#California Prison Overcrowding

[thenewdemocratus]

Prison Reform Movement: Rina Palta: ACLU: Counties Opting For Incarceration, Not Rehabilitation

Source:The FreeState California has so many people in their corrections system as far as inmates. And so many inmates that they are now under a court order to reduce the size of their inmate population. Not by accident because they arrest too many people. Fill up their prisons with inmates, basically just warehousing them. There are some exceptions and are left to wonder what to do with them once…

[octuscle]

Chronivac Punishment: Twink Transformation

As you may have noticed, the use of Chronivac to relieve overcrowded prisons is slowly becoming established.

As a reminder, the substitute for jail is permissible if the following conditions are met:

The TF must be humiliating The TF must be recognisable to the social environment of the offender. The TF must be beneficial to society

Mike has been convicted of coercion and extortion. He did not attend the court hearing. He stayed away without permission. The sentence against him was passed while he was training at the gym. Execution will take place with immediate effect.

Mike's grunting dominates the gym. He is undoubtedly one of the big boys. No one here would dare question his authority. One of Mike's buddies asks him how many sets he has left. And Mike replies in a rather high-pitched falsetto voice that he'll take as long as it takes here. His buddies collapse with laughter. Mike lets go of the bar in shock and the weights come crashing down. Hey, big guy, someone asks. Now in the boys' choir? And where does that poncey smell come from? Hardly from me, Mike flutes and smells his freshly epilated armpits. It smells like Calvin Klein. The boys collapse in laughter.

Determined to regain his respect, Mike resumes training. But he doesn't manage to move the weights even a millimetre. Before the eyes of his buddies, his muscles melt and his tattoos disappear. In shock, he runs to the locker room. Loses his trousers from his narrow hips in the process. And uncovers an astonishingly magnificent cock.

His former buddies run after him, jeering. Mikey awaits them with a half-erect cock. He now has a new role as the gym whore. To what extent does this fulfil the third condition for Chronivac's punishment? May not be beneficial to society. But funny and a maximum punishment for a testosterone brimming bully.

[animentality]

Where is the lie though? What? Don't like having your propaganda turned over? Go look up her record. California prisons where so overcrowded and labor programs where so brutal people where killing themselves in record numbers in the system. She fought to keep non violent offenders locked up and ruined people's lives. It got so bad the Feds had to step in. You really gonna sit there and pretend this is some kind of good person? Kamala Harris is a piece of shit.

Trump is a rapist.

You going to pretend I should vote for him instead?

[theoutcastrogue]

"California voters chose harsher sentencing, the continuation of forced labor in prisons, and tough-on-crime prosecutors this week in overwhelming numbers. Proposition 36, a bill that upgrades a raft of petty theft and drug crimes from misdemeanors to felonies, was approved by 70 percent of voters in the initial counts. It is designed to incarcerate thousands more people by reversing a ballot measure passed 10 years ago, Prop 47, which downgraded theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in response to massive prison overcrowding. On the same ballot, voters rejected a prison reform measure that would have made slave labor illegal in state prisons. [...]

Copaganda 

Police and prison guard groups have tried to roll back Prop 47 multiple times since its passage in 2014, but none have been as well-funded as this year’s Prop 36. Retail giants Walmart, Target, and Home Depot poured more than $6 million into the campaign, while In-N-Out and 7-Eleven each chipped in $500,000. Along with major donations from pro-business PACs and the state prison guards union, the campaign racked up nearly $17 million, dwarfing the opposition. [...]

For months, the Prop 36 campaign ran ads presenting the bill as a way to address the fentanyl crisis and make both businesses and consumers safer by putting people committing low-level property crimes behind bars.

After a spike during the initial years of the pandemic, property crimes have again begun to decline across California, continuing a decades-long trend, which sees rates at about half of what they used to be in the 1990s, according to Department of Justice figures. But that hasn’t stopped media outlets from keeping broadcasts of “smash-and-grab” incidents as mainstays of evening news cycles, often recycling the same footage."

