Community News
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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to form a task force to help non-violent ex-cons update their records under Proposition 47 and to link them to jobs and services.
Proposition 47 — dubbed by supporters the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act — was approved by 59.6 percent of California voters in 2014. It reduced some non-violent drug and property crimes — such as shoplifting, receiving stolen property and writing bad checks of less than $950 — from felonies to misdemeanors.
Supervisors Hilda Solis and Mark Ridley-Thomas proposed the task force and Solis said it would bolster public safety.
“The primary purpose of the motion today is to reduce crime,” Solis said. “Jail and prison have become a revolving door.”
The task force will focus on connecting individuals coming out of jail and prison with jobs, housing, health care and mental health and substance abuse treatment and finding funding for those services.
“For the last 40 years, our broken criminal justice system has drained communities like South Los Angeles,” said Karren Lane of the Community Coalition of policies that doled out harsh punishments for drug and other non-violent offenses.
Solis highlighted the barriers faced by ex-offenders.
“Having a felony conviction makes it difficult to get work, to get housing, to get services and to put your life back together,” Solis told her colleagues.
Public Defender Ronald L. Brown said individuals in prison and jail suffer disproportionately from mental illness and substance abuse and told the board that treatment is critical to success outside of jail.
“Prisons don’t encourage inmates to address their drug problems,” Brown said.
Proponents say the proposition provides a more just penalty for low-level offenders. Anticipated savings from the law are intended to be spent on mental health and substance abuse treatment, truancy and dropout prevention and victim services.
“I think what we’re talking about is a hand up, not a hammer down,” said Bruce Brodie of the county’s office of Alternate Public Defender.
Other backers point to how Prop 47 has alleviated prison overcrowding and allowed more serious offenders to serve a greater proportion of their sentence.
However, opponents say Prop 47 puts dangerous criminals who should be behind bars out on the streets.
Supervisor Michael Antonovich pointed to criminals who are released only to commit new crimes, citing the example of one man who had been arrested 22 times after his initial release.
“Violent crime is up 4.2 percent,” Antonovich said.
Supervisor Sheila Kuehl challenged the idea that the proposition was linked to higher crime rates.
“There has been a lot of rhetoric about Prop 47 and a rise in crime rates and it’s just that, rhetoric. There is no data,” Kuehl said.
Kuehl said San Diego County hasn’t seen a rise in crime since Prop 47 became effective.
There are roughly 695,000 Los Angeles County residents who are eligible to apply to change their criminal records under Prop 47, according to Brown, who told the board that his office is overwhelmed by the need to help ex-offenders “become employed, tax-paying citizens of this county.”
One community advocate said many of those eligible were unaware of the potential to change their lives.
“Two out of three people who qualify for Prop 47 are not even aware” it exists, said Amber Rose Howard of All of Us or None.
The task force was also charged with trying to extend the deadline to apply for a criminal record change, currently set for Nov. 3, 2017.
The board directed staffers from the Office of Diversion and Re-Entry to work with the city of Los Angeles’ Office of Reentry to push for the region’s share of state funding from Prop 47 savings. A report back is expected in six months.
The board also asked the Auditor-Controller to audit the county’s savings as a result of Prop 47.
A proposed state constitutional amendment with the stated aim of making government more responsive and ethnically diverse would add two members to the Riverside and San Bernardino county boards of supervisors.
The amendment offered by state Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, is scheduled be heard by a Senate committee Aug. 17. It would require counties with 2 million or more residents -- Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Los Angeles -- to have at least seven people on their supervisorial boards.
Riverside and San Bernardino each have five supervisors. If the amendment passes both houses of the Legislature by a 2/3 vote, it would go on the ballot for voters’ approval.
In a staff report on the amendment, Mendoza’s office wrote that expanding the boards of supervisors “will provide the opportunity for these bodies to be more responsive and reflective of the needs of the people they represent and serve.”
The amendment would add supervisors in counties with sizeable Latino populations. Roughly half of the Inland population is Latino, according to recently released census numbers.
Despite that, no Latinos serve on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. San Bernardino County has one Latino supervisor, Josie Gonzales.
For Luz Gallegos, community programs director at TODEC Legal Center, a grassroots organization serving Inland Empire migrant communities, the measures can help boost Latino representation, but in order for the community to reap the benefits, simply electing a Latino politician wouldn’t be enough.
It's about “making sure they have their heart and the community commitment,” she said.
Electing Latinos and other people of color is important, Gallegos said, because it will inspire youth to run for elected office.
