By KALW CrossCurrents 
From KALW by Rina Palta
There's always a big tug of war between those who think that we should rehabilitate prisoners and those who think that nothing works--that if punishment doesn't knock the sense into inmates they are more or less destined for a life of crime. In the gray area between those two sides, there's a middle ground--those who believe in "evidence-based corrections." Essentially, these folks say, love and understanding won't necessarily get criminals to abide by the law, but some things can work if they're done right. Things like education and vocational training. These "evidence-based" folks ask that resources go into evaluating programs to see which work. And they say, in the long-run, effective programs can cut down on the number of people going back to prison, resulting in a reduction in the amount of money we throw into our prison system. So as the state is looking to cut the prison population by some 40,000 inmates, this term "evidence-based" rehabilitation is coming up a lot.
For this current fiscal year the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation cut $250 million from rehabilitation programs in prisons. That means at places like San Quentin, there are few state-run programs left. Few drug rehab programs, few educational programs and few vocational training opportunities for prisoners, unless they're provided by volunteers.
According to CDCR, these budget cuts are not a catastrophic gutting of the department's mandate to rehabilitate inmates, but an opportunity to "streamline" programs and make CDCR programming more "evidence-based"--essentially clean up the state's repertory of programs and throw out anything that can't demonstrate that it cuts down on recidivism.
As Paul Golaszweski, the policy analyst at the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) in charge of keeping tabs on adult prison operations told me, CDCR's rehabilitation programs have a spotty success record. "They're not always implemented using the best practices," Golaszweski said. "Nor have they always seen the best results."
So cutting out the waste and rebuilding successful programs seems like a good idea, right?
Here's the problem: Along with cuts to rehabilitation, CDCR was forced to slash its overall budget as well. And a lot of the cuts ended up coming from the departments that collect data, oversee programs and train prison workers in best practices for effective outcomes. According to reports that CDCR gave the LAO, Adult Programs funding went from $46 million down to $14 million. And the Fidelity Unit, which is tasked with providing "formative evaluations, program development, continuous quality improvement and technical assistance to ensure fidelity and quality" of CDCR programs went from $16 million to $10 million.
So how do you institute evidence-based programs without having people who collect evidence, analyze it and turn it into new methods?
"More slowly," is the answer I got.
Despite staff cuts, CDCR has a position dedicated to addressing media requests regarding, well, cuts. Here's what spokesperson Peggy Bengs told me:
"We’ve had to slow down somewhat. You know, our initial plan was more ambitious, but we are still pursuing the same concepts. We are still moving forward with evidence-based programming. We’re still moving forward with the new science-based assessment tools. We’re still moving forward with those programs that have been shown to reduce recidivism. We can’t move sometimes as quickly as we wanted to in the past, but we’re still targeting our resources on evidence-based programs."
So for now, streamlining the CDCR look like evidence-based cuts more than evidence-based corrections.
For more on reducing prison costs and the prison population, check out our story on the so-called "early release program," a piece funded in part through Spot.Us.
Posted by KALW CrossCurrents on 03/30/10Last year, more than two million people got married in the United States…and about a million got divorced.
Marriage creates a web of rights and obligations, and when two people break up, that doesn’t mean the relationship is over, at least the legal relationship. There's still the question of who gets the kid for the Christmas holiday... and who pays off the charge debt on the Sears card.
These are the sorts of issues tackled in our nation’s family courts. As part of a series funded by Spot Us, we sent KALW’s Rina Palta to Alameda County’s courts for two weeks. During that time, she interviewed a family law judge about his experiences on the front lines of one of the law’s messiest institutions
Posted by Spot. Us on 12/21/09Hi Folks,
Just wanted to let you all know that our first radio segment from this series aired today on KALW's Crosscurrents. You can hear it at
http://www.kalwnews.org/audio/californias-superior-court-system
More to come!
Posted by Rina Palta on 12/04/09It's been a week since I sat in on a penalty hearing for Christopher Evans, convicted of killing Tina Rose and Tommy Lee Brown in 2001. Last Monday, the lawyers in the case laid to rest their arguments and the jury retreated to decide what the penalty would be: life in prison without parole or death. No one knew how long it would take for the jury to come back, and the deputy district attorney, Michael Nieto, defense attorney William DuBois, and family members of both the victims had beenin and out of the courthouse all of last week, staying nearby in case word came that the jury had reached a verdict. Then this morning, the rumor spread and various parties began filtering into Judge Vernon Nakahara's chambers.
At 9:30AM, Tommy Lee Brown's family arrived in a big burst of energy, filling up the small hallway on the 5th floor of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse.
At 10:30, everyone was still waiting, as Tina Rose's family hadn't yet arrived. Lawyers milled about, bailiffs chatted about football and ate candies from the leftover Halloween stash, and Brown's family discussed Thanksgiving plans. All of a sudden, the elevator doors opened, Rose's family walked out, and the courtroom hastily assembled itself.
