effects as new reforms continue to take hold, including November’s successful Proposition 47 that changed most nonviolent property and drug crimes to misdemeanors from felonies.

“Realignment has largely been successful, but the state and county correctional systems face significant challenges,” wrote Magnus Lofstrom and Brandon Martin, the authors of the study. “The state needs to regain control of prison medical care, which is now in the hands of a federal receiver. And the state and counties together must make progress in reducing stubbornly high recidivism rates.”

The report found no dramatic change in recidivism rates. There also was no evidence that realignment has increased violent crime in California.

The lone area where crime increased was in auto thefts. Researchers estimate that the overhaul led to car thefts increasing by more than 70 per 100,000 residents. The car theft rate is about 17 percent higher than it would have been without realignment, the report states.

Although the realignment shift drove county jail populations close to historical highs, the program also has changed the profile of those incarcerated. The report found that by early 2014, some 1,761 inmates were serving sentences of more than five years, up from 1,155 in 2013.

Still, while county jail populations increased since 2011, the growth was far smaller than the prison population drop.

Researchers suggest various alternative crime-prevention strategies such as boosting policing, behavioral therapy and targeted intervention for high-risk youths.

Via: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article36881103.html 

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Rally to Stop the Jail Expansion in Riverside County!

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Senate Dems push for spending on mentally ill criminals

As budget negotiations reach their final weeks in the state Capitol, state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg is pressing for more spending to treat mental illness among inmates and people being released from prison, arguing that the proposals will reduce prison crowding and promote public safety.

The proposals by Senate Democrats to spend $132 million on reducing recidivism among mentally ill offenders are based on suggestions by professors at Stanford Law School, who studied the proliferation of mental illness within California’s prison population. Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed $91 million in spending.

The Senate Democrats’ package comes as lawmakers respond to Friday’s rampage near UC Santa Barbara in which a disturbed student killed six people and injured 13 in a spree of stabbing and shooting.

“These proposals finalized earlier this month are now cast under a different light than any of us had originally planned,” Steinberg said during a news conference Wednesday. “It’s a cruel and of course sad coincidence that the significance of one proposal – to improve training among front line law enforcement to recognize the warning signs of mental illness – was illustrated by a gun rampage in Santa Barbara County.”

The proposals from Senate Democrats include:

• $12 million to train law enforcement officers and $24 million to train prison employees in dealing with people who are mentally ill

• $25 million to expand re-entry programs for mentally ill offenders

• $20 million to help parolees by providing case managers to make sure they get treatment for mental health issues and substance abuse

• $20 million to expand so-called mental health courts that manage offenders who are mentally ill or addicted to drugs

• $50 million to re-establish a grant program for counties offering substance abuse treatment, job training or other programs to help mentally ill offenders after they’re released from prison.

via: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/28/6440139/senate-dems-push-for-spending.html#mi_rss=State%20Politics

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Steinberg proposes $50 million for treating mentally ill criminals

Democratic state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg wants California to spend $50 million on programs that try to keep mentally ill criminals from re-offending.

The proposed legislation calls for bringing back a program that existed for about 10 years in California. The "Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction Grant" program allows counties to apply for funding to support mental health courts, substance abuse treatment, and employment training programs. Those efforts would reduce recidivism and crowding in California jails, Steinberg said, and help mentally ill people become more stable.

"We are trying to bring back something that was a great success in the late 90s early 2000s that went away as a result of the budget cuts," Steinberg said during a press conference this morning, where he was backed by law enforcement and mental health care leaders.

"We do not have a specific funding stream dedicated to providing mental health services to people in jail that continue once they leave jail and get into the community... We had that before, prior to 2008. We want to reinstate that and make it part of our overall approach."

Steinberg said lawmakers should treat California's projected budget surplus with an approach that dedicates one-third to paying down debt, one-third to reserves and one-third to spending.

"We shouldn't be shy about saying that there are areas of public investment that we must make, that are important," he said.

Speaking in support of Steinberg's proposal today were Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson; Sacramento County's Chief Probation Officer Lee Seale; Sacramento County's mental health director Dorian Kittrel and Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna.

PHOTO: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, in March 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Hector Amezcua

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/12/steinberg-proposes-50-million-for-treating-mentally-ill-criminals.html#storylink=cpy

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/12/steinberg-proposes-50-million-for-treating-mentally-ill-criminals.html

Jerry Brown vetoes bill to make some drug crimes 'wobblers'

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation Saturday that that would have given local prosecutors discretion when deciding whether a person charged with possessing a small amount of illegal drugs should be charged with a felony or a misdemeanor.

