[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CALIFORNIA CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM: POTENTIAL LESSONS FOR THE NATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,
AND HOMELAND SECURITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 13, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-35
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available http://judiciary.house.gov or www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
38-184 WASHINGTON : 2021
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chairman
ZOE LOFGREN, California DOUG COLLINS, Georgia,
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas Ranking Member
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., Wisconsin
Georgia STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
KAREN BASS, California JIM JORDAN, Ohio
CEDRIC L. RICHMOND, Louisiana KEN BUCK, Colorado
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York JOHN RATCLIFFE, Texas
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
ERIC SWALWELL, California MATT GAETZ, Florida
TED LIEU, California MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington TOM McCCLINTOCK, California
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
J. LUIS CORREA, California GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania, BEN CLINE, Virginia
Vice-Chair KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
LUCY McBATH, Georgia
GREG STANTON, Arizona
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
DEBBIE MUCARSEL-POWELL, Florida
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
Perry Apelbaum, Majority Staff Director & Chief Counsel
Brendan Belair, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY
KAREN BASS, California, Chair
VAL DEMINGS, Florida, Vice-Chair
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas JOHN RATCLIFFE, Texas,
LUCY McBATH, Georgia Ranking Member
TED DEUTCH, Florida F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.
CEDRIC RICHMOND, Louisiana Wisconsin
HAKEEM JEFFRIES, New York STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
TED LIEU, California TOM McCLINTOCK, California
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
DEBBIE MUCARSEL-POWELL, Florida GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
STEVEN COHEN, Tennessee BEN CLINE, Virgina
W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida
Joe Graupensperger, Chief Counsel
Jason Cervenak, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
JULY 13, 2019
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
The Honorable Karen Bass, a Representative in Congress from State
of California, and Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime,
Terrorism, and Homeland Security
Oral Testimony............................................... 1
The Honorable Ted Lieu, a Representative in Congress from State
of California, Member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism,
and Homeland Security
Oral Testimony............................................... 47
The Honorable Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., a Representative in
Congress from State of Georgia, a Member of the House Committee
on the Judiciary
Oral Testimony............................................... 69
The Honorable G. K. Butterfield, a Representative in Congress
from State of North Carolina, a former Chair and Member of the
Congressional Black Caucus
Oral Testimony............................................... 49
The Honorable Dwight Evans, a Representative in Congress from
State of Pennsylvania, a Member of the Congressional Black
Caucus
Oral Testimony............................................... 50
The Honorable Steven Horsford, Representative in Congress from
State of Nevada, a Member of the Congressional Black Caucus
Oral Testimony............................................... 52
WITNESSES
Panel 1
Michael Romano, Director, Three Strikes Project and Justice
Advocacy Project and Lecturer in Law, Stanford Law School
Oral Testimony............................................... 5
Prepared Statement........................................... 8
Taina Vargas-Edmond, Initiate Justice
Oral Testimony............................................... 22
Prepared Statement........................................... 25
Charis E. Kubrin, Professor, Department of Criminology, Law and
Society, University of California-Irvine
Oral Testimony............................................... 31
Prepared Statement........................................... 33
Panel 2
Susan Burton, A New Way of Life Reentry Project
Oral Testimony............................................... 55
John Harriel (Big John), Electrician, Diversity Manager, General
Superintendent for Marrow Meadows Corporation, and Facilitator
with 2nd Call
Oral Testimony............................................... 57
Prepared Statement........................................... 59
Stanley Bailey, Durango, CO
Oral Testimony............................................... 65
Prepared Statement........................................... 67
LETTER, MATERIAL, ARTICLES SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Written Talking Points from the Women Organizing Reentry
Communities of Color (WORCC-Prop 47) Network to Representative
Karen Bass, a Member of Congress from the State of California,
and Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland
Security....................................................... 42
APPENDIX
Letter from Women Organizing Reentry Communities of Color to
Representative Karen Bass, a Member of Congress of California,
Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland
Security and Representative John Ratcliffe, a Member of
Congress of the State of Texas, and Ranking Member of the
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security........ 84
Submitted Testimony by Michele Alpuente Hanisee, President of the
Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles,
California..................................................... 87
CALIFORNIA CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM: POTENTIAL LESSONS FOR THE NATION
----------
SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:47 a.m., in
Fame Renaissance Center, 1968 West Adams Boulevard, Los
Angeles, CA, Hon. Karen Bass [chair of the subcommittee]
presiding.
Present: Representatives Bass, and Lieu.
Also present: Representatives Johnson of Georgia,
Butterfield, Evans, and Horsford.
Staff Present: Ben Hernandez, Counsel; Joe Graupensperger,
Chief Counsel; Rachel Rossi, Counsel; Veronica Eligan,
Professional Staff Member.
Ms. Bass. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, everyone.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. We have to give a good L.A. welcome to members of
the Judiciary Subcommittee, as well as members of the
Congressional Black Caucus. So, good morning everyone.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. I am Congresswoman Karen Bass, and one of the
many paths I have in Congress is I serve on the Judiciary
Committee, and on Judiciary we have several subcommittees. So I
chair the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland
Security. So what we are going to do today is to have an
official hearing. This is not a town hall meeting like we
usually do in L.A., but this is an official hearing of the
Subcommittee, and we are going to examine California's reforms.
So, without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare
recesses of the Subcommittee at any time.
Our Subcommittee will come to order now, and I welcome
everyone to today's hearing on California's criminal justice
reform and potential lessons for the nation.
I will now recognize myself for an opening statement.
We are here today to discuss California's criminal justice
reform efforts and to determine whether there are lessons the
nation can learn.
It is first important to recognize how California's reforms
came to be. California was long known for its tough-on-crime
policies, and it once led the nation in the rush for mass
incarceration. Between 1975 and 2006, California's prison
population increased eight-fold. From 1980 to 2006,
California's jail population more than tripled. By the 2000s,
California's prisons, which were designed to house a population
of about 80,000, held over double their capacity.
Incarcerated people slept in gyms, hallways, and dayrooms.
Mentally ill prisoners were jammed into tiny holding cells.
Inmate suicide rates were 80 percent higher than in the rest of
the nation's prisons. And this rapid incarceration devastated
communities of color. Black persons represented 6 percent of
the population but 27 percent of the incarcerated population.
It is important to note that, unfortunately, this data has
not changed. At the end of 2016, 29 percent of male prisoners
in state prisons were black, while only 6 percent of the
state's male residents were black.
California, however, has made strides. After the 2011
Supreme Court case mandating the reduction of this
unconstitutional incarceration, numerous ballot initiatives
reflected the will of the people to scale back mass
incarceration.
What has California done right? The witnesses in our first
panel will describe ballot initiatives that have begun to
drastically reduce the state's incarcerated population. These
reforms have been narrowly targeted, but also have broadly
applied to more types of offenses than simply low-level drug
possession. The reforms include narrowing the Three Strikes
law, the revision of felony murder laws, the reduction of
penalties for drug and theft offenses, the expansion of parole
and earned time credits for early release from prison, and the
broad revisions of juvenile laws, and many more.
I know many of you in this room have been involved for the
last three decades in making these reforms happen. So although
many of them took place by ballot initiatives, it was the
people in this room and others throughout our state who led a
movement through many grassroots organizations that created the
public will and identified the resources for the ballot
initiatives to take place to begin with. And as a result, the
state's incarceration levels have decreased drastically.
California's prison population--that is right, applaud for
that.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. California's prison population had peaked at
nearly 163,000 in 2006. By 2018, the California prison
population stabilized at around 115,000, which is still far
above capacity but leaves California with the 18th lowest
incarceration rate in the country.
And remarkably, crime has not increased as a result of any
of these reforms. Today I hope to explore these reforms--that
deserves another applause.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Today I hope to explore these reforms and whether
similar comparable efforts will work at the Federal level.
We took a modest and remarkable step with the passage of
the First Step Act last year, but California's experience can
aid Federal legislators as we consider legislative efforts
beyond those that focus on low-level drug offenders and how to
safely and creatively expand the type of offenses that must be
reformed.
But take note: California is far from finished in its
efforts. The prison incarceration rate in California is 4,180
per 100,000 residents for African American men, compared with
420. So that is 4,000 to 420 for white men. As in the case of
other states and federally, we have not begun to sufficiently
mitigate the clear racially disparate treatment within our
criminal justice system, and reentry efforts must improve both
in California and at the Federal level.
California has demonstrated that reentry efforts and the
mitigation of collateral consequences must be a focus when
considering criminal justice reform. Reform cannot only focus
on reducing prison populations, it must also focus on ensuring
the success of those coming home. The National Inventory of the
Collateral Consequences of Conviction counted more than 44,000
separate collateral consequences to conviction. These include
ineligibility for certain professional licenses and Federal
housing assistance, and can limit many aspects of an
individual's life, such as employment, education, and
government benefits.
Lack of housing post-incarceration creates particularly
dire challenges for women, especially those who are parents,
and over 80 percent of women are parents, mothers who are
incarcerated. Mothers may be required by child welfare agencies
to locate adequate housing in order to gain custody of their
children in foster care, and the witnesses on our second panel
will describe this.
Today, this field hearing is an exciting opportunity for
Congress to lead Washington, D.C. and to expand our
understanding of criminal justice reform, and today I believe
we will learn from California that we can reduce mass
incarceration safely, but we must do so with the focus on more
than numbers. We must focus on the people impacted and
addressing their needs.
So from this hearing, we hope to develop legislation on
reentry and looking for other ways to reduce the prison
population.
Let me, before I introduce our witnesses, let me take a
moment to introduce my colleagues that are here today. Two of
my colleagues serve on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime.
Representative Ted Lieu from Los Angeles. We all know Ted
Lieu.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Representative Hank Johnson from the great state
of Georgia.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Representative G.K. Butterfield from North
Carolina.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. I might add, G.K. is the former Chair of the
Congressional Black Caucus.
Dwight Evans from the great state of Pennsylvania.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. And Representative Steven Horsford from Las
Vegas, Nevada.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. So in addition to the hearing today--and this
hearing is a collaboration between the Congressional Black
Caucus and the Crime Subcommittee. Members of the Congressional
Black Caucus will be here all day. After this, we will be going
to review our homeless situation, which we also know is one of
the collateral consequences of mass incarceration as well.
Let me acknowledge Ira Reiner who is here, our former
District Attorney.
Please stand, Mr. Reiner.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. And there are many, many, many community leaders
who are here.
So once again, I thank you so much for coming. You know we
do town halls all the time, but just to note this is different
than a town hall. This is a formal hearing.
So I want to begin by introducing our panelists.
Professor Michael Romano is the Director of the Three
Strikes Project and Justice Advocacy Project, and a Lecturer in
Law at Stanford Law School. Professor Romano teaches Criminal
Justice Policy and Advanced Criminal Litigation Practice, and
has published several scholarly and popular press articles on
criminal law, sentencing policy, prisoner reentry and
recidivism, and mental illness in the justice system.
Michael also co-authored successful statewide ballot
measures in California, the Three Strikes Reform Act,
Proposition 36, and the Safe Neighborhoods and School Act,
Proposition 47.
Ms. Taina Vargas-Edmond is the Co-Founder and Executive
Director of Initiate Justice. Initiate Justice was created by
and for incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people, and
people with incarcerated loved ones, and represents 15,000
incarcerated members and organizers, both incarcerated and on
the outside. One of Initiate Justice's successful campaigns was
in support of Proposition 57, approved by the voters in 2016.
It expanded the applicability of earned time credits for
successful completion of education and rehab programs.
Professor Charis Kubrin is a Professor of Criminology, Law,
and Society at the University of California-Irvine. Her
research focuses on neighborhood correlates of crime, with an
emphasis on race and violent crime. Recent work in this area
examines the immigration-crime nexus across neighborhoods and
cities, as well as accesses the impact of criminal justice
reform on crime rates. Professor Kubrin co-authored the only
effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's impact on
California crime rates, which found that the reform cannot be
linked to any rise in crime.
We welcome our witnesses and thank them for participating
in today's hearing. Please note that your written statement
will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, I
ask that you summarize your testimony in 5 minutes.
And to help you stay within that time, there is a timing
light. Where is that timing light? Oh, okay, there is that big
timing light. When the time expires, we need you to conclude
your testimony.
We will now proceed under the 5-minute rule with questions.
Before we go to that, we will have each panelist speak for
5 minutes, and then our panel here will engage in questions.
