In 1969, the world was shocked by a series of murders committed by Charles Manson and his “family” of followers. Although the defendants were sentenced to death in 1971, their sentences were commuted to life with parole in 1972; since 1978, they have been regularly attending parole hearings. Today all of the living defendants remain behind bars.
Relying on nearly fifty years of parole hearing transcripts, as well as interviews and archival materials, Hadar Aviram invites readers into the opaque world of the California parole process—a realm of almost unfettered administrative discretion, prison programming inadequacies, high-pitched emotions, and political pressures. Yesterday’s Monsters offers a fresh longitudinal perspective on extreme punishment.
Book reading, signing, parole reform, food, drink!
The opening chapter of Foucault's Discipline and Punish compares two penal scenes: the drawing and quartering of a regicide and a drab scene from a discipline-heavy juvenile facility, 80 years later. These scenes are emblematic of the change Foucault sees in punishment: from centralized to decentralized, from a "festival of punishment" to drab things behind closed doors, and most importantly--from body to soul. I read this stuff for the first time about twenty years ago, and its enchantment has worn off; I'm pretty clear on the fact that the move from corporal punishment to incarceration was overall a good one. But there are some days when the "soul" element of punishment is especially hard to stomach, especially when it consists of selling justice-involved people the lie that the only cause for their miseries lies in their own action.
After 15 long years behind bars, Terah Lawyer needed to show the parole board she had somewhere lined up to live. She landed a spot in a facility on Treasure Island and was so grateful to be out that at first she didn’t mind being forced to spend dozens of hours a week in treatment classes for a substance abuse problem she didn’t have, and in fact, as a drug and alcohol counselor, was certified to teach about. But quickly, the program’s strict schedule and tough restrictions, like lockdowns on holidays and limited free time, got in the way of adjusting to real life. Before she left prison, she’d worked hard to secure a job with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, but her facility’s rules forced her to delay her start date three months, and she lost the opportunity. Most painfully, the program’s structure made it hard to visit with her parents, who lived a couple hours north in Sacramento.
Once she was finally able to start working, she’d leave the house at 7 a.m., work a full day, and get back in time for the hour-and-a-half class at night. “I was required to still bring in 21 hours of treatment classes in order for me to get my weekend passes to go home, to go shopping, to go out with family or friends, to do things that are considered freedom,” she explains. “It was really difficult being able to hold down a full-time job, which is thankfully now giving me an income, and also meet the program’s requirements of classes that I didn’t even need in the first place.”
Lawyer's experience reminded me of participant observations I did at the Peer Reentry Navigation Network (PRNN), a group of former lifers now making a life for themselves on the outside that meets monthly in San Francisco, run jointly by an activist who is formerly incarcerated and by a parole officer. The day I was there, everyone talked about housing. In Yesterday's Monsters I described the conversation:
After a round of advice and information about housing and smartphone tutorials, Cara, a young woman, steps to the front of the room to facilitate an activity. She distributes blank pages and invites attendees to draw a picture frame on the page. She then asks us to write or draw a picture of what success means to us. We work in silence, occasionally sneaking a peek at our neighbors’ work and smiling at them. Cara then invites the audience to share. “Being able to provide for my family.” “Having a job, a stable place to live.” “Finding someone to love and someone who loves me.” One woman shares, “I want two dogs and a Mercedes.” Cara laughs. The woman jokingly adds, “What? You wanted us to define success. Well, that’s what success means to me.”
Then Cara gives us the “bad news”: If you are not actively working to direct your life toward those goals, then perhaps you don’t really want them. For example, she says, if you want to save enough money for a down payment on a house but you end up buying shoes and flashy outfits, then maybe you are not really that driven to be a homeowner. You must pursue your goals with real ferocity, she says.
For many of the people in the room, homeownership in aggressively gentrified San Francisco is a pipe dream. Since the rise of the tech industry, housing in the city has become prohibitively expensive, both for owners and for renters. Even so-called low-income housing requires a considerable income, as well as jumping through multiple bureaucratic hoops. Joe acknowledges these difficulties but encourages attendees to overcome them. “If you want to apply,” he says, “I will help you. We’ll work on your applications together.” It might take sixty applications, he says, but eventually one will succeed.
My ambivalence grows. On one hand, I admire the spirit of enterprise, mutual aid, and community strength in the room. I recognize the importance of self-focused success and of belief in free agency. On the other, I’m sure that my fellow attendees have learned all too well in the course of their lives that, despite their best efforts, the reentry deck is heavily stacked against them. I recall Alessandro de Giorgi’s recently released subjects who attributed their immense difficulties and abject poverty to their own failings rather than to the systemic difficulties that stood in their way.
There is something maddening about people being led to be convinced that their own flaws are the only thing standing between them and their dreams, but that very message is what the so-called prison rehabilitation apparatus, and particularly the parole hearing process, tries to sell people on a regular basis. When my colleague Alessandro de Giorgi interviewed formerly incarcerated people who faced acute misery at the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (no home; no job; no food), he was struck by how much they attributed their poverty, squalor, and dire need to their own flaws. He explains:
Today, whatever minimal services are available to former prisoners are provided mostly through the non-profit, faith-based, semi-private sector, what Jennifer Wolch (1990, 201) has aptly defined as an emergent shadow state: a “para-state apparatus with collective service responsibilities previously shouldered by the public sector, administered outside traditional democratic politics, but yet controlled in both formal and informal ways by the state.” In this framework, highly individualistic and market-friendly solutions are systematically proposed as the only answers to a broad range of structural obstacles faced by formerly incarcerated people: At every turn in their trajectories through the carceral state, from arrest to reentry, criminalized people are taught that success or failure is entirely dependent upon their own efforts.
