Who Benefits from Arizona's SB 1070?

NPR reports:

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country.

"Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation."

But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.

This is quite a shocking story. It turns out that private prison corporations are among the main financiers of Arizona's anti-immigration bill. This puts a shocking, cynical slant on what would be deemed a disgraceful bill even if it were sincere, and not profit driven.

Upcoming Film Event: Presunto Culpable (Presumed Guilty)

This Tuesday, the World Affairs Council, the Berkeley Center for Human Rights and the ACLU of Northern California will be hosting a special screening of the terrific film Presunto Culpable (Presumed Guilty). Filmmakers Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, currently graduate students at UC Berkeley and also lawyers in Mexico, have documented the horrors of a criminal trial in Mexico, in which justice is derailed and denied by a perverse justice system that, by law and by fact, presumes defendants are guilty and prevents them from confronting their witnesses. The film follows a particularly horrific example of such travesty of justice: the trial of this José Antonio (“Toño”) Zúñiga for a murder he did not commit. The filmmakers, whose film was crucial in exonerating Zúñiga, will speak at the event (yours truly will moderate the discussion). It's a wonderful, thought-provoking film, and you are all encouraged to attend.


When? This Tue, 10/26, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (check-in starts at 5:30, please arrive early for registration)

Where? World Affairs Council Auditorium, 312 Sutter Street , Second Floor, San Francisco

To RSVP, please click here.

Black Alcatraz Screening Today

This evening we will be screening Black Alcatraz, a documentary about the African American experience at Alcatraz in the era of segregation. Director Kevin Epps ("Straight Outta Hunters Point") will join us for Q&A and dinner will be served.

Where: UC Hastings, 198 McAllister Street, 2nd Floor, Room F

When: 7pm

Leno on Recidivism

I'm at the Students for Sensible Drug Policy West Coast Regional Conference (at SF State -- see http://ssdp.org/conference/westcoast) where Senator Mark Leno is currently answering a question about Proposition 19. This initiative would reduce California's prison population by allowing adult possession and cultivation of 25 square feet of cannabis.

Senator Leno reminds us that California has the USA's highest recidivism rate, 70%, compared to the national average of 35%. California's prisons confine 170,000 inmates, 180% of their capacity of 90,000. Wow!

Slate/Daedalus new stats on Prison/Poverty cycle

WOW! Great statistics and charts and graphs in this new publication about the school-to-prison pipeline keeping people in poverty. Check out the summary at http://www.slate.com/id/2270328/?from=rss of the report by Western & Pettit at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DAED_a_00019. Here are some stand-out quotes:

"[I]f current incarceration trends hold, fully 68 percent of African-American male high school dropouts born from 1975 to 1979 (at the start of the upward trend in incarceration rates) will spend time living in prison at some point in their lives, as the chart below shows."

"After being out of prison for 20 years, less than one-quarter of ex-cons who haven't finished high school were able to rise above the bottom 20 percent of income earners, a far lower percentage than for high-school dropouts who don't go to prison."

"University of California at Berkeley professor of law Jonathan Simon writes that these men and women in many ways become the human equivalent of underwater homes bought with subprime mortgages—they are "toxic persons" in the way those homes have been defined as "toxic assets," condemned to failure."

Law Professors Endorsing Proposition 19

A long list of law professors and criminal justice experts (including my colleagues and me) are listed as supporting Prop 19. Here is our endorsement letter with some of the reasons for the endorsement.

Prop 19 Constitutionality: Fri @ noon

This Friday 10/15 at noon in room A,

Hastings Law Students for Sensible Drug Policy
and American Constitution Society present
Allen Hopper from ACLU
on the constitutionality of Prop 19 to legalize marijuana WITH FREE FOOD

Allen Hopper, Legal Director of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project, will address constitutional and other legal concerns raised by the text and context of Proposition 19, the November 2010 CA ballot question on taxing and regulating marijuana. Mr. Hopper will discuss the potential legal and practical interactions of Proposition 19 with federal law, including the Controlled Substances Act. Mr. Hopper will also discuss how Proposition 19 may affect the CA state medical marijuana regime, as well as its effects on CA employment law and employer policies.