Each member on the panel will have 5 minutes to question you.
Mr. Romano.
STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL ROMANO, DIRECTOR, THREE STRIKES PROJECT
AND JUSTICE ADVOCACY PROJECT AND LECTURER IN LAW, STANFORD LAW
SCHOOL; TAINA VARGAS-EDMOND, INITIATE JUSTICE; CHARIS E.
KUBRIN, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINOLOGY, LAW AND SOCIETY,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL ROMANO
Mr. Romano. Thank you, Chair Bass and other members of
Congress. It is an honor to be here today.
My name is Michael Romano. I teach criminal justice policy
at Stanford Law School. As part of that work, I represent
people who are sentenced to life in prison for non-violent
crimes and help to reform the laws that put them there in the
first place.
Ms. Bass. Hold on one second.
Can people in the back hear? Can everybody hear? Okay,
good.
Pull your mic a little bit closer. Okay.
Mr. Romano. Is that better?
Ms. Bass. Yes.
Mr. Romano. All right.
As the Chair mentioned, I was intimately involved with
three recent ballot measures enacted here in California,
Propositions 36, 47, and 57, plus other reforms which have
sustained a remarkable and ongoing movement to reduce
California's prison population.
I would like to make three main points with my testimony
today. First, California has successfully reduced our prison
population by 26 percent, or 45,000 inmates, and reduced crime
at the same time.
[Applause.]
Mr. Romano. Since the peak of California's prison boom in
2006, violent crimes in California are down 17 percent, and
property crimes are down 27 percent. You can reduce prison
sentences and crime rates at the same time. It is a fact.
Second, despite our successes, legislative action seems to
lag behind public opinion. I would like to single out
Proposition 36, the reform to California's Three Strikes law
for a minute, because it was the first law in California to
roll back prison sentences because it was enacted by voters and
because it is the reform with which I am most familiar.
We first went to Sacramento, and we couldn't get out of
committee. Our allies, Democrats, liberal activists, said it
couldn't be done. They worried about Willy Horton.
Our opponents asked: ``What do you think is going to happen
by reducing Three Strike sentences, even for minor crimes like
shoplifting and drug possession? We already know,'' they said,
``they will commit new crimes and kill innocent people.'' That
is a direct quote.
They were wrong.
Proposition 36 passed with 70 percent of the statewide vote
and a majority in every county in the state.
[Applause.]
Mr. Romano. Even in red counties that voted for Mitt
Romney. Over 2,000----
[Laughter.]
Ms. Bass. They think it is funny that people voted for Mitt
Romney.
Mr. Romano. It is a big state.
Over 2,000 hopeless recidivists and career criminals have
been freed under Proposition 36, and their recidivism rate is
almost two times better than the state average.
Voters want criminal justice reform. In three straight
elections we have overwhelmingly passed initiatives that
reduced criminal punishments for almost all crimes. The least
popular of these reforms, Proposition 47, passed by a two-to-
one margin. New polling shows that likely 2020 voters, and even
crime survivors in California, all support continued reform.
And as you surely know, criminal justice reform is now a
bipartisan issue.
I submit that the politics of ``tough on crime'' is over
and we must take the opportunity to reexamine the reform laws
that we know don't help public safety but instead inflict
misery, destroy families and communities, and cost billions and
billions of dollars.
Finally, so much work remains to be done. Far too many
people still remain behind bars. I know them personally because
I am their lawyer. I represent Malcolm McGee, who is serving a
mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole in
Federal prison for a non-violent drug crime. His prior strikes
are misdemeanors. He has never committed a violent crime. He
has already served 20 years. He has zero prison rule
violations, hundreds and hundreds of hours of educational and
vocational programming, and a loving family waiting, hoping,
and praying for him to come home.
I also represent Alejandro Nolkemper, who is serving a life
sentence for breaking a church window here in Los Angeles. That
is now a misdemeanor. She is transgender and fears for her
safety in prison, so she commits minor rule violations, like
breaking her cell window, to intentionally get sent to solitary
confinement, where she feels safe. In solitary, she has no
access to programming, which is required for her release. So
she, too, remains in prison for the rest of her life.
Finally, there is Stanley Bailey. Stanley was sentenced to
life for possession of drug paraphernalia under the Three
Strikes law. After serving more than 20 years, he got lucky and
was released under Proposition 36 in 2014. He went to a halfway
house, volunteered for a truck driving school, eventually got
his commercial driving license, and he also decided to give
back. He came to work for my office helping to support folks
who are released from prison.
[Applause.]
Mr. Romano. Then he did it for the White House, the Obama
White House, traveling the country and meeting prisoners
released under executive clemency, welcoming them to a new,
free world, and helping them integrate into society. His work
was recognized by the Obama Administration as a Champion of
Change.
There are thousands of Stanley Baileys in prison across the
country today. They are changed people. They are good people.
They don't need to be there, and we should all work to get them
out.
[Applause.]
Mr. Romano. I am very proud to say that the one and only
Stanley Bailey is here today and is here to tell his story
himself.
Thank you all very much for your time. I look forward to
answering your questions.
[Applause.]
[The statement of Mr. Romano follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Ms. Vargas-Edmond.
STATEMENT OF TAINA VARGAS-EDMOND
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Good morning, Chair and members. My name
is Taina Vargas-Edmond. I am the Founder and Executive Director
of Initiate Justice, an organization that works to end mass
incarceration by activating the political power of those who
are directly impacted by it.
We organize currently incarcerated people, formerly
incarcerated people, and their loved ones to fight for policy
change that bring people home from prison and keep our
communities safe.
Over the last few years, Initiate Justice has been part of
the broader reform movement in California that has succeeded in
reducing our prison population while at the same time reducing
recidivism rates. Today I will discuss three of those
sentencing reforms that I believe have had the most significant
impacts: one, youth offender parole; two, ending the felony
murder rule; and three, Proposition 57.
In 2013, 2014, and 2017, the California state legislature
passed three pieces of legislation that created a youth
offender parole program, meaning that people who were sentenced
under the age of 18, under the age of 22, and under the age of
26, respectively, were given the opportunity to apply for early
release, to go to the Parole Board sooner, while taking into
consideration their mental and cognitive development because of
their age. This program has been one of the most successful
programs in not only reducing the California state prison
population but also people who are released under youth
offender parole have the lowest recidivism rates out of any
group. For the first year that they were--for the first cohort
of folks who were released, they had a one-year recidivism rate
of zero percent, a two-year recidivism rate of zero percent,
and a three-year recidivism rate of 2.2 percent.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. An important piece about those pieces of
legislation and the other ones that I am discussing is that
they were implemented retroactively, meaning that they do
impact people who are currently incarcerated, which is critical
in any policy reform that we are proposing.
The second piece of legislation that I will discuss is S.B.
1437, which was passed by the California state legislature just
this last year, which reformed California's felony murder rule.
In California, you could be sentenced to life for murder when
you did not commit the murder if you were committing another
felony at the time. So if you were, for example, a getaway
driver, having no idea that a murder was being committed, you
could still go to prison for murder the same as the person who
actually committed the homicidal act.
This was changed last year, and now we have dozens of
people who have been released throughout the state so far, and
hundreds more who are awaiting hearing who are going to be
resentenced for their actual participation in the crime----
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond [continuing]. And have the opportunity to
come home.
Most significantly, I would like to discuss Proposition 57,
which passed with an overwhelming majority in November of 2016.
Proposition 57 did three things. One, it made it much more
difficult for people who were convicted as youth to be
sentenced as adults. Two, it created a parole opportunity for
people sentenced to certain non-violent offenses. And three and
most significantly, it created a credit earning program for 96
percent of people currently incarcerated in the California
state prison system.
What is important about the credit earning portion of
Proposition 57 is that it represented a paradigm shift in
California, where we recognized that people who are currently
incarcerated, one, need incentives to be able to invest in
their own rehabilitation and transformation; and two, by
offering folks these incentives and these tools, we are
actually increasing their likelihood of success while they
reenter society.
I am a person who has personally been impacted by
Proposition 57, with my husband earning almost two years off of
his sentence, and in three days we will celebrate one year
since he has been home from prison.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. The issue with Proposition 57 is that
the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was offered a
lot of leeway in terms of how they implement the credit earning
opportunities, and in response to Proposition 57, in response
to these other retroactive policy reforms that I have
discussed, I am also going to take some time to offer some
recommendations for the state of California, and also things
that I believe the Federal Government should keep in mind as
you consider policy reforms as well.
One, we must close prisons. Despite our decreasing prison
population, the California Corrections budget has continued to
soar every single year. This is in part due to increasing
medical and mental health costs for incarcerated people, but
mostly due to the fact that prisons have continued to be in
operation despite the fact that the population is going down.
Facilities must close for us to eliminate these operating
costs.
Two, we must implement more inclusive policy reforms. Many
proposed policy reforms tend to address the political low-
hanging fruit, the folks who are convicted of non-violent, non-
serious, non-sex offenses. The fact of the matter is,
especially in the state prison system, that most people are
serving time for violent offenses, and we need to reconcile
with that and consider how we are going to address these more
serious offenses and think about solutions and not just
punishment.
In that vein, three, we must expand restorative justice
practices. Our existing criminal justice system----
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Our existing criminal justice system is
punitive in nature, meaning that we punish people rather than
looking at root causes, rather than focusing on healing and
transformation of the individual and the victims and survivors
of the offense.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Four, we must end sentencing
enhancements, including the Three Strikes law in California.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Sentencing enhancements are meant to act
as a deterrent for crime, but there is no evidence to suggest
that sentencing enhancements have been effective. Our
sentencing enhancement laws are so complicated that the average
person is not familiar with them, so no one thinks, okay, let
me not commit this offense because of Penal Code Section blah-
blah-blah. And in California, we actually have more sentencing
enhancements than we have penal code violations on the books.
And five, we must ensure that people directly impacted by
incarceration are leading these policy reforms. People directly
impacted by incarceration are leaders in our own experiences.
We are the ones who understand what we need to make our
communities safe because we know what we didn't have to end up
in prison in the first place.
The first step in doing this is that we must restore voting
rights to all people impacted by incarceration.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. And I will conclude with this. As a
representative of an organization led by people directly
impacted by incarceration who fight for policy change, I have
witnessed many victories in decarceration policy in recent
years. California is in the midst of a paradigm shift where our
leaders are finally starting to realize that the punitive
justice system and being tough on crime is not a cure for our
social ills.
As we move forward toward ending mass incarceration, we
must expand on existing reforms and fight for bold and
courageous change that is rooted in solutions rather than just
punishment. Ending mass incarceration will require that we
address these root causes of harm, shift our culture to one
that embraces transformation, and follow the lead of those
directly impacted by the criminal legal system. Thank you.
[Applause.]
[The statement of Ms. Vargas-Edmond follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Ms. Kubrin.
STATEMENT OF CHARIS E. KUBRIN
Ms. Kubrin. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity
to appear before you in these hearings. My name is Charis
Kubrin. I am a professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the
University of California-Irvine, and among other things I
research the impact of criminal justice reform, prison
downsizing in particular, on crime rates.
I first got interested in criminal justice reform back in
2011 when I moved from D.C. to California to start my job at
U.C.-Irvine. It happened that realignment A.B. 109 had just
been implemented. I knew absolutely nothing about realignment,
but everywhere I turned I heard dire predictions of an
impending crime wave, and I came to learn that despite these
grave concerns there was no state funding set aside to evaluate
realignment's impact, and that at that point no studies had yet
been done, so there was no evidence to weigh in on the issue
one way or another.
I decided to do something about it. My colleague, Dr.
Carroll Seron, and I received funding from the National Science
Foundation to hold a workshop at U.C.-Irvine bringing together
leading scholars who researched prison downsizing throughout
the country. The workshop addressed essential questions,
including did realignment cause crime and recidivism rates to
rise. Those who participated conducted original research. Those
studies were peer reviewed and published in a special issue of
the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, which Dr. Saron and I co-edited. Our volume represents
the first scientific, systematic analysis of realignment's
impact.
In the volume, Drs. Magnus Lofstrom and Steve Rafael
conducted a study of statewide crime trends pre- and post-
realignment. What they found was that realignment had no impact
whatsoever on violent crime, and only a very modest impact on
property crime, and that was only for the crime of auto theft.
They concluded the criminogenic consequences of realignment
have been modest.