Brown's family filled up the entire second row of the prosectution's side of the courtroom. The bailiff thanked them for their composure over the past months of trial, making his job of keeping the courtroom orderly much easier. Today, he said, is an emotional day and whatever happens, whether they agree or disagree with the jury, he asked them to please keep their emotions harnessed. They could go outside if they needed to, take a moment in the hall to do whatever they needed to do, but there was some process the court would have to finish up, and he needed them to try their best to keep it together for a little longer.
At 11:08AM, the baliff brought out Chris Evans, who appeared to be breathing a little heavily. The room went dead silent.
At 11:10, you couldn't hear anything but the approaching clicks of the jurors' shoes. Minutes later, they filed by and were seated.
At 11:13, the bailiff announced, "Department eight is now in session" and the attorneys, who had stood as the jury walked in, took their seats.
"My understanding is that the jurors have reached a verdict," Judge Nakahara said. "We have, you're honor," said Juror #2.
The bailiff handed the envelope to the court clerk and she read: "We the jury fix the penalty at death."
Each juror confirmed the verdict. Members of Brown's family quietly nodded.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," the Judge said. "I have one final instruction." In a few moments, he said, I'll be dismissing you from this case and all the instructions you've been living by for months and months will no longer apply. It's your individual choice to discuss or not discuss this case with anyone. If there's any improper contact from anyone, please let the court know.
"I'll be sending you a thank-you note," he added. " Hopefully, you don't consider that improper contact." The jury laughed. The Judge thanked the jury for their extraordinary service and committment to seeing the case through. At 11:21--after less than 10 minutes--he dismissed them, and the crowd scattered: the jurors back to the jury room to retreive their things; the prosecutor outside to hug the victims' families before they packed into the elevator to gome home for the final time. William DuBois, Evans' attorney, was the last to leave and he looked crushed.
"This will be appealed to death!" he said, in response to my question. "There are a lot of appellant issues that came up during the guilt phase and the penalty phase." This jury, he said, "is a killing jury. We thought there were a few who would choose life." He paused. " It was a hard verdict," he said.
I asked him what he could possibly say at this point to his client, who was remanded by the judge to the reception center at San Quentin State Prison.
"Everything happens for a reason," he said. "That's the only way you can comfort them."
The attorneys return to court on March 3 for further motions on the case.
Posted by Rina Palta on 11/23/09The line outside the Hayward Hall of Justice is notorious--people who want to make sure they're on time to whatever appointment they have inside often arrive an hour early just to be sure to make it through security. On the plus side, standing on the sidewalk allows the opportunity to overhear conversations--and since the Hayward facility combines every form of court business under one roof, from traffic court and small claims, to civil suits and felonies, there's plenty to overhear. The person in front of me, to his companion: "See? This is better than sitting at home on discipline all day, isn't it?" And behind me: "So. How'd Omar end up killing someone, anyway?"
Even while not eavesdropping on other people's conversations, going to court as an observer feels vagueley voyeuristic, and that's particularly true in family court. I spent day three of my two-week embed in Alameda County's court system (a project funded through Spot.us) in the courtroom of family law Commissioner Charles Smiley and it felt like peering into neighbors' windows with binoculars.
Family Court is a place where a lot of incredibly personal negotiations take place in public: the breakdown of marriage and other fallouts from once-loving relationships gone awry, like child custody, distribution of assets, parsing out of debts, and alimony. Over the course of the judge making all of these determinations, who gets and has to do what when, people bring up a lot of things about each other--pillow talk, annoying quirks, fights, spending habits, other things that happen between consenting adults that were never intended to be repeated--that may or may not be pertinent, but are nearly all now part of the public record. Political careers have inadvertently been destroyed and launched in family court.
As people file into the room in the morning, the court attendant, the resident version of a bailiff, makes a couple of announcements.
"Do not talk to each other at the table," he says. "Do not argue with each other. Do not argue with the judge. DO NOT ARGUE WITH THE JUDGE." If things get unruly, he says, sheriff's deputies will be called.
Some people's ex-partners haven't shown up for their court date. Others sit on opposite sides of the audience from one another and some wait side-by-side for their turn before the judge. A young man and woman sitting in the second row are among the first called.
The woman dismisses her lawyer and promptly gives up the right to custody of her three-and-a-half-year-old child to the man, the child's father, who then requests leave to move, with the toddler to Wisconsin. The mother agrees. The Commissioner goes over the document slowly, making sure that the mother truly knows what she's agreeing to and she says she does. In five minutes it's over and they both leave.
