Supreme Court Decisions

Pastor Johnny Welcomes Parolees Home, and Connects Them with Needed Services

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Pastor Johnny LaPenias about to start a weekly meeting with parolees.

On a Tuesday morning, in a barren warehouse across the street from Superior Court, Pastor Johnny is leading a gathering of over 40 parolees in a meeting that is part resource fair, part spiritual revival.  The meeting, called Parole and Community Team, is mandated by parole, and is for every recently released parolee from the state prison system that is returning to Santa Clara County. Drawing little attention, it’s been happening for years with a new group of recently returned former inmates every week, both men and women, and may be the first time anyone has said two profoundly important words to them “welcome home.” Continue reading →

ACJP Organizer Blanca Bosquez Explains Coerced Pleas on Gene Burn’s KGO Radio Show

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Blanca Bosquez

ACJP organizer Blanca Bosquez was on widely listened to 810 KGO’s Gene Burn’s Show on Friday August 19th regarding the criminal justice system. Click here and listen to Blanca respond to Burn’s statement that he would, “Never take a plea if he didn’t commit the crime.” Blanca changes Burn’s position after explaining the coercive nature of the justice system, that there are innocent people that take pleas because of the time that have been incarcerated, and the threat of excessively long sentences. She also speaks to the injustices she witnessed with her own son’s case, who was falsely charged with a crime and coerced during police interrogation as a juvenile. Listen to Blanca break it down from the 33 minute mark to the 38 minute mark. By the end of the conversation, Burn’s says such travesties in the law are “frightening”and that we all “need to be vigilant, since people are so mistreated.” Great job Blanca!

Thomson Reuters News Insight: Lower sentences cut costs without raising crime

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In the state of California, we are often told that prisons and incarceration are the most effective way to reduce crime. However, this recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union points to six “tough on crime” states including Texas, that have successfully reduced their prison population while simultaneously saving millions of tax dollars by reducing how much they spend on the prisons. They have accomplished this through a number of very reasonable reforms, such as quality rehabilitation programs for prisoners who are no longer a threat, ending mandatory minimum sentences, and reducing sentences for small amounts of marijuana possession, to name a few. — Post Submission by Ernest Chavez

NEW YORK, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Six states that reduced incarceration rates by focusing on parole or probation instead of prison time have cut costs without increasing crime rates, according to a report released on Tuesday. Continue reading →

LA Times: Californians would rather ease penalties than pay more for prisons

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LA Times poll showing Californians in favor of reforming 3 Strikes Law

According to a LA Times poll, Californians are calling for the reduction of prison inmates and also reduced sentences for three-strikers. The article points to two reasons for this: (1) The large hole left in the wallets of hard-working Californians, whose tax dollars have been spent in giant sums ($38,000 per inmate per year) to support the prison system…  And to make matters worse, the global stock market just had its worst plunge since 2008, this week. This means the economy is only getting worse. (2) The June 2011 Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Plata) which declared that California’s prison are overcrowded. The Supreme Court has ordered the State of California to begin releasing 31,000 inmates.

Preparations for the release of prisoners is already underway. Reducing the population of the prisons will help California save a lot of money. However, there is a responsibility that falls upon all members of the public. This responsibility is to make sure that the inmates who are being released have received the rehabilitation and reentry support they need to reenter society. A lot of prisoners experience a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since they are being released back into our communities, we need to make sure we give them the support they need. This means that all Californians, regardless of political party, need to hold our county and public officials accountable in helping to make sure that these inmates are made ready to reenter our communities.  Also read: California’s Goal to Reduce Prison Populations Hinges on County Plans.  — post submission by Ernest Chavez Continue reading →

California’s Goal to Reduce Prison Populations Hinges on Counties’ Plans

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By Raj Jayadev

Santa Clara County Main Jail

Through a recent piece of legislation called AB109 that mandates a reduction in the prison inmate population, California counties are being given a rare, historic opportunity to re-imagine its public safety framework in a way that can dramatically strengthen our communities, unite our families, and rebuild the economy of our resource depleted state.

Or, we can just fill up our local jails with people who would have filled up our state prisons.

What path we take in the state’s fork in the road moment will be based on how counties envision, strategize, and act over the next two months, as counties need to submit their plan for what is being called “realignment” on October 1st, 2011. And as much as I hate to use a Silicon Valley catch phrase – Santa Clara County, as well as every California county, can shift the paradigm of our criminal justice system if we allow our more rationale thinking to prevail over the impulse to do more of the same in terms of incarceration. Continue reading →

Mercury News: Sentencing reform should be a conservative priority

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In an editorial written for the Mercury News, Pat Nolan, a former Republican Leader of the California Assembly member, makes the case for why prison reduction makes sense across the political spectrum….