But here's the really depressing bit:
Despite the weight of the structural circumstances they face, the participants
to this research appear to have internalized the neoliberal narrative of personal
responsibility that is constantly inculcated in prisons, rehabilitation centers,
and reentry programs (see also Gowan & Whetstone 2012; Miller 2014;
Werth 2012, 2016). They wholeheartedly embrace the dominant rhetoric
of free choice, as well as hegemonic definitions of social deservingness and
undeservingness.
In other words, de Giorgi's subjects themselves believe that the ills that they face when they reenter are their own fault, because they don't deserve better, and do not seem to see any institutional problem here (when he presented this piece at our Carceral Studies Workgroup, he astutely observed that people do have racial critiques a-la-Michelle Alexander, but not an understanding of class.)
In Yesterday's Monsters I saw this propaganda apparatus at work: people who see their crimes in a broader social context are chastised for "minimizing." Here's an example from the book, in which Patricia Krenwinkel, in the 1980s, tries to frame her crime in the context of the sixties:
It came up about ’65. It was the beginning of the marches. It was the beginning of the civil rights movement. It was the beginning of all the movements of the late sixties, which eventually involved entering the war. . . . I found that I couldn’t seem to find my bearings in this world at that time. . . . I couldn’t seem to find where there was any, on my own—seem to find any reinforcement for doing anything other than kind of letting myself go with the time of what at that time was tune-in and drop-out, as Timothy Leary so put it. I mean, it’s hard to say. There were so many components. I was a child of the sixties. And there definitely is something to be said about the sixties. It was an incredible time in the period of our history. It’s something that I look back on and I see, because there’s thousands of people out there that were not much different than myself.
The prosecutor, Stephen Kay, responds with an astounding lack of empathy and contextual comprehension:
I feel that it’s kind of hard for me to accept Miss Krenwinkel’s statement that she was a child of the sixties, and there were thousands of others like her out there in the sixties. I myself went to law school at Berkeley during the time of Mario Savio and could observe some of these children of the sixties. And they characterized themselves as flower children. Their slogan was “make love, not war.” They weren’t into murdering people.
Pretty much any reasonable criminologist you'll meet will tell you that crime is a combination of personal and environmental factors (including what gets defined as crime.) How much of each gets poured into the mix varies across crimes; this is why talking about both drug use and violent assaults as "crime" can be confusing. But you'd have to be extremely naive to assume that crime doesn't have an ontological existence (some abolitionists in the 1970s advanced this view), just as you'd have to be pretty obtuse and cruel to assume that crime is entirely a function of personal pathology. If it were, why are poor people overrepresented in the criminal justice apparatus?
A lot of the highfalutin' critical criminology from the last few years uses the term "neoliberalism" to mean a hypercapitalist, highly privatized environment in which people are expected to take responsibility for themselves, with no welfarist contribution from the state. Kicking people out of prison to fend for themselves without any veritable programming designed to put them on their feet--and with an astonishing paucity of solid vocational training behind bars in preparation for life outside--is a manifestation of this neoliberal ideology, and what's more--this mentality is successful and pervasive because it dupes not only the professionals who administer it, but also the people who are subjected to it.
This morning, the Guardian is covering a great vocational program in Southern California called Manifest Works, "an immersive workforce development and job placement organization; we turn real-world experience into learning opportunities for those impacted by foster care, homelessness, and incarceration." From the Guardian story:
One of the most common entry points into the entertainment industry is as a production assistant, or PA. The PA might get coffee, run electrical cords, or break down the set; the job’s chameleonic nature makes it a behind-the-scenes linchpin. Manifest Works, a not-for-profit based in Los Angeles, ties the hustle of a PA job to its training program for people affected by incarceration, homelessness and foster care. Some participants had been out of prison as little as three months.
Williams spoke softly and deliberately, rocking back and forth in his crisp white sneakers. He applied to the program after an alum recommended him. He was doing security before that. “Not what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “This is giving me an opportunity to pursue something closer to what I wanted for myself.”
He still wasn’t sure what on-set role he’d like most. “Everybody wants to be the director,” he said, knowingly.
California, as the country’s most populous state, has one of its highest prison populations, and the highest population of people on probation or parole. It is also home to the multibillion-dollar entertainment industry.
A 2017 study in the Economic Journal evaluated the career trajectories of 1.7 million people released from California prisons between 1993 and 2008, and concluded that, while employment curbs recidivism among the released, the quality of opportunities may be more important than the quantity available.
Sixty-three people have completed the Manifest Works program since it began in fall 2014. Many have established steady freelance careers doing production work. No alum has gone back to prison.
What do they mean by "quality of opportunities?" The study referred to in the Guardian story is by Kevin Schnepel, an economist from the University of Sydney and you can find it here. The abstract reads:
I estimate the impact of employment opportunities on recidivism among 1.7 million offenders released from a California prison between 1993 and 2008. The institutional structure of the California criminal justice system as well as location, skill, and industry-specific job accession data provide a unique framework for identifying a causal effect of job availability on criminal behaviour. I find that increases in construction and manufacturing opportunities at the time of release are associated with significant reductions in recidivism. Other types of opportunities, including those characterised by lower wages that are typically accessible to individuals with criminal records, do not influence recidivism.
This kind of careful study is exactly what we need to counter the despair of the "nothing works" legacy. Because of the dramatic cuts to rehabilitation and vocational programs, which I discuss in Cheap on Crime, opportunities in California prisons really vary. San Quentin benefits from its proximity to the Bay Area, which guarantees an influx of volunteers--but are they programs they offer really effective? More importantly, why are opportunities in construction and manufacturing more important in curbing recidivism than opportunities in other fields, such as service?
