Video & Multimedia
Related: About this forumGo here to stop Gov. Brown's costly private prison scheme!
sign the Petition here: (I'm not in CA, but I am a CA economic refugee)
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/51040/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=11877
NOTE: Since this video was produced, Brown's plan was clarified to cost about $1 billion over three years for more prison space. That's instead of diverting more nonviolent people out of the prison system. The California State Assembly has a chance to stop this plan, but legislative leaders aren't saying if they will. Let's make sure the legislature hears our voices.
This video was produced by Beyond Bars (a project of Brave New Foundation) in partnership with the California Partnership, Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Critical Resistance, SJRA Advocate, Friends Committee on Legislation of California, Courage Campaign, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/day-52-prisoners-isolated-disturbing-news-from-corocran-strike-participation-grows-prisoners-remain-committed-cdcr-is-not-going-to-break-us/
annm4peace
(6,119 posts)After you send your email, please make a few quick phone calls to make sure our message is heard!
Hello my name is _________ and I am calling to let you know that I am disgusted by Gov. Brown's plan to spend billions of dollars to expand our prison capacity. I believe the only sustainable solution to reducing overcrowding is to reduce the number of people who are imprisoned in California. I hope that instead of dipping into the state budget reserve to finance additional prison beds that you will look at more cost effective methods of releasing people from our overcrowded prisons. There is overwhelming support for your administration to release people from our overcrowded prisons immediately and we need your leadership today!
Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell
(916) 319-2054
Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner:
916) 319-2015
Assemblywoman Toni Atkins
916) 319-2078
Assemblymember Anthony Rendon
(916) 319-2063
Assemblymember Roger Dickinson
(916) 319 - 2007
Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer
(916) 319-2059
If you can help us make a few more calls we are targeting all Assembly Democrats! Help us keep the pressure on:
http://asmdc.org/democratic-members
annm4peace
(6,119 posts)To Our Elected Leaders,
I am writing in response to Governor Brown's recent statement announcing a new plan to raid budget reserves meant to restore anti-poverty programs for more prison expansion. He wants to spend several billion dollars in the next 5 years on leasing prison and jail beds across the state and country, and expanding three California prisons. We hope that you will take into consideration the overwhelming support by California voters for you to release people from our overcrowded prisons. We hope that instead of dipping into the state budget reserve to finance additional prison beds that you will look at more cost effective methods of reducing our prison population. Our budget reserve should be used for restorations to much needed social safety net programs, not more prison cells. We can not afford hundred of millions of dollars going into the already bloated corrections budget.
We believe the only sustainable solution to reducing overcrowding is to reduce the number of people who are imprisoned in California. We want the implementation of compassionate release, medical parole, geriatric parole, lifer parole, youth sentence reduction, expansion of good-time credits, reclassification of low-level felonies, and expansion of the Alternative Custody Program; all of which are among many cost-efficient, responsible options for population reduction. We hope that the administrations plan does not include the use of additional transfers to out-of-state or in-state contract facilities such as the community correctional facilities Taft and Shafter that CDCR recently toured in Kern County.
Additionally, we hope that all current prison expansion projects are canceled including the $810 million in in-fill bed construction, which CDCR is looking to site at Donovan, Mule Creek, Folsom or Vacaville prisons. We hope that the reduction plan does not include realigning additional people to serve time in already overcrowded county jails or leasing jail bed space from any California County, specifically Alameda or Los Angeles. According to a recent Los Angeles Times Article "California prisons could free 1,000 to ease crowding" many county jails are unacceptably full. In Los Angeles County, for example, "the sheriff has simply said we can't handle any more," said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for Sheriff Lee Baca.
We do applaud you for reducing the amount of prisoners in prison since the implementation of realignment. However, in order to stay out of the fiscal crisis California has suffered through for so long, we need to invest in viable prison population reduction strategies. The cost per inmate - adjusted for inflation - has continued to climb and is substantially higher than in the mid-1990s. In California spending has increased to about $60,000 for each prisoner in 2013-14 which is 82.3 percent higher than in 1994-95 ($33,000 after inflation). At the same time, California's spending per K-12 student has risen by just 17.9 percent during the same period ($6,971 in 1994-95 to a projected $8,219 in 2013-14 after inflation). Spending per prisoner in California has increased nearly five times faster than spending per K-12 student over the past two decades. We need to focus on the priorities that are going to make California the great state it once was.
