Tagged With "Decreasing The Jail Population Amid"
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37th Annual Child Abuse Prevention Symposium Recap
"Speak Out! Confronting the Culture of Child Sexual Abuse and Secrecy" was the theme of Santa Clara County's 37th Annual Child Abuse Prevention Symposium which featured a Keynote conversation with Olympic Gold Medal winning gymnast and current UCLA Assistant Gymnastics Coach Jordyn Wieber. Jordyn, and other athletes and survivors of former USA Gymnastics team doctor and serial child sex abuser Larry Nassar, earlier spoke to a U.S. Senate Subcommittee about a “culture of silence” more...
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Bail or Jail? Tool Used by San Francisco Courts Shows Promising Results (kqed.org)
Last year, San Francisco began using an algorithm to assess whether someone accused of a crime and awaiting trial is safe to be let out of jail. Fifteen months later, prosecutors say the risk assessment tool appears to be working: According to information provided to KQED by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, just 6 percent of defendants who were released from jail based on the “public safety assessment,” or PSA, over those 15 months committed a new crime; 20 percent failed to...
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Being homeless during coronavirus adds hardship for California college student [edsource.org]
By Marisa Martinez, EdSource, April 17, 2020 Mornings for student Cristina Zetino at California State University, Los Angeles are as normal as they can be. Before she packs up her things, she checks in with the family that offers her an occasional place to lay her head for the night. The self-described “couch surfer” alternates between three different homes throughout the week while juggling work and classes. Always in her possession are three bags: “One bag for school, one for clothes and a...
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Board of State and Community Corrections Awards $96m In Prop 47 Grants
SACRAMENTO (June 13, 2019) – The Board of State and Community Corrections today approved grant awards from a voter initiative that reduces from felonies to misdemeanors certain low-level crimes and directs state savings to programs primarily focused on mental health and substance-use disorder treatment. It is the second round of Proposition 47 funding approved by the Board, to which voters allocated the bulk of the state savings for rehabilitative grants targeting Prop 47-impacted...
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Board of State and Community Corrections Awards Grants for Youth Diversion
SACRAMENTO – (June 13, 2019) The Board of State and Community Corrections approved two grants worth millions of dollars for programs designed to prevent young people from entering the justice system or from furthering their involvement in it. Just over $1 million was awarded to Native American tribes, and $29.1 million was awarded to cities and counties. Preference points for the larger grant were given to local governments who also plan to serve Native American youth. The Youth Reinvestment...
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Briefs on current adverse childhood experiences in children in selected California cities
Attached are briefs on current ACEs in children in selected California cities, with comparison with state and county data. They were prepared by the Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health, a project of the Child and Adolescent...
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Budget Breakdown: Money For Diversion, Probation, Reform, And More [witnessla.com]
By Taylor Walker, Witness LA, January 14, 2020 On Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled his plans for the 2020-2021 budget, a $222.2 billion proposal that features important changes to probation and pretrial diversion, jail reforms, and a potential prison closure, among other big changes in the world of justice. Below, WitnessLA has compiled some of the highlights from the governor’s proposed criminal justice spending. Based on Newsom’s January budget proposal, spending for the...
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Budget realities challenging California school districts’ restorative justice programs [EdSource]
By David Washburn, July 1, 2019 Legions of California educators have been trained in recent years in restorative justice, which is no longer considered an obscure alternative to traditional school discipline. Yet even in districts with well-established programs, finding and keeping funding for it remains a challenge. Earlier this year, for example, the Oakland Unified School District board approved a package of austere budget cuts that appeared to have dismantled the district’s program,...
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Building Community Health
Dr Sandy Escobar is transforming healthcare in East Palo Alto, one family at a time.
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CA Could Reduce Its Prison Population By 30,000, Says Report (witnessla.com)
A new report outlines strategies the state of California could employ that would reduce its prison and jail populations by 30,000 and save approximately $1.5 billion in prison spending. In 2016, there were over 200,000 people were locked in California’s prisons and jails. According to the report, lowering the incarcerated population by 30,000—by reducing the length of prison time for the majority of inmates by 20 percent—would make it possible for the state to close five prisons. The report,...