Other cases are much more contentious, like one that involves a man, his wife, her daughter, the daughter's significantly older-looking baby daddy, and their toddler. The child's mother evidently has had drug problems and the grandparents have physical custody of the toddler.
"The mediator says it's time to increase the exposure of the child to the father," Commissioner Smiley says. The grandmother doesn't seem to like that idea--the father is always late to meetings, she says, and refuses to talk to her about diapers, food, or any of the baby's needs. The tension at the front of the room is thick--no one at the table looks at the father, who in turn, stares down at his crossed arms.
"You can't just go to a visit and then shut down communication," the Commissioner says. The father starts to talk. "Wait a minute and listen," Smiley says. "Don't just sit there and think about what you're going to say next." He tells the father that he needs to communicate with the baby's other family and that he needs among other things, car insurance and proper safety restraints for the car before he's allowed any lengthy visits with the child. The father interrupts--all these accusations against him are false, he says.
I listen to people talk all the time, the Commissioner says, "One says the sky is red, the other says it's green. I deal with perception a lot. Whether it's true or not, I can't ignore it," he says. This theme will come up a lot over the course of the day--that perceptions held by either party in these disputes, are valid. When a mother complains that a father's insistence on after-school care for a child instead of spending afternoons at her house is a direct result of him not wanting the child exposed to her more, the father disagrees and the two start to bicker.
I can see both sides of this, the Commissioner says. And it's important that the father acknowledge the mother's perceived slight in order to come to an agreement. The mother also has to acknowledge that the father is deferring to her education plan for the child. Every single case is a delicate negotiation, with both parties looking to the judge to sort out to some degree what their new, post-marital relationships will look like--how they'll manage to sanely stay tethered to someone they no longer want to share the future with. In fact, it's amazing how much people are willing to go through to stay apart (and I should note, the foresighted maturity they often show in not completely isolating one another).
One separated couple has a 5-month old son. Which means that about 14 months ago, they at least weren't repulsed by each other. They now live in different Bay Area cities, each with a teenager from previous relationships, and they both want to be completely involved in raising their infant. The mom takes the baby Sunday afternoon through Wednesday evening and every other weekend. The father has the baby Wednesday night through Sunday night and every other weekend. Here's where it gets complicated and where Commissioner Smiley's eyes start to get wide: the mother works in San Mateo, the father works from home. So every day that the baby's with the mother, the mother and father meet up twice at police stations in San Leandro and Dublin to exchange the child so the father can watch him during the day. The problem is that the commute to either person's preferred drop-off point is long and it's draining both these parents beyond even the normal wear and tear of the first few months of constant crying, feedings, and little sleep.
After about 20 minutes of trying to get the schedule straight, the Commissioner concludes that there is simply no simple way to work this out--it's hard and it's going to be hard for a while, he says. He tells them that they're looking out for the best interests of their child, and he commends them both. But there is simply no good way to have a 5-month-old infant, with two parents who work and don't live together and have other children to care for, without it being a severe inconvenience to everyone. They'll have to power through, he says, and it'll get better.
The day ends with the tail end of a divorce trial. Over the course of the afternoon, the former couple, with their lawyers, have been working out an agreement. They read through it for the Commissioner's approval and so that both parties can hear it for a final time. They each get a car, one gets the house. One takes on their daughter's college loans, with promises of restitution from the other. They divide up the bank accounts, the credit cards, the Macy's card, the Express card, and everyone agrees to everything.
Does anyone have any questions, the Commissioner asks?
The man raises his hand. "Is there a paper that says I'm no longer married?"
"I have this dissolution paper, that proves you're no longer married, if that's what you mean. It's a temporary paper--you'll get the real one later," the Commissioner says and then he laughs."You want me to make you a copy?"
The man nods vigorously. Everyone smiles and the day is over.
Stay tuned: The day in family court raised a lot of questions, so I'll be interviewing a commissioner in the next couple of weeks. Do you have any questions for a family law judge or questions/comments about anything courts-related? If so, leave them in the comments and we'll do our best to investigate.
Posted by Rina Palta on 11/23/09The lawyers I know seem like the busiest people in California-they live with a sense of urgency that's distinctly East Coast. "This motion has to be filed tonight! By midnight!" they say. "I've been working for 50 hours straight, on twelve cups of coffee, and I'm lovin it!" I always thought that courts would be jam packed with over-scheduled attorneys, all tapping their feet, late to the next appointment, and judges who constantly admonish meandering witnesses to "stop wasting time and get on with it!."
Yet inside the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse, where I spent day two of my two-week embed in Alameda County's court system as part of an explanatory series funded through Spot.us, things are slow. Painfully, deliberately slow. Instead of making them frantic, those long school nights of poring through archaic law texts, followed by massive career-threatening exams, seem to have made attorneys incredibly patient.