[insteading]

Apropos of a post talking about the importance of reading your whole ballot (YES, especially if you live in California or one of the other states that does a lot of ballot initiatives):

Back when I was out of paid work and doing local politics coverage full time, I was running an event about state and local ballot initiatives. We tracked down speakers who worked on housing policy, environmental policy, education policy, etc., and asked them to devote some time to talking about how the measure(s) they'd studied / worked on would impact existing racial inequities.

Somewhere in my whole calendar of tasks was "obsessively peruse the secretary of state's website starting in June to get an educated guess at what initiatives are likely to make it onto the ballot for the general election." And this is how I found out: I have a ballot initiative nemesis. This guy puts his whole law school education into the most retrofuck propositions I can think of. (For one, he wrote the Three Strikes law- which some of the people in whose name it was written have been trying to get overturned. For another, a particular measure passed years ago reclassifying some thefts as misdemeanors decreased prison overcrowding. This guy decided: CAN'T HAVE THAT and decided to make stealing laundry detergent a felony again!)

Anyway "Who wrote this measure?" gets to be an instructive question after a while. If I see this mustache-twirling villain's name on it, I am not fucking voting for it.

[reasonsforhope]

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has announced a plan to transform the state’s oldest prison into a center for rehabilitation, education and training, modeled after Norwegian incarceration systems, which are much less restrictive than US facilities.

Newsom told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that his goal was “ending San Quentin [prison] as we know it” and working to “completely reimagine what prison means”. San Quentin, located on a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area and established in 1852, houses nearly 4,000 people, including hundreds on its infamous death row, the largest in the US, which is on track to be dismantled.

The Democratic governor said that by 2025, he plans to transition the massive penitentiary into a final stop of incarceration before individuals are released, with a focus on job training for trades, including plumbers, electricians or truck drivers, the LA Times reported. His recently released budget proposal includes $20m to start the effort.

“The ‘California Model’ the governor is implementing at San Quentin will incorporate programs and best practices from countries like Norway, which has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world – where approximately three in four formerly incarcerated people don’t return to a life of crime,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Thursday. The prison will be renamed the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.

Pictured: Instructor Douglas Arnwine hands back papers with comments to his students at San Quentin state prison in April 2022.

The transformation Newsom has described would, at least for San Quentin, mark a fundamental shift from the extremely punitive American system. The US has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world...

Although California is considered a leader in criminal justice reform, the state’s prison system continues to be overcrowded, with thousands of elderly people languishing behind bars and Black residents disproportionately imprisoned for decades due to harsh sentencing laws adopted in the 1990s.

Scandinavian models of incarceration that have garnered increasing attention from some US lawmakers are less focused on punishment and are meant to give imprisoned people support and a sense of normal life behind bars so that they are prepared to reintegrate into society. That can mean access to personal computers, televisions and showers, consistent classes and programming, fresh food, more freedom of movement and stronger connections with the outside world.

“Do you want them coming back with humanity and some normalcy, or do you want them coming back more bitter and more beaten down?” Newsom told the LA Times.

An overhaul of San Quentin would be a huge undertaking, and there are significant unanswered questions about what the transition would mean for its current residents as well as the tens of thousands of others located across the California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR). San Quentin has a long and recent history of scandals involving abuse, overcrowding, guard misconduct and medical neglect. It is also a prison that has significantly more programming than some of the remote and rural CDCR prisons, with a renowned podcast produced by incarcerated San Quentin journalists.

The governor’s office noted research showing that every $1 spent on rehabilitation saves more than $4 on costs of re-incarceration; that people who enroll in education programs behind bars are 43% less likely to return to prison; and that crime survivor groups say victims prefer sentences that include programming designed to prevent recidivism...

Assemblymember Mia Bonta noted that California spends $14.5bn on prisons each year – $106,000 a person – but traditionally puts only about 3.4% toward rehabilitation: “It’s time for a significant paradigm shift.”

One of the reporters in attendance was Steve Brooks, an incarcerated journalist and editor of the San Quentin News paper, who asked the governor how the Scandinavian model would be adopted in a prison where residents remain concerned about overcrowding and the living conditions. Brooks also said people were concerned that those convicted of violent offenses would be excluded from programs under a new system. Newsom responded, “I’m not looking to cherry pick certain offenses. I’m for people who are committed, not passively interested, in changing themselves.”

