Carrie McGann
Almost a year after seemingly giving up on the idea, Governor Jerry Brown again announced that he’ll close the Division of Juvenile Justice, California’s youth prison system. The DJJ, known as the California Youth Authority (CYA) until a lawsuit prompted a system overhaul and inspired a corresponding name change, is slated for gradual shutdown starting this year, according to Brown’s proposed budget.
It’s been a violent year in Oakland so far – both homicides and shootings are up about a third over last year’s numbers. And, throughout the year, various editorials have called for different solutions to the uptick in violence.
After restaurant owner Jesus Campos was killed in the Fruitvale district, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Chip Johnson blasted Mayor Jean Quan for focusing too much on community programs, and not on police. Meanwhile, others, like Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon questioned whether or not there’s anything you can do in the short-term about violence and crime.
KALW News decided to explore other perspectives. So for the next three days, we’ll be talking with Oakland residents about what they think are real solutions to violence–mini-editorials on what they think are appropriate responses and actions in the wake of violent periods. Today, we start with Jakada Imani, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
DEA
About 9,000 inmates in California prison are there on charges of “simple possession” of an illegal drug. And according to a new poll, commissioned by the ACLU of Northern California, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the NAACP, and the Drug Policy Alliance, most Californians don’t think they should be there.
The poll, released earlier today and conducted by Lake Research Partners, sampled 800 registered voters from around the state and found:
Jessie Hodge
The success rate for juvenile offenders in places like St. Louis has risen to around 80 percent.
As California contemplates Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to shut down the juvenile prison system, eyes are increasingly turning to the state of Missouri. The Missouri Model of juvenile justice–often referred to as the “Missouri Miracle”–has become famous for its apparent success in giving kids who run afoul of the law a second chance. The state has closed down its youth prisons and moved towards a model focused on rehabilitation and therapy. Kids on probation there are now housed in small groups of 15-30 and their treatment is personalized, handled by attentive staff, and involves family and community members. In 2007, the state’s system posted a 7.3 percent recidivism rate. (In California, the rate at which kids return to either a juvenile facility or enter an adult prison within three years of release hovers around 56 percent.) To find out more about how Missouri’s system works, we called up Mark Steward, who was a counselor in Missouri’s juvenile correctional system when the new model was a pilot project. Steward eventually became Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services and now runs a consulting group called the Missouri Youth Services Institute, devoted to spreading the Missouri Model nationwide–and he says he’s been getting a lot of inquiries from California counties looking to change their systems.
Kevin Cortopassi
Do you fix an old system or start from scratch?
Governor Jerry Brown has been throwing out some seemingly radical proposals about the future of corrections in California since he took office. Most of them involve taking responsibilities that are currently handled by the state and moving them to the counties. Why? On its surface, the Governor says the general move to localism will save money. In the criminal justice arena, localism–or “community-based corrections”–is also a big rallying point for reformers.
On Wednesday night’s Crosscurrents, we reported on the debate over closing the California Division of Juvenile Justice, the state’s youth correctional system. One of the most interesting things about the debate is that people who agree on almost everything do not agree on whether or not to shut down the DJJ. Specifically, Barry Krisberg, of the Earl Warren Institute at Berkeley Law and Dan Macallair, of the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, are on different sides of few issues other than this one. Their different takes on the issue break down to two big questions:
Erica Mu
Jakada Imani is the executive director of Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He’s called violence a public health emergency, saying that if the high rate of black murders were happening in white communities, the National Guard would be in the streets. Here’s a conversation with Jakada Imani and KALW’s Holly Kernan. (Transcript after the jump.)
The Oakland Tribune had a solid article on this topic, so I’ll only add a couple of things.
First, here’s the breakdown. Alameda County is about to hire for an important post: chief of probation. About 18,000 adults and 2,000 juveniles are under the supervision of the probation department in Alameda County at any time. Donald Blevins, the previous chief, moved down to Los Angeles county to head up that troubled probation department. Blevins’ main claim to fame seems to be that he managed to cut $50 million (and 115 jobs) from his budget. In Los Angeles, he’s arrived in town as something of a reformer. The question now is what kind of person his replacement up here will be. And community groups like the Ella Baker Center for Human rights, which deals with a lot of issues surrounding juvenile justice, are peeved that the Board of Supervisors hasn’t included any of them in the process of looking for a new hire.
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