Blog Aug 16, 2010
DJF Mental Health Experts Resign
On August 2, 2010, the court in the Farrell litigation concluded that Dr. Eric Trupin and Dr. Terry Lee have resigned from their positions as Mental Health experts in the case. This is compelling news for followers of DJF reform efforts. Almost seven years ago, Dr. Eric Trupin conducted the original investigation of DJF’s mental health care, noting “In general we have grave concerns relative to the competence of the psychiatric staff, historical lack of leadership… and the lack of any…
What does a drug abuse epidemic have to do with angry political attacks against immigrants and minorities? Everything, concludes a new CJCJ study detailing key facts so far missing from debate over Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrant law. The study analyzes recent figures documenting that drug abuse has become a deadlier crisis in Arizona than almost anywhere else – worse, even, than California’s formidable drug woes. After a tripling in drug death rates over the last two decades, overdose of…
Blog Aug 2, 2010
Ventura: Overcrowded and Understaffed
Current information available on the DJF creates concern in regard to the level of rehabilitative care provided in Ventura Youth Correctional Facility. In the Fifteenth Special Master Report, filed July 13, 2010, experts identified that DJF is experiencing several obstacles to reform resulting from the State’s fiscal crisis, including a hiring freeze, lay-off plans, and travel bans. Moreover, the closure of the Heman G. Stark facility in February of this year required DJF to swiftly transfer…
Blog Jul 30, 2010
A New Responsible CCPOA
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) has long been seen as the primary villain responsible for the disastrous state of the California prison system. During the late 1980s and 1990s while under the leadership of Don Novey, the CCPOA argued, advocated, and spent enormous amount of its resources to intimidate lawmakers to support harsher sentencing laws and prison expansion. The calculation, of course, was that an ever expanding prison system would translate into an…
Two provocative papers issued by CJCJ this month find that despite racial progress in other areas, American authorities’ historical campaign to associate taboo drugs, particularly marijuana, with “Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos,” and other minorities (U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics Harry Anslinger, 1936) remains powerful in 2010. CJCJ’s first paper analyzes new criminal justice, health, and drug monitoring agency statistics to document that California operates a separate, harshly unequal…