For the past 20 years the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice has critically examined the control exercised by special interests group over California’s prison policy — especially the state’s prison guards union. With their ability to spend millions of dollars to defeat political enemies, the guards union has achieved unprecedented success in promoting their agenda and resisting reform efforts. In her recent editorial, Sacramento Bee editor, Pia Lopez, analyzes the historical influence…
Blog Jan 21, 2009
Another troubling juvenile court case
Statements by prosecutors following the January 16 ruling by a San Francisco Juvenile Court judge that four “Potrero Hill gang members” committed first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, and gang-related crimes in the 2007 shooting death of a 17-year-old woman and wounding of another teen outside a community center raise troubling questions about juvenile justice. According to prosecutors and the judge’s ruling, one of the youths, now an adult, used a gun to murder…
Blog Jan 21, 2009
Will Obama confront 21st Century crime realities?
Barack Obama ascends to the presidency today to be greeted by yet another little-mentioned paradox (detailed more in future blogs) of keen interest to criminal justice groups: he inherits record-high levels of drug abuse and imprisonment and record-low levels of serious crime. If any president has an eye for complexity and contradiction, it’s the student and community-activist Obama revealed in the first half of his first book, Dreams for My Father. That Obama amiably chatted with city boys…
Two statements-and some huge omissions-sum up the obsolete thinking that plagues development of a 21st century crime policy for San Francisco, an issue receiving more attention after new police reports show homicides have increased. “Nothing that I have tried to resolve has been more frustrating and vexing than solving the issue of why a 14-year-old would take the life of a 15-year-old with a weapon of war,” Mayor Gavin Newsom told the Chronicle on January 1. And unnamed community…
Blog Jan 6, 2009
Dreams from the Monster Factory
Sunny Schwartz writes about her extraordinary work transforming the San Francisco jails from “monster factories” that foster violence, rage, and better criminals, into places that could change criminals for the better.