A few things come to mind: construction and manufacturing are opportunities that structure one's day in addition to providing an income. It's easier to stay the course when you have to be somewhere and perform a job that shows tangible improvement (i.e., putting together a kitchen or producing X gadgets.) They are also jobs that, in the right setting, can provide camaraderie, and have fairly strong unions. But who knows if this is true? To understand why some job opportunities are more effective, we'd need to interview formerly incarcerated folks who are employed in these jobs and ask them about their day and their thoughts about this.
In any case, it's important for prisons to follow up on studies such as Schnepel's and on the success of programs such as Manifest Works. Resources are limited, and they need to be invested where they'd yield real results.
Future posts will definitely feature some of these
interesting things, but today I want to talk about the movie I saw on the
flight to DC: Marvel Comics’ Ant-Man. This is not an indie documentary for
bleeding-heart progressives who can wax poetic about the prison industrial
complex. It’s a mainstream movie, featuring CGI animation, superpowers, gloom,
doom, and beautiful people, and as such it is remarkable, because it represents
what the filmmakers think the mainstream is open to seeing and accepting
onscreen. And what it shows them is a skewed and flawed, and yet refreshing,
slice of incarceration and reentry in the Bay Area.
Set in San Francisco, the film’s hero, Scott Lang, starts his
journey in prison—notably, not a generic, imagined institution, but an imagined
version of the very real San Quentin. And it’s a very different
cinematic San Quentin than the one in which Oscar Grant spends an important
scene in Fruitvale Station; one that resembles Justice Scalia's dark fantasies more than it resembles the actual prison we know. Scott’s first scene in Ant-Man sees him engage in a
violent fight with another inmate. The many spectators, as well as Scott’s
adversary, are large, black, muscular men. But then, the tension breaks, and it
becomes obvious that Scott is on friendly terms with his adversary; we are told
that this is some sort of rite of passage in honor of Scott’s impending
release. Smiling, Scott says to his fellow inmates, “you have strange rituals.”
“You”, not “us”; because early on it is fairly clear that
Scott is a special sort of inmate, one for which filmgoers will feel sympathy:
he is a conventionally good-looking white man, armed with graduate education (a master’s
degree in electric engineering), and his criminal history is that of a
high-level hack for the morally allowable purpose of redistributing wealth. In
short, Scott is a non-non-non if there ever was one, and we all root for him as
he is released—be it because he terms out or because of Realignment.
But even with this relatively privileged starting point,
Scott finds it difficult to cope outside. We see him shack up with friends, all
of whom are formally incarcerated, and expressing hope of finding a suitable
job soon. But his hopes are shattered: he manages to obtain an entry-level job
at Baskin Robbins, where he is summarily fired by an unfeeling boss. Not for
smart-mouthing a client (which he does, and which would be unthinkable to, say,
an uneducated man of color competing for unskilled labor positions); for having
a criminal history. Ban the Box, apparently, only gets one through the door; it
doesn’t keep him there. And this is a crisis for Scott, who has to provide for,
and win back the right to visit, his young daughter. His ex-wife is engaged to
a cop, and both of them think of Scott as the deadbeat dad he is. We, however, know better; we’re rooting for Scott, and that’s partly because we
haven’t been exposed to his ex-wife’s travails through his trial and
incarceration. But we also learn a lesson: when someone is saddled with a
criminal record and a history of incarceration, all the whiteness and the
education in the world won’t help. It almost goes without saying that this message is deeply flawed.
Race, class, and education make a big difference in reentry—as does another
thing Scott has going for him, a supportive family. But it drives home the
heavy penalty of incarceration and a criminal history with regard to someone
with whom some middle-class moviegoers might identify.
It is this economic desperation, rather than a personality
flaw, that leads Scott back into crime with his housemates—all of whom, except
for him, are either men of color or immigrants with heavy accents. The film
plays fast and loose with stereotypes, which is par for the course for
sidekicks in a comic book. They are capable men, but they are capable in
limited ways, and only as assistants to Scott, whose competence and ability are
played up in the sophisticated heist they plan. The film occasionally takes
pleasure in breaking these stereotypes; Luis’s unfocused chatter and confused
narratives include references to his visits to a museum and enjoyment of Mark
Rothko oils. But even when doing so, the Bay Area scenes that fly before our
eyes as Luis describes the potential heist place him squarely within the imagined
East Bay working class colorful subculture of dive bars, bikers, chicks and
shady contacts. Luis has the info and the contacts, but he is not the brain of
the operation.
The scenes depicting the heist planning elevate Scott and
his accomplices to the coveted status of garage startup techies, and it is this
subtle analogy that portrays them at their most competent and heroic. This nod
to Silicon Valley reminded me of The Last Mile and other programs
encouraging the involvement of folks of low income and education in the tech
world upon their release. The film makes it clear, though, that reentry is not
kind to any of our heroes, and if they are to make their way in the world, they
must do so themselves. And so, their entrepreneurship is modeled after the
“innovate first, ask questions later” model of South Bay, and sold as admirable
and competent.
As viewers of the film know, the heist goes awry, and a
chain of events is set in motion that sets Scott up to becoming “ant man”: a
superhero capable of shrinking to the size of an ant. The adventure, villains,
goals, and betrayals, are fairly predictable for the genre. What is less
predictable, and surprisingly touching, is the ant metaphor, and how it
connects to the incarceration and reentry theme from the movie.
