The true hero is Senator Romero, the Latina legislator, who has stood up to the prison guard union
...it is time to shut down the California Youth Authority. The youth prisons do not work. We are spending $80,000 per kid in the youth authority. It costs -- you can send two kids to Yale for the cost sending one kid to jail, and yet there's a 91 percent recidivism rate. It is an $80,000 prep school for adult prisons where children are beaten and abused, and it's time to shut the California Youth Authority down and replace it with something more humane and effective.
AMY GOODMAN: Who is the most powerful lobby in the state for keeping the CYA prisons?
VAN JONES: The California prison guard's union, the CCPOA, is the most powerful lobbying interest in Sacramento. They are such a powerful force, and they have such a stranglehold on the Democratic Party in this state, that California spends more money on prisons than Texas. And, last year, when everybody was talking about the California budget crisis, the huge shortfall, the shortfall is bigger than the budget of most countries, while teachers were being given pink slips in the state, prison guards got a 7.5 percent pay raise. That's how powerful this union is, and they have a stake in maintaining these factories of abuse for these children. We say no.
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At least one of the soldiers charged in Iraq - Corporal Charles Graner, Jr. - was a prison guard in Pennsylvania. The righteous and justified outrage at the images we have seen from Abu Ghraib must be directed not only at that facility, but also at the root of these failures - prisons here at home.
Van Jones/Alternet May.28.04
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Books Not Bars
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Face-to-face interviews between journalists and specific prisoners are now banned by the California Department of Corrections (CDC) unless, subject to prison approval, the reporters are on the prisoners� visitor list. If this wasn�t bad enough, reporters cannot bring to these visits the tools of their trade � cameras, tape recorders, pens or paper on which to write. Making access even harder, the CDC recently cut the number of inmate visiting days from 4 to 2.
original essay ACLU Open Forum 2004
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With a recidivism rate of up to 90 percent, CYA has become nothing more than a finishing school for felons.
Taxpayers shell out $80,000 annually per CYA ward for programs aimed at turning them into productive citizens. But inside these youth prisons the violence has reached unprecedented levels, mental health services are severely flawed, and educational instruction is spotty at best. In fact rehabilitation is the exception and not the rule.
Senator Gloria Romero/California Bar Journal June 2004
Senator Gloria Romero homepage
Corporate 3 Strikes Act killed by California Senate
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link Naomi Klein/nologo
