LA Times Criminal Justice and Homelessness Questionnaire
List of Questions
1. Overcrowding at County Jails
In order to evaluate jail overcrowding properly you must look at four populations within the County jail system a) state prisoners being held awaiting transfers to state institutions as witnesses or suspects in pending trials or hearings, b) county jail inmates awaiting immigration hearings, c) county jail inmates awaiting trial as suspects in a crime and d) county jail inmates serving a court imposed sentence for misdemeanor crime violation(s) which occurred in the County of Los Angeles. State prisoner transfers and immigration hearings should be expedited so that space can be freed up as rapidly as possible but at minimum the county should be paid for the cell space provided to both state or federal jurisdictions for sentenced prisoners or detainees awaiting immigration hearings. This freed up space would then allow the L.A.S.D. to concentrate on its primary mission of providing a secure, humane and safe environment for inmate awaiting trial and inmates serving time for misdemeanor sentences. There is little doubt that the inmate on inmate and inmate on staff violence in the seven County jail facilities are functions of many factors and overcrowding of the inmate population is certainly one of them. Over the past fifteen years, the growth in the average annual number of inmates has outpaced the number of beds available for them, forcing the Sheriff to institute an early release program to comply with court mandated decrees.
The Sheriff has taken great strides, however, since the mis-match of beds to population reached a critical stage in 2004 when inmates slept on makeshift cots and mattresses on the floor. Just in the past few months, we have seen an easing of overcrowded conditions by virtue of the reopening of the Pitchess Detention Center – South Facility. Improvements at that facility increased the total jail capacity by over 1,000 beds, with a resulting 10% increase in the average length of time served by inmates.
The Sheriff has proposed, and I support, a $523 million capital budget to further expand and improve facilities at the Men’s Central Jail, the Pitchess Detention Center and the Sybil Brand Institute. These improvements will reduce overcrowding throughout the jail system, further reducing the potential for inmate violence, the necessity for early release and most importantly to comply with the court mandated decree.
Beyond simply assuring that the jail facilities are physically adequate to house the inmate population, we must also acknowledge that incarceration in many cases represents a failure of many other social systems. We must consciously try to keep people out of jail in the first place, address their needs and addictions while incarcerated and keep them from coming back once they leave. Those steps include prevention, intervention, education and youth development at the front end, services and treatment while incarcerated and rehabilitation, literacy training and job placement to minimize recidivism at the back end.
As a society, we have invested disproportionately more in law enforcement and the jail system than we have in programs, especially for young people, to prevent and dissuade criminal behavior that leads to jail and from jail to state prison. As Chair of the City’s Budget and Finance Committee, I have implemented a budget policy that set a goal of at least 15% of what is spent on the LAPD’s budget be spent on crime prevention/intervention activities, an objective I will seek with respect to the Los Angeles County’s budget.
2. Gang Suppression, Intervention and Prevention
There are 1,000 street gangs and 80,000 gang members in the County, many of them live in the 2nd District. Gang-related homicide is the leading cause of death for all persons age 15 through 44 in the County, a shocking statistic that speaks to the insidious nature of gang violence.
Countless gang-related programs exist, with results that are mixed or difficult to quantify. The core issues that are evident in areas of high crime and violence are: poverty, low educational achievement, lack of jobs, lack of health services, lack of adequate housing, lack of adult participation and lack of recreational facilities and activities.
These core issues can no longer be overlooked as solutions are sought. They must be incorporated into current and future planning efforts. Additionally, there has been an over-reliance on enforcement and incarceration strategies, local vs. regional strategies and incremental and symptom driven plans vs. holistic approaches. In my 38 years of law enforcement experience I have watched the debate between enforcement vs. rehabilitation rage for years. It is apparent to me that the only well thought out strategy is creating a full spectrum approach to social justice which includes prevention, intervention, education, enforcement, prosecution, incarceration and rehabilitation with adequate funding and evaluation for each segment and an insistence that these complex issues be addressed jointly and in a comprehensive manner. Of most importance, particularly for our younger population is youth development.
Although, I have seen many programs with various levels of success there are two that I would support as examples regional multi-discipline efforts that are worthy of expansion and future funding.
One is the Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR) Program. The other is a program begun by the County’s Community Development Commission labeled the Florence-Firestone Community Enhancement Team.
The effectiveness of each can be measured by tangible results:
CLEAR is a regional partnership between the County and City of Los Angeles specifically designed to combat community quality of life issues including gang violence. In the CLEAR model, the LAPD and Sheriff address visible gang activity in target neighborhoods; the City Attorney and the District Attorney issue gang injunctions and vigorously prosecute criminal activity and quality of life issues; probation officers work to ensure that convicted criminals receive appropriate conditions of probation; and a Community Impact Team works together on local strategies to facilitate neighborhood recovery, clean-up, code enforcement and quality of life issues.