-via The Guardian, 3/17/23

[filmnoirsbian]

As this book has shown, insane offenders against the law are routinely convicted and warehoused in jails and prisons, and the jail and prison populations swell beyond the limit of health and decency, and the watchdog groups issue statistics and the media report them, and people wonder what can be done, and then they cease wondering.

Sometimes a little reform does occur. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the overcrowding in California prisons was unconstitutional. The high court sternly ordered that the correctional system population be reduced--to 137.5 percent of design capacity.

Mass shootings by people in psychosis create freshets of outrage--not over our poor and porous identification, care, and oversight of mentally disturbed people, but over the laxity of our gun-control laws. Gun-rights activists hear these outcries, and call, not with any great passion, for mental health care reform. Then the conversation drifts to other things, until the next massacre.

Police shootings of mentally ill victims, mostly black and poor and unable to find help, inspire similar freshets, with similar results.

Suicides take the lives of thirty-eight thousand Americans a year. About 90 percent of suicides are the result of mental illness.

No One Cares About Crazy People by Ron Powers

[king-vecnass]

(Uncensored version can be found HERE) Eddie hated California. It was too hot, too much people, too much light. He craved for the gentleness of forests, not overcrowded beaches in the first days of Summer. But Al was now out of prison, had managed to wrestle Eddie away from Wayne after threatening to sue his uncle for some old skeletons in the family closet. It had been dirty, but it worked. Eddie had caved, if only to protect Wayne. He missed Wayne. He missed Gareth, and Jeff and James. He missed Dustin and- and the whole Hellfire club. Eddie missed them all and his heart was fucking bleeding. His only joy came from his dreams, lately. Eddie kept dreaming about this young man, with sun-kissed skin, golden hair and eyes like tiny oceans. He was a fierce soul, keeping Eddie on his toes by holding his heart in his tan hands. It made Eddie's every waking hours an absolute nightmare, forcibly kept away from his sweet sandman by the unforgiving daytime. Soon, he started to miss him, too. He tried to take naps, to sleep as much as he could, his golden boy was surprised to see him at such unnusual hours, but it didn't matter, Eddie could stay with him that way. And if Al was angry, Eddie couldn't find it in himself to care. At least until Al decided to shake him awake when the sun rose every goddamn day, forcing him to stay awake until late in the night. Al was back in his shady business, and was dragging Eddie down to the bottom with him. When he saw his golden boy again, worry for Eddie and furry against his father were etched on his statuesque face. They could only meet for a few, bittersweet hours before Eddie would be wrenched away, exhausted and heartbroken. It wasn't fair. Every sundays, though, Eddie was free to roam and wander. He had used this day to sleep, at first. Spending the entire day in arms he couldn't touch but that could touch his soul. Now, however, Eddie had other plans. Eddie was nothing if not creative. He had drawn a lot, for the Hellfire club, for Corroded Coffin, for his own projects. He knew how to make music, weaving notes on metal cords. It had been a matter of time before he would start working on something... different. That day, he had tried to bring his lover out of his dreams. It was rough and unrefined, yet overwordly and surprisingly graceful. Just like him. Maybe it was the sand, that material that waas so perfect for his golden man born from the sun and the sea. What he didn't expect, was for the sculpture to start stirring and move, the sand falling to the ground and revealing smooth skin underneath. Eddie watched, dumbstruck and in awe, as his statue leaned over him, his breath warm against his lips. "Took you long enough, Ed."

SECOND PROMPT "Sand Sculpting Contest" IS DONE. I have to admit I slightly cheated on this one and got rid of the "contest" part... but I make the rules now. So have my Pygmalion and Galatea AU!! I didn't like the idea of them just... making silly things out of sand so I tried to twist the prompt into something I would be hyped about.It went WAY out of hands, lol. ANYWAY, @mungrovebingos thanks for making me stir my braincells on this one!

