IMMIGRATION: Legality of effort to repeal Prop. 187 is questioned

Some California legislators are poised to repeal Proposition 187, a controversial 20-year-old initiative that was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court and never enforced. But law scholars question whether the elected officials have the legal authority to act on their own.

“The California Constitution says you can’t amend or repeal an approved measure without submitting it to the voters unless there’s a waiver clause,” said Jessica A. Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes on election law.

Prop. 187, which sought to cut off public education, health care and welfare benefits to undocumented immigrants in California, had no such waiver, said John C. Eastman, a Chapman University Law School professor and founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

“These guys are acting lawlessly,” Eastman said. “They’ll do it if they think they can get away with it and no one will challenge them.”

California voters approved Prop. 187 – also known as the “Save our State” campaign – in November 1994 with almost 60 percent approval. A federal court ruled most of the provisions unconstitutional, and the measure was not enforced. But some of the language remains embedded in various codes, including education codes.

Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, said he learned of its existence in California codes accidentally. He was recently talking to his staff about his personal history and recounting how he “cut my teeth politically against the 187 campaign.” Chief of Staff Dan Reeves decided to look into the proposition and found it had not been removed.

“These code sections are unenforceable. The Legislature has the right and power and authority to maintain the codes with our statutes and that’s we’re doing,” Reeves said.

“Essentially, it’s code cleaning,” he said.

De Leon’s staff consulted with the state’s legislative counsel, Diane Boyer-Vine, whose opinion was that “it’s not necessary to go back to the voters,” Reeves said.

State Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, said unconstitutional laws should not remain on the books.

“The Constitution is the highest law of our nation, and I support any effort to remove any statute or language found unconstitutional,” he said.

Sen. Mike Morrell, a Rancho Cucamonga Republican who represents parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said in a statement that he has not yet decided whether to vote for de Leon’s bill.

“I have not yet had a chance to review the specific language of the bill or the legal questions surrounding it,” he said.

Robin Hvidston, executive director of the anti-illegal-immigration We the People Rising and an Upland resident, urged legislators to keep the law in California codes.

“To me, it’s important because this was the direct voice of the people,” she said. “The people’s voice, the people’s will was overruled by the courts.”

She worried that stripping Prop. 187 language from state codes would set a dangerous precedent and lead to other voter initiatives being gutted.

But Maria Rodriguez, an activist with the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Coalition, said passage of de Leon’s bill would be another signal by the Legislature that California is “an immigrant-friendly state.”

Jerry Brown to sign budget Friday in San Diego

Gov. Jerry Brown will sign the state budget Friday in San Diego, his office announced Thursday, less than a week after both houses of the Legislature approved the spending plan.

Governors have the right to reduce or strike appropriations in budget bills before signing them, but it is unclear what line-item vetoes Brown will make to the $156.4 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Last year, the Democratic governor made only a small number of line-item vetoes, totaling about $40 million.

This year's budget plan is a compromise between Brown and Democratic lawmakers. It includes an expansion of child care and preschool for poor children and more money for high-speed rail, Medi-Cal and welfare-to-work. It also puts about $1.6 billion into a special rainy-day account.

Brown will be joined for the budget signing by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. Brown is scheduled to travel to Los Angeles after signing the budget to attend a celebration with Latino lawmakers.

PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown signs bills in Sacramento on March 24, 2011 as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco look on. The Sacramento Bee/Hector Amezcua

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Optimistic on economy, California lawmakers OK $156.4-billion budget

Flush with optimism from California's resurgent economy, lawmakers approved a $156.4-billion state budget that expands preschool for children from poor families, increases welfare payments and provides critical funding for building the nation's first bullet train.

The state's financial turnaround has allowed the Democratic-led Legislature, with the blessing of Gov. Jerry Brown, to spend more freely just a few years after the recession prompted deep cuts to government services. And if tax receipts outpace expectations, the budget could send even more money to schools, public universities and local governments.

Lawmakers also are addressing more of California's lingering financial problems, stockpiling cash in a rainy-day fund and chipping away at pension costs.

