2.3 BILLION Reasons Los Angeles Must Stop Building Jails

These days when you search the news for “Los Angeles County Jail” you are bombarded with articles about racist emails from a top sheriff’s official, use of force increasing by 40%, deputies being convicted of assault, Former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka’s conviction, Former Sheriff Lee Baca’s conviction, and the deaths of Matrice Richardson and Wakiesha Wilson.

If you look hard hidden within all of the news about sheriff brutality you can find a sentence here and there about the fact that Los Angeles County is moving forward with a plan to build two more jails to house this rampant culture of violence.

Let’s be clear, stopping this jail plan is not about money – it is about people’s lives. But, just to show how incredibly negligent the county is, let’s talk about money for a minute…

Los Angeles County’s proposed budget for the next year includes $118 million dollars for a new women’s jail to be built in the toxic Mira Loma site in Lancaster, more than 80 miles away from the current location in Lynwood, and another $5 million towards the planning of a new Men’s Central Jail, marketed as a “mental health jail.” The entire project is estimated to cost at least $2.3 BILLION dollars, but if the LASD has it their way it’ll cost even more. In an effort to ramp up the jail plan the sheriff’s department has been doing their own deal on the state level, scheming to get an additional BILLION dollars to take on 600 state prisoners within the county jails. That would make the jail expansion cost $3.5 BILLION at the minimum.

The LASD and the county would like to have you believe that they are “reforming,” “building trust,” and “focusing on alternatives,” but the fact is that although the county is planning on investing a few million towards mental health and reentry projects, they have not yet taken the multi-billion dollar jail plan off the table.

A perfect example of the sheriff department’s eagerness to expand the largest jail system in the world is the recent MacArthur grant. The MacArthur Foundation just awarded 11 grants ranging from $1.5 to $3.5 million to reduce jail populations. New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans were among the winners. Los Angeles was not. They instead received a smaller, lower-tier award of $150,000. Our team that looked over the LASD application theorize that it was deliberately flubbed.

There is hope. First of all, the budget has not been approved and you better believe we will be at the County Board of Supervisors meetings in full force advocating for funding community solutions. Second, the supervisors do not seem keen on accepting this sheriff-lead state deal. And third, just look at San Francisco! The people there were successful in stopping the jail plan.

Let’s change the news headlines and #STOP2BILLIONJAIL!

LA County Board of Supervisors agendas are often posted last minute so keep your Tuesday days flexible and follow us on Facebook or Twitter and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on actions. In the meantime contact your supervisor and tell them to stop the 2 billion dollar jail plan and invest in mental health diversion and community solutions! We. Will. Win.

Stay tuned to our blog for big updates regarding the Civilian Oversight Commission this month!

0

Thanks to Prop 47, Californians are less oppressed than they were a year ago

One year ago California voters adopted Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reduced 6 low level felonies, including drug possession, to misdemeanors. Check out this report out of Stanford analyzing the first year of Prop 47 that highlights reduced jail and prison overcrowding, the resentencing and release of 13,000 people as of Sept 30 (4,454 of from state prison, the rest from jail), the state savings of $70 million already and an estimated $93 million more every year, the county savings of $203 million annually, and the recidivism rate at a mere 5% – far lower than the state’s average.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell and others in law enforcement have been quick to attack Prop 47. It’s no surprise this pushback is coming at a time when the sheriff’s department is trying to build two new jails. We agree that not enough funds were given to rehabilitation programs, education, and victim services. What Sheriff McDonnell fails to mention in his recent videos in the LA Times is that those funds are historically given to the sheriff’s department! Well, we’re addressing his failure in our own series of Prop 47 videos.

Here’s our LA Times video response:

We didn’t set Prop 47 up for success

Housing rather than criminalizing folks on Skid Row

Recidivism rates via Prop 47 are at 5%

Our communities have spoken

The idea of the Ferguson Effect

0

A Success Stories Story

August 17, 2015
Guest Blog By: Lirisi ‘Bless’ Arzu

My name is Lirisi Arzu. I am 26 years old and I was a participant in Success Stories. The group in itself was a delight. It’s probably the only self-help program tailor-made for millenials (in prison). It is a fusion of business and therapy, which is just the right blend for both social and economic success.