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against LATINO PEOPLE

On June 14th, 2019, an off-duty cop, Salvador Sanchez, in Corona, CA, shot and killed a mentally ill man, Kenneth French,, as well as shooting his family 8 times, while his family was with shopping for fathers day at a Costco. “I begged and told him not to shoot,” his father Russell French said. “I said we have no guns and my son is sick. He still shot.” Sanchez then fired at least eight rounds, striking all three family members. A man inside Costco stood and prayed over Russell French as he lied on the ground bleeding, he said. Kenneth French was shot twice in his back, Galipo said. There were also two gunshot wounds in his armpit and shoulder area. After the shooting, Corona Police said Sanchez was assaulted “without provocation” before Sanchez opened fire. He was placed on administrative leave days after the shooting, into which the LAPD is conducting an internal investigation.

On Feb 7th, 2019, a US border patrol officer shot and killed 21 for old Mendivil Perez, an American citizen, in Nogales, AZ. More than six months later, CBP won’t name the officer who fired his gun, or explain why he fired, or acknowledge the killing.

In early June, 2019, several reports of abuse surfaced about the US’s migrant prison camps, run by US customs and Border Patrol. One such facility, named “The Dog Pound”, by border patrol agents, had no running water, no tarp or safety from the elements. A group of prisoners were held in a single cell for 30 days without shower or clothes changes, in 100 degree temperatures. There is severe overcrowding in the El Paso camp, with as many as 76 migrants packed into a tiny cell designed for a maximum of 12 people. A number of children have died while being held, including one baby born in an overcrowded cell. The mother was never taken to a hospital. 4 toddlers in a Texas facility were so ill and neglected, that a lawyer intervened to force the government to hospitalize them. Children are often taken from mothers, due to the horrible conditions in the camps. In several Rio Grande Valley facilities, migrants were not provided soap, toothbrushes, and were sleep-deprived. Health and Human Service says it is past capacity with over 13,000 kids in its care at the moment. A mole exposed a Facebook group containing 9500 border patrol agents, with incredibly racist and sexist rhetoric, including threats against US rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was planning a visit to the camps.

On January 29th, 2019, Tempe Arizona police shot and killed a 14 year old, Antonio Arce. He was shot in the back between his shoulder blades while running away. Police at first delayed, then released a small section of the bodycam footage, intentionally cut right before seeing the body, 3 days after the shooting. After backlash over the shortened video, they held a private showing to select reporters, barring any cameras or recording devices, seemingly showing Arce with the orange-tipped airsoft gun found near his body. They’ve refused to release that video to the public, leading many to believe it to be doctored, with police planting an airsoft gun on him after the killing as a justification. The original video has no such airsoft gun. The officer who murdered him is currently on administrative leave.

On Nov 25, 2018, US customs and border agents fired tear gas at hundreds of Central American migrants on the US border. “We ran, but when you run, the gas asphyxiates you more,” Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, told the Associated Press while cradling daughter Valery, 3, in her arms. The use of tear gas is banned in warfare, while its use for riot control is internationally accepted. Protesters and amnesty seekers would have more rights and protections if they simply declared war on the US government.

In May 2018, at a California press conference regarding Sanctuary cities, Trump, referring to Mexican immigrants stated: “These aren’t people. These are animals”.

Starting in April 2018, the Trump administration began a policy of separating families who attempt to cross the border. Separated children have been housed in a number of newly constructed tent facilities, such as one in Tornillo, TX. Another facility in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the same military prison that held Japanese and Apache civilians, will hold south american migrants. Andrea Pitzer, the author of “One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps” writes, “While writing a book on camp history, I defined concentration camps as the mass detention of civilians without trial, usually on the basis of race, religion, national origin, citizenship, or political party, rather than anything a given individual has done. By this definition, the new child camp established in Tornillo, Texas, is a concentration camp.” Recently it has been found that the Trump administration has been drugging children without consent. Children as young as 14 were abused at a Stanton VA ICE facility. “Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would handcuff me,” said a Honduran immigrant who was sent to the facility when he was 15 years old. “Strapped me down all the way, from your feet all the way to your chest, you couldn’t really move. … They have total control over you. They also put a bag over your head. It has little holes; you can see through it. But you feel suffocated with the bag on.”