"This is a much brighter day than what we've seen in years past," Senate Budget Chairman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said.

The spending plan — which includes a $108-billion general fund, $7.3 billion larger than last year's — now goes to Brown, who has until the end of the month to sign it. He can still veto items he dislikes.

The budget marks lawmakers' first major effort to combat global warming with revenue from the state cap-and-trade program, which charges fees on polluters when their carbon emissions exceed set limits.

Over the next several years, billions of dollars from those funds could flow to affordable housing, mass transit and environmental programs in a broad effort to get Californians to drive less and consume less energy.

A quarter of the money will be used for building the $68-billion bullet train, a decision that may draw legal challenges from groups that oppose the project and view it as an improper use of cap-and-trade revenue.

Republicans criticized the money for high-speed rail, and Senate Republican leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) called the budget a "missed opportunity."

"You're enacting policies to make California unnecessarily expensive, drive people into poverty and then propose new government programs to subsidize their life in poverty," Huff said.

Long-term costs for public employee retirements and overdue maintenance continue to weigh on state finances, and the budget starts tackling the $74-billion shortfall in the teacher pension fund. Under the plan, schools, teachers and the state will contribute more money to the fund in an attempt to close the gap over the next three decades.

The budget also deposits $1.6 billion into a reserve fund, a down payment on the state's effort to create a cushion for future economic downturns. Voters will have an opportunity in November to approve a constitutional amendment that would set aside money in the fund every year and help pay off the state's debt and long-term costs.

Despite the budget's increasing size, some cuts remain in place. Most notably, doctors who participate in Medi-Cal will continue receiving reduced payments even as hundreds of thousands of new patients enroll in the state's public healthcare program. Brown's resistance to increasing the payments disappointed lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, who fear fewer doctors will agree to care for Medi-Cal patients.

"The Senate wants to do this, the Assembly wants to do this and the governor understands we need to," Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) said. "So we are working as of tomorrow to figure out how soon we can do this. But we have to make sure we can pay for it."

Other programs for California's poor are being boosted. Beginning next April, welfare payments for a family of three in such high-cost counties as Los Angeles would increase to $704 per month, up from $670.

Over the next few years, preschool enrollment is expected to increase by 43,000 4-year-olds from low-income families. There's also more money for subsidized child care.

The budget already had been negotiated among Brown and top Democratic lawmakers before Sunday's vote, tamping down the drama in the Capitol. Still, controversy bubbled over a series of new policy proposals that were included in budget-related bills, sometimes after little public vetting.

For example, Brown has pushed new limits on how much money school districts can keep in their reserve accounts. Administration officials say the schools won't need to stockpile as much cash because the state will have its own rainy-day fund, but angry district officials called the proposal a ploy by the powerful teachers union to make more money available while negotiating contracts.

The California Teachers Assn. spent $4.7 million to help elect Brown in 2010 and donated nearly $290,000 to lawmakers, mostly Democrats, for this year's campaigns.

Lawmakers from both parties criticized the governor for inserting the proposal late in the budget process, but Democrats ensured the bill passed.

Another measure approved by the Legislature would modify California's new rules for granting driver's licenses to immigrants here without documentation, eliminating the requirement for applicants to submit affidavits saying they cannot prove legal residency.

Ronald Coleman, a lobbyist for the California Immigrant Policy Center, said the change would provide "peace of mind" that applying for a license won't increase the risk of deportation for immigrants who are here without those papers.

A separate budget-related bill, also approved Sunday, would remove the ban on drug felons receiving food stamps and welfare payments. Democrats say the measure would help former inmates reintegrate into society, but Republicans were critical.

"In what universe does it make sense to give cash benefit cards to drug users?" Huff said.

More budget bills have yet to be considered by the Legislature. Democrats are angling to pass two new taxes, on fireworks and insurance. The levy on fireworks — 10 cents per pound, to be paid by distributors — is intended to finance the safe destruction of illegal pyrotechnics. The other tax — 15 cents per insurance policy for residential and commercial renters — would fund earthquake research.