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CA pediatrician develops, tests, gets state OK for whole-child assessment tool that includes ACEs
Over the last dozen years or so, many pediatricians, astounded by the ramifications of the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the children they care for, began integrating this science into their practices. The most common approach has been to ask parents about ACEs using a questionnaire, and to use this information to counsel parents and identify resources for the family. Different practices have been using different questionnaires: Some ask parents for their ACE scores...
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CA pediatrician develops, tests, gets state OK for whole-child assessment tool that includes ACEs
[Editor's note: This blog was first posted in April 2017. Dr. Marie-Mitchell updated the assessment by modifying a few of the questions, so we are republishing with the new assessment, one in Spanish and one in English.] Over the last dozen years or so, many pediatricians, astounded by the ramifications of the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the children they care for, began integrating this science into their practices. The most common approach has been to ask parents...
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Adversity and resiliency: The case for integrating ACEs and Strengthening Families approaches
Attached is the PowerPoint that was presented by Diane Kellegrew, Jane Stevens and Katie Albright in a webinar April 16. And below is the slide that ID's the presenters.
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Aiming to Help Homeless, UCLA Residents Practice ‘Street Psychiatry’ (californiahealthreport.org)
New programs begun in the last two years at UCLA include a resident-faculty group focused on community psychiatry, as well as health-system and community mentorships. There are also new clinical electives for psychiatry residents at the Los Angeles County Jail and the county’s Office of Diversion and Reentry . The Diversion office was created by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in 2015 to develop and implement alternatives to the criminal justice system for people with mental illness and...
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All too often, California’s default mental institutions are now jails and prisons (calmatters.org)
Perhaps nowhere is California’s mental health crisis more evident than in its criminal justice system. After decades of failure to create and fund policies that effectively help people with serious mental illnesses, many now say the jails and prisons have become the state’s default mental institutions. Close to a third of California’s inmates have a documented serious mental illness, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A few decades ago, fewer than half...
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Allen Nishikawa: ACEs Storyteller Helps People Develop Their Resilience
Sonoma County ACEs Connection members Allen Nishikawa and Lena Hoffman at California Policymaker Education Day, 2018 Allen Nishikawa, a sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, majored in political science and American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he participated in antiwar (Vietnam) marches. But it was his experience as a military brat — moving from school to school across the U.S. and even to Japan as a child — that shaped his own childhood experiences and...
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Alternative IHEBA with ACEs for California (and Other) Pediatricians
If you are a pediatrician serving Medicaid managed care patients in California, then you are required to use the Staying Healthy Assessment or an alternative IHEBA (Individual Health Education Behavioral Assessment) at all well-child visits. The bad news is that getting approval to use an alternative IHEBA is a tedious process. The good news is that as of October 27, 2016 the Whole Child Assessment (WCA) is available for use in English and Spanish. Most importantly, the WCA has been...
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Amid affluence, youth homelessness surges in the Bay Area (edsource.org)
The San Francisco Bay Area, with its Teslas, tech start-ups and $3,700 one-bedroom rents, is one of the most affluent regions in the country but also home to nearly 15,000 homeless children. Most of the students are in the urban areas, but they also live in the wealthy enclaves. They're in Menlo Park, they're in the San Ramon Valley, they're even in Ross in Marin County, where the median household income tops $200,000. And they're most certainly undercounted: parents report to schools...
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APPLY TODAY: Help improve jail conditions in California! (Board of State and Community Corrections) BSCC
Every couple of years, the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) revises California's Title 15 and 24 regulations which set standards for the hundreds of local adult detention facilities across all 58 counties. This includes adult jails, temporary holding facilities, and court holding facilities. The standards cover everything from family visits to solitary confinement to nutrition. The revision process has started up again and our coalition is working to make sure a diverse set of...
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California Child Welfare Policy and Progress, Winter Issue [Insight]
The California Child Welfare Co-Investment Partnership Report This issue of in sights provides an overview of the latest legislative developments in California, including data and perspectives on the policy and practice transformation taking place with the Continuum of Care Reform (CCR). Beyond a comprehensive summary of child welfare state legislation, this issue also includes a discussion on the key provisions of the Family First Prevention Services Act. The issue concludes with...