Prison in Tracy, California

At long last, California will have to deal with our bulging prisons, where 140,000 inmates are crammed into facilities designed to hold 80,000. The Supreme Court found conditions that are profoundly troubling, and these prison conditions could turn a short sentence for a nonviolent offense into a death sentence because of inadequate medical care.

Certainly our prisons hold many folks who are very dangerous and need to be locked away from society, even for the rest of their lives. However, we also send many low-risk offenders to prison. As a conservative Republican, that makes no sense to me, as it is very costly and can sometimes turn low-level offenders into hardened criminals. Continue reading →

Wall Street Journal: Santa Clara County Prepares for Influx of Inmates Into Jails

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The not so good news: WSJ reports that Santa Clara County sends more people to prison than any other Bay Area County. The good news: Our County is going through a process to relieve ourselves of that distinction, and other counties from across the state are watching to see how transformative we can be in our local criminal justice strategies, particularly over the next couple months…

Santa Clara County officials hope county-run services such as this San Jose support group aimed primarily at women on probation will reduce the likelihood that participants will wind up incarcerated.

Bobby White, August 4, 2011

Santa Clara County is hastily drawing up plans to accommodate about 3,000 new inmates and parolees slated to move to county supervision from the state’s control this fall under a major shake-up of the California prison system.

Gov. Jerry Brown last month signed into law a bill that calls for jailing offenders who commit low-level crimes in county lockups instead of state prisons. The law, which also requires counties, rather than the state, to supervise newly released low-level inmates, was prodded by a Supreme Court ruling in May ordering California to sharply reduce prison overcrowding.

While all California counties face the mandate starting in October, Santa Clara sends more inmates to the state prison system than the Bay Area’s other counties—and thus will see more inmates move to its jurisdiction from the state. The shift means Santa Clara will now play a far larger role in housing and supervising offenders. Continue reading →

San Francisco Chronicle: Two strikes have large impact on prison population — Expensive to incarcerate state’s repeat offenders

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California is currently going through a Supreme Court mandated process to reduce its prison population, but experts ask whether they are looking at the most burdensome sentencing schemes, and the most bloated inmate populations, like two strikers…

July 31, 2011| By Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer

Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender

California’s “three strikes” law is best known for locking up career criminals for life, but the vast majority of offenders serving prison time under the sentencing mandate were actually charged under the less-noticed second-strike provision.

These 32,390 inmates are serving sentences that were doubled as a strike-two penalty, and they account for nearly 20 percent of the state’s prison population. Yet most efforts to reform the law have focused exclusively on the third-strike provision, which carries with it a mandatory 25 years-to-life sentence.

As prison costs in California continue to grow, and the state faces a Supreme Court order to reduce its inmate population by more than 30,000 over the next two years, the tens of thousands of second-strikers appear to pose a bigger challenge to state officials attempting to rein in prison costs than the 8,700 people serving time for a third strike. Continue reading →

California Prison Overhaul: Justice Best Administered Local

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Our friend David Muhammad, now the Chief Probation Officer for Alameda County, shares his vision on why prison reduction is both possible, and can strengthen public safety in the following editorial written for New America Media.

OAKLAND, Calif.–California is on the brink of a massive overhaul of its criminal justice system. The changes could become a model for the United States–or could be a disaster.California is in a budget crisis, and spending on corrections not only drains billions of dollars every year from the state, but yields horrible outcomes. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the state to end the unconstitutional practice of overcrowding its prisons.

At the same time the state is facing extreme challenges, though, it is being given enormous opportunities.There are more than 140,000 inmates in a prison system designed to hold 80,000. And California has sent another 10,000 or more inmates to be held at facilities in other states.

Continue reading…

Mercury News: Fiscal and prison overcrowding crises could lead to Three-Strikes reform

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From almost the day California’s Three Strikes sentencing law was approved by voters in 1994, opponents have tried and failed to repeal or amend the politically popular measure.

Now, huge budget deficits and overcrowded prisons have given opponents of the Three Strikes Law a more attractive argument for why it should be changed: California is broke and can’t afford such an expensive approach to criminal justice anymore.

By focusing on the costs of housing long-term prisoners and on the state’s need to reduce its inmate population, opponents said they believe a ballot measure amending the law, promised for 2012, has its best chance of success since Three Strikes was enacted. Continue Reading…