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-pol-state-budget-20140616-story.html

California soda warning label bill stalls in committee

California lawmakers on Tuesday turned back legislation that would require warning labels on sugary beverages, voicing skepticism about the public health benefits. 

"It's an honorable effort but I feel it's ineffective," said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who acknowledged that soda manufacturers are prominent job generators in her district. "I think this bill creates as much confusion as it does information. A label which will appear on soda and sports drinks with no labels appearing on chocolate milk, juices or alcoholic beverages sends the wrong message."

Senate Bill 1000 slipped out of the Senate last month with the bare minimum 21 votes needed to advance. Legislators on the Assembly Health Committee halted its progress, with two Democrats voting against the measure and four others abstaining. The measure fell three votes short of the 10 needed to pass.

After trying unsuccessfully in the past to impose a tax on sugar-suffused drinks, Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, this year sought to drain soda consumption by having the drinks bear warning labels. Monning and public health officials backing the legislation called sugary drinks a key culprit in the nation's swollen obesity rate.

"The label is based on the science that says liquid sugar is a unique driver in today's obesity and diabetes epidemics," Monning testified.

Opponents representing the beverage industry argued that Monning's bill unfairly singled out soft drinks. They argued that other factors, including a lack of exercise, genetics and unhealthy diets, contribute in concert to ballooning obesity and diabetes rates.

"This bill would not give consumers meaningful, helpful information," testified John Latimer, a lobbyist representing the California Retailers Association and PepsiCo. "Instead it will disparage many hundreds of beverages that can be safely consumed and responsibly added as part of a healthy diet."

Holding aloft a picture of a thick slice of chocolate cake, Latimer dismissed a soda-labeling policy as inconsistent.

"This beautiful piece of chocolate cake, which can be secured at a restaurant nearby, has 2,700 calories, 150 grams of fat, 55 grams of saturated fat," Latimer said. "And yet it doesn't need a warning label, but a 75 calories beverage does?"

Members who declined to support the bill said they were not convinced that labeling would do enough to influence consumer behavior.

"I've looked for any kind of information that shows that labeling changes peoples' habits," said Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles. "I haven't found one."

Comparisons to the tobacco industry, both overt and implicit, surfaced throughout the debate. Dr. Harold Goldstein of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy wondered, "how bad will it have to get before we begin to tell the truth about these sugary drinks?" Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, was more direct.

"I do remember some of these same arguments and some of the same struggles around labeling of cigarettes," Ammiano said, "and it took a long time to permeate peoples' consciousness."

Critics of the bill rejected those comparisons, saying it is disingenuous to equate soda and smoking.

"Smoking is inherently dangerous," said Bob Achermann, a lobbyist representing a trade group called the California Nevada Soft Drink Association. "Consumption of a sugar-sweetened beverage, or anything else for that matter, is not inherently dangerous."

PHOTO: In this Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 file photo, Pepsi drinks sit on display at JJ&F Market in Palo Alto, Calif. Paul Sakuma/AP Photo.

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/06/california-soda-warning-label-bill-stalls-in-committee.html

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New proposal would require climate change warning labels at city gas stations

Berkeley commissioners are working to bring climate change awareness right to the gas pump in a proposal that would place warning labels on fuel nozzles.

The city’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission voted Thursday to move forward with a plan that would mandate such labels to be placed in Berkeley gas stations. The signs would state that gasoline consumption releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.

Max Gomberg, chair of the commission, said the label would be a reminder to customers that the gas in their cars has a direct effect on the environment.

“We already require cigarette packs to include warning labels,” said Matthew Lewis, a UC Berkeley sophomore and co-chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability, in an email. “Requiring labels at gas pumps would similarly keep the harm of burning gasoline fresh in people’s minds.”

The plan, which was originally proposed about six months ago to the city by environmental advocacy group 350 Bay Area, has generated backlash from the Western States Petroleum Association, an entity representing petroleum-producing companies.

