Crime in the California State Assembly

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

jQuery(document).ready(function($) { window.setTimeout('loadTwitter_36532()',5000);window.setTimeout('loadFBShare_36532()',5000); }); function loadTwitter_36532(){ jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('.dd-twitter-36532').remove();$.getScript

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.”

 
Add Comment
 
 
Michael and Maritza of the Youth Justice Coalition spoke up beautifully last night at a meeting with the interim Acting Chief of the Probation Department. Here's what I wrote for LA Progressive:

LA Youth vs. the Probation Department: Who Is More in Need of Intervention?
 
          When kids get in trouble, it's better to provide community-based services than lock them up in one of the county's expensive and scandal-ridden juvenile halls or probation camps. Everyone seemed to agree on that, including Cal Remington, interim Acting Chief of the LA County Probation Department, at a public meeting called by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and the Empowerment Congress on Wednesday night at the supervisor's Exposition Park offices.
          Problems in the department--the largest probation department in the world--are well known. Probation, with its $700-million budget, is monitored by the Department of Justice and sued by the ACLU. Young people are incarcerated for offenses no more serious than truancy and curfew violations. Probation officers known for physically abusing youth in their care remain on the job. The department releases illiterate minors--high school degrees in hand--who've been deprived of any meaningful education while locked up. It incarcerates a disproportionate number of Black and Latino youth. It fails to assess and treat the mental illnesses that contribute to the trouble kids get into and fails to coordinate with the Department of Mental Health or take sufficient advantage of the funding provided for mental health services by Proposition 63. It releases young people with no support for their re-entry into the community, often without such basics as a Social Security card, school transcript, or other documents they will need to move on with their lives.
          Remington came out of retirement after the former chief retired (or was encouraged to do so). He's in charge only until April 19 when Donald Blevins comes on board, and he pledged to take the first steps of setting new priorities and a new vision  for the department.
          Ralph Miller, president of Local 685 of the Probation Officers union, expressed frustration. "These are all reforms that probation officers were seeking years ago. In 1981 we went out on strike -- not for money but for services. So what happened? In 1982, the Board of Supervisors decided that you don't need any aftercare or mental health treatment or parenting or individualized education. They dropped the requirement that probation officers have a college degree and they cut the pay."
          Ridley-Thomas pointed out that he's a single vote on the Board of Supervisors and some other supervisors don't believe in intervention and re-entry strategies but default to the traditional strategies of enforcement and incarceration. (Suggested action: Contact your Supervisor!)
          There are other obstacles to reform, such as a district attorney's office that consistently demands the harshest treatment.
          Remington explained, "By law, if a minor is brought to us by law enforcement, we take that minor, but we don't have to put that minor into the system. The judges don't want to put them all into custody either," but he noted, if there's no program in the community, judges, too, will default to incarceration.
          So how do we get more community programs? Where is the money to come from?
          Michael (who didn't want to give his last name) spoke on behalf of the Youth Justice Coalition and asked Chief Remington if he would support the group's 1% campaign, redirecting a mere 1% of his budget to intervention, youth employment, re-entry and other services. In other words, use existing money to accomplish exactly what everyone claims to want.
          Remington looked taken aback: "That's a lot of money," he said.
          "Send us your documents," said Ridley-Thomas. "We'll take a look at them."
          Maritza Galvez, also of the Coalition, asked if Remington would support State Senator Leland Yee's S.B. 399 which would allow for the possibility of parole hearings in a limited number of cases in which a juvenile was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. (A bill which, incidentally, has been watered down and watered down in an attempt to get votes from our elected representatives who may or may not be afraid of kids but are terrified of being seen as soft on crime. Soft? No country other than the United States permits such a draconian sentence for minors.)
          "There's nothing more expensive than a child's life," said a former probation officer, impatient after hearing more talk about money. "I left the department because I didn't think it was designed to help children."
          The money exists. Remington has the right vision. But do we have the political will to change the design?
Add Comment
 
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.
Add Comment