Justice System

Families, youth, human rights groups hail Gov. Brown's aim to close youth prisons for brighter future with safer communities and more peaceful families.

Today, Governor Brown proposed to close the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) youth prisons. Brown’s 2012-2013 budget proposes that the DJJ stop taking youth beginning in 2013, eventually eliminating the state’s three remaining youth prisons.

[Families for Books Not Bars member], Marie Sanchez said the state prison experience has battered her son. In visits, he has limped, sported a black eye and showed her bruises on his ribs, she said.

"This is a huge opportunity to take advantage of the many services and organizations in Alameda County," said Sumayyah Waheed, of the Ella Baker Center.

Beginning October 1st, 2011, California counties will no longer send lower-level offenders to state prison. Additionally, supervision of most people returning from state prison will be handled by county officials instead of state parole agents. Advocates at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights criticized the plan, which shifts the state’s prison overcrowding and overspending problems to counties, for failing to include sentencing reform to fix the runaway cost of mass incarceration of low level offenders.

Before my son got locked up, he was healthy. Being locked up for more than 21 hours and sometimes more than 23 hours a day made my son sick. He is physically deteriorating. His speech is slower and he seems distant now.

"...el reporte de LAO indica que la actual propuesta del Departamento de Prisiones no proporciona soluciones a largo plazo y dejará a California vulnerable de repetir los mismos errores una y otra vez."

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released an audit this spring revealing that the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility had the worst record of frequently isolating kids for 21 to 24 hours in their rooms.

A civil-rights group will stage a protest Sunday in front of the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo, alleging the facility and others like it are abusing their juvenile wards.