Throughout 2018, I.C.E. started another wave of deportations, breaking up hundreds of families, and mandated the legal separation incoming parents from their children (presumably to deter future asylum-seekers). ICE arrested 114 people in Sandusky OH. Trump and Jeff Sessions have ramped up a trend of forcible deportations started by Clinton and Obama. Between 2016 and 2017, apprehensions of undocumented immigrants jumped by a third. In 2017, President Trump deported more than double the number of noncriminals than Obama had the previous year. Those deported include a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy in San Antonio; a grandmother described as the “backbone” of a Navy veteran’s family; a father of two in Detroit who had lived in the U.S. since he was 10 years old. A major consequence of this new policy has been an explosion of fear among immigrant communities “When everyone’s a target, no one is safe,” says Luis Zayas, dean of the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. He cites instances of ICE agents arresting people who had just filed paperwork for a green card, left church or dropped off their kids at school. “The arrests feel arbitrary, and that’s different,” he says. “The fear is worse now than I’ve ever seen it.”

In July 2017, police shot Ismael Lopez, a Mississippi car mechanic, in the back of the head at his own home, killing him. While the police say that he was holding a weapon, his guns were nowhere near his dead body, and police also killed his dog, and bullet holes were found from police shooting through the front door. No officer has been charged.

The United States Department of Homeland Security rescinded DACA, or Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, a program which protects ~ 800,000 minors from being deported, on June 16, 2017, while continuing to review the existence of the DACA program as a whole. The DACA policy was rescinded by the Trump administration on September 5, 2017, but full implementation of the rescission was delayed six months to give Congress time to decide how to deal with the population that was previously eligible under the policy.

Beginning in May 2017, ICE began another wave of deportation targeting Mexicans. Hugo Mejia and a coworker, Rodrigo Nuñez, were imprisoned by ICE officials, despite living in the US for 17 years, and having clean records.

Beginning in 1994, sheriff Joe Arpaio opened up a “tent city”, outside of phoenix, a facility which he called, his own “personal concentration camp”, used to house prisoners, in terrible conditions. In 2011, inmates complained that fans near their beds were not working, and that their shoes were melting from the heat. During the summer of 2003, when outside temperatures exceeded 110 °F (43 °C), Arpaio said to complaining inmates, “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths!”. Arpaio reinstuted chain gangs (for female prisoners as well), forcing people to work 7 hours a day, 7 days a week. Arpaio also entrapped 18-year-old James Saville into an assassination attempt against himself. Saville’s attorneys eventually discovered that MCSO detectives had bought the bomb parts themselves, then convinced Saville to build it even though he was not predisposed to commit such a crime. On July 9, 2003, a Maricopa County Superior Court jury acquitted Saville, finding that the bomb plot was an elaborate publicity stunt to boost Arpaio’s reelection bid. On April 4th, 2017, newly elected Phoenix sheriff Paul Penzone finally closed it down due to public pressure, after 23 years of operation. Trump pardoned sherriff Arpaio in August 2017, after holding a rally in Phoenix AZ in which police tear-gassed protesters.

On March 25th-27th, 2017, ICE agents arrested 84 immigrants in Oregon and Washington. Many arrested had no criminal background. Oregon Governor Katie Brown complied with ICE, but received vitriolic responses when she tweeted in support of immigrant families.

On March 27th, 2017, ICE agents in Chicago broke into the home of Felix Torres, and shot him while he and his family slept in their home. After speaking with Torres’ daughter, the People’s Response Team added that “no members of the family are undocumented, and the family has lived in the home for at least 30 years.”Carmen Torres said, “They didn’t say anything. They just came in and pointed pistols in our faces and dragged us out,” DNA Info reported. “It’s a lie when they say he was holding a gun. He doesn’t even own a gun,” she said. “They shot my dad. They shot him, and I don’t know why.” He is in critical condition.

In early 2017, ICE began a campaign of arrests and deportation of undocumented immigrants. 700 People have been arrested so far.

In the present day, ICE (U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement), the police tasked with immigration enforcement, operates over 500 prison camps, holding over 34,000 undocumented people deemed “aliens”, 20,000 of which have no criminal convictions, in the US system of immigration detention. The camps include forced labor (often with contracts from private companies), poor conditions, lack of rights (since the undocumented aren’t considered citizens), and forced deportations, often splitting up families. Detainees are often held for a year without trial, with antiquated court procedures pushing back court dates for months, encouraging many to accept immediate deportation in the hopes of being able to return faster than the court can reach a decision, but forfeiting legal status, in a cruel system of coercion. After the creation of DHS and ICE, the budget for immigration enforcement doubled from $6.2 billion in 2002 to $12.5 billion in 2006 under Obama.

