table of contents May 2000 update prior to election lockdown future hijos = mas carcel LA County says No to 21 thanks to Jesse Jackson L.A. Archdiocese Cardinal Mahony OC Greens speak out Arthur Carmona children's rights links
per the Legislative Analysts Office summary in the sample ballot,

Officials to discuss new juvenile crime initiative

by Greg Moran San Diego Union-Tribune March 9 2000

Pfingst said changes affecting 14-year-olds will likely have little impact. The law says only a youth charged with first-degree murder with a special circumstance -- such as murder in the course of a robbery, for example -- or certain violent sex crimes will go to adult court. But Pfingst said that those cases make up a tiny portion of the cases his office prosecutes and that overall violent crime by juveniles has been falling steadily in San Diego.
" I don't expect to see a significant increase in the number of cases we directly file" to adult court, he said.

Henry Coker, chief of the juvenile branch of the Public Defender's Office, said he, too, does not expect a huge influx of cases. But neither he nor Chief Probation Officer Alan Crogan played down the significance of changes wrought by Proposition 21. Crogan said the meeting with Pfingst tomorrow will be the just the first part of a "massive education and training" effort for the Probation Department.
Crogan and other probation officers across the state opposed the measure largely because of its projected price tag and the shift from rehabilitating youths to punishing them more harshly. He said yesterday that the measure is "probably the most phenomenal juvenile justice revision ever passed in the state of California and maybe the United States." One example, Crogan said, is that the new law effectively ends so-called "informal probation" for many youths charged with felonies. The law requires that they be placed under formal court probation -- a stricter kind of probation that requires closer scrutiny by probation officers. The change could create dozens of cases that probation officers would have to monitor.

The law also gives prosecutors the discretion to skip juvenile court and file charges against 16-to 18-year-olds directly in adult court for certain crimes. This change -- which takes the discretion away from judges -- was a key cause of opposition to the measure. Critics said it put too much power in the hands of prosecutors.
Pfingst tried to allay those concerns by saying his office will not make wholesale direct filings in adult court, but will continue to review cases individually to see if they should remain in juvenile court, where penalties are less severe.
Superior Court Judge James Milliken, presiding judge of the county's juvenile courts, said it was too early to know what the impact on the juvenile court system will be. Milliken was an outspoken opponent of the measure, chiefly because it took away a judge's discretion to have a youth tried as a juvenile.
Pfingst said the biggest impact from the law will fall on gang members, who now face stiffer punishments for everything from graffiti to recruiting people into gangs. "Being a member of a criminal youth gang is now a very, very serious event," Pfingst said.
Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

Proposition 21: Another fine mess

by Linda Brown, San Diego defense attorney in The Espresso (San Diego) March 2000

• Under current Juvenile Law ( W&I 707(B) ), 14 year olds and older can be prosecuted as adults and receive a life sentence in adult prison. Remember the "pizza delivery robbery" of 1995? Such was the fate of Tony Hicks, a 14 year old boy who was ordered by an adult to shoot. His 16 year old co-defendant, who merely watched, was prosecuted in Juvenile Court and is serving a prison sentence until he is 25 years old.
• Also, under current Juvenile Law ( W&I 1800 ), a child prosecuted for any felony can be kept in prison for life, if it can be proved that he continues to be a danger to the community.
• Despite the fairly recent school shooting incidents, the juvenile crime rate, nationwide, is the lowest it has been since 1987.
  

Next consider Penal Code section, 261(a)(2), forcible rape. Take a 17 year old who, in the dead of night, breaks into a home and, with a knife held to her throat, rapes a woman who was a complete stranger to him. Contrast that with a 17 year old boy on a date with his girlfriend with whom he has been in a sexual relationship but has learned he has cheated on her therefore, instead of consumating as usual, stops at a very amorous point to show him what he will miss now that she is ending the relationship. If the boy continued to force himself on her, he would be guilty of the same code section as in the preceding example and subject to the exact same punishment, 8 years in state prison as an adult.
Shouldn't a judge be permitted to determine whether the second boy needed that adult prosecution? Proposition 21 takes that discretion away.

Finally, consider Penal Code section 211, Robbery. Robbery, by definition, is the taking of property from the person of another or from his immediate presence, by the use of force (however slight) or fear. A youth who enters a jewelry store with a weapon and robs the proprietor, and a kid who grabs another kid's lunch money at school are subject to the exact same punishment if prosecuted as adults for violating Penal Code section 211. Should they both be facing state prison? Proposition 21 says yes.

The fact is that there are plenty of people, even prominent, upstanding people, who, in their youth, made some bad mistakes and were able to learn a better way. Some of the best youth counselors are those who have " been there, done that ". Proposition 21 not only provides nothing for intervention, education or crime prevention measures, but also takes away funding from programs that are already proven effective in turning lives around.
Our country is first in the world for spending money on building and funding prisons. We are forty-first in the world on spending money for education. We are a nation of " Have " & " Have-Nots ". Things get decided here clearly along economic lines. Look at the rating of San Diego schools in relation to others in the state. La Jolla and Del Mar schools didn't just coincidentally rate higher than schools in poorer geographic areas. If all kids in all schools received a college prep education that would qualify them all to get in such academic institutions as Princeton, Harvard and Yale, what would that do to the power elite?

Proposition 21, just like Proposition 184 ( 3 Strikes ) is a design to make things economically better for some of us. It is a means to guarantee that prisons will be full and that there will be a need to build more. The fastest growing real estate development market is the prison industry. Corrections officers have the largest union and the largest political action committee, enabling them to buy politicians who will vote for more laws to keep people imprisoned longer, regardless of whether the punishment fits the crime.
Prison guard contributions to Pete Wilson were $1.5 million, $2.5 million to Gray Davis.

Many are apathetic to the accused. They only care if it happens to them or their loved ones. This " lock everybody up & throw away the key " trend has got to be stopped or it will spread until it does affect everyone. there will be more and more " have-nots " who will need to be locked up to protect all the " haves " and their wealth.

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