During yesterday's bout in a death penalty hearing, I became very curious about jurors. Who are these people who are chosen on behalf of all of us, to make some of society's toughest decisions? Every day, hundreds of U.S. citizens show up to report for jury duty at the Davidson Courthouse, but comparatively few (12 per trial, with 2 or 3 alternates) actually end up serving on a trial. With that question in mind, I spent most of the day in Judge Trina Thompson's courtroom, observing jury selection. And what I saw was comfortingly unhurried.
The case, California v. Atualevao, will be a civil hearing to review the state's petition to designate Atoa Atualevao as a sexually violent predator. "Sexually Violent Predator" (SVP) is a designation put into law by the California legislature in 1996 and it's meant to apply to extremely dangerous sex offenders who are mentally ill and likely to reoffend and the state feels cannot be released into the general public after their prison term is complete. If a jury deems a person an SVP, they are transferred to a state mental hospital--it used to be Atascadero, but in 2005, the state completed a new facility in Coalinga explicitly to house the state's Sex Offender Committment Program--and they can be kept there for as long as the state sees fit, meaning, they could be kept there for the rest of their lives.
Atualevao's case history was not immediately available, nor was either attorney in the case available to comment, but according to the state's Meghan's Law site, Atualevao is a registered sex offender, and from what came out in jury selection, he's a repeat offender with a violent history. As Judge Thompson started throwing out phrases like "rape" and "sexual penetration with a foreign object," the 50 or so potential jurors started to shift in their seats, and one thing became clear: this jury is going to have to deal with some extremely uncomfortable things.
The court clerk called up 12 random names and they took seats in the jury box: a couple of MBAs, a few lawyers, a carpenter, a school teacher, a massage therapist, and a smattering of other professional types. The first task, Judge Thompson said, would be to relax and get comfortable, and to facilitate this, she'd start off the questioning herself. Judge Thompson joked with the jurors, asked them about their jobs, their experiences with conflct resolution and mediation--it was almost like a job interview, and jurors, most of whom probably grumbled for weeks about having to go in and serve jury duty, all of a sudden seemed eager to please, like they wanted to be picked.
"Dynamics change when you're in the box," Elizabeth Semel, a professor at UC-Berkeley's law school and director of the school's Death Penalty Clinic, told me. Semel does not comment on cases where she doesn't know the specifics, but I called her up for insight into the general process of picking juries. "Judges are figures of authority, and jurors are inclined to try to please them," Semel said. That's why it's important for a judge to allow plenty of time for lawyers, who jurists tend to be more honest with, question potential jurors. "Plus, no one wants to be considered unfair. They don't realize that being dismissed is not a judgment on their character, they just might have some biases specific to that case. That doesn't make them not fit to serve in a different case."
She said there are two types of challenges a lawyer can make to get a juror dismissed: for cause, which means that the lawyer believes and can demonstrate that the juror has actual bias against the defendant, which would make them unable to be fair and impartial; and peremptory, where an attorney can dismiss a juror without giving a reason. A judge can agree to dismissing any number of jurors for cause, but an attorney is restricted to a specific number of peremptory challenges, depending on the type of case, and only so long as the attorney isn't getting rid of jurors to say, stack the jury with people of particular races or genders. Meanwhile, there are other requirements that come up in specific kinds of cases. In a case where the death penalty is a possibility, you can't have jurors that are fundamentally against the death penalty--each juror must say that they would be willing to vote for the death penalty in certain circumstances.
From a defense attorney's standpoint, Semel said, "you end up with a jury that's not only able to impose the death penalty, but people who are for the death penalty tend to be more pro-prosecution" and presumably, more likely to convict in the first place. "In a society increasingly opposed to the death penalty, you're excluding from juries some 40 or 50 percent of people who would be otherwise qualified," she said.
More than anything, Semel said, a defense lawyer's questioning is designed to find a jury that will listen. With sensationalistic portraits of crime and courts in the media and popular culture, jurors will take ideas with them into the courtroom, especially in emotional cases where violence or sex crimes might be at issue, "and that's not always consistent with what happens in a court room or what's consistent with the rule of law" she said. "Like the presumption of innocence."
Stanford law professor Robert Weisberg added another perspective on jury selection. He said that an experienced lawyer who tries the same types of cases will over time, start to come up with profiles of ideal jurors. Prosecutors, who are particularly prone to specialize, are great at this, he said. Weisberg added that in high-stakes, well-funded cases like lawsuits against big businesses, a defense attorney might even hire a jury consultant to research demographics. But ultimately, "lawyers know that there are a certain number of people that they won't be able to get out of a jury," he said. "That's when they start using their questioning not to expose a bias in the juror, but to start to seduce the jurors into their way of thinking."
