Mercury News: Homeland Security toughens stance on Draconian ‘Secure Communities’

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A Washington Post Columnist opines on Homeland Security’s recent announcement that they are rescinding the MOU’s with jurisdictions — essentially saying they never needed them, and that they can force the controversial program on states and counties despite local jurisdictions saying they want to opt out. While the move impacts some immigrants advocates’ strategies, better believe civil rights groups are not giving up on ending the program.

By Esther J. Cepeda
CHICAGO — Draconian. Rogue. Dangerous. Flawed.

These are just some of the words used to describe the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program, which, if it hasn’t already, will soon be coming to a community near you.

In a stunning defeat for immigration rights advocates who were celebrating in June after several states, including Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois, declared they’d no longer be participating, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced last week that it was terminating all existing memorandums of agreement with individual jurisdictions — to send the clear message that the program is not voluntary and cannot be declined. Continue reading →

New America Media: San Francisco District Attorney Debate

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Last week, a debate was held between the four candidates vying for the recently vacated position of San Francisco District Attorney. George Gason, David Onek, Vu Trinh and Sharmin Bock spoke on a number of issues including: the war on drugs, conviction rates, and the three strikes law. Here are a couple clip, produced by Ann Bassette, a video producer for New America Media.

David Onek discusses how race-neutral decisions affect communities of color.

George Gason speaks on the war on drugs in San Francisco.

To see more clips, go to New America Media’s coverage of the debate sponsored by: Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, ACLU-Northern Calif, African American Art and Culture Complex, Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Equal Justice Society.

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 →

ACLU Press Release: DHS Ends Three-Year Charade on S-Comm

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Three years after Department of Homeland Security first rolled out the “Secure Communities Program” which sent fingerprints of those accused of a crime at the moment of arrest from the jails to ICE, DHS reveals they never needed state consent to participate in the program anyway.  Immigrant rights organizations are angry, yet are not surprised by DHS’s latest move — which many feel is just part of their business-as-usual tactic to skirt transparency and ultimately deport undocumented immigrants at all costs.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 5, 2011
CONTACT: Cynthia Bell, (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been able to cite only one statutory provision to support its position: 8 U.S.C. § 1722, part of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act (EBSA).  But EBSA does not authorize the federal government to commandeer states’ resources to screen individuals in state and local custody.

“Three years after introducing Secure Communities, DHS changed the rules of the game by setting aside all the agreements that states negotiated in good faith. Today’s announcement is the latest in a long line of deceptive DHS theatrics and is an insult to governors and state leaders who signed these agreements, which now amount to nothing more than the paper they’re printed on. DHS has recklessly inflicted S-Comm on states and localities across the country without any legal justification for the program,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

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 →

Upcoming forum to re-imagine incarceration//re-entry policies

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On August 3rd at 2pm Board of Supervisor Goerge Shirakawa will be hosting a Re-Entry Network meeting to gather input on how the county will adopt policy changes for California’s re-alignment — the mandate to lower the prison population. While there are a number of questions as to what exactly realignment will look like, what we do know is that counties, including SCC, is supposed to have a plan in place by the beginning of October. The plan should include how the county is going to house and provide services for a still undetermined number of current prison inmates that will be transferred to county care, and also a strategy on how the County is going to reduce numbers of people being sent to prison from our county.

So all in all: alot of questions and a short time frame. What is certain is that realignment represents a rare opportunity to offer a new vision for our county’s criminal justice system — and a real possibility that vision can become reality.

Keep reading for the details in the meeting and the agenda… Continue reading →

Advocates Balk as San Jose Police Consider Fed Surveillance Program

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Only weeks after the San Jose Police Department (SJPD) announced the addition of two federal immigration officers, officials say they are now considering participation in a new program calling on local police and residents to report to the FBI, Homeland Security and a host of other federal enforcement agencies.

Participation by local police departments in the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative is optional. In advance of making a final decision, SJPD Chief Chris Moore held a forum at Pioneer High School for community representatives and city officials to learn about the program from federal officials and give input on San Jose’s potential involvement. Continue reading →