On Wednesday, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the petroleum association, sent a letter to the commission stating that the plan would violate gas station owners’ First Amendment rights. Citing various court cases, she wrote that a governing body cannot compel a business to state information unless doing so would “prevent consumer deception.” Reheis-Boyd also questioned if climate change was a serious threat to California’s resources.

“Though the proposed ordinance calls these messages ‘warnings,’ they are, in reality, forced reproductions of the state’s and city’s policy opinions,” Reheis-Boyd wrote. “But the messages are not ‘purely factual and uncontroversial information’ – they touch on issues that represent some of the most contentious issues in existence today.”

Still, Tupper Hull, spokesperson for the petroleum association, said he did not doubt the scientific evidence of climate change’s negative effects. Instead, he was concerned with the way the proposal would only affect gasoline distributors.

“To single out one source to the exclusion of others is where we have a strong objection,” Hull said. “I am not aware that they have proposed placing warnings on your vehicles, your stoves and your household furnaces, all of which produce carbon dioxide emissions.”

To assert the veracity of the claim that climate change presents a risk to California, commissioners are planning to cite the California Global Warming Solutions Act, according to Commissioner Andrew Torkelson. The law, which was passed in 2006, contains provisions aimed at lowering the levels of greenhouse gasses and requires certain industries to disclose their emission levels.

Gomberg said City Council is expected to vote on the plan in six to eight weeks.

via: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/06/16/new-proposal-require-climate-change-warning-labels-city-gas-stations/

Repackaging Mass Incarceration

by JAMES KILGORE

Since my CounterPunch article last November which  assessed the state of the movement against mass incarceration, the rumblings of change in the criminal justice have steadily grown louder. Attorney General Eric Holder has continued to stream his mild-mannered critique by raising the issue of felony disenfranchisement; the President has stepped forward with a proposal for clemency for people with drug offenses that could free hundreds. In the media, we’ve seen a scathing attack on America’s addiction to punishment in the New York Times and the American Academy of Sciences has released perhaps the most comprehensive critique of mass incarceration to date, the 464 page The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. In late May, several dozen conservatives including Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and former NRA President David Keene pulled together the first Right on Crime (ROC) Leadership Summit in Washington DC.

The ROC, an organization which boasts a coterie of members with impeccable right wing credentials, reiterated the need for conservatives to drive the process of prison reform. The Conference  “call to action” argued: “In our earnest desire to have safer neighborhoods, policy responses to crime have too often neglected core conservative values — government accountability, personal responsibility, family preservation, victim restoration, fiscal discipline, limited government and free enterprise.” Gingrich engaged in similar kinds of soul searching:  “Once you decide everybody in prison is also an American then you gotta really reach into your own heart and ask, is this the best we can do?”

All of this has precipitated another round of optimistic cries about the possibilities of a Left-Right Coalition on mass incarceration, including a high profile Time Magazine op-ed co-authored by Norquist and MoveOn.org co-founder Joan Blades.

While the spirit of reconciliation in criminal justice attracts most of the media attention, a number of pieces have also emerged rejecting any rush to positive judgment.  For example, fellows at the Brennan Center compiled a statistically based report which contends that careral change has not yet turned the corner while Black Agenda Report co-founderBruce Dixon asserted that Obama’s clemency measures would have no significant impact on mass incarceration.

However, another process, likely at least as important in the long run as number crunching, coalitions or clemency also has been gaining steam. The official voices of incarceration- politicians, corrections officials, private prison operators, prison guards unions and county sheriffs, are exploring changing discourse and cosmetic reform in order to avoid systemic restructuring. In the business world, they call this re-packaging.