Back in Judge Thompson's courtroom, the two MBAs, a teacher, and one lawyer had fallen off the jury by the end of the day, and the defense attorney hadn't even asked a question yet. A nurse, a judicial commissioner, a student, and girlscout leader had been called up to fill their slots and the questioning process started all over again: Do you you think that someone who's committed sex crimes can ever move on? It says here that you went to a psychologist when you were in high school--was that a positive experience? Do you think that people in prisons are treated badly? The questioning was punctuated with periodic private conferences with attorneys in the judge's back room and afterwards, a lag time while the court reporter dragged her equipment back and forth. Around the room, people were starting to slump in their seats. The newspapers they had been reading in the morning were done and they were bored with the books they'd brought.
At 4:15pm, Judge Thompson looked up suddenly. "Oh, look at the time," she said, deciding that the jurors could leave for the day. "We've been moving so swiftly," Judge Thompson said. "It may not seem swift to you, but considering the delicacy of this case, it is."
NOTE: Wednesday is furlough day in the court system, but I'll be back with more on Thursday. Please leave any questions or insights in the comments.
Posted by Rina Palta on 11/18/09I remember visiting a courthouse once on a school field trip and a judge telling us, after annoyedly referencing both Perry Mason and Judge Judy, that "the court is nothing like you see on tv." After day one in my two-week embed at Alameda County's Superior Court, part of a series on the courts funded through Spot.us, I have to say that's not entirely true.
Yes, most of the courthouse is surprisingly serene. The first floor is a little bustley with civilians milling about, waiting for their shot at jury duty. The rest of the building, including the court rooms, is pretty sparse. And at first glance, even the criminal jury trial rooms, like Department 8, Judge Vernon Nakahara's chambers, are quiet, smallish, and lightly populated. But as the day wore on over in the criminal trials division, rhetoric flared, demonstrations ensued, and the courtroom started to live up to its dramatic grandeur.
On the docket today, People v. Christopher Evans. In April, 2001, Evans shot and killed Tina Rose, 28, and Tommy Lee Brown, 41, in her hair salon at 85th & E. 14th in Oakland. Rose's brother had punched Evans in the head, moments earlier on the street, and a friend had handed Evans a gun. When Evans walked into the salon, waving the gun and apparently seeking revenge, Brown attempted to intervene. Evans shot him twice, then chased down Rose and shot her in the back of the head. This jury convicted Evans of a count each of first and second degree murder earlier this year. Now, they reconvened to discuss punishment--specifically, whether Evans will serve life without parole for his crimes, or be put to death.
Being on a jury in a criminal trial looks tough enough, but it's hard to imagine being pulled in off the street (missing work the whole while) to sit through a gruesome, emotional, months-long legal tug of war, not be able to talk to anyone (including fellow jurors, your spouse, and even your therapist) about it, and then be asked, after all that, to sign off on an appropriate punishment--namely, whether or not to put a person that you've been staring at and talking about for months, whose 13-year-old child you've heard beg for his life, and whose victims' families sit about 10 feet away from you, to death. The jury, 5 men and 7 women of various backgrounds, looked a little worn down.
The prosecutor, however, deputy District Attorney Michael Nieto seemed energized as he opened up the day's arguments. Nieto spoke for about an hour, imploring the jury to do what he said was the right thing and the difficult thing, to sentence Evans to death. Nieto said that Evans had shown Rose no mercy when she begged him not to shoot her, that Evans hadn't cared that Brown himself was a father when he took his life. Nieto flashed through pictures of the crime scene as he spoke, showing a particularly graphic panoramic of a blood-pooled hair salon and another photo, a close-up taken of Rose's face just after she died.
Nieto said that as time passes and initial revulsion abates, victims of a crime like this fade and become historical characters, while the sympathy the public feels for them morphs and transfers to the criminal himself, who now appears vulnerable and pitiable. Nieto said that pity for the defendant was misplaced, and that the jury should choose death.
Evan's lawyer, William DuBois (a prominent Oakland defense attorney who's represented many a high profile defendant, including software engineer and convicted murderer Hans Reiser), took over after lunch, and began by instructing the jury that while it's Nieto's job as a prosecutor to do so, he was trying to manipulate them into unnecessarily killing another human being. While Nieto had spent his allotted time trying to ease the jury's conscience by assuring them that the case against Evans was indisputable and the justification for death legally called-for, DuBois made it personal.
The government, DuBois said, is trying to "stone Chris Evans to death." The members of the jury could cast the first stone, could "vote to kill Chris" or could vote for life, he said. Evans' acts, Dubois said, were 26 seconds out of a then-27-year life, clouded by a concussion sustained when Rose's brother hit him in the head--Evans defense had (unsuccessfully) centered around the idea that he still does not remember the murders he committed in a post-concussion haze. DuBois flashed images from a security camera outside of Rose's salon. The pictures show Evans hit hard, and then staggering to stay upright for 40 seconds before entering the store with a gun. While Evans had taken Rose's and Brown's lives irrationally and spontaneously, DuBois told the jury, if they choose the death penalty, they will have taken a life deliberately, after discourse and rationalization and ultimately, unnecessarily.