Under Senate Bill 649, by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, possession of cocaine, heroin and other specified drugs would have been downgraded to the status of methamphetamine, Ecstasy or hashish, "wobblers" treated as felonies or misdemeanors depending on the circumstances.

Brown said in his veto message that state officials dealing with prison crowding in California are preparing "to examine in detail California's criminal justice system, including the current sentencing structure."

The Democratic governor said that "will be the appropriate time to evaluate our existing drug laws."

Supporters of the Leno bill had said it would reduce recidivism by eliminating some employment barriers resulting from a felony record. The California District Attorneys Association opposed the measure.

PHOTO CREDIT: A police officers conducts a traffic stop in Lincoln on Wednesday, September 29, 2010. The Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/

Stop the Revolving Jail Door

Split sentencing, in which a felon serves a portion of his time in jail and another portion in the community but under supervision, shows promise.

By The Times editorial board

June 29, 2013, 5:00 p.m.

Criminal defendants convicted of felonies in California used to be sentenced to state prison. Most, after serving 50% of their terms, were released on parole and returned to their communities. And of them, most ended up back in prison, either because they committed new crimes or because they were caught violating parole. California was good at running felons through a revolving door and very bad at guiding their safe return to society: getting the addicted off drugs, getting treatment for the mentally ill, getting those with antisocial and criminal mind-sets into structured, supervised programs with reliable records of reforming those former inmates who were amenable to reform.

The state had a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but in most cases it neither corrected nor rehabilitated. It kept criminals incapacitated, but when they returned to their neighborhoods, they were at least as dangerous as when they were sent away.

Today, defendants convicted of felonies defined by law as violent, serious or sexual continue to go to state prison; and despite widespread public misunderstanding and assertions to the contrary by officials who ought to know better, defendants convicted of lesser felonies also go to state prison if they have rap sheets that include past violent, serious or sexual offenses.
But since October 2011, newly convicted "non-non-non" felons — those whose offenses are not violent, serious or sexual — with no current or previous record of serious convictions go to county jail. Just like their counterparts in state prison, they will serve their time, get out and return to their communities.

And then what? The addicted and the mentally ill will most likely remain untreated; they and other inmates badly in need of life skills, anger management counseling or similar programs will leave jail at complete liberty, with an unstructured reentry into society. Their prospects for success — shunning trouble, getting work, leading productive, crime-free lives, leaving their neighbors safe — will be about the same as those of felons returning from state prison: not good.

Evidence has shown, time and again, that the outcomes are better for inmates who begin programs in jail — and who then return to society under supervision while continuing mandatory treatment and education. There are three choices for dealing with inmates, and three well-documented outcomes: no treatment or education in or out of jail, and a poor chance at success; compelled treatment and education in jail, and slightly better chances; and mandatory treatment in jail followed by mandatory treatment and monitoring, for a period of time, on return to society, with much improved prospects of breaking the cycle of offending, being locked up, returning to the streets and offending again. And keep in mind: The beneficiaries of these programs are not just the offenders but also those who are victimized by them.

AB 109, the criminal justice realignment laws adopted in 2011 that gave counties new responsibilities over low-level felons, also proposed a reinvention of the reentry process to deal with criminal recidivism. Defendants could receive what is known as a "split sentence," with a portion of the time to be served in jail and another portion to be served in the community, under supervision by probation officers who would monitor mandatory participation in rehabilitation and other programs. The period served under supervision in the community, after release from jail, is known as a "tail."

In keeping with the spirit of realignment, which gives counties maximum flexibility to experiment, compile data, compare notes and adjust as necessary, AB 109 doesn't mandate split sentencing. Nor does it compel counties to abide by any formula or guideline in determining how much it can spend on programming, or what kind of programs to offer. Counties can decide whether to spend more of their realignment funding on incarceration or reentry.

Some counties — especially those already geared toward community-based corrections for their misdemeanor defendants — have embraced split sentencing. In Contra Costa County, for example, 90% of the AB 109 felony sentences are split. Other counties and their trial courts are also turning to split sentencing, pairing the post-incarceration tail with innovative and proven programs that reintroduce felons to their neighborhoods with carefully tailored treatment and scrutiny. Because more time is served under community supervision, jail cells are freed up for the most dangerous offenders.

So how tightly is the state's largest jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, embracing the opportunities presented by split sentencing? This county is bottom of the barrel, with a supervised tail in only 4% of sentences.

The reasons for the failure to use this proven tool are unimpressive. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are used to bargaining over custody time, not negotiating for tails. Defendants would rather do their time and return to the streets at full liberty. Prosecutors would rather maximize custody time than require post-custody programming. Judges defer to the lawyers' plea bargains when sentencing. The focus is shortsighted, aimed at efficient processing, not structured reentry or breaking the cycle of recidivism. The leader of a committee made up of local law enforcement officers, judges and county service providers told the Board of Supervisors last week that he expects no change in the number of split sentences here.