Ants are eusocial insects. They are
indistinguishable from each other. The inventor who employs Scott refers to
them by numbers, not by names. When Scott complains, the inventor explains,
“they are just numbers; do you have any idea how many ants they are?” We treat
ants, apparently, the way we treat people in total institutions; we see them as
a population, not as individuals deserving of life, health, and happiness. But
Scott, reduced to the size of an ant, sees them as individuals, and names one
of them Anthony. He learns from the inventor’s daughter how to control the ants
with his mind by becoming part of the eusocial structure. Thus, the ants’
impersonality and collective organization is their great advantage. When one is
struck down, ten rise in its stead (in fact, Anthony is struck in one of the
final raids; Scott regrets it, but hops over and rides another ant in its
stead). And together, because of their commitment to the collective wellbeing
of the community, they are invincible.
It is notable that the penultimate scene in the movie
marshals some of the laughable stereotypes for the beginning to marshal the ant
metaphor of community and apply it to the formerly incarcerated. Luis tells a
convoluted story yet again; but the bottom line of the story is that an
indirect contact wants Scott to join the Avengers: “We need a guy that
shrinks”. It is through this informal Bay Area network that an opportunity awaits
our superhero. Because, like ants, the people who exit our prisons may look to policymakers,
jailers, and employers all the same, and it might be easy to discount them—but when
they look out for each other and act collectively, that is the source of their strength.
For some optimistic news, look no farther than Oakland, where former Black Panther activist Elaine Brown has put together a beautiful reentry project. Civil Eats reports:
Brown’s project, announced last October, is ambitious. The first step has been establishing a for-profit West Oakland Farms, whose 40 raised beds are already overflowing with tomatoes, peppers, kale, squash, corn, and other produce. Down the road, Brown wants to add a juice bar, fitness center, grocery store, and tech design space, along with affordable housing on the city-owned property under the umbrella of the nonprofit organization she founded last year, Oakland & the World Enterprises. “I’m not in the farm business,” she told Civil Eats recently. “I’m in the business of creating opportunities for Black men and women who are poor and lack the education, skills, and resources to return to a community that is rapidly gentrifying without economic avenues for them in mind.” Think of it as part prisoner re-entry program, part small business startup incubator, and part community hub. Brown chaired the Black Panthers from 1974 to 1977 and, after more than a 30-year absence, moved back to Oakland in 2010. The project marks her return to activism in the city. Since 2013, Brown has been working closely with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson on youth and employment re-entry projects in West Oakland.
This strikes me as a very exciting program for so many reasons, not the least of which is connecting disenfranchised populations with fresh produce and high-quality food often unavailable in the "food deserts" of poor neighborhoods. I hope it succeeds and flourishes.
This morning, in re William Taylor et al., the California Supreme Court struck down the provisions of Jessica's Law that restricted registered sex offenders from residing within 2000 feet of a school or park. The bottom line is as follows: [W]e agree that section 3003.5(b)‟s residency restrictions are unconstitutional as applied across the board to petitioners and similarly situated registered sex offenders on parole in San Diego County. Blanket enforcement of the residency restrictions against these parolees has severely restricted their ability to find housing in compliance with the statute, greatly increased the incidence of homelessness among them, and hindered their access to medical treatment, drug and alcohol dependency services, psychological counseling and other rehabilitative social services available to all parolees, while further hampering the efforts of parole authorities and law enforcement officials to monitor, supervise, and rehabilitate them in the interests of public safety. It thus has infringed their liberty and privacy interests, however limited, while bearing no rational relationship to advancing the state‟s legitimate goal of protecting children from sexual predators, and has violated their basic constitutional right to be free of unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive official action. Nonetheless, as the lower courts made clear, CDCR retains the statutory authority, under provisions in the Penal Code separate from those found in section 3003.5(b), to impose special restrictions on registered sex offenders in the form of discretionary parole conditions, including residency restrictions that may be more or less restrictive than those found in section 3003.5(b), as long as they are based on, and supported by, the particularized circumstances of each individual parolee. While the Orange County Register believes that it is unclear whether the ruling has effect outside San Diego County, it seems that a legal provision that is unconstitutional in one area of California is just as unconstitutional in another. Of particular interest is the impact of San Francisco, which, because of the layout of schools and parks in it, is essentially inhabitable to sex offenders under Jessica's Law. This meant a large proportion of homeless and transient sex offenders, which, as one of them said to ABC news, "are actually walking time bombs out here because we are suffering from sleep deprivation".
My terrific colleague Alessandro de Giorgi has an excellent series of posts on the Social Justice blog, titled Reentry to Nothing. They are based on ethnographic work he is doing and expose the difficulties of making life work on the outside.
#1 - Get a Job, Any Job At 1:30 p.m. I get a message from Melisha, who tells me that her job application at the Walmart in East Oakland had been turned down after they performed a background check on her: Hi bra happy Memorial day. It all bad for me sad … about the Walmart job … that Walmart did a nationwide check everthing came back from fines old address criminal record from Arkansas. Cant nobody say I didn’t try … sad … my life is fuck up. Is there any kind of away you can get that removed for me … don’t u study criminal justice. I need u on this bra I’m stress now I try to tell Ray #2 - The Working Poor
Ray tells me they are desperate for money. He has only been able to work for a few hours a week at KFC since being released from jail last month. He still works on call for $8.00 an hour and makes less than $200 each week. Meanwhile, Melisha has been unable to find any job—despite filling out applications at McDonald’s, Pack n’Save, Ghirardelli, and several other places—and her SSI payments were suspended while she was in jail.
Alex: Right now … The two of you, how much cash do you have? Ray: Nothin’. Alex: Nothing? Ray: Zero. Pennies. Oh, here you go [searches into his pockets, then opens his hand to show me a few dimes]. That’s our savings right here. Oh yeah … And our free cookie [hands me a greasy paper bag from KFC with a half-melted chocolate chip cookie inside].Alex: A free cookie? Ray: Yeah! Free cookie, from KFC. Free cookie, that’s all we got right here.