In closing, DuBois referred to an 8.5 by 8.5 space he'd spent the last part of the lunch break measuring out. That's the size of the cell Chris Evans will spend the rest of his life in if the jury sentences him to life without parole, DuBois said. He'll get visits from his family at first, but they'll taper off. Two iron slats and an hour of yard time per day will be his only connections to the outside world, until the day when a guard finds he hasn't finished his meal tray, knocks on the cell door, and finds Evans dead inside.
"They'll put him in a body bag, take him out, and he'll be free," DuBois said. "And that is enough."
The jury went to deliberate with instructions from Judge Nakahara to weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors in the case for themselves. They're expected back within the week.
Though listening in turn to Nieto and then DuBois made the decision to first execute, and then not, seem obvious, it's clearly a ridiculously difficult and fraught task. Even Jessie Brown, mother of the Tommy Lee Brown, told me she didn't know if Evans should get the death penalty for killing her son. Brown sat in the second row on the prosecution's side of the courtroom, crying lightly for much of the afternoon. She said she'd been to every single day of the legal proceedings against Evans, save one.
"I just wanted him to be punished," she said. "That's all."
Posted by Rina Palta on 11/17/09Thank you to everyone who donated! We've got enough to get started, which means starting Monday, I'll be spending two weeks in Alameda County's court system. Be sure and write in with any tips, suggestions, comments, and questions. Watch for updates on this blog and on kalwnews.org, and of course, tune into Crosscurrents, weekdays at 5pm on 91.7fm.
Posted by Rina Palta on 11/13/09The greater Bay Area is getting another prison complex. As part of a plan to get the prison system up to Constitutional snuff, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recently announced Stockton as the site of its new prison medical facility.
California likes to put its prisons away from major cities: Pelican Bay, Folsom, Susanville, Kern County (which has six CDCR facilities), and Stockton's San Joaquin County (which in about to have six). In the old days, places like Stockton--busted real estate market, high crime rate, and a nasty employment market--would jump at the chance to house a job-generating machine like a prison. But no longer.
Many in Stockton are not happy about becoming the state's new prison capital. And the Stockton Chamber of Commerce is while not seeking to halt the project, trying to get CDCR to include local actors in the decision-making process surrounding the new facility.
Recently, the state failed to convince localities to open community reentry facilities around the state. Public sentiment seems to be turning on solving our crime and overcrowding problems with new prison construction, but it's unclear whether the state can think outside the prison boom mentality of the late 20th century.
Posted by Rina Palta on 11/03/09In a somewhat surprising move, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton has announced his endorsement of Kamala Harris in her upcoming bid for state Attorney General.
Bratton is a famous figure in the law enforcement world. He was former Mayor Giuliani's NYPD Commissioner back in the cleaning-up-Manhattan days, and was perhaps the first law enforcement official to embrace and implement the infamous "broken windows" style of crime reduction. That theory, put forth in an Atlantic Monthly article by two criminologists, essentially amounts to the idea that if you clean up minor crimes--graffiti, loitering, and well, vandalism like broken windows--a community becomes a place where crimes are not committed, simply because it no longer exudes vulnerability and disorder.
Bratton's success and toughness in NYC has made him a hero to conservatives, so it's somewhat surprising that he's endorsed Harris, who's known for liberal stances like being anti-death penalty.
Bratton said he chose to endorse Harris because, "As a career prosecutor with a proven track record of innovation and success, Kamala Harris knows what it takes to effective fight crime and keep out streets safe...I know that when Kamala Harris is California's next attorney general, everyone in law enforcement - from police chiefs and sheriffs to the cops who walk the beat - will have an ally in California's attorney general."
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/19/09
Via Prison Photography, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics has a striking collection of prison-related art online, including this image, which is particularly grabbing because it makes a surprising point: women are the fastest-growing prison population in the state, in the country, and in the world.
Why? It's hard to say. Overall, the prison population has boomed since the 1980's, so it only seems natural that the numbers of women would increase as well--but proportionally, women still outnumber men compared to 30 years ago. One common explanation is the increasing participation of women in the narcotics industry, whether as users or dealers. Others contend that women are often arrested as accessories to crimes involving their husbands and boyfriends.
The National Organization for Women has expressed concern that women in prison are more vulnerable to abuse than male prisoners, because prisons were not designed with women (let alone mothers, which many female prisoners are) in mind. Indeed, a recent survey found that inmates at the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla report some of the highest levels of sexual abuse in the country.