“As a youth, I remember (Los Angeles City Councilman) Gil Cedillo,” she said. “He was out there marching with us and he was part of the unions and now he's in positions where we have youth saying, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’”
“NOT HOMOGENOUS”
Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley said he didn’t think the amendment would make much of a difference when it comes to electing a Latino supervisor.
“Latinos are not a homogenous group,” Ashley said. “They look at the issues and if they see a candidate that’s backing the issues they like … they’ll vote for (that candidate).”
Ashley, who is not seeking re-election when his term ends in 2018, said it’s very likely a Latino will take his place. Ashley’s chief of staff, Jaime Hurtado, already is running to succeed his boss.
San Bernardino County supervisors oppose the amendment. In a letter to the state Senate, Supervisor James Ramos wrote that the amendment would “erode the ability of San Bernardino County voters to determine their form of government.”
“While we appreciate your goal to increase diversity among members of county boards of supervisors to better reflect the changes in the state’s demographics, we feel the composition of our Board achieves that goal, and no legislation is needed,” said Ramos, former chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. His county also has two female supervisors.
Via: http://www.pe.com/articles/supervisors-775582-amendment-san.html
In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 109 into law. Realignment allowed people convicted of 500 "non-serious, non-violent and non-sex related" felonies to serve their sentences in county jail or in a supervised community release program.
The idea was to help reduce the state's prison population and the soaring costs of incarceration. Supporters of this major corrections policy shift saw it as an opportunity to break the cycle of re-incarceration by sending more low-level offenders to evidenced-based community programs that offer drug rehab, education, job training, anger management, housing and other services to help them to re-enter society.
Yet in fact, AB 109 was set up to maintain the status quo.
The state gives each county a certain amount of money -- based on a formula -- to help absorb the costs associated with this new group of people still serving sentences and parolees that they are now responsible for.
The Community Corrections Partnership Executive Committee makes funding recommendations to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Six of its seven members come from law enforcement and the courts. They include LaDonna Harris, chief probation officer, Fremont Police Chief Richard Lucero, Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern, District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, Public Defender Brendon Woods and court executive officer Leah Wilson. There are no community members on the powerful committee.
The Alameda County Sheriff's Department, which runs the jails, has gotten the lion's share of the money. The department has been allocated more than half of the $34.6 million AB 109 funds -- the same percentage as last year. Yet the number of inmates at Santa Rita and Glenn Dyer dropped from 10,000 to 7,000, according to a presentation by sheriff's officials before the county Public Protection Committee. The department has closed three housing units at Santa Rita and two floors at Glenn Dyer.
So with fewer inmates under its supervision, why is the department still set to get $18 million -- close to the same amount as when there were more inmates?
"The number of bed days have gone down and the number of inmates have gone down but our costs continue to rise with the cost of living," Ahern said.
Ahern said there were fixed programming costs that don't go down just because of fewer inmates. He also characterized many of the prisoners coming from state prison as having been "in and out of jail with a high level of sophistication."
Yet how could they be any more difficult for deputies to manage than the gang members and killers who are routinely housed in Santa Rita while they're on trial?
"The Alameda County jail population is the same as its always been and the people who are coming from state prison are nonviolent," says Ella Baker Center for Human Rights organizer Darris Young.
According to an Ella Baker Center analysis, the county spent just under $6 million of the $9.5 million allocated to community-based organizations in 2013-2014. Young said that the county's failure to disburse the funds to community-based organizations meant that ex-offenders with pressing housing and other needs didn't get help, which makes no sense. Activists complain that the sheriff has not given a detailed accounting of expenditures.
The Ella Baker Center "Jobs not Jails" campaign has been waging a battle to get Alameda County to reduce the sheriff's share of realignment dollars and dedicate at least 50 percent to community-based organizations that provide re-entry series. They are currently set to receive 29 percent of the $34.6 million pie under the proposed 2014-2015 budget.
"This fight is going on in almost every county in California," says Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at UC Berkeley. "Unfortunately, in a lot of places the traditional voices are winning."
The highly organized "Jobs not Jails" campaign is beginning to gain traction.
Ella Baker activists took over a board of supervisors meeting earlier this month. They sang and chanted, demanding that the supervisors dedicate nearly 50 percent of funds from the proposed realignment budget to community re-entry programs. Supervisor Keith Carson introduced a compromise proposal to up those programs to 50 percent -- starting July 1.
The activists say that's a step in the right direction but they won't concede on the current AB 109 budget vote set for Tuesday. It's going to be a wild ride.