I follow Rico to the last room on the left, which is occupied by one of his old friends. Peering through the open doors, I see only decrepit rooms with littered floors. In some, people are sitting on their beds eating, smoking, watching TV, and arguing loudly. All residents of the premises share two bathrooms and showers. Like the rest of the building, they are filthy. Hip-hop music blasts from the surrounding rooms, including the one we enter. There, two middle-aged white men, whose teeth are mostly missing, are smoking crystal meth. They become nervous at the sight of me, but when Rico reassures them that I’m not a cop, they intently inhale the vaporizing crystals again. After a few minutes of silence, Rico explains that the building was formerly the site of a transitional housing program for recovering drug addicts. Now it is just a ghetto building with cheap rooms for rent. Since Rico is no longer on parole, he cannot go back to the halfway house; moving here may be his only option, because the landlord does not require a deposit or credit report.
“Those swept up in this system too often had their rights rescinded, their dignity diminished, and the full measure of their citizenship revoked for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Holder said. “They could not vote.”A couple of years after the failure of the effort to interpret voting regulation in CA so that folks doing time in jails as a result of realignment can vote, civil rights organizations are trying again. This time, the petition focuses on folks who are under mandatory supervision, who are told by the Secretary of State they can't vote.
“Those swept up in this system too often had their rights rescinded, their dignity diminished, and the full measure of their citizenship revoked for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Holder said. “They could not vote.”
Holder was addressing life-long bans in Southern states, a holdover from the nadir of race relations in the 1920s, which render, for example, 10% of Florida citizens ineligible to vote. By contrast, California offers more opportunity for redemption (and has done so since 1974.) But this governmental animus toward enfranchisement is important to notice.
Thanks to your efforts, phone calls, and lobbying, Ban the Box has passed the Senate Floor, 21-16, and will now go to the Governor. Good things can happen when good people care.
Cheauvon, and other honest and accountable formerly incarcerated people who are looking for work and want to take responsibility for their lives, need YOUR help!
AB 218, otherwise known as the Ban the Box initiative, would prohibit state or local agencies from asking an applicant to disclose information regarding a criminal conviction until the agency has determined the applicant meets the minimum qualifications for the position. From the reentry perspective, it is a laudable initiative that gives formerly incarcerated people a fair shot at being considered for a position on their merits and qualifications.
The bill failed on the Senate Floor yesterday by a vote of 20 to 16, but was granted reconsideration. Which means there is something you can do to make things right. It's the last day of the Senate session and this is an opportunity to pass this important bill.
Call one of these senators (highest priority are Senators Pavley and Roth):
Fran Pavley: Phone: (916) 651-4027 District 27 incorporates and maintains the eastern portion of Ventura County, which includes the cities of Simi Valley, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, and Westlake Village. It also includes the coastal area extending from Leo Carrillo State Beach to Malibu and on to Topanga Canyon. Additionally, it captures the communities of Calabasas, West Hills and a portion of Santa Clarita in Los Angeles County. It maintains the coastal mountain range and watershed. This district reunites the cities in Eastern Ventura County above the Conejo Grade and combines them with communities in the greater Santa Monica Mountain area and the western San Fernando Valley along the Highway 101 and 118 corridors.
Richard Roth: Phone: (916) 651-4031; District 31: Riverside County including the Cities of Corona, Eastvale, Jurupa Valley, Moreno Valley, Norco, Perris and Riverside, Fax: (916) 651-4931
Hannah-Beth Jackson: Phone: (916) 651-4019; District 19 Santa Barbara County and a portion of Ventura County.Santa Maria, Buellton, Solvang, Goleta, Santa Barbara, San Buenaventura, the Santa Clara Valley (Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru) and Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo on the southeastern border. Agricultural nexus between the Santa Clara Valley, Oxnard plains, and the Santa Maria area.
Jerry Hill: Phone: (916) 651-4013; District 13; Atherton, Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Hillsborough, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Mountain View, Pacifica, Palo Alto, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Mateo, South San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Woodside and parts of unincorporated San Mateo County and unincorporated Santa Clara County.
Here's a suggested script for your call:
“I live in the Senator's district and I support AB 218. I want to urge the Senator to pass this bill. This bill is important to our community because ... ”
• “it will help reduce recidivism.”
• “it will increase public safety by making sure people with records have a chance at being employed.”
Use your own words and reasons.
If the idea is to make folks with criminal records contributors, rather than burdens, on the economy, the way to do it is to at least not make it impossible for them to find work. DO SOMETHING TODAY to help them.
This Wednesday, Riverside County Jail became the first county institution to send inmates to California's fire camps, in which state prisoners help put out fires. Richard de Atley of P.E. bloggers reports:
The 20 inmates were sent Wednesday, June 5 to the CDCR’s Sierra Conservation Camp training facility, in Jamestown. CDCR has agreed to place the trained county inmates in Riverside County fire camps, whenever possible.
. . .
County Supervisors in April approved a Sheriff’s Department proposal to supply county inmates to the fire camp program. More inmates will be sent every two weeks until the program reaches capacity of 200 Riverside County inmates at any time during the next five years. Riverside County’s five jails have been at capacity shortly after realignment began. More than 10,000 inmates have been released early due to realignment, jail officials have said.
. . . Riverside County will pay $46.19 daily per inmate. The funds were set aside from realignment money controlled by the Community Corrections Partnership, a joint local agency that includes the probation, sheriff, mental health department and district attorney and public defender’s offices. Riverside County’s fire camps are located in Norco and Hemet. The county also maintains the Oak Glen camp, located in northern Riverside County inside the San Bernardino National Forest in the San Gorgonio Mountain Range, according to the Riverside County Fire Department’s web site. In addition to helping fight wildfires, inmate camp members do public road maintenance and community service work.
