Selena Teji on California’s Broken Juvenile Detention System Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, August 18, 2011
Blog Aug 16, 2011
Conservative states leading the way in prison reform
The Supreme Court decision that California needs to shrink (not release) its prison population has made national headlines, but as I mentioned in my last blog , over the past few years many states have already begun reducing their reliance on incarceration. What is particularly interesting, as the ACLU points out in their most recent report, is the overwhelming bi-partisan support for prison reform efforts. Texas, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, and a handful of other states have successfully…
Over the past three decades a continuous mantra among conservatives has been that the “free market” represents the best solutions to social problems. The government is “too big” and is inefficient; the free market works best. Let the market rule and social problems will disappear has been the thinking. One of the consequences of this line of thinking is the privatization movement where issues normally handled by the government should be turned over to private businesses. The profit motive…
Despite declining crime rates, incarceration rates are at an all time high in the United States with 2 million adults in prison, including 150,000 in California institutions. The number of people in private prisons has increased more rapidly than the rate of people sentenced to state and federal facilities. The reason behind this growth is due to the direct link between the private prison industry, monopolized by the GEO group and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and The American…
Blog Aug 9, 2011
Farrell Update: Motion Granted
Last week, in response to the July 7th Farrell hearing , Judge Tigar enforced the Prison Law Office’s (representing Farrell ) motion to hold California’s state-run juvenile correctional facilities (DJF) accountable, specifically for unmet educational and programmatic requirements. DJF remains in violation of a 2005 court order to meet the 4‑hour minimum requirement per youth per day for educational programming. In July 2011, DJF said they needed at least 90 days to hire adequate staff to…