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Thursday, 06 November 2014 00:00

California Voters Pass 'Historic' Mass Incarceration Reform

Written by Lauren McCauley | Common Dreams
With the new prison reform measure passed, up to 10,000 California non-violent detainees may be eligible for early release. With the new prison reform measure passed, up to 10,000 California non-violent detainees may be eligible for early release. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/cc/flickr)

'This historic vote demonstrates support to advance a public safety strategy beyond incarceration to include treatment and prevention.'

A California public safety measure to reclassify low-level crimes, including drug possession, won a clear victory on Tuesday, as voters paved the way for thousands of non-violent offenders to be resentenced and potentially released from the state's notoriously overcrowded prison system.

Voting 58.5 to 41.5 percent to pass Proposition 47, California residents "spoke clearly" on the issue of mass incarceration, according to Brian Elderbroom and Ryan King with the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center. They wrote, "The current sentencing and correctional system in California is costly and inefficient and voters would prefer their tax dollars to be spent on education and health care rather than incarceration."

Under Proposition 47, low-level property and drug offenses including shoplifting, theft, and check fraud under $950, as well as personal illicit drug use will be reclassified from felonies to misdemeanors. Because the law will apply retroactively, as many as 10,000 people convicted of these offenses may now be eligible to petition for early release and, by some estimates, state courts will hand out roughly 40,000 fewer felony convictions each year. As stipulated by the law, the estimated $150 million in state savings will be used to support school truancy and dropout prevention, victim services, mental health and drug abuse treatment, and other programs designed to expand alternatives to incarceration.

"This historic vote demonstrates support to advance a public safety strategy beyond incarceration to include treatment and prevention," said Marc Mauer of criminal justice reform advocacy group, The Sentencing Project.

Reform advocates say that the passage of Proposition 47 will now institute a measure of justice for those communities disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs and tough-on-crime policies, such as California's infamous three strikes law.

Karen Lang, an organizer for the Community Coalition of Los Angeles, recently told the Los Angeles Times, that prison reform is seen as a "social justice" issue. "We have been punishing crimes of poverty."

Proposition 47 is one of handful of legislative efforts to reform the state's prison system, which a 2011 Supreme Court decision said was one of the most crowded and costly in the country. According to The Sentencing Project, the decision in "Brown v. Plata found the provision of health care in the California prison system to be constitutionally inadequate due to the severe overcrowding in the system; the state was required to reduce this figure to 137.5% of design capacity within two years."

While heralding the passage of Proposition 47, reform advocates note that by tackling low-level sentences the state is only addressing a small percentage of their prison population.According to the Department of Corrections, as of 2013, 70 percent of the California prison population was serving a sentence for a violent offense.

"If Californians want to reduce the prison population to address chronic overcrowding, it is going to take more ambitious policies that reduce time served for serious and violent offenses," write Elderbroom and King.

According to The Sentencing Project, research has shown that inmates serving life sentences who are released have low rates of recidivism. "Long-term sentencing reform will also need to focus on enacting policies and practices to provide opportunities to distinguish among individual offense circumstances, accomplishments in prison, and degree of risk to public safety," it reports.

The Sentencing Project concludes: "Coming after a nearly four-decade rise in imprisonment, the substantial reductions in Californian due to changes like Proposition 47 demonstrate the possibility of achieving pragmatic reforms to address mass incarceration."

Link to original article from Common Dreams

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Rev. Rodney Sadler

Dr. Sadler's work in the community includes terms as a board member of the N.C. Council of Churches, Siegel Avenue Partners, and Mecklenburg Ministries, and currently he serves on the boards of Union Presbyterian Seminary, Loaves and Fishes, the Hispanic Summer Program, and the Charlotte Chapter of the NAACP. His activism includes work with the Community for Creative Non-Violence in D.C., Durham C.A.N., H.E.L.P. Charlotte, and he has worked organizing clergy with and developing theological resources for the Forward Together/Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina. Rev. Sadler is the managing editor of the African American Devotional Bible, associate editor of the Africana ...  Bible, and the author of Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible. He has published articles in Interpretation, Ex Audito, Christian Century, the Criswell Theological Review, and the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and has essays and entries in True to Our Native Land, the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, the Westminster Dictionary of Church History, Light against Darkness, and several other publications. Among his research interests are the intersection of race and Scripture, the impact of our images of Jesus for the perpetuation of racial thought in America, the development of African American biblical interpretation in slave narratives, the enactment of justice in society based on biblical imperatives, and the intersection of religion and politics.   readmore

Rev. Rodney Sadler

Co - Chair - People Demanding Action
North Carolina Forward Together/Moral Monday Movem
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People Power with Ernie Powell

Ernie Powell has been involved in public policy, progressive campaigns and grassroots efforts since the mid 1960's. He worked as a boycott organizer with the United Farm Workers from 1968 until 1973. He then became a community organizer in Santa Monica, California involved in affordable housing advocacy while working with others in laying the foundation for one of the most progressive local rent control measures in the country. He organized on behalf of environmental and coastal access and preservation issues in California as well. Beginning in 1993 he served as Advocacy Representative and later as Manager of Advocacy for AARP in California working on national and state iss... sues. He left AARP in 2012 to work as Field Director for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare in Washington D.C. In late 2013 he returned to California and started a consulting business. He is a consultant with Social Security Works and is organizing groups nationally to fight for the protection and expansion of Social Security. He also consults with the California Long Term Care Ombudsman Association on issue impacting nursing home reform. He is a frequent author for Zocalo Public Square having just authored a piece on Social Security's 80th Birthday about the early impact of the Townsend Plan in building toward the passage of Social Security. Ernie has hosted two radio shows - the "Grassroots Corner" on "We Act Radio" in Washington D.C.and "the Campaign with Ernie Powell" at Radio Titans in Los Angeles. His focus for over 25 years has been on public policy issues impacting older Americans. He is a nationally recognized expert on grassroots organizing and campaigns. He is 66 years old and resides in Los Angeles, Ca.   readmore

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Social Security Works
Los Angeles

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Robert Dawkins is the founder of SAFE Coalition, North Carolina located in Charlotte, North Carolina. SAFE Coalition NC is a grassroots community coalition working to build public trust and accountability in NC law enforcement. We believe that critical dialogue, citizen oversight and legislative action are required to design a safe, accountable, fair and equitable system of criminal justice in our state.

Robert Dawkins

Founder
Safe Coalition, North Carolina
Charlotte, North Carolina

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