For readers unfamiliar with California's fire camps, I highly recommend Philip Goodman's work (exhibit A, exhibit B). Not only do the fire camps alleviate prison overcrowding, they provide a much-needed public service. As an interesting aside, the strict racial divisions within the institutions blur when inmates work side by side on life-saving work.
Obtaining a job as a fireman after release from prison, however, may be tricky, as the fire departments run thorough background checks.
Today's New York Times editorial is devoted to the problem of screening job applicants who have criminal records.
Sixty-five million Americans have criminal records that might cause them to be denied jobs, even for arrests or minor convictions that occurred in the distant past. Last year, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reaffirmed a longstanding ruling that it was illegal to screen out employees unless the offense was directly related to the job.
The problem, however, has become so acute that a growing number of states and municipalities have explicitly prohibited public agencies — and in some cases, private businesses — from asking about an applicant’s criminal history until the applicant reaches the interview stage or receives a conditional job offer. In addition, many jurisdictions now require employers to show that the disqualifying offenses are directly related to the position in question.
The editorial links to this report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), which lists states and localities that have adopted "ban the box" initiatives, which do not allow employes to inquire about prospective employees' criminal records. Among the localities mentioned in the report are San Francisco, Oakland, East Palo Alto, Carson, Compton, Richmond, Alameda County, and Santa Clara County. As the report explains, many of the "ban the box" initiatives are fairly new (adopted within the last seven years) thanks to the work of prison and reentry activists, and some of them were adopted during the financial crisis and despite job shortages.
As far as statewide policies, a Schwarzenegger gubernatorial executive order from 2010 ordered two questions regarding conviction history removed from the State of California Employment application. The State Personnel Board has issued a new application, and background checks will not
be required for every position. For more information about the successful campaign to bring about Ban the Box in California, read how Legal Services for Prisoners with Children spearheaded the campaign or use the toolkit available on their website.
What about private employers? The California Labor Code, summarized in this report, asking employees to provide information about arrests that did not lead to a conviction is illegal. The statues do not prohibit employers from asking about arrests for which employees are out on bail, but it seems that seeking such information about applicants would be tricky, if not illegal. Asking about criminal convictions is allowed when accompanied by a statement that criminal records do not necessarily disqualify an applicant from consideration, and asking about certain marijuana convictions (more than two years old) and expunged/sealed convictions, as well as misdemeanor convictions for which probation has been completed, is illegal.
The progress made by Ban the Box activists is astounding particularly against the background of job losses in the last few years. It's a display of fairness and equity in a setting that usually does not have much empathy for currently or formerly incarcerated people. Readers - why do you think that is? Is this a rehabilitative animus - that is, people feel more inclined to help folks who have already completed their sentences? Or is there anything else afoot?
This evening I attended a town hall event with Senator Mark Leno and other guests. The event focused on criminal justice reform in California, but most of the time was spent discussing San Francisco's policies and practices. It was, for the most part, a happy occasion, with plenty of opportunity to celebrate San Francisco's sensible approach to law enforcement and corrections.
Senator Leno opened by giving some historical background. Ten years ago, when he started chairing the Public Safety Committee on the Assembly, California was spending 5.3% of its budget on corrections. That rose to 11% pre-realignment. But we've turned a corner. In 2014, this figure will be lowered to 7%. And, despite not incarcerating as many people (actually, being the county that incarcerates the least amount of people!), San Francisco is experiencing record low rates of violent crime. How are we doing this without recurring to mass incarceration?
There are a few things that are in the works. The unsuccessful attempt to reclassify simple possession, a misdemeanor, as an infraction, might be resuscitated. We're beginning to make use of medical parole (trying to save $150 million dollars spent on health costs and security costs involving treatment of inmates who can't take care of their basic needs, some of whom are actually comatose.)
The main achievement has been the enactment of SB 678, the counterpart to AB 109, which creates community corrections. Shifting the responsibility for the post-sentence phase to the counties was accompanied by a shift in approach. Wendy Still, the Chief Probational Officer, spoke of her 26 years of experience in corrections and of moving to the counties to make a difference before people come to state prison. New admissions to prison are now down 37% statewide, and 47% in San Francisco, which always held the lowest prison rates and has reduced them now even further. The probationers, now addressed as clients, are no longer perceived to require surveillance and supervision, but rather services to help them get their lives on track. The system of incentives has been modified so that reduction in recidivism makes a difference. The money that counties received upfront to set up SB 678 - $45 million in federal stimulus grants - yielded &180 in correctional savings.
David Onek from UC Berkeley's center on criminal justice mentioned the unique nature of San Francisco's criminal justice apparatus and the remarkable collaboration between its different agencies. While it is, he said, too early for a realignment report card, it seems that San Francisco was well ahead of the curve for a long time.
Jeff Adachi talked about the work that still needed doing: Fixing the racial disparity in San Francisco's correctional institutions and seriously improving our reentry services. One measure taken toward the latter is Clean Slate, which helps folks with convictions start anew and put their lives on track.
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said that San Francisco jails are remarkable in that they are undercrowded. He also spoke of his wish to be the first sheriff to request less beds, or to rebuild dilapidated institutions with less beds than they had in the first place.
Commander John Murphy of the SFPD talked about the collaboration between the city's different agencies, and of the effective reduction in violent crime (16% less shootings.) The focus is on Anthony Braga's hot spots - apparently, 50% of all violent crime in the city happens in 2% of its geographical area, which allows the police to focus their efforts in this area, involve community organizations, and shift the attention away from low-level drug offending (arrests for drug offenses have gone down from 50-100 a day to less than 10.)
It was a self-congratulatory evening, but rightly so; San Francisco has much to take pride in. And, as a side note, it was rather delightful to see a large contingent of the awesome United Playaz in the audience. So glad to see young people politically involved.