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California Jails use Kinder Approach to Solitary Confinement [sfchronicle.com]
By Don Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle, December 27, 2019 An inmate in solitary confinement at a California jail was refusing to leave his cell. The jailers' usual response: Send an “extraction team” of corrections officers to burst into the cell and drag him out. But not in Contra Costa County, one of three in the state using a kinder, gentler approach in response to inmate lawsuits, a policy change that experts say could be a national model for reducing the use of isolation cells. So the...
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Violent Crime Up & Property Crime Down In CA & The U.S., Say New FBI Stats: But What Do The Numbers Mean? (witnessla.org)
On Monday, the FBI released its full crime stats for 2016, which showed violent crime up 4.1 percent in the U.S. over the FBI numbers for 2015. Pfaff, a Professor of Law at Fordham University Law School, was one of several academic and law enforcement figures who took part in a Monday morning conference call about the FBI stats. The call was sponsored by the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School, and Fair and Just Prosecution , a project that supports and inter-connects...
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Why distance learning is a success in one California district [edsource.org]
By Sydney Johnson, EdSource, April 27, 2020 Never in his 25-year teaching career did Greg Platt imagine he would someday be working full-time through a computer screen. But much has changed in the last few weeks as schools around California closed their doors amid the coronavirus pandemic. “I never thought a switch would be flipped one day, and we would be doing this,” said Platt, an English teacher at Troy High School in Fullerton. “It’s extremely painful for teachers. It’s so difficult not...
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Workshop on funding for homeless services hosted in Ukiah [UkiahDailyJournal.com]
At a workshop Wednesday in Ukiah, local agencies learned how to apply for a pot of funding for homeless services that typically gets scooped up by larger cities. “In the past two years, we haven’t got a dime of the (Emergency Solutions Grant) funding north of Marin County,” said state Sen. Mike McGuire, (D– Healdsburg), referring to $20 million that is set aside for agencies serving the state’s estimated 144,000 homeless residents by California’s department of Housing and Community...
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Yoga helping inmates transcend jail cells [KEYT - Santa Barbara]
An ancient spiritual practice is helping rehabilitate men and women at the Santa Barbara County Jail. Prison Yoga Santa Barbara (PYSB) invites inmates to practice yoga, meditation and mindfulness during incarceration at no cost to taxpayers. Ginny Kuhn is the force behind the non-profit staffed by volunteers. The program is modeled after The Prison Yoga Project which was started yogi James Fox at California’s San Quentin State Prison 15 years ago. Kuhn's motto for PYSB is 'Working Freedom...
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Youth Of Merced Use The Power Of Writing To Illuminate The Human Cost Of Incarceration…& Other Urgent Issues [WitnessLA.com]
Earlier this month, an innovative youth program called We’Ced Youth Media, located in Merced, California, co-hosted an event called #SchoolsnotPrisons Merced. The event’s stated purpose was “to educate the Merced community about the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration.” A portion of the event included poetry that expressed the pain of incarceration, both for the one who is locked-up, and for those who lose a family member to jail or prison. What is particularly...
Ask the Community
Anyone using MHSA or other funds in innovative ways to address ACEs or trauma?
Question: Please share examples of innovative uses of existing funding to address ACEs and trauma. For example, Mental Health Services Act has a funding category called "Innovative Projects" which might be a way to fund ACEs and trauma related efforts. Are you aware of any CA communities that have found ways to utilize MHSA or other funds in unexpected ways - that have the potential of addressing trauma and ACEs? See below and attached for more background re MHSA. Background: The CA...
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SF Police Commission head Suzy Loftus resigns for sheriff’s job [SFGate.com]
San Francisco Police Commission President Suzy Loftus resigned Tuesday, leaving the oversight board without a powerful voice amid a sustained push for reforms in the police force. Loftus is joining the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as assistant chief legal counsel for the law and policy team, and Sheriff Vicki Hennessy determined the role could create conflicts of interest with the duties of a police commissioner. Wednesday will be Loftus’ final meeting after almost five years on the...