Lawmakers this year considered a bill that would have required courts to include at least a six-month tail on AB 109 sentences, helping sluggish counties to begin solving the recidivism problem even when they don't want to. Under heavy lobbying from prosecutors, the measure died in committee.

That's a shame. Los Angeles County and its courts are squandering the opportunity presented by AB 109 to return corrections and rehabilitation to the criminal justice system. If they can't make use of split sentencing on their own — and so far they have demonstrated that they can't — they will need to be pushed.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

AOUON Community Engagement & Forum

Thursday, June 27, 2013

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Universalist Unitarian Church of Riverside

3657 Lemon Street

Riverside, CA 92501

Corner of Mission Inn & Lemon Street

California's Recidivism Problem

Two years after the United States Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its severely overcrowded prisons by more than 30,000 inmates, the state is still trying to figure out how to comply. Governor Jerry Brown released a new plan in early May that called for the early release of elderly inmates and the relocation of thousands of others to private lockups and state fire camps.

These are undoubtedly fine ideas, but they will never solve the fundamental problem of California's prisons. To do that, Governor Brown and his administration will have to confront the state's recidivism problem: too many people are released from California's prisons, return home and then proceed to commit new crimes or violate parole rules. Before long, they are back in prison.

California has the second highest rate of recidivism in the country, according to the Pew Center on the States. Nearly 58 percent of the state's offenders are sent back to prison within three years of their release, according to the Pew Center.

Unless this cycle is broken with bold actions -- unless people can be diverted from a lifetime of crime, repeatedly shuttling into and out of prison -- California will remain stuck trying to jam too many inmates into too few prison cells. This pattern carries enormous costs, both human and financial.

Under pressure from the courts, the state has a unique opportunity. It can confront its correctional problems head-on by shifting its priorities from incarceration to rehabilitation.

That would involve moving many more nonviolent offenders from prisons into alternative community programs for drug treatment and job training. The best cure for recidivism is for ex-offenders to learn how to stay drug-free and to develop skills for real, full-time jobs. There is nothing like a job to keep someone from reverting to a life of crime.

To do this, California would find itself relying as never before on nonprofit and perhaps even for-profit social service providers. These have traditionally been the organizations that work with inmates and parolees to help them re-enter society successfully. People who have spent time in prison need help, often a lot of help, to develop the necessary skills that lead to a job, independence and a responsible life.

It can be done. In fact, it is done on a small scale every day in places around the country. But it is also costly. Over the long run that initial expenditure can produce extraordinary savings for taxpayers. Right now, California pays an enormous sum, about $9 billion a year, to fill its prisons to overflowing. Since 1980, the state's spending on higher education has declined by 13 percent, adjusted for inflation, while its spending for corrections has increased by more than 400 percent.

Given the enormity of the task, California and other state governments burdened with huge corrections costs, are going to have to learn how to distinguish social service providers that produce positive outcomes from those that do not. It makes no sense to commit to serious reform, investing in drug treatment and job training, if you select social service agencies that are unable to help former offenders stay out of prison.

For rehabilitation to succeed, California will have to select organizations that can produce verifiable results. Social service agencies will have to use transparent, performance-based data to track their work, and they will have to be held much more accountable for what they do than they are now.

Some nonprofit and for-profit groups will no doubt be put off by such rigorous demands, but others, including mine, The Doe Fund, will welcome them.

For more than 20 years, our Ready, Willing & Able program has been helping former offenders in New York City and Philadelphia to develop skills, find work and become productive citizens. Along with like-minded groups, we are not afraid of having our work measured and judged. We want to know if we are really improving our clients' lives.

With support and guidance, people can lift themselves from unemployment, crime, drug addiction and homelessness. Over the last two decades, thousands of formerly homeless men -- 70 percent of whom are former offenders -- have completed our program; they have found private sector jobs, lived independently and remained sober and drug free.

Reconfiguring California's criminal justice system will require commitment and ambition, and it will be expensive, at least at the outset. But it could produce extraordinary changes and would surely save the state vast amounts in the future. Lowering the recidivism rate would significantly reduce the size of the state prison population, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It would also cut the crime rate.

California will have to apply new rigor in contracting out social services and be willing to experiment with innovative strategies to meet the burden of the Supreme Court's order. But unless it makes a concerted new effort to prepare inmates and parolees for life after prison, the cycle of arrest and re-arrest will surely continue. And California's prisons will continue to overflow.

via The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harriet-mcdonald/californias-recidivism-pr_b_3267575.html