[break] >> okay guys, hello everyone, and i will need everyone's attention please. >> we are trying to get the hearing on this very important

item started. as i understand it, there is an overflow room. the north court. and so, for fire safety reasons, we are not able to have people standing in the aisle. so if you do not have a seat, we respectfully ask you to go to the overflow room. and which is in the north light court. >> thank you, with that this is an important item that has been called upon by supervisor cohen and so i will turn it over to cohen, if i may ask the people to please respect the proceedings and if you can quietly leave through the overflow room. >> thank you. >> may i? >> okay. >> okay, everyone, we are going to get started as you continue

to leave the committee room, do so quietly so we can continue with this business as we go forward. >> today we are hearing to talk about an important topic. and in the to be respectful of everyone's time, we are going to have to call a few people out of order, first i am going to call up sheriff to share with us very briefly as the impact from his department of having incarcerated children, and what his department is doing, next up will be our public defender jeff adache. so let's just go ahead and jump in and get started on our purpose here today. thank you. sheriff, come up. thank you so much. >> okay. >> did you call the item? >> we did. >> okay. >> sheriff it is all yours. >> okay. >> we called the item.

>> yes. >> honorable commissioners thank you, and thank you supervisor cohen for this opportunity, my remarks will be brief i will compress them as fast as i possibly can, another good activity that is happening today is that we are in between the graduations of our san francisco sheriff's department 5 keys, charter school, and our morning graduation for the in-custody population and i just came from it and now i am heading out for the after post custody graduation, and but it is a wonderful opportunity to be here with you and the other members of the communities and the agencies that have been working closely on this issue of children of incarcerated parents. and i know that you are going to learn a lot today but i am hoping that what we leave with is a strategy, that is supported by resources, from the city government, that allows us to laser in on san francisco stepping up to the plate, and looking at what has

been the disconnect of the not too distant past that had really prevaid for decades of us not looking into the relationship of the bonding and unification that is necessary in between incarcerated parents and children and in the united states as we know is the country that over incars rates more than any other country on this planet, 52 percent of the prison population, and in the united states, consists of parents, and mothers and father and while san francisco's population is lower than that, average, it is high enough, in the high 30s that i think that it is essential to recognize that if we really want from a sheriff perspective or from a rehabilitation perspective, if we really want to make our imprint on public safety then everything that we have to do to stem the tide of repeat offense or recidivism as it relate to helping people who are incarcerated come out and have better integration within the community but better

bonding with their families and children, starts while they are in custody and if in fact they are in custody and we believe that it is the administration is starting at birth and with the first county in the state of california, that launched, what is known as the birth justice project last year, and if in the irregular occasion the population is not much that there is a woman incarcerated in our jail system who is pregnant and expected to give birth during her incarceration, typically, the common rule among all states, in this country, and in california, is that the baby is separated from the birth mother by the third day. and it is often uncertain if the baby will benefit from the breast milk of the birth mother and for us we want to change the dynamic profoundly which is why we installed the dula in the woman's jail that can help to facilitate what is a proper birth system and a better bonding and unify indication,

and installing the milk pumping stations, and and so that the baby itself can never be without the benefit of the mother's breast milk and unless there is a legal or health reason and we are working closely with the department of public health on what is the birth justice project and we are hoping that they understand the value of this for what is a more sizeable female population and as it result to even just the basics of going and visits our jail like in sanbrun the fog there can be quite challenging, and up until, even today, there had been no ability when someone goes and visits with their children and the people who certainly don't like the weather when it is cold there has never been any coverage for the people to sit and just be protected from the elements and well, we are building now, a gate, in the center and the community visitor's center so that the people have the ability to at least be there and be protected

from the elements other than waiting for hours, while they are having to cope with our visitation system and this is why i have a larger philosophy about the fact that a lot of the visitations should be downtown san francisco and not shift everybody else down to san bruno as the debate and the discussion about the protect of a future jail, but the importance of this, is parenting classes. because we want to see a cultural shift, be propelled by the city government, as all our partners are also doing their part on, so that it is not just speaking to the people that are incarcerated now that we hope do not repeat the offenses and it is the family and children members of those people incarcerated that we want to be less inshrined to also fall implicated in the criminal justice system and we have seen the stats that put us on the edge of the seat to send that generational sort of revolving door of the folks that will go

back into the system and it maixs me optimistic that i see the good work of the adult probation and the da office and the public defender and the community works and the project that you will hear from and everyone else and the juvenile probation that is now focusing on the question of recidivism and so we may be required that parenting classes are now both in the male and the female, job areas.

