Crime in the California State Assembly

by Diane Lefer posted on Monday, 30 August 2010One Comment

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I don’t have the heart to write this.

For years,  Sen. Leland Yee has been trying to convince the California State legislature to reform JLWOP–  Juvenile Life Without Parole, that is, minors being sentenced to remain behind bars till they die. Yee is not only a State Senator, but also a child psychologist who knows very well that the judgment of a teenager is very different from the judgment of an adult.

This year, a much watered-down version of The Fair Sentencing for Youth Act passed the Senate, making it possible, under some limited circumstances, for a prisoner who’d committed the offense while a minor to go to court and seek to have the sentence changed to 25-to-life. That’s still a life sentence, but offers a glimmer of hope –a parole hearing to be held after serving at least 25 years. Few prisoners would qualify for the hearing. The  California Board of Prison Terms routinely denies parole anyway or tells prisoners to return for another hearing in ten years or more. Senator Yee’s bill would not have opened the floodgates releasing violent offenders back into the community.

Last week, his bill failed to pass the Assembly.

We are all shamed, but it’s time to call out the people who belong on the roll call of shame, the Assembly members who so fear being called soft on crime that they couldn’t bring themselves to do the right and rational thing.

Their names: Anthony Adams, Joel Anderson, Juan Arambula, Bill Berryhill, Tom Berryhill, Marty Block, Joan Buchanan, Anna M. Caballero, Charles Calderon, Connie Conway, Paul Cook, Chuck DeVore, Nathan Fletcher, Jean Fuller, Ted Gaines, Martin Garrick, Danny Gilmore, Curt Hagman, Diane Harkey, Alyson Huber, Kevin Jeffries, Steve Knight, Ted Lieu, Dan Logue, Fiona Ma, Jeff Miller, Brian Nestande, Roger Niello, Jim Nielsen, Chris Norby, Anthony Portantino, Jim Silva, Cameron Smyth, Jose Solorio, Audra Strickland, Norma Torres, Van Tran, Michael Villines

The bill might have passed if other Assembly members had shown up and taken a stand and voted for it: Wesley Chesbro, Hector De La Torre, Cathleen Galgiani, Tony Mendoza, Pedro Nava, V. Manuel Perez

As parole board commissioners like to say in their routine boilerplate denials, these people “lack insight and express no remorse.”

 
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LWOP! 02/14/2010
 

That stands for Life Without Parole -- draconian sentences handed down on children who are tried as adults. Once sent to adult prison, they will NEVER be eligible for release on parole.

Who are they? Well, take Sara Kruzan. Growing up in abusive surroundings, she was raped at age thirteen by a man who then turned her out as a prostitute. Where was society then? Where was the help she needed? But three years later when she killed him, the system was quick to condemn her. Today, Sara Kruzan is in prison at Chowchilla and unless the law is changed--and made retroactive--she'll never be free.

With Hector Aristizábal's nonprofit, ImaginAction, I'm working with the Youth Justice Coalition to create theatre we can perform on the streets of LA to let people know what LWOP means and what it's doing to kids.

250 young people are doomed to die in prison in California, more than 2500 in the US. No other country in the world permits this sentence.

 Here in California, State Senator Leland Yee has introduced legislation to end the practice. Unable to get it passed, he keeps watering it down and watering it down. Will it finally pass? 

 We all have to let our representatives know we won't consider them soft on crime if they use their heads and hearts and make State policy a rational one.
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