There is overwhelming support for your administration to release people from our overcrowded prisons immediately. We need a plan that shrinks the prison system through common sense sentencing reforms, and the expansion of elder parole, medical parole and good time credits. I ask you to pledge to invest in California's future, and not put one more dollar into the bloated corrections budget.
Sincerely,
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)His alternative is to build more prisons. I oppose that and I support the short term fix of farming it out, as do local progressive groups.
Sorry.
mike_c
(36,281 posts)Also, support the hunger strikers and end indefinite solitary confinement!
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)Nonviolent offender accused of killing 22-year-old 3 months after early release
Stay strong Jerry! Don't let these criminals loose on our streets.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)Wisehart wrote in a news release that Johnson had a prior dating relationship with the victim, had served time in state prison for assaulting her and had a domestic violence restraining order against him.
Johnson had been released from prison on probation, Wisehart wrote, and police are looking into the circumstances surrounding his release.
He certainly does not seem to fit the criteria of a non-violent offender under AB109, police Capt. Rob Webb said.
People don't know how lucky we are to have Jerry Brown back in office.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)Type 1 crimes -- homicide, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, arson, robbery and auto theft -- in Redlands are up 17.8 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to police records.
Garcia associates the spike in crime with the additional criminals in Redlands and surrounding areas.
"They're not the only ones committing crimes, of course, but we can track a large number of our crime increase to the PRCS," he said.
Stay strong Jerry! We support your efforts to keep our neighborhoods safe!
mike_c
(36,281 posts)...including me. We also don't support torture and indefinite solitary confinement, often for decades. California's prison system is utterly broken, and farming prisoners out for corporate profit is not the answer.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)Auto thieves, jewel thieves, drug pushers, bank robbers, etc?
It's all find to say "non-violent" until you have a real definition of what "non-violent offenders" actually mean.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)California already reduced its prison population by more than 46,000 inmates since 2006, the majority because of a 2-year-old state law that sentences lower level offenders to county jails instead of state prisons.
We dont have an awful lot of these low risk, less serious people left in our system and so were very concerned about who we might have to release if we go that way, Beard said in a telephone interview.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/08/05/california-seeks-to-avoid-releasing-violent-offenders-due-to-prison-crowding/
Stay strong Jerry! Keep our streets safe!
mike_c
(36,281 posts)You're all over this thread calling for more incarceration instead of less. Hmm, who benefits from California's bloated prison population?
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)please answer
annm4peace
(6,119 posts)if only more CA taxpayers would pay attention and take action.
We have to push Gov Brown to do what is right and humane and what will also save tax dollars.
Because the prison industrial complex is pushing him to make money at any cost.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
Frederick Douglass
During his tenure as head of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Secretary Beard oversaw a dramatic increase in Pennsylvanias prison population and the opening of two new state prisons. If the state of California wants to learn from Pennsylvanias mistakes, they should be looking for leaders who will work with the Governor and Legislature to shrink the prison system, not build it up, warned Layne Mullett of Decarcerate PA, who monitored Beards running of Pennsylvanias Department of Corrections from 2001 to 2010. In Pennsylvania, under Beards leadership, the prison population increased from 38,000 in 2001 to more than 51,000 by the time he left his position in 2010.
Left Coast2020
(2,397 posts)..or it may have been on tweedy's show, but a large number of African American men are behind bars for smoking pot or possession of.
That is not a violent crime and therefore should subject said offenders to release and educational opportunities. And additionally, remove this conviction from their record which eliminates discrimination for seeking a job.
I thought Jerry was going to let non-violent people out according to a Bee story a few weeks ago?
annm4peace
(6,119 posts)we think we have evolved as a society/civilization and then you read about our prison systems and it make you see in many cases we haven't evolved as much as we think we have.
3 strikes has imprisoned two generations. Have to remember some prisoners are innocent but took plea deals so they didn't end up with longer sentences. The Innocent Project finds many are innocent that have been sitting in prisons and jails.
Innocent or Not,, the Prison system breeds more violence and mental illness. It has to be changed, even if it is step by step. Just meeting the 5 demands is a start.
It isn't just about the prisoners,, it is about us as a society. We can do better, much better.