Dr. Seron and I worked hard to disseminate these findings.
We published an op-ed in the Washington Post, we held a
briefing in Sacramento, we spoke with reporters, we met with
law enforcement officials, and during our outreach something
really interesting happened, which was that as we spoke about
realignment and its impact, people wanted to know more about
Prop. 47, the newest reform that had been implemented, and what
its impact on crime rates were throughout the state.
Just like its predecessor, Prop. 47 became heavily
politicized. I saw the same alarming headlines in the news,
``Prop. 47 Causing a Crime Wave,'' for example, and the same
situation with no funding set aside to evaluate it and no
studies done at that time. One claim especially concerned me.
Many people assumed that if crime rates went up following Prop.
47's implementation, that Prop. 47 was to blame for those
rising crime rates. But crime rates going up, or down for that
matter, tell us nothing about the causes of those crime trends,
whether they be up or down, because crime is caused by a
constellation of factors, not just a single policy. A proper
evaluation is necessary to evaluate any policy's causal impact.
This time I didn't wait for someone else to conduct the
study. I did the research myself, along with my graduate
student, Bradley Bartos. Our goal was simply to examine the
impact of Prop. 47 on violent and property crimes statewide in
the year following Prop. 47's enactment, so 2015. We wanted to
study Prop. 47's impact on murder, rape, robbery, assault,
burglary, larceny, and auto theft. So we did all of the UCR
Part I crimes. And we utilized a research method that allowed
us to construct a comparison unit that approximates California
had it not enacted Prop. 47. We called this ``Synthetic
California.''
Synthetic California is comprised of other states in the
U.S. that looked a lot like California in their crime trends
prior to Prop. 47 being implemented but that did not implement
a Prop. 47-style intervention. What we were able to do in our
study was compare crime in California in 2015 with crime in
Synthetic California in 2015, and any difference between the
two time trends can be seen as the causal impact of Prop. 47.
So we really wanted to isolate the policy's impact.
So, what did we find? We found that Prop. 47 had absolutely
no impact whatsoever on the crimes of homicide, rape,
aggravated assault, robbery and burglary. We did find that
Prop. 47 might have caused a slight uptick in larceny and motor
vehicle theft, however. But before we could conclude that this
was, in fact, the case, we needed to do what was called
robustness checks on our data, and these are standard tests
that are done in order to determine whether we might have
issues of spuriousness in our study, like noise in our crime
trends that could be accounting for these findings, and also to
determine the extent to which our findings may be sensitive to
our model specification; so if we created Synthetic California
differently, would we find different results.
The robustness checks revealed that, in fact, the findings
for both larceny and motor vehicle theft do not hold. So
overall, we found very little evidence, almost no evidence, to
suggest that Prop. 47 had an impact on violent or property
crime in the state of California following its enactment.
These findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal
Criminology and Public Policy, a leading journal in the field.
So, what is the larger takeaway from both of these studies?
Two things.
First, we can downsize our prisons without harming public
safety. We absolutely can.
[Applause.]
Ms. Kubrin. And secondly, that as other states throughout
the nation debate prison downsizing and consider what reforms
may work in their states, that California has to be front and
center of that discussion.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
[The statement of Ms. Kubrin follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Bass. Well, I want to thank our witnesses.
We will now proceed under the 5-minute rule with questions.
I would like to ask unanimous consent of my colleagues to
allow our three members who are here who are not on the
committee to participate in Q&A. Thank you.
And I would also like to ask unanimous consent--I want to
enter a document in from the Women Organizing Reentry
Communities of Color.
[The information follows:]
CHAIR BASS FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Bass. I am beginning the Q&A by recognizing myself for
5 minutes.
So, the Women Organizing Reentry Communities of Color have
made a few recommendations. One, they want to make sure that we
include gender at the onset of policy development; that we
target resources for women of color to access employment and
other streams of income; that we build data systems and
collection into policies to promote transparency. And I would
like to ask if the Women Organizing Reentry Communities of
Color, if you are here, if you could stand so that we could
acknowledge you.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for
your input.
You know, those of us from California and the two of us
here on the panel, Representative Lieu and I, are familiar with
the propositions. But I wanted to know, Mr. Romano, if you
could please restate what were the significant aspects of
Proposition 47.
Mr. Romano. So, Proposition 47, which was enacted in 2014,
took six common street-level crimes--we are talking petty
theft, shoplifting, forgery, drug possession--and made those
crimes mandatory misdemeanors rather than possible felonies. It
made those changes both prospectively and retroactively, I
think which we all have discussed is an important aspect,
meaning that future offenders could not receive felonies for
those crimes. But also, if you are in prison serving a sentence
for those crimes, and those crimes could amount to life
sentences under the Three Strikes law, then you had an
opportunity to get out.
Proposition 47 also created a fund from the state savings,
from a reduced prison population, and distributed that money to
K-12 education and reentry programs throughout the state.
Ms. Bass. Ms. Kubrin, I know you were talking about
Proposition 47, but could you please state for the record what
was Proposition 36?
Ms. Kubrin. So, I have not done research on Proposition 36.
Ms. Bass. No, I know.
Ms. Kubrin. So I would defer to my colleagues, who could
probably say more about that.
Ms. Bass. Okay. Ms. Vargas-Edmond.
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. I would defer to Mr. Romano.
Ms. Bass. Okay, all right. You get it again.
Mr. Romano. Proposition 36 was enacted in 2012. It reformed
California's Three Strikes law to require that a third strike
be a serious or violent felony. In other words, you couldn't
get a life sentence for a non-serious, non-violent crime. It
limited life sentences for shoplifting a pair of socks--that is
not an exaggeration--stealing a dollar in change from a parked
car. And like 47, it operated prospectively, meaning nobody
could get a life sentence for these minor crimes in the future,
but also retroactively. So if you were serving a life sentence
for an extraordinarily minor crime, you could get out of prison
as well.
Ms. Bass. How about explaining what realignment is, Ms.
Kubrin?
Ms. Kubrin. Sure. So, 8109 realignment was implemented in
2011. It took what we called the triple nons, the non-serious,
non-sex, non-violent offenders, so very low-level individuals,
and transferred them from state-level prisons down to the
county level. Counties were given discretion and funding in
which they could figure out what they wanted to do with these
low-level offenders. They could put them in jails, they could
do electronic monitoring, community supervision. Basically,
each county had to come up with a realignment plan on how it
was going to use its realignment dollars. The idea was that
this was something that could be handled better locally, local
solutions to issues, and also that this would save the state a
lot of money because instead of having individuals in the state
prisons at the tune of around $55,000 back then, that this
would create a lot of savings for the state as well.
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Ms. Vargas-Edmond, you mentioned about how the state prison
budget is still increasing in dollars, but has there been any
increase in programming? Meaning education, training, et
cetera.
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. To technically answer your question,
there has been an increase in funding for programming, but
there have been many issues in terms of implementing and
expanding access to programming inside of prisons. There are
various reasons for that. One, most of the prisons in
California are rural. They are in places where community
members who have to come in and offer their volunteer time to
implement programs, it is difficult for volunteers to come.
Two, there are security concerns. The way CDCR operates is as
if the prison is in security lockdown. People are not allowed
to move. I see that we are out of time, but there are various
issues----
Ms. Bass. Well, in the last few seconds, it took community
organizing and activism to really bring about these reforms.
Could you speak a minute about that?
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Yes. So, community members, particularly
people who are directly impacted by incarceration, recognize
the importance of programming, and Proposition 57 was put on
the ballot largely by the volunteer efforts of people who have
incarcerated loved ones and folks who are formerly
incarcerated, mostly because folks recognize that they want the
opportunities to be able to come home and were willing to work
and invest in their own rehabilitation in order to do so.
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Let me also just mention that for
Three Strikes to change, there was an organization, Families
Against Three Strikes, that worked for a couple of decades to
reform the Three Strikes law.
Let me call on Representative Hank Johnson for your 5
minutes.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you, Madam Chair. I
appreciate you hosting us out here in Los Angeles for this very
important topic. I am just heartened to see how many people in
the community care enough about this subject to come out on a
Saturday morning.
[Applause.]
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. I will note the vast array of
ethnicities out there in the crowd. It is really heartening for
me coming from Georgia, where we almost elected Stacey Abrams
for governor, I might add.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. You did elect Stacey Abrams. She just wasn't
allowed to take office.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. That is right. We still have
election death going on around here.
But at any rate, what percentage of the petitions under
Proposition 47, which was retroactive and which enabled persons
who were currently serving sentences to petition the judge for
release, what percentage of those petitions are granted and
denied, or have been granted and denied, granted or denied?
Mr. Romano. So both under Proposition 36 and 47, the vast
majority have been granted. I am talking over 95 percent of
people who are eligible have been released. I will say,
however, that litigation is ongoing for both initiatives,
especially here in Los Angeles, where prosecutors are opposing
the release of these folks.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Have prosecutors, the prosecuting
counsel of California, I guess, have they opposed any of these
propositions before they passed? And has their stance against
the propositions, if there was opposition, changed since
implementation?
Mr. Romano. So, the California District Attorney's
Association has opposed almost all of these reforms.
Proposition 36 was supported by the Republican District
Attorney of Los Angeles, Steve Cooley, at the time, and the
current District Attorney, Jackie Lacey. They are outliers, and
very few DAs have recognized the effectiveness of these
reforms.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. What have been the human, societal,
and/or financial costs associated with over-incarceration? And
anyone can respond.
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. I could be here all day talking about
the human costs of mass incarceration. Maybe I will share a
little bit about my story of being a woman impacted by
incarceration.
My husband, at the age of 19, was facing 150 years to
double life for an offense in which no one was hurt. He ended
up being sentenced to 10 years and pled out to things that he
did not do because of the ways the District Attorneys have the
ability to stack charges.
Because of Proposition 57, he was able to earn almost two
years off of his sentence, and that is the reason that he is
here now.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. But the seven years that he spent
incarcerated cost me about $40,000 out of my pocket to be able
to make visits, to be able to put money on the phone so I could
talk to him, to send packages, and that doesn't even include
the cost that we spent on an attorney trying to fight his case.
There are too many stories that are exactly like mine where
women of color in particular bear the financial burden and the
emotional burden and the social stigma of having incarcerated
loved ones.
[Applause.]
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. So I think it is really important to
take into consideration the human cost on not only the people
who are incarcerated but their family members and their
communities who bear the brunt of that burden as well.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Children involved?
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Children.
Ms. Kubrin. Can I just add, as a sociologist and someone
trained in sociology, mass incarceration reproduces inequality
in our society. It reproduces and deepens inequality in all
aspects, whether we are talking about education, family, the
labor market. Prison can be a stratifying institution. And so
if we want to fight back against inequality, racial inequality
in particular, we cannot have the kinds of incarceration rates
that we have had in this country.
[Applause.]
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Even with Propositions 36, 47, and
57, and the legislation that you referred to, Professor Kubrin,
does California still have an over-incarceration problem?
Ms. Kubrin. Absolutely.
Mr. Romano. Yes. We are currently at about 137 percent of
the design capacity of the prison system. We are under a
Federal court order that has ruled that the conditions in
California prisons are so bad that they amount to cruel and
unusual punishment. This was a decision that was originally
made in 1995, and we are still under that decision. It was
affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2011. We are still under that
order. So the answer is yes.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you.
Ms. Bass. Representative Lieu.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you. Let me first thank Congresswoman Karen
Bass and my colleagues for being here at this important
hearing, for all of you for being here.
When I was in the California state legislature, I had the
honor of working with then-Speaker Bass on her leadership team
on criminal justice reform, and it is such a thrill to now be
in Congress and work with Karen Bass on criminal justice
reform.
[Applause.]
Mr. Lieu. I have had a chance to visit both Federal and
state prisons, and two things became clear to me. One is,
regardless of what we think, we can all agree on this one
point, which is people in prison have a lot of time, and it
seems totally ludicrous to me that we don't provide better
opportunities for them to spend that time getting an education
or earning a skill, or learning a tradecraft.
[Applause.]
Mr. Lieu. The second thing that became clear is that with
any large population, there is a large, diverse array of
interests, and some folks might love a plumbing course and want
to be a plumber. Some folks might never ever want to go near
that area.
So my first question is to Ms. Vargas-Edmond. You said the
California Department of Corrections has a lot of discretion in
implementing these rehabilitation credits. Do you believe they
have enough array of programs for the diversity of interests
that prisoners have in getting these credits?
