Before the hospice program started by prison chaplain Lorie Adolff, dying prisoners in California’s state prison in San Luis Obsipo (California Men’s Colony) just expired alone in their cells, with prison nurses looking in periodically until their vital signs ceased. Adolff’s project, Supportive Care Services, trains other prisoners, most of them lifers, to sit with … Continue reading »
California prison system
‘Mass incarceration now, tomorrow, forever’: Gov. Jerry Brown and the politics of court bashing
Just about two years ago, in May 2011, the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Plata 131 S.Ct. 1910 (2011) upheld what Justice Scalia called the “most radical court injunction in our nation’s history.” The injunction imposed by a special 3-Judge federal court in August 2009, required California to reduce its prison population by some 40,000 prisoners, … Continue reading »
Realignment time: The prison crisis comes home
Norimitsu Onishi takes a sobering look at California’s emerging “realigment” policy in this morning’s NYTimes [ed: Aug. 6, 2012] (read it here). The state’s major response to the humanitarian disaster in its state prisons, and the Supreme Court confirmed order to reduce the prison population by approximately 40,000 prisoners, has been to channel many people … Continue reading »