Last night I finally saw the 2008 HBO movie Recount. It is a docudrama about the aftermath of the 2000 Bush/Gore election, from the first reports of the results up to the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore.
I arrived in the United States in July 2001, to a shell-shocked Berkeley, where the wall-to-wall consensus was that the election was stolen by Bush supporters and that Al Gore was the President-in-exile. The confusion and rage intensified shortly after my arrival by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I was a newcomer, and for the life of me, could not figure out who had voted for Bush; I was yet to realize how deep the rift was and how partisanship wrecked and hollowed American politics. So, it was a fascinating experience to see a retelling of the story of that election, with the last twelve years in mind; much of what we experience politically today can date back to that fateful election.
What stuck out for me, though, was not so much the righteousness of one side or other; I entirely believed Ted Olson's integrity when he said, with a straight face, to a room full of Bush supporters, that Bush had won each and every one of the recounts. Instead, what filled me with rage was the cynical use the Florida state apparatus made of felon disenfranchisement laws.
In the film, a Democratic party volunteer knocks on a door. A guarded, sad man opens the door. The volunteer asks for his name. "Yeah?" says the man. "You were turned away at the ballots this election, right?" The man replies in the affirmative, his face ashen and disaffected. "I'm Jeremy Bash from the Democratic party. Can we talk?" Says the volunteer, and the man lets him in.
It turns out that, in Florida's enthusiasm to deny the vote to its formerly incarcerated citizens, the list makers included many non-felons in the list. The outrage among the ranks is palpable.
But the strongest scene, for me, is the ending scene of the movie. Bush's acceptance speech is shown on TV, and as he addresses the people who did not vote for him, he promises to be their president, too, and to earn their respect. The camera moves around the room, showing the man turned away at the ballots on wrong information of his being a felon. His face is hard to read, but it seems to betray a web of complex emotions: Rage? Disbelief? The first seeds of disaffection, disengagement, dissent? The deep realization that he was locked out of his country's political process, robbed of the choice to vote for either of the candidates?
This scene speaks volumes for me as we're getting ready for a hearing before the California Court of Appeals with regard to the right to vote for post-realignment inmates in California jails, and for folks on community post-release supervision. And it is gaining importance as we begin to experience the 2012 presidential campaign. We think that the California bureaucratic apparatus has wrongly interpreted the California constitution to deny felons, whether they are in prison or in jail, the right to vote. Not only does this interpretation fly in the face of the intent behind realignment--a new world of community corrections--but by denying civic integration, it is a barrier to re-entry and a successful welcoming back to society.
Inmates have an important voice of their own and important insights into the criminal process and public expenditure. Some of you may recall a series of posts, like this one and this one, that appeared on the SF Bay Guardian by Just A Guy, an inmate with a keen eye for big-picture politics and economics. This is an important voice that needs to be heard. And, as Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen have repeatedly proven, this voice can make or break an election (and would, indeed, have reversed the 2000 election, as well as another Presidential election and eight Congressional elections.) Thinking about yesterday's film reinforced my conviction that I would fight for enfranchisement no matter what direction the projected vote would go; it's no coincidence, however, that inmates and parolees, disproportionately poor and of color, would vote against the regime that subjected them to lengthy, punitive, dehumanizing and unnecessary prison sentences under abysmal conditions.
"Vote" by Anthony Papa,
http://www.15yearstolife.com
Today I filed an amicus brief on behalf of a list of leading criminal justice scholars, supporting petitioners in All Of Us Or None v. Bowen. AOUON and other organizations have filed a petition asking that the Secretary of State allow people serving their sentences in jails post-realignment, or under community post-release supervision, to vote in the elections. In doing so, they rely on the California Constitution, which grants the vote to everyone except those “imprisoned or on parole for the conviction of a felony". The Secretary of State, however, guides inmates not to vote if they are felons, even if they are serving their sentence in jail.
Here's the summary of our argument in support of the petition:
Following the California Criminal Justice Realignment, inmates convicted of non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offenses will serve their sentence in county jails, rather than in state prisons. The legislative history of AB 109, as well as its language and the practices it directs and encourages, suggest that the legislature intended to use local facilities not merely as a cost-saving measure, but rather as a tool in recidivism reduction through community corrections, reentry and rehabilitative programming. Amici posit that the local setting of jails is an ideal locus for implementing community reintegration goals, and that civic involvement, including enfranchisement, is paramount to these goals. A broad interpretation of the right to vote as including all population in local jails—convicted of non-serious, non-sexual, non-violent offenses, felonies and misdemeanors alike—is fully congruent with these goals. Moreover, enfranchising a broader population, as a result of AB 109, would increase democracy and encourage participation of underserved low-income communities and communities of color in the political and civic process. Finally, Amici rely on empirical research findings to suggest that enfranchisement of all jailed and formerly jailed individuals can positively contribute to recidivism reduction, a socially and economically desirable outcome.
Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB, curbprisonspending.org) published a very helpful report ranking counties' realignment plans back in October when realignment took effect. Now CURB has issued a new, updated report card comparing 12 large counties' realignment schemes. Take a look at this vital info! http://curbprisonspending.org/?p=1391
Today, several Californian civil rights organizations filed a new lawsuit with the First District Appellate Court, arguing against Secretary of State Deborah Bowen's policy of disenfranchising all felons, including those who, after realignment, serve time in jail.
And... CCC is involved! A group of criminal justice scholars, represented by yours truly, will be filing an amicus brief shortly in support of the lawsuit.
Here's what is going on: As some readers may know, Californians imprisoned in state institutions, or on parole, are disenfranchised, but jail inmates and probationers have a right to vote. The realignment, as we know, puts many formerly imprisoned felons in county jails, for part or all of their sentence.