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. No. The short answer, no. However, a
positive aspect that came from Proposition 57 is that for the
first time incarcerated people were allowed to earn time off of
their sentence for participation in what are referred to as
ILTAGs, inmate leisure time activity groups, which are peer-led
groups, which are determined based on the need and the interest
of currently incarcerated people. So that is certainly a step
in the right direction.
But in terms of job or vocational training or
rehabilitative programming that might address folks' cognitive
or behavioral needs, I think a significant issue that we have
is that currently incarcerated people don't have a say in which
programs are implemented. What we have done with Initiate
Justice is we have conducted surveys of currently incarcerated
people to ask what programs they think should be available and
have been able to analyze some of those results and put forward
recommendations when we advocate both through the legislature
and through the administrative process through CDCR. I can't
say that we have necessarily won any of those victories because
it is a huge uphill battle, but I would recommend that the
state legislature and CDCR actually ask folks who are impacted
what they need to be successful.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Mr. Lieu. There is one specific area that I worked on. It
is arts in corrections, and for some prisoners going through
programs related to art or through acting seems to have a
transformative effect on them. I have worked with groups such
as Actors Gang, and they go in and they teach prisoners
basically how to act. To me it is really sort of an emotional
management course cloaked as acting, but it seems quite
transformative. I have tried to get it in Federal prisons.
Do they get credits for that, do you know, in the
Department of Corrections, for arts in corrections programs?
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Well, they could if the program was
registered as an official inmate leisure time activity group.
However, the threshold for that is pretty high. They are only
able to earn 40 days off per year for 208 hours of program
completion.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
Mr. Romano, Professor Romano, a question for you about
Proposition 36. Based on the research I read, people who are
released because of that have an extremely low recidivism rate,
on the order of 1.7 percent. Is that correct?
Mr. Romano. In the first year of their release, yes.
Mr. Lieu. Okay. How about in the outer years?
Mr. Romano. In the outer years they are still vastly
outperforming all other people being released from prison.
Mr. Lieu. What is the statewide recidivism rate in general?
Mr. Romano. Well, recidivism is a tricky word, but we can
use returns to prison or new convictions. I think new
convictions is probably the fairest and best measure. The
statewide new conviction rate is about 50 percent, just under
50 percent.
Mr. Lieu. So why is there such a huge disparity between
people released under Proposition 36 and the statewide
recidivism rate?
Mr. Romano. I should say the 50 percent recidivism rate is
over three years, and I wish I knew the answer to that.
Honestly, the recidivism rate for folks released on 36 has been
better than our wildest expectations. We are very happy with
the results.
[Applause.]
Mr. Romano. We have worked hard to ensure success for as
many people as possible. Folks are older, but we are still
outperforming old inmates who are being released. So there are
a lot of reasons that go into it, and I wish I knew the answer.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
So let me just conclude with this. I want to thank all of
you here for fighting for criminal justice reform. Many times,
things in politics seem impossible until it happens. So if 10
years ago I were to tell you, hey, in 10 years we will be
smoking weed in multiple states, you would think I was crazy.
[Laughter.]
That is what is happening now. [Laughter.]
And with that, I yield back.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. On that note, Representative Butterfield.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Butterfield. What a time to jump in. [Laughter.]
Let me just begin by thanking the three witnesses for your
testimony this morning. It was a very profound presentation and
I want to thank you so very much.
As Ms. Bass said at the outset of this proceeding, this is
not a political rally. This is not a town hall meeting. This is
an official congressional hearing, and so the remarks that you
will make today will go into the Congressional Record and will
be a guide for us as we legislate in the years to come.
I am Congressman G.K. Butterfield. I represent a very low-
income minority district in eastern North Carolina. I have been
in Congress now for 15 years, serving as Chief Deputy Whip of
the House Democratic Caucus.
What has not been made abundantly clear here this morning
is that Congressman Karen Bass is a very busy congresswoman. We
all know what her car looks like. It is a black Toyota with
California tags on it. We see that car all over Washington,
D.C., morning, noon, and night. She represents you, and she
represents you well.
[Applause.]
Mr. Butterfield. You all are cutting into my time now. You
are cutting into my time, but I have got to give credit where
credit is due. I am not one that just heaps a whole lot of
praise on people just for the sake of doing it, but your
congresswoman is a dynamic leader. Not only does she serve as
the Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism and
Homeland Security, she is also the Chairwoman of the
Congressional Black Caucus, 55 members of us from all across
the country. She was unanimously elected as chair of our
caucus, and we are so very proud of her. Keep your applause
down. She also serves on Foreign Affairs Committee, where she
leads the effort on Africa and world hunger and domestic
poverty and all of the others.
[Applause.]
Mr. Butterfield. And so I want to just thank her publicly
for her leadership.
I also want to thank my friend Ted Lieu. Ted Lieu is a very
active member of Congress. He is also in the Democratic
leadership, serves as the co-chair of our Democratic Policy
Communications Component. We call it the DPCC. He is very
active. He is on the Judiciary Committee and serves you well.
[Applause.]
Mr. Butterfield. So I am delighted to be here today. There
are 240 Democratic members of the House of Representatives out
of 435, which means that we are the majority party.
[Applause.]
Mr. Butterfield. We get enormous criticism all across the
country because we don't tell our story well enough. And so
this trip here to Los Angeles this morning is an opportunity
for us to tell our story, to let you know what we are doing, to
listen to you and to collect information, collect evidence so
that we can go back and do more. And so I want to thank you so
very much for coming.
In my prior life I served as a judge, spent 15 years in the
judiciary in North Carolina, 13 of those on the trial bench,
where I sentenced literally thousands of individuals over the
15-year period. I served on our state supreme court for two
years. And so I have a vested interest in what we are talking
about today. For 15 years I sat in the front row watching
justice and the miscarriage of justice take place right in
front of me. And so, although I am not on the Judiciary
Committee, I have a profound interest in this subject.
Let me conclude by talking about my favorite subject in
criminal justice reform, and it has to do with record
expungement.
[Applause.]
Mr. Butterfield. Let us remember that 90 percent of those
who are incarcerated are in state prisons, 10 percent are in
Federal prisons. What that also means is that we as a Congress
do not have what is called jurisdiction over state issues. We
cannot direct the states with respect to their criminal justice
system. We don't have that power. We have the power of the
purse. We can withhold funding to states for various programs,
but we cannot direct states as to how to conduct their program.
And so what I saw when I was a judge is that police at the
time of arrest have a tendency to overcharge, charge for
offenses which the defendant did not commit, only just a hint
that they may have been involved in it. So what that means is
that the overcharging is done so that when the case goes to
court, there is room to plea bargain, there is room for
negotiation. And so if the young offender is charged with 12
offenses, when the case goes to court, the prosecutor may offer
a plea deal for two offenses, which means that the 10 offenses
would be dismissed. That sounds good, but it continues to be on
the defendant's record for the rest of her life. It is a
problem. And so when she is released from prison or terminates
her probation, goes for a job, they look at the criminal
record, Oh, you cannot work here because you were charged with
first-degree burglary. And when the defendant says but that was
dismissed, that does not matter to the employer.
So please pay attention in California to the need for a
strong expungement law so that cases that were dismissed and
cases in which the defendant was found not guilty can be
expunged from their criminal record.
Thank you so very much.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Representative Evans.
Mr. Evans. Thank you very much.
I too want to thank our chairperson in a lot of different
ways. Obviously, as chair of this subcommittee, I am really
honored to be here, and as chair of the Congressional Black
Caucus.
But I want to probe something that was said, and I would
like for you to elaborate on it. Front and center, you said
something that I believe. As goes California, so goes the rest
of the nation. And I think that what you said--I don't want to
put words in your mouth, but I want you to expound on it, the
importance of it, because in Pennsylvania, I have been around
long enough to tell you that Pennsylvania went from 5,000
people in prison to 55,000 people in prison, and that
Pennsylvania has 12 million people in the state, and the fact
is that Pennsylvania is a rural state. Obviously, prison
production has basically been economic development in rural
areas. So we don't need to forget the fact of the economics
around that.
But I want you to probe, Professor, on that front-and-
center statement, because people really need to understand
that. Can you speak on that?
Ms. Kubrin. Thank you. Yes. I mean, I absolutely agree,
California has led the way in many ways. At the same time, what
California has done has been quite modest. I think the term
``low-hanging fruit'' was used, which is that we have
identified the least serious offenders, the low-level, non-
violent, non-serious, non-sex offenders.
The big question to me, first of all, other states should
be looking at California to replicate that, considering what
may work in their state. But the next step is what is next. How
do we continue on the path of reform in order to get where we
should have been before the buildup started, and that's going
to take some real digging, I think, to move beyond simply
identifying the lowest level non-violent, non-serious, non-sex
offenders.
In some ways I was not surprised by the findings of these
studies because it is the low-hanging fruit that we are talking
about here, people who have committed such minor offenses and
would do better to have rehabilitation and other kinds of
reentry responses rather than harsh punishment. The big
question I think in California and other states as well is
where do we go from here, what is next. California is a great
first start. It should be modeled in many ways, but the next
big question remains.
Mr. Evans. And I want to piggyback on as a result of what
you have just said. In Pennsylvania, the governor there did
shut down a few prisons, and in addition to that we passed a
law on earned time, and we passed the law in Pennsylvania
relating to closing cases so that wouldn't be on their record.
So I am saying that you, as our chairperson here, this is
all being watched. I don't want you to just think you can look
at this from the perspective of California and Los Angeles, but
you need to understand there are other states watching and
listening. So you could not at a better time, the person who is
the chairperson of this subcommittee for the role that she
plays, along with Congressman Lieu and Congressman Johnson, my
good friend, Congressman Butterfield said. But also Congressman
Lieu must be the best tweeter in the House of Representatives.
[Laughter.]
He gives out lessons on that. Social media is also
extremely significant because you need to use every method in
your toolbox in terms of communicating.
So this hearing, in my view, reinforces this discussion,
and that piece you said front and center, because states are
laboratories of democracy. It is not the national government.
It really is driven from you, and then we react to what takes
place.
I was in the legislature for 36 years, and I was the
chairman of the Appropriations Committee, so there is a direct
connection to cost implications, which I think is why you
suddenly see Republicans, not because of moral outrage, in my
view, but because of the cost implications that it is driving
on the national level in each state budget. So just understand
the dollars are also driving the decision-making of what is
occurring here. I just want to add that, and I yield back the
balance of my time.
Ms. Bass. Representative Horsford.
Mr. Horsford. Thank you, Madam Chair. I too want to commend
you.
The vision of your congresswoman to bring these
congressional hearings is very significant, as has been stated,
and this is one in a series of congressional hearings across
the country that is being led by Congresswoman Bass as the
chair of the Congressional Black Caucus so that we can hear
directly from the community, the experts, those who are
impacted by the policies that we are setting.
And so I want to commend you again, Congresswoman, and
thank you for inviting me to participate.
I was looking up just quickly some information, and
California spends about $75,000 a year to incarcerate a
prisoner. And yet, it spends about $10,000, $291 per child to
educate. And so I want to ask the witnesses what specifically,
Ms. Edmond, what investments could be made on the front end to
help strengthen our communities by supporting our programs
around children, around families----
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford [continuing]. That would help stem the
incidents that lead people to crime to begin with.
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. Thank you very much for that question. I
think a topic that is often left unaddressed in these policy
reform conversations is root causes, so thank you very much for
that.
First and foremost, I think that we should directly be
asking people who are impacted what services could have been in
place to prevent you from committing what it was that you
committed. I think that what we would find are things that we
know a little bit already, what causes violence. We have an
incredibly violent culture. We have a history of racism. We
have poverty. We have issues of unaddressed mental illness and
substance abuse. So those are some areas where we can start.
I think most folks in our communities are aware of the fact
that if you are experiencing a mental health crisis, you do not
have access to resources or social workers, and what folks will
often say is, well, we have to wait for them to commit a crime
and then we can call the police.
I am glad that you raised the amount that we spend on
education. I think what we are seeing is that we get what we
pay for, so I believe that we need to dramatically increase
what we are spending on social services, ensuring that children
who are in crisis are getting the care that they need, that
everybody has access to therapy to work through the trauma that
they have that may cause them to cause harm in the first place.