In a related development, earlier this month, the US Appeals Court for the 8th Circuit found that the state of Arkansas violated a female prisoner's constitutional rights when they shackled her legs during child labor (apparently, a common practice, even for inmates with no history of violence).
As the population of women in prison continues to grow, it'll be interesting to see how correctional institutions evolve to respond to this population's needs--will the system become more rehabilitative? More focused on sustaining famiy relationships during incarceration? Will they not change at all? Should they change at all?
For more topical viewing, I'd also reccommend Jane Evelyn Atwood's photographic series, for which she travelled around the world, photographing women in prisons in several different countries.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/15/09
In an effort to stop up the bleeding budget, the Governor ordered furlough days for some 189,000 state workers earlier this year--about 70,000 of whom work in the correctional system. Turns out, according to a state senate report released this morning, you can't just order prison workers to take a beach day and expect things like transporting inmates, patrolling yards, and administering medications to mentally ill prisoners to work themselves out. The report, ordered by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and completed by the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes, found that many prison workers simply aren't taking furlough days--they're working them, and simultaneously accruing future vacation time, which is a financial liability. The report says that while savings for this unpaid vacation time may show this year, correctional workers are accruing time off faster than they can use it, and this will eventually cost the state more money than it's saving--an estimated $52 million.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/14/09When prison reform advocates talk about reducing Calfornia's prison budget, I don't think this is what they have in mind. Over the past few weeks, CDCR has slashed $280 million from educational, vocational, and drug rehab programs around the state, like this one at Donovan State Prison near San Diego.
At the California Institution for Women, the warden has taken to the streets to round up community members willing to volunteer to keep services running. Still, the prison will cut the majority of its rehab beds.
Ironically, CDCR just released a report showing a "substantial reduction" in recidivism for those who complete such programs.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/14/09
Patrick J. Boyd, San Francisco's Chief Probation Officer has decided to retire after 18 months in office and 37 years in corrections. He's been a fairly progressive voice in the San Francisco law enforcement community, a frequent presence at talks and conferences on developing reentry projects in the county. The Superior Court has begun a nationwide search for his replacement.
Meanwhile, Matier and Ross are reporting that Sheriff Hennessey is making moves towards a 9th term, adding that "if Hennessey decides not to run for sheriff this time out, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi will."
It's not often you see a legislator and community activist run for sheriff, but Mirkarimi clearly has a taste for law enforcement. His propensity for catching crooks while jogging around his Western Addition district has earned him a nickname, "the sweat-shirted crusader."
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/08/09Yesterday, the Sacramento Bee published a letter from Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate. His letter was basically a response to a SacBee editorial criticising state leadership for not moving forward effectively to reduce prison overcrowding. He also mentioned something I've been hearing a lot from the Governor, legislators, and in media--he said that a major state priority is reforming the parole system, which in its new incarnation, "will focus more resources on serious and violent offenders while reducing the churning of low-level offenders."
I've taken issue with that sort of phrasing, because it fails to acknowledge one important thing: some of the criminals with the nastiest, most horrific records (such as sex offenders) are statistically the least likely to commit new crimes. In the post-Garrido era, that's a hard truth to acknowledge, but it's certainly worth our leaders' consideration if they really want to reduce recidivism.
Ryken Grattet is a professor of Sociology at UC-Davis and co-author of perhaps the most comprehensive report (pdf) on California's parole system. He has long been advocating a parole system that focuses on a parolee's likelihood to reoffend, rather than categorizing them by crime, which he says is less predictive of their future risk. I asked him to weigh in on the current state of parole reform and whether it's going in the right direciton. He said that there have been some moves toward a risk-based system:
For example, they adopted a risk assessment and violation decision-making tool that determines, based upon offender risk and violation type, whether or not a parolee should be returned to prison or placed in a program for a given violation. An evaluation of the new risk assessment tool and the new decision tool is supposed to be released any day now (by UCI Center for Evidence Based Corrections). I'm anxious to hear how this has worked. Also, the legislature also passed new caseload guidelines last month that aim to reduce caseloads from roughly 75 to 40 cases per agent, presumably eliminating or dramatically reducing supervision for the least risk prone parolees. This is significant progress. However, in both the decision tool and the new caseload plan they continue separate out violent and sexual offenders for different treatment. In our research, we found that on average these parolees tend to pose lower risk, but the department justifies different (i.e., harsher) treatment of these parolees' violations because of the bad behavior they have done in the past. So, by sticking to these categories of offenders (sexual, violent) they have retained the core element of offense-based system, while attempting move toward a more risk-based framework for all of the others who do not have one of those offense types.
Also, I don't care for the term "low-level" offenders, because it is kind of misleading. Many of those "low-level" offenders are churners, responsible for lots of violations and mayhem. Moreover, it continues the focus on offender types, which obscures more than it reveals, especially when coupled with the common assumption that offenders specialize more than they do.
