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With Governor's Veto, California's Harsh Drugs Sentencing Will Continue
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/governors-veto-californias-harsh-drugs-sentencing-will-continue
Photo Credit: By Neon Tommy (originally posted to Flickr as Jerry Brown) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Over the long weekend, California Gov. Jerry Brown chose to continue the 40 year old failed war on drugs.
Brown rejected the national ‘smart on crime’ trend and pragmatic public policy by vetoing SB649, which aimed to give judges and district attorneys the discretion to charge possession of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use as a felony or a misdemeanor as the case warrants.
Brown chose to make no advance towards the federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding. The governor chose to defy supermajority public opinion on how California should deal with nonviolent drug offenders.
Drug use is a health issue, not a criminal justice one. And the last thing someone struggling with problematic drug use needs is a lifelong felony record. Felony sentences don’t reduce drug use and don’t persuade users to seek treatment, but instead, impose tremendous barriers to housing, education and employment after release – three things we know help keep people out of our criminal justice system and successfully reintegrating into their families and communities. States that currently charge drug use as a misdemeanor actually show higher rates of drug treatment use.
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-Laelth
Private purchasing of prisons locks in occupancy rates
USA Today 3/8/2012
WASHINGTON – At a time when states are struggling to reduce bloated prison populations and tight budgets, a private prison management company is offering to buy prisons in exchange for various considerations, including a controversial guarantee that the governments maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years.
The $250 million proposal, circulated by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America to prison officials in 48 states, has been blasted by some state officials who suggest such a program could pressure criminal justice officials to seek harsher sentences to maintain the contractually required occupancy rates.
Corrections Corporation spokesman Steve Owen defended the company's "investment initiative," describing it as "an additional option" for cash-strapped states to consider.
more
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-01/buying-prisons-require-high-occupancy/53402894/1
This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall
—By Andy Kroll Mother Jones Thu Sep. 19, 2013
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.
Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)
more
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime
USA Today 3/8/2012
WASHINGTON – At a time when states are struggling to reduce bloated prison populations and tight budgets, a private prison management company is offering to buy prisons in exchange for various considerations, including a controversial guarantee that the governments maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years.
The $250 million proposal, circulated by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America to prison officials in 48 states, has been blasted by some state officials who suggest such a program could pressure criminal justice officials to seek harsher sentences to maintain the contractually required occupancy rates.
Corrections Corporation spokesman Steve Owen defended the company's "investment initiative," describing it as "an additional option" for cash-strapped states to consider.
more
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-01/buying-prisons-require-high-occupancy/53402894/1
This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall
—By Andy Kroll Mother Jones Thu Sep. 19, 2013
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA's pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.
Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)
more
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime
Senate Bill No. 105
CHAPTER 310
An act to amend, repeal, and add Sections 19050.2 and 19050.8 of the Government Code, to amend, repeal, and add Sections 1233.1, 1233.3, 1233.4, 2910, 11191, and 13602 of, to add Section 1233.9 to, and to add and repeal Sections 2915 and 6250.2 of, the Penal Code, and to amend Section 15 of Chapter 42 of the Statutes of 2012, relating to corrections, and making an appropriation therefor, to take effect immediately, bill related to the budget.
Approved by Governor September 12, 2013. Filed with Secretary of State September 12, 2013.
CHAPTER 310
An act to amend, repeal, and add Sections 19050.2 and 19050.8 of the Government Code, to amend, repeal, and add Sections 1233.1, 1233.3, 1233.4, 2910, 11191, and 13602 of, to add Section 1233.9 to, and to add and repeal Sections 2915 and 6250.2 of, the Penal Code, and to amend Section 15 of Chapter 42 of the Statutes of 2012, relating to corrections, and making an appropriation therefor, to take effect immediately, bill related to the budget.
Approved by Governor September 12, 2013. Filed with Secretary of State September 12, 2013.
link: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB105&search_keywords=
more here: http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/10/drug_possession_misdemeanor_veto_649.php
p.s. what's up with all the "what's up with Jerry" posts, anyway? No he's not going to sign crappy legislation for the hell of it.