And if folks do end up being incarcerated, making sure that we
are seriously and significantly investing in their own healing
and transformation and reentry.
Mr. Horsford. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford. I want to ask the witnesses to discuss the
juvenile offender piece of this. You have described the
California legislature's steps in recent years acknowledging
that age should be taken into consideration when determining
the length of a person's incarceration. So what things should
we consider as Federal legislators in approaching or reforming
some of our practices around juveniles?
Ms. Vargas-Edmond. I would recommend looking at the
science. There is a lot of evidence to show how cognitive
development is different for different folks, so looking at
what the different cognitive needs are for people who are below
a certain age and coming up with appropriate responses based on
what the cognitive development is for the person at that age.
And then just to reiterate the point that I made previously is
to increase access to programs and services so that folks who
are young have access to maybe more non-punitive interventions.
I think most young folks make mistakes. Some are illegal,
some are not. Some people get caught, some people don't, and a
lot of that has to do with your income and your skin color. So
taking into consideration what we can do to target specifically
vulnerable young people and make sure that they get care and
not just punishment.
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford. And finally, Mr. Romano, real quickly on the
recidivism rate, you said about 50 percent. How much of that is
for technical violations, and how is that being addressed in
any of your policies?
Mr. Romano. Those are for new crimes. So those are actual
convictions.
Mr. Horsford. But my understanding, though, is if you
technically violate off of a minor offense, you could end up
back in prison.
Mr. Romano. Actually, in California, one of the first
reforms that California achieved was to reduce, if not fully
eliminate, returning people back to prisons for technical rule
violations. So both for parole, which is run by the state, and
probation, California dramatically reduced the number of people
who are going back to prison for technical violations of their
release rather than committing new crimes. That was one of the
first and most successful reforms here.
Mr. Horsford. Can I get the information on what that is?
Because we need to bring that to Nevada.
Mr. Romano. Absolutely.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Once again, I want to thank our witnesses on our
first panel. This was excellent. We really appreciated your
testimony.
And as my colleague Representative Butterfield said, you
are not just giving testimony and having a discussion here just
to educate ourselves. We take this information and this
absolutely helps us develop legislation. So, thank you very,
very much.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. While we are transitioning to the next panel, I
wanted to acknowledge a few people that are here. I saw former
Assemblywoman Gwen Moore come in. Where is she? Please stand
up. For my colleagues here, that is the other Gwen Moore.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. There is a member of Congress named Gwen Moore
who is from the great state of Wisconsin. She is the original
Gwen Moore in our audience here.
Michael Lawson, who is the CEO of the Urban League, is
here.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. And standing next to him is Pastor Michael Eagle,
who has also been a warrior for criminal justice reform for
many, many years.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. And I want to thank Reverend Boyd. Those folks
from Los Angeles know we are in the Fame Renaissance Center. We
are across the street from First AME Church. So we want to
thank Reverend Boyd.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. I see our MTA Commissioner, Jackie Dupont-Walker,
is here.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Now let me welcome our second panel. Our first
panel talked about reforms that California has done, and our
second panel is going to look at what happens when people are
released from prison, what do they need, what is their journey,
and what can we do legislatively to help.
I want to mention that on Tuesday the Crime Subcommittee in
Washington, D.C. is going to have a hearing that is
specifically looking at women in the criminal justice system,
because as we embark on criminal justice reform in our nation,
I have been struck by the fact that the discussions really are
talking about men, and women and children are often not part of
the discussion. So I want you to know that that is not the case
in Washington, D.C., but we are definitely going to look at
that.
And then also the fact that we are here today having this
hearing I think is an example of the types of things that we
can do now that things have changed somewhat in Washington. We
clearly need to have further changes over the next year, but
the changes that have already taken place result in being able
to have hearings and putting issues like criminal justice
reform seriously on the top of our agenda.
So, our first panelist, Susan Burton.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. She is not well known in Los Angeles. [Laughter.]
She is the Founder of A New Way of Life Reentry Project.
The Project promotes healing, power, and opportunity for
formerly incarcerated people by taking a multifaceted approach
to mitigating the effects of and ultimately eliminating mass
incarceration. The project provides housing and legal
assistance and other comprehensive services for those coming
home after incarceration. People might remember that Susan
Burton was one of the first recipients of the CNN Heroes. She
was one of the 10 finalists out of the thousands around the
country.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Mr. John Harriel, as I know him--I used to call
him ``Big John.''
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Big John is a Diversity Management Superintendent
with the Los Angeles Electrical Contracting Company, so he is
an electrician, works with individuals who seek a new direction
in their lives through the construction trades with 2nd Call, A
Second Chance at Loving Life. 2nd Call is a community-based
organization designed to save lives by reducing violence and
assisting in the personal development of high-risk individuals
and those who have suffered convictions and incarceration.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Mr. Stanley Bailey will describe his experience,
having been sentenced to life in prison under California's
Three Strikes law for a non-violent offense, and his later
release after the passage of Proposition 36. Bailey also gave
back after his release and drove across the country with a
program that provides rides home to those leaving
incarceration.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. We welcome our second panel and thank them for
participating in today's hearing. I will remind the witnesses
that your written statement will be entered into the record in
its entirety. Accordingly, I ask that you summarize your
testimony in 5 minutes, and to help you stay within that time
we will continue with our iPad screen, which has your time.
Ms. Burton.
STATEMENTS OF SUSAN BURTON, A NEW WAY OF LIFE REENTRY PROJECT;
JOHN HARRIEL, DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT SUPERINTENDENT, LOS ANGELES
ELECTRIC CONTRACTING COMPANY STANLEY BAILEY, DURANGO, CO
STATEMENT OF SUSAN BURTON
Ms. Burton. Yes. Good morning. Thank you so much,
Congresswoman Bass, for putting this panel together. I want to
thank you all for spending your Saturday morning with us here
in Los Angeles.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. My name is Susan Burton. I am Founder of A New
Way of Life Reentry Project. And just to give you some context
of how I got here, which is documented in the book that you all
have, the short story is I lost a son. After I lost him, I
began to drink. I drank alcoholically. It escalated to drug
use, and I was sentenced to prison. I was sentenced to prison
not one time but six times. Every time, I would plead my case
and ask the judge for help. I was always sentenced to prison.
October 4th of 1997, I found a place on the west side of
Santa Monica out by the beach that helped me. When I landed
there I couldn't understand why the type of help that was
available to people in Santa Monica was not available to people
in south L.A.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. After leaving the recovery program, I worked, I
saved money, all the time beginning to understand the
difference of the two worlds. I saved money and I got a little
house.
You go down to Skid Row today, you will see where we get
off the bus when we come from California prisons and try to
make a way, a way back into our lives. I met Karen Bass at the
Community Coalition, one of the only places that embraced what
I was doing. I bought a house and I began to meet women down
there at that bus station and would bring them to that house.
Today--that was in 1998--we have helped over 1,000 women
come back into the community.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. We have a 90 percent success rate. We also help
women reunite with their children. We have legal services. We
have just an array of services.
I published a book in 2017. 2018 I spent going to prisons
all over this country, all over this country and in two other
countries. I visited 30 states, 46 prisons, and sat down with
women. When we talk about what women need when they are leaving
prisons, overwhelmingly I saw women recidivating because they
had no safe place to go. I saw women who were desperately
trying to maintain their parental rights when needing
reunification services and ways to keep ties to their children.
I saw women who wanted to get a job and go to work and were
worried about how they would get employed, how they would live.
As a result of that tour, as a result of seeing all the
languishing and suffering women across this nation, I developed
a training to help states to replicate our model at A New Way
of Life that has proven to be very successful.
I have also raised $2 million to help those states and
those women to replicate the model of A New Way of Life.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. I know what it could mean to leave a prison and
have safety, and to leave a prison and not have safety. Women
are the fastest-growing segment of the prison system, and we
could really be doing something different.
So I am really, really thankful to you, Congresswoman Bass,
for holding this hearing, not a town hall, and having us come
together here to begin to discuss women reentry and the needs,
to turn the tide here.
Before I close, with my 11 seconds, in order for me to go
back home to A New Way of Life, I need to have all the women
from A New Way of Life stand, and I would really like to have
all the people in the audience----
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton [continuing]. Who are formerly incarcerated, can
you just stand and let us know and see who you are and what you
look like? All right.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. So, thank you. But I think housing, jobs,
reunification support, and just being able to have that level
of hope for people coming home. Thanks.
Ms. Bass. Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. John Harriel.
STATEMENT OF JOHN HARRIEL
Mr. Harriel. Thank you. That is a tough act to follow right
there. I just want to say thank you for the work that you do,
Susan, because I am aware of it, and thank you, Chairman Bass
and the committee, for being down here. This is a great day
today and I am glad to be here.
So, as you read off my things that I do as being an IBEW
union electrician, going into my 22nd year, Diversity Manager,
General Superintendent for Morrow Meadows Corporation, and a
facilitator at 2nd Call, and also a member of the great
Abundant Life Christian Church down on 3500 South Normandy,
where we hold the Life Skills class every Thursday.
But before we get to that of me being a homeowner, an
individual in the community--I still live in the same community
I helped destroy--let's go back to the prison system, because
absolutely I come from that dysfunction.
I did not know that I had low self-esteem growing up. When
I would suit up--and when I say ``suit up,'' we are talking
about not the suit that I have on today, looking real
handsome----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Harriel [continuing]. But the other suits that would
cause individuals to say, hey, that guy must be a member of so-
and-so.
I had no idea that I wanted to commit suicide. I just
didn't want to do it by my hands. I wanted somebody else to do
it.
So growing up in my community, when I think back there was
no men leading the way as far as getting up, putting their
boots on, going to work every day. What I saw in young men,
were other things that were counter-productive of manhood. But
at the time I didn't know.
To show you how counter-productive it was, I can remember a
time as a young man, my mother, bless her soul, because she is
not here anymore, but I can remember her being on the floor
picking up little white spots thinking it was crack cocaine,
and my sister was involved with the man who supplied her the
cocaine, and I worked for him as a drug dealer. So he was able
to take control of the whole household. But by me not
understanding manhood, I thought that was just how it was. I
had visions of going to prison because in my community prison
was rewarded.
Now that I know that it is not like that, when I was in
prison, there were two men by the name of Ernest Cornes and
Everette L. Tims that helped me see something in myself I
didn't see in others, I didn't see in myself. So when I got out
of prison, the IBEW saved my life, and Morrow Meadows enhanced
it, because they believed in a young man that did the things
that I have done, and with these same hands. Everything in L.A.
that has been built of significance, I have been on to help
build.
[Applause.]
Mr. Harriel. So with that, I understood that if it helped
me, I had the duty in my community to help those same young men
and women who others called gang members. I called them
friends. We are in the same group of now picking up tape
measures instead of guns, purchasing homes instead of doing
home invasions. But it was all through the fact of we had life
skills, and that is what 2nd Call does, the life skills. So we
talk about the anger management, the low self-esteem, how did
it feel to me not to have my father or even my mother hug me
and tell me she loved me, how did that make me feel.
So when I talk about those things and I get that out of me,
free of charge, we get to talk about that once a week down
there on Thursday, it makes me a better person in my community,
and it makes me a better employee, a better friend, a better
father, a better grandfather, and an individual who can change
and save lives because of the simple fact of what we preach and
teach is I want you to be a better person. The careers come
later.
There is nothing I cannot build due to the building trades
allowing someone like me with a background of a 9th grade
education to now there is nothing I cannot build. I am an
absolute vicious individual when it comes to being a building
electrician.
[Applause.]
Mr. Harriel. I know how to do this. And I think the Morrow
Meadows Corporation and the family--because with them, from the
top down, that family decided to come out and invest in our
community, and there are a lot of young men and women working
because the IBEW provided a platform, but Morrow Meadows
enhanced it by allowing them to come down to see what 2nd Call
does and embrace what we are doing for the community and help
us be productive citizens in our community.
So with that I will say to you thank you for thinking
outside the box and being uncomfortable and coming down to the
community and doing something different. Thank you.
[Applause.]
[The statement of Mr. Harriel follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Bass. Mr. Bailey.
STATEMENT OF STANLEY BAILEY
Mr. Bailey. Good morning. It is an honor to be here.
As mentioned in the bio, I did do 36 years in the
California Department of Corrections, long before they added
the ``R'' to it, to make it ``Rehabilitation.''