Re-Packaging Mass Incarceration: Carceral Humanism

Currently this re-packaging assumes several forms.  One of the most important is carceral humanism or what some people refer to as incarceration lite.  Carceral humanism recasts the jailers as caring social service providers. The cutting edge of carceral humanism is the field of mental health. According to a recent report by the Treatment Advocacy Center, in 2012 the US had over 350,000 people with serious mental health issues in prisons and jails as compared to just 35,000 in the remaining state mental health facilities.  Prisons and jails have become the new asylums and the jailers are waking up to the fact that mental health facilities also represent a new cash cow. Likely the most important examples of carceral humanism are happening in California. There Governor Jerry Brown has played a shell game called realignment in which he’s transferred thousands of people from state facilities to county jails in order to comply with a Federal court order to reduce the state prison population. To help counties adapt to all these new prisoners, the Governor put up $500 million to the state’s sheriffs to build extensions onto their jails. In response, the Sheriffs had to come to Sacramento to pitch for a slice of that money. They didn’t come talking about public safety. Their mantra focused on caring-providing opportunities and improved circumstances for those in custody. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s summary from Lake County, one of the 15 winners out of 36 submissions, is illustrative:

“$20 million for a new Type II, 40-bed women’s jail with a new stand alone 39-bed Medical/Mental Health Services building with program space, a new administration building, and renovations so that existing space can accommodate programs.”

The new jails are about institutionalizing the funding of mental health and other services behind the walls, further diverting money from the already bare bones social services in communities.  The Lake County proposal also featured another prominent strain of carceral humanism- a woman’s jail or in the present corrections jargon, a “gender-responsive” facility. Since mainstream research now argues that women experience incarceration differently than men, law enforcement is waving the gender banner to access more funding for construction.  Los Angeles lies at the cutting edge in this regard. In March the LA Board of Supervisors authorized $5.5 million for consultants to draw up a plan for what some law enforcement people are calling a “women’s village.” Deputy Sheriff Terri McDonald of Los Angeles suggested that the new facility could be a place where “women and children could serve their time together.”

Carceral humanism has also surfaced in the repackaging of immigration detention centers.  The latest immigration prisons carry the label “civil detention” centers. The GEO Group, the nation’s second largest private prison operator, opened their latest such facility in Karnes Texas. TheLA Times called it a “pleasant surprise for illegal immigrants.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials boast that people detained in Karnes won’t be housed in cells but in “suites” holding eight people.  Those detained will be supervised not by guards or correctional officers but by “resident advisers.”

Repackaging 2: Non-Alternative Alternatives to Incarceration

A second form of repackaging mass incarceration falls under the heading of non-alternative alternatives to incarceration. These non-alternatives purport to change things but in essence simply perpetuate the culture of punishment.  The most common forms of these are Drug Courts, Mental Health Courts and Day Reporting Centers. While many of these may be well-intentioned and in some cases have positive effects, they typically involve heavy monitoring of a person’s behavior including frequent drug testing, limitations on movement and association, a whole range of involuntary but supposedly therapeutic  programs of dubious value and very little margin of error to avoid reincarceration.  Perhaps the most extreme example of a non-alternative alternative to incarceration, and one which is likely to gain increasing traction, is electronic monitoring.

While advocates claim electronic monitoring facilitates employment, building family ties and participation in community activities, my interviews with a number of people on a monitor have revealed a different experience.  Jean – Pierre Shackelford, who spent two years on an ankle bracelet in Columbus, Ohio said that he felt like his probation officer had him in a “choke hold” while he was on an ankle bracelet. He labelled monitoring “another form of control and slavery, 21^st century electronic style.” Shaun Harris, on a monitor for a year in Michigan called it a form of privatized incarceration, “it’s like you just turned my family’s house into another cell” was his comment. Shackelford and Harris, like many others I spoke with, both reported difficulty getting movement for family activities and a lack of clarity about what was and wasn’t permitted.  Shackelford finally took to going to church because that seemed to be the only activity his probation officer would approve.  Both Shackelford and Harris, like most people interviewed, complained that they could be put on 24 hour “lockdown” (meaning they couldn’t leave the house at all) for any reason for an indefinite period and there would be no way to appeal such a decision.  Even a late return home from work due to a delay in public transportation could result in a re-arrest. To make matters worse, most electronic monitors come with a daily user fee which ranges anywhere from five to twenty dollars a day.

