vincent o’bannon

Pelican Bay’s new podcast ‘UNLOCKED’

March 16, 2020 by vincent o'bannon

Creators of a new Pelican Bay podcast look to build community and prisoner relationships—one story at a time, reported the Lost Coast Outpost. https://lostcoastoutpost.com/

“These guys just want to better themselves and create a stronger, more resilient, community,” said Paul Critz, a journalist who teaches inmate students the tools they need to record their personal stories.

Inspired by San Quentin’s Ear Hustle, https://www.earhustlesq.com/ Pelican Bay Prison’s https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/pbsp/ UNLOCKED became the first of its kind at a security level IV institution.

Created by Critz and about 30 incarcerated men, the podcast aims to bring together the men on the inside and to communicate with the residents of Del Norte and Crescent City.

“They’re Del Norters too, and they’re very interested in hearing from the community. They want interaction. They want to humanize themselves, “ said Critz.

Dubbed as the single most important project in his career, Critz uses a portable recorder, laptop and a hand-held microphone to show his students how to put together a narrative.

While given much room for choosing content, Pelican Bay’s Public Information officer John Silviera advised Critz not to “bash the institution.”

“There’s a lot of gray area all around that phrase,” Critz told the Outpost. “We have to figure out what that means because at what point does bashing your reality become bashing the institution that’s responsible for your reality?”

Critz credits what he calls “The Awakening” as the pivotal moment in Pelican Bay’s history that led to launching the podcast.

“The Awakening” refers to the 2015 Supreme Court decision that shut down Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Units in 2013, following a widespread series of hunger strikes that began at the prison.

Critz’ students chose “The Awakening” as the subject of their first podcast. “They wanted to talk about… the changes that have been happening at Pelican Bay and other prisons as a result.

“The real awakening is hope,” said Critz. “They’re able to think about a future, maybe getting out – certainly even with people who’ll never get out.”

Critz, experienced in freelance journalism and radio, is best known as the operator of Crescent City’s community radio station. He was tapped to head Pelican Bay’s UNLOCKED by Stephanie Wenning, former executive director of the Del Norte Association for Cultural Awareness.http://dnaca.net/

Of all the reviews Critz received, “The one that stands out the most,” he told the Outpost, was from the daughter of one of his students.

“I love listening to this podcast. It makes me happy to know my dad is doing something positive with his life. I can’t wait to hear more,” she said.

New San Francisco DA to reform criminal justice system

March 12, 2020 by vincent o'bannon

Recently sworn in as San Francisco’s new District Attorney, Chesa Boudin has bold plans to reform the city’s criminal justice system.

“Our criminal justice system is failing all of us. It is not keeping us safe,” said Boudin in a recent SF Examiner article. “It is contributing to a vicious cycle of crime and punishment.”

As the head of San Francisco’s investigative division, Boudin said he will form a Conviction Integrity Unit of special advisers to address wrongful conviction allegations and excessive sentencing.

Boudin, a Rhodes Scholar and Yale graduate, ran for district attorney on a platform of reducing mass incarceration.

“There have been debates about how sympathetic Boudin will be to victims of crime, with some questioning if his policies will be empathetic to them, and others arguing that he will stand up for crime victims,” the SF Examiner reported.

We have a shared understanding that “there is a balance between justice and fairness,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed. “I appreciate that Chesa Boudin understands that balance. We can hold people accountable, and we can make sure there is fairness in our criminal justice system. I am looking forward over the next four years of working with him to do just that.”

Opposed by the San Francisco police union, Boudin who has been labeled a “radical” for his extremely progressive plans.

“Radical simply means, grasping things at the root,” Boudin said, quoting one of his supporters, activist Angela Davis. “For far too long, criminal justice policy has been shaking the trees, when the plant itself has rooted out. The solution lies beneath the surface.”

Boudin views the criminal justice system as failing and points to current tough-on-crime sentencing enhancements, immigration prosecutions, and “illegal searches” after minor traffic violations as problematic.

During his inaugural speech, Boudin told a crowd of public defenders, former mayors, and police brass, “These failures (of our criminal justice system) have led us, as a community, as a nation, to accept the unacceptable. Join me. Join this movement. Join us in rejecting the notion that to be free, we must cage others.”

Boudin is the son of radicals who were convicted for a robbery that led to the deaths of two police officers and a security guard. In his speech, he described visiting his parents in prison as a child. Although his mother was there to hear his speech, his father is still incarcerated.

Speaking of his father, Boudin said, “He taught me that we are all more than our worst mistakes.” And in a spoken aside to his father, said, “Thank you for teaching me about forgiveness and redemption.”

Campaign under way to raise the age for criminal prosecution

February 20, 2020 by vincent o'bannon

A campaign is under way to increase from 18 to 20 the age where young people accused of crimes are processed as juveniles instead of adults.

“Young adults would benefit more from the juvenile system and early diversion programs than adult incarceration,” said Stephanie James, president of the Chief Probation Officers of California. “Such diversion programs have proven successful, and have been used for decades,”

The plan is to introduce legislation in 2020 in an effort to see more juveniles benefitting from rehabilitative programs, the Chronicle of Social Change reported on Dec. 12.

Researchers have reported that a person’s brain is still developing between the ages of 18 and 24, the story said. That group makes up 10% of the U.S. population.

“We’ve been working on this for almost a year. We want to build on what works and what has been successful. (It’s about) evolving, elevating, keeping the things that we’re trying to expand on … that’s really at the heart of what we’re trying to build on,” said Karen Pank, CPOC executive director.

Young people are prone to be more impulsive, less future-oriented, volatile in emotionally charged set- tings; and highly susceptible to peer and outside influences, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Between 75 and 95% of system-involved youth “exhibit symptoms of trauma due to exposure to violence,” the article noted.

