California AG “Shocked” To Learn Her Office Wanted To Keep Eligible Parolees In Jail To Work

[Playinghardball]

Lawyers for California Attorney General Kamala Harris argued in court this fall against the release of eligible non-violent prisoners from California’s overcrowded prisons — because the state wanted to keep them as a labor force.

Harris, a rising star in the Democratic Party, said she learned about the argument when she read it in the paper.

“I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court,” Harris told BuzzFeed News in an interview Monday. “I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.”

The Supreme Court found California’s prisons were so overcrowded in 2011 that the conditions violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, California has been under federal court supervision as it seeks to comply with the order that the state reduce its prison population. In February, the state had agreed to reduce its population by releasing non-violent prisoners with only two felonies who had served half their sentences.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that attorneys in Harris’ office had unsuccessfully argued in court that the state could not release the prisoners it had agreed to release because “if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.” Those prisoners, the Times reported, earn wages that range from “8 cents to 37 cents per hour.”

More here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/some-lawyers-just-want-to-see-the-world-burn

[phantom power]

1. It's fucking slave-holding

[Lurks Often]

2. If AG Harris is really "shocked" then she isn't doing a good job

of supervising her subordinates. This would seem to be a significant case that should have required her signing off on the position the lawyers were going to take in court.

[Wella]

18. Agreed.

+1

[Sanity Claws]

3. This should be headline news

This is exactly what we've been saying about incarceration --- people are being jailed in order to create cheap labor for for-profit companies.
We have the highest incarceration rates in the world and this is why.

Even if the AG was not aware of it, it is clear that others in positions of authority were. The attorneys could not have come up with the argument unless the state tracked the data and made it available.

[stuffmatters]

13. Why is she sending attorney to even argue against releasing these non violent prisoner?

This pro slavery argument of "her staff" is hideous and inexcusable. But the larger pix it paints for her is even grimmer: Why are Harris & Brown arguing to keep these inhumane incarcerations in the first place, incarcerations so cruel that they've been denounced by the UN Human Rights Comm.

Not to mention the cost of these incarcerations...60,000 per prisoner per year...more $ than paying for a 4 yr UC degree. It's a disgraceful priority. And rather than release them, is Brown is "selling" them to private out of state prisons; we know it's one of his methods of "thinning" the pool.

And the so-called cheap labor Harris & Jerry are fighting want to keep in place...the taxpayers are paying for room, board etc of each of these slaves. Again they cost 60,000/year each. There's nothing "cheap" about the labor except the taxpayer picks up the costs & the labor is enslaved...inevitably for private profit. Endangered even, they have these prisoners fighting forest fires.

I've voted enthusiastically for both AG Harris & Gov Brown, but in this particular area they are both contemptible.

Hard to imagine why this is not a huge union fight. Maybe the power of the prison guards and police unions drowns out the other labor unions.

[Man from Pickens]

4. I'm shocked!

that there is slavery going on in this establishment

[hifiguy]

5. Who the fuck is in charge of the attorneys

who made that argument and why the fuck have they not been fired yesterday?

[cali]

6. this doesn't speak well for Harris.

[dilby]

7. Time for her to find a new job.

I am really shocked that she had to learn what her employees are doing through a paper.

[KamaAina]

8. "I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find out that gambling is going on in this establishment."

She better can these attorneys pronto, or kiss her political future goodbye.

[valerief]

9. Another shocked Capt. Renault.

[bravenak]

10. Prison is the new Slavery!!!nt

[marble falls]

11. Shocked, I tells ya'! ......

[Le Taz Hot]

21. There are no private prisons in California

Just an FYI.

[Initech]

14. How is this not slavery again?

[4now]

15. She is quickly becoming a big disappointment.

[Eleanors38]

16. What does Harris think about theft of guns?

Now that the voters if CA approved reducing theft of guns below some dollar amount to a misdemeanor.

Even this armed American doesn't back that.

[Wella]

17. The prison industry wants the non-violent offenders--they make a more docile workforce

They don't want the violent offenders that they can't control. I often wonder if the War on Drugs was really an attempt to get a prison workforce in place with placid pot smokers who wouldn't be too much trouble to control.

[Autumn]

19. An Attorney General didn't know her office Wanted To Keep Eligible Parolees In Jail To Work

Sure she didn't know. That's the ticket.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

20. Why isn't this all over the nooz channels as a great Democratic scandal? Because...

...making a great deal of it has the potential to uncover a corrupt justice system that turns inmates, who are ostensibly supposed to be being rehabiliated, into slave labor.