In 1996, in response to increased immigration from countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala ravaged by US imperialism and authoritarian dictatorships, the US passed the Anti-Terrorism and effective Death Penalty Act, allowing deportation of any immigrant ever convicted of a crime, no matter how long ago or how serious. Lawful permanent residents who had married Americans and now had children were not exempt. The New York Times reported in July that “hundreds of long-term legal residents have been arrested since the law passed.” 

By 1984, during the Reagan-era of social services and welfare cutbacks, 42% of all Latino children and one-fourth of the families lived below the poverty line.

In 1983, a mostly latino workforce lead the 3-year long Arizona Copper Mine Strike of 1983, in which the police, national guard, and Arizona governor assisted in one of the largest strikebreaking incidents of the 1980s, ending with the Phelps Dodge Corporation replacing most of the workers and decertifying the unions. Miners were subject to undercover surveillance by the Arizona Criminal Intelligence Systems Agency, to identify strikers engaged in violence, with the governor sending 325 National Guard soldiers to Morenci, and increasing the number of state policemen there to 425. Meanwhile, the local government passed injunctions limiting both picketing and demonstrations at the mine. The Arizona copper mine strike would later become a symbol of defeat for American unions.

From 1929 - 1954, the US implemented Mexican Repatriation, and Operation Wetback, a US law enforcement initiative under Eisenhower to curb Mexican immigration, in which over 1 Million Mexicans were arrested. After implementation, Operation Wetback gave rise to arrests and deportations by the U.S. Border Patrol that were civil rights violations, which resulted in several hundred United States citizens being illegally deported without being given a chance to prove their citizenship. From 1929 - 1939, ~400k-2 Million people were deported, 40-60% of them lawful citizens, and many of them children. About 1.1 Million people were deported in 1954 alone. A total of 750 immigration and border patrol officers and investigators; 300 jeeps, cars, and buses; and seven airplanes were allocated for the operation. Teams were focused on quick processing, as planes were able to coordinate with ground efforts and quickly deport people into Mexico. While the operation included the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, its main targets were border areas in Texas and California. Overall, there were 1,078,168 apprehensions made in the first year of Operation Wetback, with 170,000 being rounded up from May to July 1954. In addition, many illegal immigrants fled to Mexico fearing arrest; over half a million from Texas alone. 

In 1951, the Los Angeles Police Department severely beat up 5 Latino and 2 white men, in an event called Bloody Christmas, leaving them with broken bones and ruptured organs, and covered it up. After pressure from the Mexican-American community, the LAPD opened up an internal inquiry, resulting in eight police officers being indicted for the assaults, 54 being transferred, and 39 being suspended.

[honesty-my-policy]

Things you should know about Kamala Harris

While running for attorney general, championed state legislation that allowed the criminal prosecution and jailing of parents whose children were habitually truant (students who miss school) - despite evidence that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color. 1

Appealed a federal judge's ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

Failed to support Proposition 47, a ballot initiative that reduced low-level felonies to misdemeanors.

When the Supreme Court decided that California's overcrowded prions were cruel and unusual punishment, Harris fought a ruling ordering the state to release some of its prisoners. 1

Showed she was no friend of sex workers by crusading against Backpage and support for SESTA. 1 2

Defended California's three-strikes law, urging voters to reject Proposition 66, "a ballot initiative that would have reformed the harsh law by making only serious or violent felonies trigger life sentences." 1

Opted not to join other states' attempts to take marijuana off the federal list of most dangerous substances.

When asked about legalizing recreational marijuana in 2012, Harris laughed.

Opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate fatal police officer shootings and refused to support statewide standards for police body cameras.

