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It has been
confirmed that the Vanir Corporation Inc will be presenting
Phase II of LA Counties Jail Plan at the Board of
Supervisors meeting on Tuesday May 6
We want to
mobilize as many people as possible to speak out against any
and all jail construction.
We will be
asking people to sign up for public comment on Item S1. No
More Jails LA Coalition will provide fact sheets and talking
points and help people sign up for the correct item. The
item is scheduled for 11am so it is best to be there by 10
or 10:30.
I have
attached the NMJs most recent fact sheet and pasted the text
below.
Please feel
free to contact me with any questions or clarifications.
Hope to see
you there.
Mary Sutton
310 709 8602
STOP ALL LA COUNTY JAIL
EXPANSION PLANS - NO NEW CAGES FOR WOMEN
The LA County Sheriff’s
Department and the County’s Chief Executive Officer are
proposing to spend over 2.5 billion dollars to expand the
L.A. County Jail system. At the same time the County has
refused to use any of the hundreds of millions of
realignment dollars that are available to implement
well-founded strategies to reduce recidivism, reduce the
number of people in LA Counties’ violent jails and invest in
viable solutions that create truly safer communities. The
Vanir Corporation will present the next iteration of this
monstrous jail plan on May 6 2014 at the Board of
Supervisors meeting. SAVE the
DATE! We need you there.
The first stage of this jail
expansion project is to build a new jail for women in
Lancaster on the site of the old Mira Loma Correctional
Facility—projected to be 1604 new beds for women. These
cages will be partially funded with a $100 million awarded
by the state through AB900. Passed in 2007, AB900 gave birth
to the largest prison and jail expansion plan in the history
of the world. Mostly poor women and women of color would be
housed in this new female facility, they are ironically
calling a ‘Village‘. Sheriff Teri McDonald couched the
concept for this new facility as a cozy environment where
”women and children can do there time together‘.
In June 2012 the LA Board of
Supervisors voted to accept $100 million in AB900 funding to
help finance the women’s jail but plans have been stalled
due to inaccurate cost projections, site changes, and
community pressure. In January 2014 the Board of State &
Community Corrections (BSCC) approved a site change—from the
Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic to the Lancaster
site—and granted LA County an extension needed in order to
still qualify for the AB900 funding.
The women’s jail plan includes
renovating the old facility at the Mira Loma site that would
house 1156 women. This building is not up to code and has a
deteriorating foundation — not fit for human habitation. For
15 years L.A. County contracted with the Department of
Homeland Security to house ICE detainees at Mira Loma. In
November 2012, the facility was vacated—up to 2000 detainees
were transferred out of the County jail system. Sheriff Lee
Baca broke the contract with the Federal agency in August
2012, as the County could not meet ICE standards for medical
and mental health care, detainee programs and services,
security or basic living conditions. The women’s jail plan
also includes a second facility with an additional 448
mental health beds. People with mental illness should not be
put in cages but served by professional health care
providers in the community.
The L.A. County jail plan will
also proposes to replace Men’s Central Jail with a new
mental health facility and high security units. All the jail
options that have been proposed in the last year project an
ongoing need for over 20,000 beds in the L.A. County jail
system. Over 50% of people in the county jail are awaiting
trial, over 30% convicted of non-violent, non-serious
charges. L.A. County is insisting on holding the realignment
population—people convicted of non-serious, non-violent
offenses—for 100% of their sentence while doing nothing to
invest in strategies to reduce recidivism and the reduce the
number of people locked up in its violent overcrowded
dungeons. The extreme violence in LA’s jails should be
reason to shrink, not expand the system. The LA County
Sheriff’s Department was recently investigated for regular
and brutal violence inflicted by guards against prisoners
and allowing the conditions in its jail system to
deteriorate. They are currently under the critical eye of a
local and national community as implementations recommended
by the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence are tracked. The
county needs to focus on resolving these issues, not
building more jails.
NO MORE JAILS L.A. Coalition DEMANDS
Stop the construction
of the Women’s Village— it is an expensive fraud.
It is offensive that
this new set of cages for women is being called a 'Village'
.The Sheriff is describing the
project as a Rehabilitative Female Village‘ that will
provide women with mental health, educational, and treatment
programming. These women are better served by outside
programs that support their families and children and make
it possible to build a life in their community.
Put AB 109 money in to
the community not the Sheriff’s Department.
Building new jails will cost L.A. County
residents billions of dollars. It is outrageous to lock up
people with mental illness or drug addiction. There are
cheaper and more humane alternatives. The L.A. County Board
of Supervisors received $124 million in the 1st
year of realignment, over $250 million in the 2nd
year and over $350 million in the 3rd. More than
80% is allocated to the Sheriff’s Department and the
probation department. The County Board of Supervisors must
use AB109 money to fund community programs that support the
real needs of people coming home from prison and fund social
programs that prevent incarceration and reduce recidivism.
We must direct resources into education, jobs and youth
programs that promise safer, happier communities.
Implement
recommendations from VERA Institute, Austin Report,
and the ACLU using alternatives to
incarceration to reduce the jail population and cut
recidivism rates. Implement parole reform, release people
that are facing trial and pose non threat to the community,
decriminalize petty non-violent crimes and drug possession,
provide basic needs to those coming home form prison or jail
including: I.D.s, medical records, health care, proper
medication, bus cards as proposed by Youth Justice
Coalition’s Welcome Home L.A. plan.
The No More Jail L.A.
Coalition meets 2-3 Wednesdays a month at Chuco’s Justice
Center in Inglewood.
For more information contact NO MORE JAILS LA Mary Sutton at
masutton2@earthlink.net
or Diana Zuñiga
Diana@curbprisonspending.org
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