Posts Tagged: prisons

Unfair to blame visitors, families for prisons’ woes

An inmate gestures through the bars of his prison cell. (Photo: Sakhorn, Shutterstock)

by VANESSA NELSON posted 10.15.2014

OPINION: In all the justifications for the new measures going in under Beard’s watch, the Corrections Secretary never mentions the well-known, privately acknowledged fact that while visitors may bring in small amounts of drugs, the importation of trafficable amounts of drugs comes in not through visitors, but through staff at the prisons, including custody staff.

Latinos’ role crucial in fixing correctional system

A section of the San Quentin Prison area for condemned inmates. Photo via SanQuentinBlog.org

by DELIA De LA VARA and LENORE ANDERSON posted 07.02.2014

OPINION: Here in Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, anyone will tell you that casting is key. A film’s meaning and potential are lost if it’s miscast or missing the right characters. The same could be said about a blockbuster story that has been playing out for decades in California: our bloated and costly prisons. Much attention has been paid to lawsuits about the conditions in these packed facilities, as well as the response by the Governor, Legislature and others.

The total spending increase needed to get CalSTRS, brought low by mismanagement, back to full funding may be the biggest-dollar scenarios ever presented to a California legislative committee. Legislators were told last week an additional $181.7 billion would be needed for full funding in 20 years. If payments are spread out to ease the budget bite, the additional amount needed to reach full funding in 60 years is a staggering $618 billion.

Tragedy: Mental illness in a state prison

by VANESSA NELSON-SLOANE posted 11.03.2013

OPINION: This is what it’s like to be a mentally ill, delusional prisoner in a California prison. Already so deranged, paranoid and irrational that you have flooded your concrete prison cell with toilet water and smeared feces, a small, grinning face appears in the window slit of the cell door and tells you to take medication. (Photo: Rennett Stowe)

My awakening from a coma in 2006 was both physical and metaphorical. My eyes opened, over time, to new perspectives on life, including the support survivors of crime need but too often don’t receive.

It started the night of August 24, 2006, while walking from my home in San Leandro to BART. A young