After a man was exonerated by the Innocence Project and had his conviction overturned, Harris challenged his release, after 13 years in prison, claiming that the man had not produced evidence of his innocence fast enough. 1

In another case, where a prosecutor had falsified an interview transcript to add an incrimination confession, Harris tried to argue that because the false confession was not obtained by force, it did not violate the defendants constitutional rights. 1 2

there is more but y'all should do your own research

[partisan-by-default]

During 2020, the prison population plunged as California authorities took measures against the coronavirus. In January 2020, California state prisons held 33% more prisoners than they were designed to hold, at 122,000 people. By December, only 94,500 were incarcerated, a decrease of 27,500. Despite this sharp drop, which dwarfs those made by other states, overcrowding in California prisons remains a threat to prisoners’ health.

The 23% population drop for California prisons stands out in a year when state prison populations plummeted across the nation. Of 29 states with easily accessible data for 2020, decreases ranged from 9% to 26%—a few hundred to many thousand inmates in each state.

In total these states saw a reduction of 125,600 prisoners. California’s drop constituted 22% of that total. Texas had the next largest reduction, at 16% of the total, or 20,000 inmates. Illinois was third with 9,000 fewer inmates—or 7%—less than half of Texas and one-third of California.

Individually, just three states saw larger proportional drops than California during 2020. Prison populations in Colorado, Connecticut, and Illinois each fell by about 25%. By comparison, Texas started with far more prisoners than other states—nearly 141,000—so its reduction of 20,000 prisoners was just 14% of its prison population.

[sapphire--moonlight]

https://factcheck.afp.com/misleading-claim-says-harris-jailed-1500-black-men-marijuana

Here's my source for 1,974 people being sent to prison. Interesting how the OP doesn't provide a source and expects people to believe them over the CDCR.

45 people is too many. 1 is too many. People should not be sent to prison for Marijuana. People should not be sent to the overcrowded prisons of California to become legal slaves.

Even if she wasn't solely responsible, she still had the power to stop terrorizing our friends and family and chose not to.

And to the person in the replies saying that we don't have race statistics so we don't know how many of those are arrested are black, is it better if they were latino? Or white, or asian, or native American?

Laying a racist construct built by white men at the feet of one woman is ridiculous.

[masteroffearshusband49020]

As San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general Harris worked to keep non violent offenders locked away in overcrowded underfunded California prisons and used prison labor programs as basically modern slavery. She pushed a law that would give parents a fine of up to 2 thousand dollars in some cases and a year in prison. Thanks to her vulnerable black families where broken up, kids put in the CPS system which we all know is broken and corrupt and her policies in San Francisco targeted mainly gay black men for possession of drugs or soliciting. Harris took glee in locking black people up and harming the poor and vulnerable. She comes from a background of wealth and privilege and I looked it up and yeah her family was a bunch of slave owners. You guys need to demand better. There are better people in the Democrat party.

My broski, I am not a US citizen (thank goodness) I'm Canadian. I can't vote for that election. Also why are you dropping this in somebody's inbox on anon??? If you're gonna make big claims like that (I say claims because Idk how much of this is actually true) make a post about it and use tags that make sense so you can get the attention of people who actually follow the subject.

[wafflerageface]

As San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general Harris worked to keep non violent offenders locked away in overcrowded underfunded California prisons and used prison labor programs as basically modern slavery. She pushed a law that would give parents a fine of up to 2 thousand dollars in some cases and a year in prison. Thanks to her vulnerable black families where broken up, kids put in the CPS system which we all know is broken and corrupt and her policies in San Francisco targeted mainly gay black men for possession of drugs or soliciting. Harris took glee in locking black people up and harming the poor and vulnerable. She comes from a background of wealth and privilege and I looked it up and yeah her family was a bunch of slave owners. You guys need to demand better. There are better people in the Democrat party.

Lmao this dumbass thinks we get to pick our candidates

Also if you really wanna educate people, maybe post some actual sources. As for your comments about slave owners… I mean. There’s a lot of fucking American families that can probably go yeah I had one too. It’s not like she went time hopping and said hey gramps you know what would be dope? Owning people. She’s also not benefitting from any white privilege, she’s a woman of colour. Idk what the point of that is.