In neighborhoods where CLEAR has been deployed, all crime but specifically gang-related violent crime has been reduced significantly. CLEAR is a success story that speaks to the effectiveness of inter-agency and inter-jurisdictional collaboration of the City of Los Angeles and the County. Given the fact that there are four other cities with their own police departments and 20 unincorporated areas in the 2nd District, the CLEAR model should be expanded throughout the 2nd District and throughout the County for that matter.
The second program reflects a philosophy, which I share, that all public services should be viewed as instruments to assure safe
neighborhoods within safe communities within safe cities within a safe county. There are 18 different County departments whose services impact the public safety environment. These departments include everything from the Sheriff’s Department to Child Support
Services to Parks and Recreation to Public Health to Community and Senior Services to Public Works to Mental Health. The provision of one service must be integrated with the others. Put another way, a single public service, such as Parks and Recreation, cannot be performed as if it bears no relation to another, such as Community and Senior Services or Children and Family Services.
A very good example of this philosophy in action specifically as it applies to gang activities exists in the Florence-Firestone community, one of the roughest and most blighted areas in the region. Crime has dropped in the area over the past two years because the community and multiple County services combined their efforts to make it happen.
The County’s Community Development Commission sought out community organizers to help inform residents of services available to them. Once that education process started, residents began demanding services like Code Enforcement and street improvements and graffiti abatement and the cleanup and elimination of illegal dumping. Through the Regional Planning Commission, they closed down an illegal vehicle paint shop near an elementary school. Block Watch programs were organized. They closed down an illegal nightclub, eliminating the crime activity associated with it.
Then they met with the Sheriff’s Department and joined forces in reporting and fighting criminal activity. 200 residents have gone through the Sheriff’s Community Academy. They asked for and received a Special Prosecutor from the District Attorney’s office to try neighborhood homicide cases.
The impact of this community involvement complemented by various County services has been spectacular. Homicides are down by half and over 100 members of a local “targeted street gang” have been indicted. Retail stores, including a Target, have moved into the area, as have new restaurants. In next year’s budget, the Sheriff is adding another deputy to the Florence-Firestone Community Enhancement Team, further institutionalizing the progress that has been made.
As a Supervisor, this is exactly the kind of partnering I will promote and enable between our various communities and the County departments whose services in combination with community activism make for safer environments.
3. Homeless Center
The Second Supervisory District leads the county in residents that are homeless, receive Section 8 housing vouchers and live in unauthorized housing. These are significant indications that the housing crisis, the number of homeless and near homeless people has reached a critical mass. It is also apparent that the homeless population has six sub-categories that need to be addressed so that core solutions can be addressed. They are: a) the mentally ill, b) those addicted to alcohol or drugs, c) those who suffer from illiteracy, d) the unemployed or unemployable, e) returning convicts from state prison and f) those that prey on the above
Adopted in 2006, the County’s Homeless Prevention Initiative was intended to establish “Stabilization Centers” in each of the five supervisorial districts. That objective has not succeeded, mainly because of the opposition of many communities to the placement of such Centers within their boundaries.
Thanks to the efforts of the Los Angeles City Council, the 2nd District already has what amounts to a functioning stabilization center in the form of New Image on Broadway Place. Established in 2003, New Image provides 600 beds and has moved more than 3,000 people to transitional or permanent housing.
Also located in the 2nd District and operated by New Image, Project Fresh Start provides 50 beds for women and combines housing placement with job training, computer education, Life Skills and mental health and health care. Project Fresh Start is an amazing story for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it is located in what used to be a nuisance motel in a blighted area traversed by prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers. Project Fresh Start has transformed the entire community around it. New Image took a negative and turned it into a project that saves lives, all the while enhancing the neighborhood environment around it.
As a Council Member, I supported funding for both projects, have visited both facilities and have seen the remarkable results they produce. In my view, it makes little sense to continue centralizing homeless services in downtown Los Angeles particularly when it has been well documented that homelessness is a county-wide issue. Also, it is not wise to pursue super-sized “stabilization center” when successful models like New Image and Project Fresh Start already exist and could work quite effectively though out the 2nd District and would assist with community buy-in and site placement elsewhere in the District.
The key factors to success are: a) concentration of services on the core populations, b) decentralized placement sites, c) services to address co-dependencies, d) services that address transitional model vs. a warehousing model, e) smaller facilities and f) community support for site placement and integration into permanent housing and employment status.