While the punitive nature of ankle bracelet regimes is a cause for concern, the potential to implement exclusion zones with GPS-based monitors contains more serious long-term implications.  Exclusion zones are places where monitors are programmed not to let people go.  At the moment authorities mainly use exclusion zones to keep individuals with a sex offense history away from schools and parks. But such zones have the potential to become new ways to reconstruct the space of our cities, to keep the good people in and the bad people out.  This technology, which can be set up via smart phones, holds the possibility to turn houses, buildings, even neighborhoods into self-financing sites of incarceration.  In the meantime, firms like the GEO Group, which owns BI Incorporated, the nation’s largest provider of electronic monitoring technology and backup services, are experimenting with new target groups for ankle bracelets. In parts of California and Texas they’ve used electronic monitors on kids with school truancy records. Under a $370 million contract, BI already has thousands of people awaiting immigration adjudication on monitors. Packaged as an alternative these bracelets actually represent a new horizon for incarceration, finding ways to do it cheaper with technology through the private sector and then getting the user to pay, likely a  model that would line up squarely with Right on Crime’s notions of reform..

Re-Packaging: Why Now?

Most commentators attribute the spirit of change in criminal justice to a belated recognition of the fundamental irrationality of spending so much money locking up so many people for so long.  As Grover Norquist put it, “Conservatives may have wanted more incarceration than was necessary in the past, so what we’re trying to do is find out about what works.”

Such analyses make perfect sense but they also ignore a big picture political question. Mass incarceration is becoming a flash point of rebellion and resistance, with African American communities the most visible hot spot. Mass incarceration and the racialized vagaries of criminal justice have been going on for decades but recently we’ve seen new levels of anger and frustration in reaction to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant, as well as to the sentencing of Marissa Alexander.  Even mainstream Black commentators like Melissa Harris-Perry appear incensed.  At the grassroots level we’ve witnessed campaigns against stop and frisk, solitary confinement, mandatory minimums, crack cocaine laws and a host of new jails and prisons.  On the ideological plane, the notion of the New Jim Crow, categorizing  mass incarceration as a new form of slavery and segregation is catching on.  People are latching onto the idea of mass incarceration as a systemic problem that can only be solved with a vast redirecting of resources into the communities that have been devastated by imprisonment.  In other words, mass incarceration requires a total paradigm shift. The situation has the potential to explode.  Politicians and business people don’t like explosions.  When explosions appear a genuine possibility it is time to talk reform, time to re-package.

To make matters worse for purveyors of the carceral status quo, the immigrants’ rights movement has also been erupting over the last decade. From the immigrant worker strikes and demonstrations of 2006 to the endless string of demonstrations by the Dreamers and the Dream Defenders in the face of continued mass deportations, a steady stream of unrest has materialized.  With the changing national demographics, key players in criminal justice need to be seen to be doing something if they want to maintain their power.

Lastly, there is the movement inside the prisons themselves.  The hunger strikes at Pelican Bay in California and in Washington’s Northwest Detention Center coupled with the outpouring of solidarity these actions prompted,  pose a serious threat to the already heavily smeared image of US prisons. In addition, even once notorious political prisoners are gaining increasing legitimacy. Captives from across several generations are attracting large coteries of supporters.  This includes high profile individuals who have served decades behind bars, individuals  like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Albert Woodfox, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Russell Maroon Shoatz and Leonard Peltier, along with more contemporary prisoners like Lynne Stewart (recently released), Marie Mason and Chelsea Manning. Inside and beyond the walls, there is rebellion in the air.

This reality raises another question: whether a Left-Right Coalition can deliver even enough change to calm the waters. Mass incarceration has become such a fundamental part of how the US addresses issues of race, crime, poverty, gender and inequality, it appears unlikely to collapse from gradual reforms whether inspired by carceral humanism, punitive alternatives to incarceration or more genuine critique. As with civil rights, pressure from below will be required, from a social movement that has the creativity to envision an alternative, the skills and legitimacy to mobilize the people who are most directly affected, and the political power to make their voices be heard and get others to join them. Perhaps this social movement is, to borrow a phrase from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, making the path by walking at this very moment.