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Six children are dead. Could these needless deaths have been prevented? [LATimes.com]
A woman accused of stabbing her three young daughters is on trial in Compton on murder charges. Carol Coronado's husband testified that she'd been "acting weird" before allegedly killing the girls and then stabbing herself May 20, 2014, in the...
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Solano County launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
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Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
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CA communities fund "rapid rehousing" and decriminalize homelessness
By implementing a “rapid rehousing” policy, hundreds of communities around the U.S. are moving from blaming, shaming and punishing the homeless, to understanding, nurturing and providing homeless people a safe place to recover and heal. In California, Orange County is changing its policy from putting people in temporary shelters to providing them permanent subsidized housing. So is Los Angeles — where 25,000 people are homeless. Instead of trying to force people who are...
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Subsidized housing used to stem teacher shortages [OCRegister.com]
SAN FRANCISCO – As the days get shorter, first grade teacher Esmeralda Jimnez watches the dimming afternoon sky outside her classroom window the way her pupils watch the clock at dismissal time. The studio apartment Jimnez rents for $1,783 a month, or 43 percent of her salary, is located in one of San Francisco’s sketchiest neighborhoods. Getting home involves running a gauntlet of feces-strewn sidewalks, popping crack pipes, discarded needles and menacing comments — daily...
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Riverside County aims to help mentally ill stop cycle of incarceration (cafwd.org)
When a national report was issued this summer that showed incarceration has largely replaced hospitalization for the severely mentally ill, the analysis reinforced what many counties across the country had been experiencing, including Riverside County. And according the Riverside County Jail Utilization Study conducted by CA Fwd, mentally ill offenders stayed in Riverside County jails for longer periods of time and were booked more often. The national report and the Riverside County jail...
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RYSE gathering: To promote healing from trauma, institutions need to stop seeing youth as the problem
A young man told clinical therapist Marissa Snoddy recently that when she calls him a leader, she got it all wrong. “He said, ‘I just came from Juvenile Hall,’ I’m not a leader.” But, she said, “We just kept giving him love. And we said, ‘You’re courageous for showing up and being here,’” The very fact that he was there, she explained, showed he was a leader. Snoddy related the anecdote recently for 80 people attending the Trauma and Learning Series launch led by Rising Youth for Social...
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Sacramento Native American Health Center Presentation by Jeanine Gaines (Citizen Potawatomi Nation)
On June 11th, Jeanine Gaines from the Citizen Potawatomi Nation presented to the Resilient Sacramento ACEs Connection meeting discussing the intersection of ACEs and historical trauma of first nation people. My intention was to upload the information for everyone to review right away but I found myself so emotionally moved that it took a full moon meditation to be able to free my feelings and write about my experience during and after the presentation. I consider myself well read concerning...
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San Francisco's Juvenile Hall to Shut Down in 2021. Now What? [KQED]
Gail's note: A well-done discussion about the closing of juvenile hall hosted by Michael Krasney. One of the guests, Shawn Ginwright, author of the article 'The Future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement' . Worth a listen! The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will close the city's juvenile hall by the end of 2021. In a nearly unanimous vote for closure, supervisors criticized the jail-like conditions juveniles are confined in, and cited the high...
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Santa Barbara County supervisors relinquish $38.9 million grant for treatment facility [LompocRecord.com]
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors split Tuesday on a decision to relinquish a $38.9 million state grant for a transition complex that was recently cut from plans for a North County jail. The 3-2 decision effectively kills a last-minute proposal from Sheriff Bill Brown, who sought reconsideration of the grant to alternatively fund the 228-bed treatment facility, which would have been staffed by the county’s Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Services department. The board...
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The California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review [ CMQCC, CDPH, MCAH, PHI]
New reports, recently released: The California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review (CA-PAMR) is a statewide, in-depth examination of deaths while pregnant or within one year after end of pregnancy, which aims to identify the cause and timing of death, factors that contributed to the death, and improvement opportunities in maternity care and support, with the ultimate goal to reduce preventable deaths and associated health disparities. CA-PAMR is a collaborative effort between the Maternal,...