Also also if you’re so pressed about us “demanding a new democrat” why not just demand a new republican too? As a matter of fact we should just throw out the entire election system. We’ll select 4 random ass people off the street and have a beauty contest. Most aesthetically pleasing bitch gets to be king of America. That’s how it works now

[reasonsforhope]

"California used to need lots and lots of prisons. Big prisons, little prisons, prisons with special cells for gang leaders and prisons for those convicted of nonviolent financial chicanery. There were so many prisoners packed into so many prisons that federal courts intervened, mandating that the state find a way to alleviate the overcrowding.

At the inmate population’s peak in 2006, California incarcerated 165,000 people in state prisons.

Today — after a decade of sentencing reforms and a surge of releases tied to COVID-19 — California prisons house a little more than 95,000 people. 

So how many prisons does California actually need? 

“Difficult decisions have to be made, but if we don’t make those decisions, the alternative is paying hundreds of millions for prison beds we don’t need to be paying for,” said Caitlin O’Neil, an analyst at the Legislative Analyst’s Office. 

O’Neil is the co-author of a new report that lays out how the state can close up to nine of its 33 prisons and eight yards within operating prisons while still complying with a federal court order that caps the system’s capacity.

The potential closures signal a seachange in California criminal justice, representing the wind-down of the tough-on-crime policies that packed prisons in the 1990s and offering one of the few ways the state can cut costs in its $18 billion prison system.

California prisons held about 120,000 inmates as recently as 2019. That year, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a goal to close a single prison during his tenure.

“I would like to see, in my lifetime and hopefully my tenure, that we shut down a state prison,” he said that year in an interview with The Fresno Bee editorial board.

Since then, he has already effectively closed two and his administration has plans underway to shut at least two more.

In September 2021, the state closed Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy. The California Correctional Center in Susanville is scheduled to close in June, along with yards at six other prisons. 

Two other prisons, in Blythe and in California City, are scheduled to close by March 2025.

Even after those shutdowns, according to the LAO analysis, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has the space to close five more entire prisons by 2027. Today, the corrections department operates 15,000 empty beds, according to the LAO. That number is expected to reach 20,000 empty beds by 2027.

“The state pays for empty beds, and that number hasn’t been justified at this point, “O’Neil said. “It’s really just math, simple arithmetic.”" ...

For prison abolitionists like Woods Ervin, co-director of the anti-prison activist group Critical Resistance, the LAO report’s conclusions were “super exciting” and come close to their group’s goals of closing ten prisons, and announcing the closures by 2025. 

“This is big,” Ervin said. 

-via Cal Matters, 2/23/23

[anamericangirl]

Oh I’ll be voting but not for Kamala Harris.

I don’t really think you have looked into things. I think you maybe heard things in passing and think that’s enough. And if you’ve truly “weighed things” and decided you don’t care about the things Kamala Harris has done you’ve got one faulty scale.

It doesn’t bother you that she oversaw the conviction and incarceration of nearly 2000 people for weed and then laughed when she was asked if she had ever smoked it herself? Ok fine. If that was the worst thing she’d ever done I could understand overlooking that she’s a massive hypocrite and over-incarcerated people for weed offenses.

But you don’t care she refused to allow newly available DNA testing to be done that could exonerate a very likely innocent black man, Kevin Cooper, a death row inmate? You just don’t care and still think that’s she’s the best option for President? Did you “look into” and “weigh” that?

What was your metric for weighing things when you looked into how awful and overfull the prison system in California when she was the attorney general? She and Jerry Brown were nearly held in contempt for refusing to comply with a federal mandate to release just under 5000 non-violent offenders who had been found by multiple people to not be a threat just so they could be used for cheap labor. I’m curious why when you weighed that you decided it wasn’t big deal and you don’t care.

Did you “look into” the prisons being so overcrowded under her watch that it was ruled it was a violation of the 8th amendment?

There’s plenty more I could bring up but I’m curious why you simply don’t care about these things and still support her for President. This isn’t ancient history. She was the attorney general until 2017. I don’t care what she says now her opinions are only changing because she’s running for President and she wants people like you to ignore what she’s done and believe that what she’s saying now is how she really feels even though her record doesn’t align.

Why exactly, after you weighed those things, did you decide you don’t care and that it’s still better than Trump? Please share what it is you think Trump did that’s so much worse.

You guys realize this means we ALL have to vote now. No "don't wanna vote biden" excuses now- if we don't vote our rights are going to be taken away.