James Kilgore is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).  He is a frequent commentator on mass incarceration, a social justice activist, and the author of three novels, all of which were written during his six and a half years of incarceration.  He is currently working on a primer on mass incarceration to be published by The New Press in 2015. He can be reached at waazn1@gmail.com   His writings are available at his website, www.freedomneverrests.com

via: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/06/repackaging-mass-incarceration/

San Quentin plans psychiatric hospital for death row inmates

Under court pressure to improve psychiatric care for deeply disturbed death row inmates, state officials are moving quickly to open a 40-bed hospital at San Quentin prison to house them.

The court-appointed monitor of mental health care in California's prison system reported to judges Tuesday that about three dozen men on death row are so mentally ill that they require inpatient care, with 24-hour nursing.

For now, they are being treated in their cells, but the state plans to have a hospital setting ready for them by November, according to documents filed Tuesday in federal court.

The plan calls for taking over and retrofitting most of a new medical unit recently built at the prison. A spokeswoman for the court's prison medical office said San Quentin officials plan to use medical facilities at other prisons if a shortage of beds arises as a result.

The urgency of psychiatric treatment for the mentally ill prisoners demands swift action, the court's monitor, Matthew Lopes, said in court papers. He said an agreement to provide the psychiatric wing at San Quentin was made possible by collaborative effort among the state, courts and prisoners' lawyers.

In December, after weeks of courtroom testimony on the treatment of about 10 unidentified death row prisoners, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ordered the state to provide condemned inmates access to inpatient psychiatric care. The court files show negotiations and planning began almost immediately.

Karlton also ordered mental health screenings of all 720 condemned men at San Quentin. Those evaluations concluded in late May with the identification of 37 condemned men for admission to the psychiatric unit. Lopes' report notes that San Quentin is bound to need room for additional patients.

Twenty female prisoners who are sentenced to die and housed elsewhere are not covered by Karlton's order.

Some analysts see irony in providing for the long-term mental health of those sentenced to die.

"This is the only place on Earth where you'd be talking about building a psychiatric hospital for condemned prisoners," said Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring, who has written about the U.S. capital punishment system. "It is a measure of American greatness and American silliness at the same time."

Federal courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute people who are not aware of what is happening to them. "We are curing them to make them executable," Zimring said.

But San Francisco prisoners' rights lawyer Michael Bien, who argued the San Quentin case in court last fall, regards adequate psychiatric care as a fundamental right.

"The reality is these guys are going to live in this place for a long time, and you need to see they get the care they need," Bien said.

California, with the nation's largest death row, has not killed a prisoner since 2006. Later that year, state executions were stayed when condemned inmate Michael Morales challenged the lethal injection procedures.

The state attempted to adopt new protocols involving different drugs in 2010, but they remain under legal challenge.




In the interim, 44 inmates have died of age, disease, drug overdose or suicide, with the latter raising concerns about psychiatric care on death row. One of those who committed suicide was Justin Helzer, who helped his brother kill five people and dump their dismembered bodies into a Sacramento river in 2000.

According to last year's testimony, Helzer was found by San Quentin doctors to be delusional and schizophrenic and often refused medication. In 2010, he blinded himself by jabbing pens through the sockets of his eyes. In 2013, he made a noose out of his bed sheet and hanged himself in his cell.

Corrections officials had testified that psychiatric care for death row inmates was limited. Those sent to a psychiatric hospital within another state prison were quarantined from the rest of the population, limiting therapy.

San Quentin had set up unlicensed beds, providing the equivalent of outpatient treatment within a corner of its medical building. Karlton found both provisions inadequate.

Unlike other psychiatric hospitals within men's prisons, the one at San Quentin will be run by the corrections department and not the Department of State Hospitals.

Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has not sought legislative approval for the San Quentin project. Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer said the state plans to use savings in prison mental health services elsewhere in the state to run the unit.