The plan is opposed by the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Its executive director, Daniel Macallair, said the change is “just a strategy to fill the juvenile halls.”

Juvenile halls in California are operating now at about 25% of capacity, said Macallair.

The proposal, called the Elevate Justice Act, would also seal more juvenile records, re- quire probation departments to petition for termination of probation, and expand probation-supervised restorative justice programs, the article noted.

“They’re right at the threshold where they’re starting to close juvenile justice halls and promote community reinvestment. Raising the age to 20 would ensure that the juvenile justice system pre- serves itself, and everybody stays happy, under the illusion that there’s some progressive reform, “Macallair said.

“The state legislature has placed a great emphasis on brain development in recent years as it has pursued a bevy of juvenile justice reforms, and I believe that any proposal that recognizes the difference in the brain development of juveniles and adults is worth full discussion,” said Reginald Jones-Sawyer Sr., Democratic chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

Jones-Sawyer also reported he believes that punishment should be our last resort for juveniles.

Juveniles in county-run facilities have dropped from a high of about 4,000 to about 800 youth over the past 15 years, according to data from the Board of State and Community Corrections.

Homelessness is a serious problem for America’s formerly incarcerated

February 20, 2020 by vincent o'bannon

Homelessness is a serious problem for America’s formerly incarcerated people, and it’s even worse in the United Kingdom, published reports say.

In the United States there are approximately 700,000 individuals returning home from state prisons each year, formerly incarcerated according to the Journal of Community Corrections. Nine-million are released from county jails annually. Ten percent of the individuals leaving or entering prisons and jails are homeless in the months preceding and following incarceration, the report said.

In the UK, 15% of prisoners reported being homeless at sentencing, compared to the 37% who registered homeless post-release. In 2018, there were 320,000 people homeless in Britain, reported The-Conversation.com.

Figures from a 2017 analysis by the Housing Charity Shelter shows a 13,000 person rise in homelessness throughout the U.K., equivalent to one in every 200 people being homeless, the Nov. 4 article reported.

A 2012 study by the U.K.’s Ministry Of Justice reported that 37% of formerly incarcerated people have nowhere to live and that two-thirds of them will re-offend within a year.

“In my experience, housing is one of the most difficult needs to be met for returning ex-offenders upon release,” Patricia McKernan reported in the Journal of Community Corrections.

The reasons given by the formerly incarcerated in the UK for their recidivism are: the loss of housing accommodations at the time of arrest, a failing judicial system that does little to combat homelessness, and inadequate resources post-release, The- Conversation.com reported.

Unstable housing complicates all other targets of intervention for ex-offenders, said McKernan.

Incarcerated people are 10 times more likely to be home- less in the United States than the general public, reported the Prison Policy Initiative in August 2018.

Data from a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey showed that past incarceration and homelessness were directly linked, the Prison Policy report stated.

A hopeful sign for the formerly incarcerated in the U.K. was passage in 2018 of the Homelessness Reduction Act. It paved the way for local authorities to provide help to all homeless people, TheConversation.com reported.

Prior to the passage of the HRA, Britain’s homeless legislation provided that the formerly incarcerated could not receive help from the local authorities, where they served their prison term unless they could prove a local connection, the report said.

Frequently in California parolees are sent back to the county where they were sentenced. San Quentin inmate Kerry Rudd’s reaction was, “I don’t want to go back to where I was arrested. Being labeled a transient in Alameda County. I don’t want to parole to my county of commitment. I want something different. The other part is that I don’t have anything solid for where I want to go.”

Another San Quentin resident said, “Well, to be honest, I’m scared that when I get released, I’ll be homeless. I’m not from California, and I have no one in California.

Two hundred dollars gate money is not enough for me to just go back out into society and say, ‘Alright, I’m ready to do it right this time.’ I believe a lot of people are homeless because they have no family, fresh out of jail or prison with no support, and with mental illnesses.”

Both men had these suggestions to improve their chances of a successful transition back into society: more proactive participation from the prisons, local government agencies, and programs aimed at the short-termed of- fender, just as there are targeted programs for lifers.

“I believe a lot of people are homeless because they have no family, fresh out of jail or prison with no support, and with mental illnesses”

“Excluding formerly incarcerated people from safe and stable housing has devastating side effects. It can reduce access to healthcare services (including addiction and mental health treatment), make it harder to secure a job, and prevent formerly incarcerated people from access- ing educational programs,” PrisonPolicy.org reported.

In the United States, there are an estimated 550,000 people homeless, many of which have some sort of criminal justice system contact, PrisonPolicy.org reported.

With the passage of Britain’s Homeless Reduction Act, prisons are now required to inform the local authorities when someone deemed homeless is about to be released, and has made it obligatory for local authorities to provide help to (all) homeless people, whether they have a local connection or not, TheConversation.com report said.

A national survey of U.S. state parole agencies found that 60%, had no housing assistance program for post- released individuals, the Prison Policy Initiative noted in 2006.

Potential solutions to homeless problems mentioned by advocates include:

• States should develop more efficient interagency systems to help formerly incarcerated people find homes.

• States should remove the systematic barriers that the formerly incarcerated face, such as, ending aggressive enforcement of quality-of-life ordinances which prohibits people from acquiring housing based on past criminal offenses.

• Systems like “Housing First” programs should be implemented that assure the formerly incarcerated will have a successful approach to reintegration into society.

• Expand social services, and provide reentry programs that are all-inclusive.

• States should mirror Utah’s approach which has made it a budget priority to provide permanent housing for the chronically homeless. This approach acknowledges that stable living arrangements are necessary before people can address unemployment, illness, substance use disorders and other problems.