A lot of us have been traumatized by what we’ve seen and experienced in life. This group gave us the outlet to express our thoughts and emotions about those situations. How they molded/impacted our lives and what was needed to be done in order for us to turn our lives around. The therapeutic aspect of the course definitely delved deep into core problems. That’s something a lot of us, especially I, have never done before. Not to mention the group’s full-hearted belief in self-employment.

The second phase taught us all about business. It talks about raising capital, how to formulate a business plan, down to the marketing. But, it’s much more than that. It teaches you how to budget your money and how to invest in stocks. Like I said earlier, it’s the perfect blend for social and economic success. The only requirement is that you need to want to change and do something positive not just for those dependent on you but for yourself.

I personally believe that this group should be incorporated in every prison and inner-city high school in the nation because everybody deserves a chance to succeed in this game we call life.

BLESS Arzu

Lirisi ‘Bless’ Arzu is a DJ and Success Stories graduate. He is being released and deported to Belize in March 2016. Contact him on Facebook or via email.

0

AB 953: Imagining an Existence Without Racial Profiling

Can You Imagine an Existence Without Racial Profiling?
With Assembly Bill 953 (Preventing Racial Profiling by Law Enforcement), We Can.

Imagine that harassment and oppression are a routine part of your life. That on a regular basis, you, your loved ones, and your community are consistently targeted by police because of your race or identity. Imagine the trauma caused by the knowledge that no one was keeping track of when this happened and that the police were not being held accountable for their actions.

Many communities in California do not have to imagine this at all. Many people of color, whether cis gender, transgender, or gender non-conforming adults, and children, are constantly targeted by law enforcement because of their race or identity even when there is NO evidence of criminal activity. A 2015 report by a police department in California found that blacks were stopped twice as often as their driving age demographic representation, and that blacks and Latinos were searched at three and two times the rate of whites, respectively.

For these communities racial and identity profiling, though currently illegal, is a routine part of their reality and is the entry way to mass incarceration, and other disparities.

Now, imagine an existence where police are held accountable for their actions, and where we can get basic information about what police are up to. That when police are trained, this training takes into account that the officer may have biases about race and identity that impact how they treat you and your community. Imagine if there were a group of people, an—advisory council, so to speak,—whose job it were to monitor how the police are interacting with your community with the goal of protecting you against racial profiling. Imagine that each and every time the police, stop, search, or shoot someone, it were reported or somehow captured.

Now, realize that there is a bill (AB 953), making its way through the California Legislature right now, that will do much of what we imagined above. Although, we know that collecting data will not fix broader issues with disparate policing, but increased transparency and accountability will bring us one step closer to a more just system.

In short, AB 953 allows us to #ImagineNoRacialProfiling and to imagine a system in which #BlackLivesMatter.

What you need to know about AB 953:

1. Racial and identity profiling occurs when law enforcement personnel stop, search, seize property from, or interrogate a person without evidence of criminal activity.

2. Though racial profiling by law enforcement is technically illegal, to date, California does not collect or make public basic information about who police stop, search, or even shoot. AB 953 would change that.

3. The Bill was authored by Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), and the cosponsors are Dignity and Power Now, the ACLU of California, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Sacramento, PICO California, Reform California, and Youth Justice Coalition.

4. The Bill is currently on the California Assembly Floor which means that THIS WEEK, on JUNE 3RD it will be voted on by ALL MEMBERS OF THE CA ASSEMBLY.

TAKE ACTION:

AB 953 is on its way to the Assembly floor for a vote on WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3RD. The law enforcement lobby is ramping up its efforts and we need votes to pass this bill and protect our communities!

1. Click to TWEET!

2. Click to find and CALL your assemblymember!

3. Click for a prompt to EMAIL!

Photo: Balthazar Beckett

dpnadmin, Author at Dignity and Power Now - Page 4 of 7