What is not mentioned is that when you get a significant
amount of time, you are sent to a prison of higher security. So
the programs that help you earn your way out are not available.
Because of the constraints for safety, you are not allowed to
roam free in and out of your cells for evening classes, and it
makes it hard to participate in classes.
My childhood, to go to that, is pretty typical. I was
involved in drugs. Two months before my 19th birthday I entered
the prison system. A month before my 54th birthday I was
released. I was a recipient of Prop. 36. Twenty years in the
prison system, I was convicted of drug paraphernalia, which
triggered the Three Strikes life sentence.
During the last 10 years of that sentence, I availed myself
of self-help classes, alternatives to violence programs,
Criminal and Gang Members Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous.
I didn't enter the prison system as a thug. I went in as an
addict, and there is a big difference. Addiction and mental
health make up a large proportion of the prison system. The
mental health people that suffer are abused both by other
inmates and staff. Addiction was not addressed. ILTAG was not
even a word when I went into the system.
After Prop. 36 passed, I was picked up by Stanford's Ride
Home Program by one of the two individuals that weren't
attorneys, that were released from prison, convicted felons
themselves. The first 24 hours of release was a real crucial
time for me, and having some instruction in what I could expect
to come my way, both good and bad, given firsthand, not
somebody that spoke about it academically but someone that had
actually done it was a big help.
If you serve a significant amount of time, housing and
employment is the issue. Most young men that go in, and women,
and do 18 months, they still have family, they still have
girlfriends, boyfriends, people to look out for them when they
get out. If you serve 10, 20, 30, 40 years, when you become
that age, the generation before you has most likely passed.
Myself, my mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, aunts,
uncles, brothers, sisters, everybody passed before my release.
When I was getting ready to come home, everybody that I knew
was a junkie or a thug. So to come out to that was a scary
thought.
I was approached by my counsel, who works for Stanford
University, and I was told that maybe volunteering for
transitional housing--it wasn't court ordered for Prop. 36
recipients. And also for AB 109 for the post-release community
supervision was another good thing to volunteer for. It gave
you accountability.
Transitional housing is just what it says. If you serve
three decades in prison, you need a transition back to society.
Most of us know where China is. Most of us know what a boat is.
But if you take us down to the dock and you say get in a boat
and go to China, you are kind of at a loss. Even if they hand
you charts, you don't know how to navigate that, and that is
what we deal with as older people coming out of the Department
of Corrections.
Since my release I have worked as a street sweeper on the
Figueroa Corridor, from Martin Luther King to Adams. I passed
by there today, and it was kind of ironic. Since I am now a
heavy equipment operator and a truck driver, when I tell people
that I worked for Christmas as a street sweeper, they assume it
was machinery. And I tell them no, it is like the guy following
the elephant at the zoo. [Laughter.]
I had a little cart, from the business to the curb. That is
what I did.
When I would ride the bus to work I would pass a little
truck yard, and I always thought I am going to go in there and
ask that guy if I can get some experience around those trucks.
But he had this dog that used to run out to the front and chase
me.
So one day I got up the nerve and I went in there and I
told the gentleman, man, I would really like to have some
access to the trucks and the heavy equipment just to
familiarize myself with it. And he was like, well, don't they
have classes for that? And I told him, hey, I need it, I learn
by touching, by doing, not by reading about it.
Whatever you need, I will give you 10 free hours of labor,
of work a week, and I will even pick up after that little
raggedy dog. [Laughter.]
You know, whatever you need, you know? And luckily he
didn't chase me off and he allowed that. While I was in the
transitional housing I acquired my commercial license, and I am
now working as a commercial driver and a heavy equipment
operator.
[Applause.]
I just want to emphasize how important transitional housing
is. It should be mandatory. It shouldn't be a volunteer thing--
--
[Applause.]
Mr. Bailey [continuing]. That after you serve your sentence
you can go. It should be two years before your sentence ever
ends, would you like to go, and give a chance to transition
back into society and get, like John mentioned, some man skills
or some woman skills, get some job training.
Transitional housing shouldn't be another prison. It should
be a place to transition into society.
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Mr. Bailey. My time is up, and I just want to thank you for
your work on my behalf. I appreciate it.
[The statement of Mr. Bailey follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. So we will now proceed under the 5-minute rule
with questions, and I will begin by recognizing myself for 5
minutes.
One, I really appreciate all of your testimony. What I
wanted to focus on, I am trying to develop a piece of
legislation to come up with reentry services. I know in Los
Angeles we just opened a reentry center that I am very excited
about visiting. I haven't visited it yet. I know under
Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas--and it is right near here, and I
think it opened up maybe just a week or two ago.
So I am interested in developing a program that would be
run by formerly incarcerated people. Big John, you know I have
been to your meetings at 2nd Call, and I will never forget
going there and listening to people tell their stories. But if
you could envision a program, a one-stop center for people when
they get out of prison--and you all do a piece of that--what
should take place in that one-stop center? What is needed?
Mr. Bailey, your testimony, which I know I never thought
about until you mentioned it, somebody that has been
incarcerated for a long time and their family passes away, I
never thought about that. But then again, it is so hard to
envision the amount of time that people actually serve. You
said your final strike was drug paraphernalia. What did you
have that sent you in for life?
Mr. Bailey. I had a hypodermic syringe in my cell.
Ms. Bass. A hypodermic syringe in your cell led to life
imprisonment.
Mr. Bailey. Yes, it triggered the non-violent--under the
old Three Strikes law, that was my third strike, and it
triggered a life sentence.
Ms. Bass. Incredible. So what would you do, Big John, what
would you do? What do you need in a program?
Mr. Harriel. The first thing I would do if I had a one-
stop, I would form the relationships with all of the building
trades and sit them in a room and come up with a process that
might be just a little bit different than what the normal
process is, because we know we are dealing with certain
circumstances, to help facilitate the process of a young man or
woman getting into the trades, because oftentimes people will
walk by and say, hey, I don't see no black people, I don't see
no women, and it is not because they don't want to get you. It
is the fact that I don't know the rules, like I have to have a
high school diploma, I have to be drug free, I have to take an
exam. And then when I get the work--this is where the life
skills come into it--do I show up two hours early, or do I show
up two minutes late? Do I walk with a purpose, or do I just go
out there and lollygag? That is why it is so important to
understand those dynamics.
Ms. Bass. So in a one-stop, would you have GED training?
Mr. Harriel. Yes.
Ms. Bass. And speak a little bit more--why the building
trades?
Mr. Harriel. The building trades because I will have a
career. The difference between the building trades and a job is
that a job maybe affords me a one bedroom. A career will get me
a house to where I can get into----
[Applause.]
Mr. Harriel [continuing]. Living in my community and doing
what I am supposed to do and provide a way. I have a pension. I
have health care. And I can build things, and I can leave a
legacy because I am the first generation in my family bloodline
to be a part of a union, and I know that the building trades
treats individuals who follow and do what they are supposed to
do with respectful pay, and they can take care of their
families.
Ms. Bass. And the building trades is one of the few areas
that actually welcome people who are formerly incarcerated.
Mr. Harriel. It doesn't matter. I have individuals who have
done 38, 40 years, 25 years, and I am talking about the proven
risk. I am not talking about the at-risk. I am not talking
about low-level crime. I am talking about absolute top, apex,
vicious individuals, the ones who are the proven. Those
individuals now are working on projects because of the building
trades and coming down with the life skills.
I have blacks, Latinos, whites, Asians who want to change
this, and we help them, and they get out there in the field and
they are thriving. They are building the stadiums, the
hospitals, the Staple Centers. We are doing that work. The
individuals who used to use these hands for wrong are now doing
it for right.
Ms. Bass. Ms. Burton, what would you put in a one-stop?
Ms. Burton. Congresswoman Bass, to have a one-stop is just
like kind of common sense for us, to be able to go to one
place, get your I.D., apply for benefits, get connected to
medical services, go to have a GED class, go to have family
reunification. We are located in the one-stop, so A New Way of
Life is a part of that. We are doing family reunification.
To have child services in that one-stop, and to have an
array of services allows people to begin to get their lives on
track quicker, faster. I said to one of the residents a couple
of weeks ago, I said what are you doing today? And she says,
well, I am going to apply for the rehabilitation services. And
I said what else? And she said that is all I can do with the
transportation.
But having a one-stop allows people to access all the
different services in one place at one time that can bring
their lives back together so they can move forward.
Ms. Bass. Do you think people who are formerly incarcerated
could run a program like that?
Ms. Burton. Of course.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. Hey, I am doing national and international
reentry. A New Way of Life has built a place in Uganda, okay?
We are about to do one in Kenya. We have a shop going up in
Chicago next month, one in New Orleans later this year.
Can we?
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. All we need is opportunity. All we need is
opportunity.
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Representative Johnson.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you.
I didn't introduce myself. I am Hank Johnson. I represent
Georgia's 4th District, which is the eastern suburbs of
Atlanta, and I have been in Congress for 13 years. Before I
came to Congress I was a criminal defense lawyer for 27 years,
and I remember every bit of that 27 years, but thinking about
the 36 years that you did, Mr. Bailey, is almost unfathomable
to me.
I tell you, it is not often that people out in society who
are, quote, ``law abiding citizens,'' it is not often that they
would get an opportunity to hear the kind of stories that you
three have told us and what you have overcome. What you have
accomplished is indeed maybe not the same American Dream that
others have fulfilled, but certainly you are living what has to
be an American Dream, and I want to congratulate all three of
you for your accomplishments.
[Applause.]
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. And since everybody is talking
about Karen Bass----
[Laughter.]
Let me say that during that first 12 years, I was just a
rank and file member of the Congressional Black Caucus, never
had the desire to serve as an officer, but now I serve as the
Secretary of that organization. And the only reason I did that
was so that I could support Karen Bass as President.
[Applause.]
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. I will be her Attorney General.
[Laughter.]
[Applause.]
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. But let me ask this question in all
seriousness. What is the typical experience of one who has
completed their time? They are walked from their cell to
whatever outtake location it is at the prison. What takes place
for the typical inmate at that time and thereafter, the first
24 hours or so? Could you all----
Mr. Harriel. I can speak on that. I have done it a couple
of times. You leave your cell. Usually you give away all your
stuff to people that you know and people that are in need. You
go to a receiving and release area. You are fingerprinted. Your
property is searched on your way out. You are given $200 at the
gate, and then you are escorted to the parking lot.
Excuse me, let me back up. If you don't have clothes to
parole in, then about $30 or $40 of that $200 is taken from you
to supply you with dress-up clothes. If you are in a rural area
that doesn't really want convicted felons released in their
backyard, then there is a shuttle service that takes another
$80 from you to get you to a larger metropolitan area to put
you on a bus back to home. So now you are down to about $90
when you hit the streets, and you are told that within 24 hours
you need to report to your parole agent or it is a violation of
the conditions of your parole.
Without transitional housing, it is a really scary
experience and there is very little support. The guards in
receiving and release, they say, hey, we will see you in a
couple of weeks, you know? And that is usually the way it
works, too. Recidivism is ridiculous.
It is hard to navigate it without transitional housing. I
keep going back to that. I benefitted from it. I spent 15
months, nine of it voluntarily, court ordered for six. It was
immeasurable to me and to what success I have had.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you.
Ms. Burton. So, 10 days before release, they drop you--I
can remember a paper being dropped through the wicket, and they
call it a time docket 10 days before you are released. The
anxiety sets in because you know you are unprepared, and you
know you have nowhere to go.
The morning of your release you wrap up all your bedding,
your clothing, you take it to the gate. You yell up to the gun
tower: ``I am being released.'' You walk over to R&R. You are
stripped out, just like you are stripped in, and you are
fingerprinted out.
You are given an envelope when you are ready to walk
through the gates after three or four hours of sitting there
sweating, full of anxiety. They give you an envelope. They put
you in a van. They drive you to the bus station, where you buy
a ticket. You ride from whichever prison in California you are
being released from, and you get off the bus downtown Skid Row.
When you are down there, just think about how many people
are being paroled back there and have to leave through that
muck and mire, through the devastation, through the conditions
to find their way.
You are hoping and you are praying for something different.
You know that something different is in you, but you just don't
know how to access it, and all of these emotions, and your
freedom, and your ability to make a decision is all coming back
to you.
Six times I did that. Six times I failed. It wasn't until I
accessed support that I was able to get my life back together.
So no one should be released to those types of conditions and
have to navigate that.