Ryken
As parole reform moves forward, we'll keep you updated on the details, and will continue to ask local experts, community members, and those involved in the system to weigh in.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/06/09This is an interesting look into San Quentin from Sports Illustrated NBA writer Chris Ballard, who's bball team played a couple of games against lifers at the prison. I like that he doesn't hide his discomfort about playing an aggressive, physical game against a home-team made up of inmates, but I gotta say, I've been to SQ a few times, and no one's ever told me they'd "shoot through" me if an inmate with a knife held me hostage.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/05/09A couple of days ago, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers released a report evaluating drug courts throughout the country--and the results are generally not positive. The courts were established around the country in the late 1980's and 90's (and buoyed by Prop 36 in CA) by justice workers frustrated with the masses of minor drug cases in criminal courts. The new drug courts and community justice centers were intended to allow criminal courts to focus on more serious crimes, while emphasizing treatment instead of punishment for low-level offenders. Instead, NACDL claims many of the courts have failed to help those who need help most, and possibly violate defendents' constitutional rights.
Back in August, KALW's Ben Trefny talked to SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi about his concerns with the San Francisco's Community Justice Center.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/02/09
From KALW's Nathanael Johnson:
Yesterday, after multiple extensions, the contract for Alameda County's court appointed dependency lawyers finally expired. The state is legally required to employ these lawyers to represent families on the verge of being broken up by state workers. Lack of a contract could hurt children - who rely on these lawyers to be their advocates - as well as tax payers - who end up on the hook for more money (in the form of prison and law enforcement costs) if families are broken up that could have stayed together.
The Administrative Office of the Court (which takes the role of management in this labor dispute) is still in negotiation with the Alameda County Bar Association (which takes the role of labor). Last night the judges in dependency court indicated their support for continuing the relationship with the Alameda County Bar Association - but the judges and the Administrative Office of the Court want to shrink the pool of 54 lawyers who can take on dependency cases down to 24-40, according to dependency lawyer Cheryl Hicks. By having fewer people to keep track of the state would save some administrative costs - though it would not save money paid through fees because lawyers in this pool are only paid by the case. If the lawyers from the Bar Association agree on an way of reducing their numbers negotiations will continue, but Hicks is not hopeful. It doesn't seem likely that a roomful of lawyers will come to consensus on a process that will leave one half to a third of them without a large portion of their income.
Bar Association lawyers will be paid according to their old contract for the cases they currently have - if they take on new cases they will be paid at (lower) rates set in a 2003 contract. If negotiations break down completely the court will ask for proposals from other groups to provide the services of court appointed dependency lawyers. The Bar Association has had the job for 30 years, and Hicks says it's ideal in that it provides independent lawyers who truly want to be advocates. If the court contracts with a firm, she said, there is more likelihood that the firm will drive for profits by scraping the bottom of the barrel for lawyers who will work cheaply, or by speeding up the processing of cases by railroading their clients rather than putting up an honest fight. Indeed, last year an investigation by the San Jose Mercury News showed that the firm Santa Clara Juvenile Defenders was collaborating with prosecutors to quickly process cases.
Gary Proctor, the owner of the firm, committed suicide last March.
In the long run, paying for good court appointed dependency lawyers is a good investment, said Hicks.
"If you have 50 cases on calendar that week, how much time can you spend on investigating the case trying to develop witnesses, and develop your trial, and also be in court every morning every afternoon? If you have more time you can devote it to doing the investigation so you can flush out the facts. That’s our job as advocates - to flush out the facts - and if it’s not presented to the court oftentimes they just remove the children, put them in foster care, and the next thing you know they are talking about terminating parental rights. I don’t think that’s in anybody’s interest – the parents - the children - or us as a community."
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Posted by Rina Palta on 10/01/09The state of Montana is abuzz after a California-based umm...security firm (you have to see the website) called "American Police Force" reportedly rolled into Hardin, MT and bought up an abandoned local prison.
Apparently, the town is in hysterics and a sort of terminator-like mythology has built around American Police Force. Rumors have been flying around Hardin that APF has been hired to use local residents as swine-flu-vaccine guinea pigs.
It's hard to say what this company is and what it's doing in Hardin, but their site says the APF's services "include highly sophisticated background checks, asset searches, undercover investigations both domestic & international, and much more."
There's some speculation that that "much more" might actually mean establishing a private prison and bidding on contracts to house inmates from California's overcrowding prisons.
Meanwhile, there's another crop of stories popping up, alledging that one of the firm's honcho's, Michael Hilton, officially a "captain" at APF, has a lengthy criminal record in California.
APF has apparently been mute on their internal and external operations so far, but is expected to reveal more about itself in the coming days.
Posted by Rina Palta on 10/01/09