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The Governor of California Signs a Bill Ending Money Bail [psmag.com]
California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed legislation that ended money bail in California. The bill abolishes paying money as a condition of release from jail pre-trial. The money-bail system has been consistently criticized as unfair to low-income people: Unable to afford bail, poorer people were forced to spend more time in prison pre-trial. Hoping to resolve these inequalities—and compelled by years of activism —state legislators put forward legislation that sought to replace...
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The Problems With California’s Broken Bail System Are Vividly Illustrated As A 26-Year-Old Pregnant Mother Is Bailed Out Of An LA Jail For Mother’s Day (witnessla.com)
Since its inception in May 2017, the #FreeBlackMamas program has spread to an impressive number of cities across the nation. According to program organizers, in slightly more than one year, over 14,000 people have donated to bring nearly 200 mothers home to their families and communities in the cities of Oakland, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, Montgomery, Memphis, Durham, Atlanta, Houston, New York City, Little Rock, Charlottesville, Charlotte, Kinston, Birmingham, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St.
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The Support that is Helping Make College Graduation a New Reality for Foster Youth (chronicleofsocialchange.org)
About 30 percent of high school students in California go on to graduate from college, but only about 8 percent of foster youth make it that far, according to research by the Public Policy Institute of California and the University of Chicago. Young people who spend their teen years in foster care are more likely to land in jail than to earn a college degree. Those bleak prospects deter some students from even considering higher-ed options. Under the umbrella of Guardian Scholars programs,...
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Too young for juvie? California bill bars prosecution of kids under 12 [SacBee.com]
Sen. Holly Mitchell sits at her desk on the fifth floor of the Capitol and holds up a book. On the cover a small boy in oversized jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt stands on a plastic milk crate, too small to reach, as a police officer presses the young child’s ink-soaked fingertips onto a piece of paper. “That image just stuck with me,” Mitchell said. The senator from Los Angeles is pushing a bill through the Legislature that would bar the state from prosecuting children under age 12. In...
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Trauma Transformed launches regional effort in San Francisco Bay Area
Nearly 300 impassioned and committed people crowded into the Green Room at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center last week to launch Trauma Transformed. Known as T2, the regional effort representing the San Francisco...
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Traumatic Experiences Widespread Among U.S. Youth, New Data Show
[This is a media release from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.] New national data show that at least 38 percent of children in every state have had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience or ACE, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or had a drug or alcohol problem. In 16 states, at least 25 percent of children have had two or more ACEs. Findings come from data in the 2016 National Survey...
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Troubled veterans get new chances in treatment court [ModestoBee.com]
They go halfway around the world to fight in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and often are held over by popular demand for additional tours of duty. They return, in far too many cases, with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues that can lead to dangerous behavior or homelessness. One in six United States military veterans develop a drug addiction and end up in the court system, treated like criminals when in many cases they need psychological or...
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Do you or a loved one need mental health help amid the coronavirus crisis? Here's who to call [sacbee.com]
By Andrew Sheeler, The Sacramento Bee, April 7, 2020 With unemployment soaring, a statewide stay-at-home order and no end in sight for the coronavirus pandemic, this is a trying time for the mental health of all Californians. To that end, the state maintains a resource at covid19.ca.gov that includes advice and multiple hotlines to call. The site also offers some advice to people struggling at home. That advice includes limiting social media and news intake, and being mindful of your sources...
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Drug rehabilitation: setting the stage for change in Placer County [AuburnJournal.com]
A man drives while drugged, gets a concussion and goes to the hospital. Doctors patch him up and send him home. The next week the same man gets into a bar brawl, breaks his nose and goes to the hospital. Doctors patch him up and send him home. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Unfortunately, it’s not. For a long time this has been the pattern of treating those with drug and alcohol addictions: Patch them up and send them home, or jail them and send them home, but Placer County is...
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Early Discount 20th Annual Families & Fathers Conference
Call to action- Fathers and Families Coalition of America is nearing the 20th Annual Families and Fathers Conference, March 4-7, 2019 in Los Angeles, California with a comprehensive program that hosts presenters from the United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Bolivia and throughout the United States. We are providing the conference information for your consideration to participate. We are asking you to share this conference information with your community...