Mr. Harriel. What I find so disrespectful, because I had to
do it three times--but the thing that I found so disrespectful
is the fact that it is almost like taking a shower and getting
really clean, and then putting dirty clothes back on, because
what happens is they release me and they send me back to my
community, but then when I go to the parole officer, they tell
me I can't be associated with gang members.
Well, wait a minute. This is my community, these are my
friends. If you don't want to violate me and send me back to
the same community, I have nowhere else to go.
So now, by me being an electrician and doing what I am
doing, the very house where it was the epicenter of the
nonsense is now about to be a house for transitional housing
once it gets completed, once it is remodeled, to give back to
the community and help so this doesn't have to happen to other
people.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. We need to move on to Representative Lieu.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you. Thank you all for sharing your stories
and the great work that you have done.
Ms. Burton, I am curious the last time that you were
released, how did you find out about that support? What caused
you to make a change in relation to the prior six times? How
did you know about that?
Ms. Burton. So I reached a place that emotionally,
spiritually, that I knew if I didn't get help, I would die. It
is in the book. Over a cheap beer with a friend, he told me
about this place in Santa Monica that he had been. It didn't
dawn on me that it wasn't working for him because we were
drinking cheap beer. [Laughter.]
But I was desperate. I was desperate to find some type of
help, and I made my way there, and that is what turned it all
around. My parole agents, law enforcement, no one ever offered
anything that would help me. I would say that they never picked
me for nothing good. But I finally arrived there, and that
turned my life around. There, there were therapy services. I
was introduced to AA. I am 21 years sober.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. Dental services, medical services, clothing,
food, everything I needed was there for me to begin to heal,
because that is what I needed to do was heal.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
Mr. Harriel, you said that they sent you back to your
community. Could you have gone anywhere, or do they restrict
the places you can go after you leave prison?
Mr. Harriel. I could have went anywhere, but my money--I
only had $200. Two hundred bucks got me back to the community
where I left from. I couldn't go anywhere else because that
stuff has to be approved, and if I don't know no one, all I
know is my community because that is what birthed me and made
me. So I had to go back to the nonsense. It is almost like it
is a Catch 22, because in 24 hours I got to go in front of the
agent, and they have all these rules, and I am sitting there,
like, wow.
So I figured out that, wait a minute, if the trades saved
my life, then I can do the same thing in my community. So a lot
of young men from my same community are working now because I
didn't leave the community. I changed my thought process and
actually doing the work, and I became uncomfortable by talking
to individuals I normally wouldn't talk to and asked them I can
help you if I am willing to change and I am willing to go down
and do the necessary work to change. I don't want to leave my
community. I just want to enhance it and make it just like a
community for everybody else.
[Applause.]
Mr. Lieu. And how did you find out about the trades?
Mr. Harriel. While I was in prison, like I said, there were
some men in there. One of the gentlemen was an IBEW
electrician. I never thought about it. I only thought it was
for white men and dudes in the mob. I never thought they would
accept someone who looks like me. [Laughter.]
But this individual, while I was in prison, I had about a
year-and-a-half to go, and I had to change some ways, and that
is where the life skills came in, and I started to understand
that, make no mistake about it, I am not sitting there telling
you that the police put something--no, I did what I did, and I
went to prison for it. And I had to accept that fact, be
responsible, and then I had to figure out a way how to change
that, and it started while I was in prison. I started getting
up and going to work every day in there, because those men
helped me, and then when I got out I just took that same
energy, brought it out and helped other people that wanted the
help also.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Mr. Lieu. Mr. Bailey, you mentioned Stanford's Ride Home
program. I had not heard of it until you mentioned it, so I
just read about it, and it is a pretty startling statistic that
they have on their website. It says that in the first week
after release, prisoners have a 12 times higher chance of dying
in that very first week.
So I am curious, if the Ride Home program wasn't there,
what would you have done when you were released?
Mr. Bailey. Well, I had been prepared through an attorney
named Susan Champion that works with Professor Romano. That is
who handled my Three Strikes case. The transitional housing was
already there. Without the Ride Home, I still would have made
it to the transitional house.
But the information that I received from the gentleman that
picked me up at the gate named Carlos Cervantes was really
vital. He told me what I could expect, good and bad, over the
next few weeks, few months. They don't just hand you a bus
ticket and put you on a plane. I mean, I spent 16 hours going
from Port Arthur, Texas to Evansville, Indiana, driving with
someone just released from prison. The bus ticket or the plane
ride would be a lot easier, but it doesn't give you time with
someone who has actually done it, to give you a little
encouragement and to give you the courage to go out there and
do it.
I say it in a joking way, but I was a heroin addict for 35
years, and I tell people, hey, it is not impossible. If I can
do this, anybody can do it. I went to prison with a 6th grade
education, no employable skills, was released without a family
member in sight, straight into transitional housing. That is
what the Ride Home provides. It provides a few hints and a
little bit of direction. The power of a cheerleader in your
corner, that can't be overstated, someone to tell you that you
can do this, this can be done, you just have to want it.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
I yield back.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Representative Butterfield.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Let me again thank the three witnesses for their powerful
testimonies today. I shall never forget it, and I thank you so
very much.
Let me spend my few moments addressing state and Federal
funding issues for criminal justice reform and reentry
services. That is very important, and I am going to ask you in
a moment if you would help me understand the trend in
California toward the investment in these services from your
State Assembly, because I don't know. But what I do know is the
trend at the Federal level, and it is not good.
As a country, we spend $4.7 trillion every year; $2.9
trillion of that is what we call entitlement spending, which
means that we don't vote on it. It is an entitlement, $2.9
trillion in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a few
other programs. They are entitlements. What remains is what is
referred to as discretionary programs, which is what we do vote
on yearly. In fact, we are in the middle of the appropriations
process as we speak.
About half of the $1.9 trillion that we have to vote on and
will be voting on in the next few days--we have already voted
on some of those budgets. We voted on one yesterday, the
Defense budget. But of that $1.9 trillion, half of that goes to
the Pentagon. The other half goes to what we call non-Defense
discretionary spending. That is the pot of money that we need
to target programs to criminal justice reform and reentry
services.
Yes, we passed the First Step Act. I am very proud of the
First Step Act. I voted for it, but it is only a first step. We
must invest significant resources at the Federal level. Your
State Assembly must invest significant resources at the local
level so that we can deal with job training and transitional
housing and GED services and legal services and health care and
nutrition programs, and on and on.
So what we are facing in Washington is a thing called
sequestration. Several years ago during the Obama
Administration we had a debt limit crisis, and the Republicans
put the screws on us. They would not allow us to raise the debt
limit. I don't have time to develop that right now, but there
had to be a grand compromise, and the grand compromise was what
we commonly refer to as sequestration. It put a cap on Federal
spending. It put a cap on it on the Defense side and the non-
Defense side.
So the Pentagon has felt that they have been strangled by
sequestration. We in the community that supports the social
services and the safety net feel like we have been strangled
because we are not able to lift the cap and continue to invest.
So we have had a crisis.
So now the Republicans feel that there needs to be a
lifting of the cap for the Defense spending. We would not agree
until there was a lifting of the cap for non-Defense spending.
So that is the tension that we have going right now. We are
going to continue to resolve it. All of us on the Democratic
side of the aisle--and I can tell you that the Democratic
budget in the House of Representatives is a budget that is not
perfect, but it is a budget that all of you would be proud of
if you would really take a hard look at it.
The problem is that once we pass our budget, it then has to
go to the Senate for consideration, and there are different
viewpoints over in the Senate, and there is certainly a
different viewpoint down on Pennsylvania Avenue. So we are
right in the middle of a real struggle right now to get the
budget right.
But tell me, if you will, Ms. Burton, and I know you have
been on the front line now for a long time, what is the trend
line in California with respect to state investment in reentry
services?
Ms. Burton. Assembly Bill 109 shifted money from the state
prison budget into communities, and that is where communities
had to come up with a formula for how they would spend that
money. So there are resources that come from the state to the
counties that agencies can apply for.
Mr. Butterfield. So there is a sensitivity in your Assembly
toward this issue.
Ms. Burton. Most definitely.
Mr. Butterfield. Maybe not where you want it to be.
Ms. Burton. Not enough, yes.
Mr. Butterfield. But the trend is in the right direction.
Ms. Burton. Yes.
Mr. Butterfield. Mr. Harriel, do you agree with that, or
disagree?
Mr. Harriel. No, I agree.
Mr. Butterfield. Okay.
Mr. Bailey, where are you on that in terms of state funding
for reentry services?
Mr. Bailey. I really don't know the statistics or the
numbers. The need for it is there, and I think the numbers on
recidivism will show that people that avail themselves of
transitional housing have a better chance of success.
Mr. Butterfield. You know, we ran into a crisis a few years
ago with the debt ceiling. You all remember the words ``debt
ceiling''? That is how sequestration evolved. Well, we are
getting ready to hit the debt ceiling again in the next few
weeks, and we are going to use this debt ceiling debate to try
to leverage more resources at the Federal level so that
programs like this can survive.
Thank you so very much again.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. I would just like to state that money comes
from the state. It comes down, and sometimes it comes down
through law enforcement. A lot of times it comes down through
law enforcement, and then law enforcement wants you to contract
with them. But they also want to implement stipulations or
requirements within those contracts. That is not good for the
people that you are serving.
So me, as A New Way of Life, the Director, I had to
terminate some of that because we were not going to treat
people the way in which it is not the best for them.
The other thing is that private prisons can't come into our
communities and begin to do reentry.
[Applause.]
Ms. Burton. And that is what we see some of those
resources, a lot of those resources going to. So when we say
community-based, we are not talking about the private prison
industry. We are not talking about all of a sudden law
enforcement doing reentry. You can't be on the front end and
the back end.
So I just want to make those clarifications about how
resources come down, how they are distributed and allocated.
Mr. Butterfield. Well said. Thank you.
I yield back.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Representative Evans.
Mr. Evans. Thank you.
You just heard Congressman Butterfield talk to you about
the expense side. Steve and I are on the revenue side. So he
talks about the expense side; we are on the revenue side. The
reason I say that is I am on Ways and Means. So when you talk
about housing and transitional housing, one idea I would plant
with Congresswoman Bass to think about, the low-income tax
credit program is a program that tends to be funded by the
Federal Government, and I don't know how California is
structured, but in the case of Pennsylvania there is an agency
called the PHA, which is the housing authority, and that gives
money to the public authority. Basically where it gets all of
its money from is through the tax activity bond, which is
capped, which was capped when the Republicans did it on the tax
side.
So the discussion Congressman Butterfield described to you
is ultimately the issue about revenue. And what the Republicans
were able to do is a term called ``drain the beast,'' cut the
taxes so there wouldn't be any money on the expense side. Where
we are right now, we are having this internal debate, not among
us but about revenue and the availability of revenue.
So what I would say to you--and I do agree with you, Mr.
Bailey, a great deal, the housing issue is probably the issue.
My understanding here in California I heard the Congressman
describe, there is some kind of bond issue regarding housing. I
think you did something about bond housing. Well, we are facing
the same kind of problem, and how do we address that?
Homelessness is a huge, huge problem, and we haven't figured
out what is the best way to approach that.
Voice. Because you are not working with us who have lived
experience. You are working with the other folks who have a
say----
Ms. Bass. You can't do that now.
Go ahead, Mr. Evans.
Mr. Evans. So the bottom line is what we are trying to
figure out is we are trying to figure out ways to make more
housing available from where we sit. We are trying to figure
out what leverage--how do we put the votes together, because I
totally agree with you. You can't talk about if a person
doesn't have any place to live, there is no question that is a
huge issue. So I share with you that is something that we are
trying.
[Applause.]
Mr. Evans. I want to go back to something that--can I call
you Big John?
Mr. Harriel. Absolutely.
Mr. Evans. I want to go back to something you said which I
am very much interested in, that I am interested in personally.
I have an older brother who was addicted for 25 years. He is no
longer. He hasn't been addicted in the last 15 or 20 years.
What I am most interested in is the aspect of when you
started this conversation off you talked about interventions.
You talked about the life skills. What I am most interested in
is trying to understand what interventions sort of work, and is
that something that is driven by government, driven by the
community, driven by religion, driven by church. What exactly--
because the follow-up with Congresswoman Bass when she talks
about this entity trying to figure out the intervention
aspects, can you talk a little bit about the life skills part?