The legal language gives the right to vote to all inmates who are not "imprisoned". Nonetheless, the California Secretary of State interprets the law as if the felons who will be doing time in jail should remain disenfranchised, and instructs the inmates accordingly. Several inmate rights organizations are now petitioning the Court of Appeals for an original writ, asking that voting rights be extended to everyone serving time in jail or on post-jail community supervision, whether felon or misdemeanant.
We are putting together an amicus brief on behalf of criminal justice scholars to support the petition. The main argument in the brief is that the Realignment was informed by a perspective of reentry and community-based corrections, and as such should encourage civic engagement. We also argue that jails, especially post-Realignment, are the ideal setting for encouraging reintegration through civic rights. The Realignment gives us the opportunity to make that argument on sound legal ground at least with regard to non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offenders doing time in (or out on supervision from) county jails.
In case you haven't seen it yet, CURB's realignment budgeting report card is an incredible data mine, with a wealth of info from 13 counties' realignment plans. SF pass, LA incomplete, SD fail... this is a great visual metric of the degree to which counties are investing in new jail expansion plans versus alternatives and re-entry programs.
In two recent NYT blog posts, Pulitzer prize awardee Tina Rosenberg reflects on the conditions for successful prisoner reentry.
Rosenberg's first blog post mentions the meager release packages for inmates exiting correctional institutions and the lack of rehabilitative programs, but emphasizes the need to provide them with "a better class of friends": People committed to AA meetings and GED classes, who will motivate them rather than drag them down the recidivist path. She mentions two programs: The Castle in New York, and San Francisco's Delancey Street Foundation. Here is some of what she has to say about the latter:
People come to live at the Delancey Street residential building for an average of four years. Each resident is required to get at least a high school equivalency degree and learn several marketable job skills, such as furniture making, sales or accounting. The organization is completely run by its residents, who teach each other — there is no paid staff at all. Teaching others is part of the rehabilitation process for Delancey residents. The residence is financed in part by private donations, but the majority of its financing comes from the businesses the residents run, such as restaurants, event planning, a corporate car service, a moving company and framing shop. All money earned goes to the collective, which pays all its residents’ expenses.
. . .
The Delancey Street residence, which began in 1971, has never been formally evaluated. But there is no question that is phenomenally successful. It has graduated more than 14,000 people from prison into constructive lives. Carol Kizziah, who manages Delancey’s efforts to apply its lessons elsewhere, says that the organization estimates that 75 percent of its graduates go on to productive lives. (For former prisoners who don’t go to Delancey, only 25 to 40 percent avoid re-arrest.) Since it costs taxpayers nothing, from a government’s point of view it could very well be the most cost-effective social program ever devised. The program has established similar Delancey Street communities in Los Angeles, New Mexico, North Carolina and upstate New York. Outsiders have replicated the Delancey Street model in about five other places.
. . .
There are two puzzles here. Delancey Street is now celebrating its 40th anniversary. One would think that by now there would be Delancey 2.0 models sprouting all over. But there are not. A related mystery concerns the idea that underlies both Delancey and the Castle: the importance of pro-social peers. Our guts tell us they matter; we know the effect our friends can have on our behavior. Peer pressure may be the single most important factor getting people into crime — surely it should be employed to get them out again. Yet it is not. Besides Delancey and the Castle, there is probably not a single government agency or citizen group working with former prisoners that lists “clean-living peers” alongside housing, job training and other items on its agenda for what former prisoners need to go straight.
The second blog post expands upon the reasons for reentry failure. Citing David Kirk's interesting research on the decline in recidivism following Hurricane Katrina, Rosenberg points out how important it is to maintain places that provide support and encounters with reentering peers. She mentions initiatives like Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, and attributes their inadequate-to-nonexistent funding to "tough on crime" political rhetoric and to lack of research showing the decline in recidivism. However, there are grounds for hope, including humonetarianism (a discourse of scarcity that creates a countereffect to punitive policies) -- the silver lining of the financial crisis:
The good news is that we may have reached a turning point, a chance at last to see effective anti-crime policies edge out ineffective ones. One reason is the record number of people being released from prison. This has made prisoner re-entry a hot topic in the field of corrections (if still invisible to the rest of the world). The politics, too, have changed. The crime rate throughout the United States has dropped, which means that voters are less panicked about crime and less singleminded about harsh measures.
The public isn’t thinking about crime — but state officials are. States are in budget crisis. Many states are looking for ways to let nonviolent prisoners out — and they can’t afford to see them come back again. California’s three strikes law — your third felony conviction, even if for something minor, brings a 25-year-to-life prison term — is costing the state $500 million a year, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Those costs will rise as the prison population ages as a consequence of the law — housing elderly prisoners can cost upwards of $50,000 per year per inmate. And elderly prisoners are the last people you want in prison, as they are the least likely to re-offend. States are finally getting interested in finding out what actually maximizes the chance that ex-offenders will become good citizens. They’re not going to be able to do that without financing research.
Rosenberg's posts are a call to conduct empirical research on the recidivism-related implications of reentry programs. As we know, recidivism reports are very problematic. The dismal numbers in CDCR's recidivism report do not necessarily reflect a "return to a life of crime" as much as they might reflect parole failures and technical parole violations (an aspect regarding which the Supreme Court has recently exhibited surprising naïvete). As this good summary from the NIJ website explains, recidivism is a difficult thing to measure. Studies examining the impact of reentry programs and changes in peer groups on recidivism should be careful in their findings. Assuming such problems can be tackled, funding should be provided to programs with proven effects on recidivism rates, such as the marine technology and carpentry training programs at CDCR.
------------------------ Props to Michael Sierchio for the link.