Mr. Harriel. Absolutely.
Mr. Evans. And is that mandated? Is that done by a
volunteer effort? How do people enter that process?
Mr. Harriel. For me and for 2nd Cause, it is voluntary. But
through the community and through experiences, it is absolutely
mandatory that an individual come to understand these life
skills before I put them out there in that savage kingdom, what
we call the real world, because if I grew up in a square mile
where the only thing I understood was violence, there is no way
I am going to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning, work 40 hours
a week for 25 years. That doesn't make sense to me, because in
my brain I have low self-esteem. So if I have low self-esteem,
one of the things that I learned about the women that came out
of her program was that hurt people hurt people.
So when I hear someone is addicted, I don't even care about
the addiction. I want to know what they are running from. And
once we get that and we start that process, then we start the
process of cleansing out the body, understanding what is going
on. Like right now, I will be 50 in December, and my father is
the one that is left. He lives at my property. But right to
this day it affects me because he has never told me he is proud
of me. But that affects me as a man. I know that I am an
absolute beast, but I know as a man that affects me. So as a
young man, I couldn't go to some of my fellow gang members and
say, hey, I feel a little low self-esteem. [Laughter.]
It doesn't work that way. But now as a man I can say that
and have other people sit there. So not only do we get the ones
coming out, but before they go--I have children in the class
that they can understand and I can talk about how I feel, how I
feel about certain things, and we get it out through the
experience, because I have slept in those alleys. I ate out of
trash cans. I have watched things that I know I can't un-see in
my head. But at the same time, I know that the rearview mirror
in my car is the smallest mirror because it ain't meant for me
to look back. I have to move forward.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Representative Horsford.
Mr. Horsford. Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, thank you each for speaking your truth and for
sharing with us how you have overcome the challenges that you
faced and how you are now giving back to help other people.
This is a very valuable panel.
I like to follow the money, as my colleague Mr. Evans said.
Again, going back to where I started, the California Department
of Corrections, last year's budget was $12 billion.
Ms. Burton. Oh, we could do a lot with that. [Laughter.]
Mr. Horsford. It is 9 percent of your state budget, which
is about $132 billion. If my math is right, and I know it is on
average and the rate has gone up over the years, but between
the amount of years each one of you have served and how much
the taxpayers spent, this is a $3 million panel sitting here.
What could we have done with that $3 million for these
three individuals rather than incarcerating them? What could we
be doing with the $12 billion? Not to suggest that all of that
would go away, but a lot of it could.
And you spoke about the industrial prison complex. I do
want to highlight just a couple of achievements in my home
state of Nevada. One of our state legislators passed a bill to
end private prisons in the state of Nevada.
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford. They are now banned in our state.
We also passed legislation dealing with the sealing of
records so that that process is now more streamlined and that
people know how to go through the process.
We passed the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons so
that they have the ability to change the circumstances----
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford [continuing]. That may have contributed to
them being in the situation they were in.
And finally, we passed a bill to compensate those who were
wrongfully convicted and to restore some justice there.
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford. So it is a lot happening at the state level,
as it is here in California, and at the Federal level.
But I want to touch on Mr. Big John. Before I ever came to
Congress, I ran the state's largest employment and training
non-profit in Nevada doing a lot of the work that you talk
about, and I want to touch on something that you said because
it is very relevant, the diversity or lack thereof in some of
the trades.
Now, IBEW is a great example, but there are some trades
that don't do well. We have done training programs for
individuals with and without prior convictions, and they still
don't get in. So what can be done to help improve that? Number
one.
Mr. Bailey, you talked about that ethic that was inside of
you, that when you walked by that facility with the dog out
front, you saw an opportunity where some people may have said I
don't want to do that type of work, that is not for me. What
was it that put that inside of you, and how can we encourage
other people to take advantage of an opportunity even though it
may not be the one they first saw? Because you were willing to
do something initially that may have been beneath you, but it
now led to you having the commercial driver's license that you
have, but you had to work towards it.
So I would like to ask the two of you to speak on that,
please.
Mr. Harriel. So, I go first. When I see individuals in
different trades that don't look like me, I think about the
individuals who didn't get out of their comfort zone. Well, for
me, when I got in as an apprentice, my very first day the guy
told me he didn't like people that looked like me. I dug
ditches.
But here is the thing: I showed up every single day. If he
got there at 4 o'clock, I got there at 3:30. If he got there at
3:30, I got there at 3 o'clock. There was nothing--the only
words that came out of my mouth was not a problem.
Mr. Horsford. So how do we help other people have that
same----
Mr. Harriel. That is where mentoring comes in, because I
didn't just get in and look at it for myself. I knew I had to
go back to the community and help other individuals understand
that, hey, once I get in, I have to give back.
Oftentimes, the reason why you don't see it is because
there are people who are telling people what is going on out
there in the Serengeti, but they are not out there battling in
the field. I know what they want out there, and I went through
it. I got through it, and now I give back and I bring other
backgrounds to get back in, and that is so important. What are
you willing to do to be uncomfortable? I think people that get
complacent get lazy, and I think people that are complacent,
they just do everybody a disservice. They play victim. No, we
ain't doing that.
Mr. Horsford. Mr. Bailey.
Mr. Bailey. The quick answer is I didn't have a choice
myself. I knew I had to make it, and I wasn't going back to
jail, I wasn't going back to addiction. I had already made up
my mind inside to do better with myself, long before Prop. 36
was around, when I had no chance of parole. I just wanted to do
better for myself.
The addiction didn't fear me. Incarceration I wasn't afraid
of. It was the people that lived under the bridge on 39th
Street. When you go from 39th and Grand to USC College, the
people that lived under that bridge, because if I wasn't going
to be involved in crime and I wasn't going to be involved in
drugs, that was my future. So that was my reasoning.
The point that you brought up earlier, I have in-laws that
are educators, and it is a great point. You can spend $10,000
in the public school system to educate a child, or you can
spend $75,000 a year later. My sister-in-law comes out of her
own pocket to provide things in her classroom. What a
correctional officer makes a year compared to what she makes is
crazy. And to subsidize any kind of money for private prisons
is ludicrous. Anytime someone has an incentive to fill their
house, it doesn't make sense to me.
Mr. Horsford. Ms. Burton.
Ms. Burton. Yes, Congressman Horsford, we haven't talked
about the harm women incur prior to incarceration. The study
that you have, Congresswoman Bass, is part of what women talk
about as far as how they have been harmed prior to
incarceration, how they grow up, what is done to them, and
where they land as a result of the harm.
So I want to make sure that we bring into the conversation
the piece on women and what they need to actually be able to
come back into the community, become productive members,
reunite with children, be good moms, good parents, good
employees.
One of my earliest memories is driving to Camarillo State
Hospital in the back seat of my mother's car, picking up my
auntie's boyfriend, and trying to disappear into that seat
because I knew he would harm me over the weekend, and it went
on and on and on and on through my childhood.
The women who come to A New Way of Life, we sit in circles
speaking and healing with each other about what has been done
to us that lands us using drugs or angry and acting out, or
what have you. But I just wanted to bring into this
conversation the need for women to have access to therapy
services, to supports to help them heal also.
Mr. Horsford. Thank you. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Mr. Horsford. Madam Chair, I would like to just close by
saying your vision for that one-stop community center is a
great vision and one that I know we can all work to build not
just here in California but across the country, and we can
start by taking some of the Federal and state appropriations.
We can't just cut those budgets. We have to make sure the money
gets shifted to the resources where they can produce the best
results. So, thank you.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Representative Johnson.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. We have the upcoming Census coming
out. I hope every single one of you will, first of all, be
counted, will count everybody in your household, and will
encourage those out in the streets who may be reluctant to
share some information with the Census to go ahead and be
counted, because the $900 billion in Federal revenues that flow
to the streets through the state and local governments, if you
only report 50 percent of the people who are living in the
area, then you only get 50 percent of the money that you should
be getting. You only get 50 percent of the representation in
Congress.
What we have voted for in the past has been measures that
bestow upon the private, for-profit prison industry that is
housing people down on the border, the crisis on the border,
children who don't even have toothpaste and toothbrushes to
clean up. They are sleeping in an aluminum blanket. I don't
know how that keeps you warm. They are sleeping on the floor,
while the providers of the jail ownership, the detention
facility, is getting $775 per night, per child. That is
obscene.
So we need to be voting also. Everybody in here needs to be
registered to vote and exercising their right to vote.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. Thank you.
Well, let me wrap us up here. Let me begin by really
thanking everybody that turned out today. This is an amazing
outpouring.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. It shows how important this issue is. Since so
many people have my phone number, I get text messages from
people in this room. I just wanted to mention that the anti-
recidivism coalition is a one-stop for reentry, and that 64
percent of the staff at the anti-recidivism coalition are
formerly incarcerated, and they provide comprehensive case
management and pathways to careers, housing, and policy
advocacy.
I mention that because there are already a lot of examples
of work that is taking place every day. There is Big John.
There is A New Way of Life. But I know there are many people in
this room who have been involved in this fight to end mass
incarceration for decades. Many of us have been working on this
issue for a very long time. We saw the laws when they were
being passed. We tried to fight them. We lost. But now we are
in a time period in our history where we are taking a look at
this.
I will tell you that everybody on the panel today are
Democrats, but you should know that this is a bipartisan issue.
A couple of my Republican colleagues who wanted to come just
were not able to come scheduling-wise, but you should know that
we do work together on this issue. The difference is that since
there was a change in Congress, we are now here. This is top on
our agenda in the Congressional Black Caucus and the Democratic
Caucus, on the subcommittee, and on Judiciary Committee.
Reforming our criminal justice system, ending and reversing
mass incarceration are keys to our platform.
I want to thank the staff from the congressional office who
worked very hard in putting this together, and I want to thank
the staff from the Judiciary Committee. You should raise your
hand because you flew here from Washington, D.C.
You too, Joe.
Janice from Washington, D.C.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. They flew here to put this on.
And then I want to thank my colleagues that are here. Those
of you that know me, when you see me come home on the weekends,
you always tell me how sorry you are that I have to go back to
D.C., and I always tell you that there is no place else I would
rather be than at the center of the fight, the existential
fight that we are doing in our country right now.
But one of the big reasons too is that I get to serve with
people like the people who are on this panel, and several of
them--I mean, Ted and I are from Los Angeles. We are used to
four days in D.C., three days in L.A. We live on United
Airlines and a couple of other carriers we spend 10 hours a
week on.
But my other colleagues that are here had a choice to make.
They could have gone home. We all have to be back to work on
Monday. They could have gone home, but instead they flew to Los
Angeles and now will go home for maybe one day, a few hours,
and then head right back to D.C. But these are the type of
people that I get to work with every day, which is why I can
survive being in D.C. right now.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. So, as Susan mentioned the need to address women,
I mentioned at the beginning that on Tuesday in Washington,
D.C. we will have a full hearing that looks at why women are
involved in the criminal justice system to begin with, what
happens to them when they are there, what do they need when
they leave. I am doing specific legislation on pregnancy while
incarcerated.
So we have an awful lot of work to do. But one of the
things that we have to figure out is the fact that this has
become an industry, and so many people profit off of this in so
many ways. The whole reentry idea that now the corporations are
looking at, how they take over reentry, because we have so many
barriers to people who are formerly incarcerated, that is why I
believe we need programs that are led by people who were
formerly incarcerated, because it serves as a source of
support, but also as a source of employment.
The young woman that mentioned working with people with
lived experience, a basic principle that I have and many of my
colleagues have is that the best way to do legislation is not
to go off in some ivory tower but to talk to people who have
experienced it and to have them participate with you while you
are developing the legislation.
[Applause.]
Ms. Bass. My colleague, Representative Johnson, mentioned
the Census, and the Census is an issue that I know our
colleagues are going to address in the state legislature,
because one other thing that mass incarceration has done to us
is where are you counted when you are incarcerated? You are
counted where you are incarcerated, but you know that 30
percent of the state's prisoners come back to Los Angeles
County, which cheats us of resources if they are counted in
areas they do not live in.
So we have a big agenda ahead of us. I have confidence that
we will be able to continue to pass legislation on criminal
justice reform. We have one of these little openings where
there is interest in the Senate, and there is interest in the
Administration.
So we are going to get it done, and I just want to thank
you so much for devoting your Saturday morning to address such
a critical issue in our country.
Thank you, and we are adjourned.
[Applause.]
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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