it has not been fluid because i am using the over time bank to make it happen and the one thing that i would like to leave this conversation with and hope that the others pick up the speed is that on an add back for the money that will help us to keep that doubling or tripling of the visitation hours, we hope that really happens, especially for the woman's jail, and especially for san bruno and downtown, cj four and we also went to modernize too and instead of picking up the phone like it used to be, i kid you not it used to be a rotary telephone when you would call and there was no call waiting, and someone would have to call incessantly and keep calling for hours on end is what we heard, from its citizen's committee on visitation to try to get signed up and now we have done it electronically and on-line and just in the few months that that on-line visitation known as renova has been established we have now over had over 7,000 establish visits on it on the on-line system and so the more that we are able to depart from what i

have think have the practices in the past and into the future, now, and then, seamlessly work with our colleagues here in the community, so that we really laser on reunification, and bonding, so that the people are prepared when they get out, so then from birth, to adulthood that is the commitment of this department, thank you very much. >> you stated that there has been sort of an increase of people getting on-line, and... >> there is. >> and asking for visitation. >> do you know, and what the percentage of those that got on-line, were related to parents? visitations. >> i don't have the demographic but i would like to find out

what that is, and so it is something that we can try to hone in on. yeah, that is not, that is not readily available. but it should, or something that we should work on. >> thank you, thank you. >> and i am happy to answer any other questions. >> it is interesting enough, supervisor yee that is the purpose of this hearing because there is not a lot of data collection out there. >> we need to make sure that the children are taken care of and into the generational incarceration and are not getting into that. and i want to give the moment to give the thanks to the youth commission and the ro ject for working on the office and recognizing the outstanding need to review how the systematic reliance, and how it has affected a young generation of young people and low income

minorities individuals and i would like to invite, thank you. >> with that said i would like to invite up our wonderful public defender, our champion, jeff adache >> good afternoon, supervisors, this is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. and i want to thank, supervisor cohen and the san francisco youth commission and all of you and all of the people who are here today, for the plight for the parents who are incarcerated needlessness and the children and family members who are adversery affected and

scarred in many instances for life, when we started looking at this issue, it was about 12 years ago. and i was educated, and through the activist many of whom many are here and the city of clemenand now bernstein and we were brought together and they were interested in improving and looking at how this issue could be addressed and in my office, we started by dedicating a social worker, who is here today, to work with our clients, who represent 20,000 people a year, many of whom are in custody, 49 percent of whom are parents, and so we have had the children of the incarcerated parents in our office for the past ten years. thanks to the zolerbach family fund and later we were able to

institutionalize in our staff and at the time there was just one, other, social worker, teacher who was a visitation valley, middle school. and, you know, today that is going into a movement, and the community works, and more than supported that position, and now, it is going to your organization project, what. and with a very brief presentation.

>> we have over 2.7 million children in this country, who go to bed every night because one of the parents is in prison or in jail and in san francisco, 49 percent of the jail inmates are parents, two-thirds of the incarcerated parents have committed a non-or accused of or have committed a non-violate offense and 60 percent for the offenses and so this is something, this is something that african american children are 7 times more likely and the latino children twice as likely as twiet children to have an incarcerated parent and that is because of the disproportionate arrests, prosecution, and constriction and sentencing to the people who called it

disproportionate in terms of the number of that population, and also, the individuals who are say drug users, if you look at the statistics, you will find that an african american, who is charged with a drug offense, disproportionately is going to be arrested charged and actually going to serve more time than their white counter part. and this is something that is true nationally, as well as locally. and visiting a parent in jail, can alleviate a child's anguish and there is also a sesame street cartoon and a character that was created to address how a child's incarcerated parent, you know, should be discussed and talked about. in the absence of that parent.

it is positively reduced with disciplinary problems and increased likelihood of the family reunification and so these are all of the benefits of having a positive policies and i have to say in san francisco, that we made some excellent strides working with the police department and there are now protocols and general orders in place, which direct the police not to have a possible arrest, and a parently and they know that a child is going to be home, and there is a number of other policies, that we have worked on, and those are sort of the low hanging fruit and there is a lot more work that could be done and at this point, i would like to invite nicole harris who works in the program, and she is going to just provide you with a couple of examples.

>> i am here to provide you with some stats into all to provide you with the case examples of what some of the needs are for both of the parent and child. we served 63 families, and i provided counseling, and facilitated or helped advocate for them within the jail and worked with the child with reunification and worked closely with not only in custody clients but also out of custody clients. an african american man with one to two children under five.

casy is a 43-year-old formerly homeless woman with mental elth issue and was added as a walk in client and had no knowledge of resource and had been sleeping outside for weeks and had an open cps case out of county and also felt a sense of homelessness. she remained hopeful to reunite with her children and felt that she had no support, she was charged with concealment with an unauthorized outing with one of the children. i worked with her to link in the resources in the community, there were a lot of hurtles because she was an out of county resident and was not meeting the mental health support necessary. she was unable to remine in shelters and parenting classes which was a requirement of cps for her. she met with me on a weekly basis, and remained dedicated to her children and kept trying. she was able to secure shelter bed and link a transitional

housing program. and in the midst of her efforts she was threaten with the loss of her children to the system and unable to regularly visit with her children and her son was beginning to exhibit behavior problems within the school and the community. after a year to link to resources to reunify with the children she now has stable housing in her transitional treatment program and also recently acquired a part time job. she is now able to also visit regularly, with her children and she continues to hope for reunification. >> the second case, involved an incarcerated father who we will refer to as raymond, he co-parented with his child's mother and he is charged with domestic violence against someone who is not the child's mother, and was denied contact visits he was involved in a violence prevention program in the jail and adhering to the rules. i reached out to the mother of ray monday's child and was

informed that the child was exhibiting problems at school, i worked with him and his fiance the child's mother, on advocating for him, to receive contact visits, at the facility that he is currently at. we advocated to the captain and worked closely with the captain of the facility to have his denial over turned. he is now allowed to have regular contact visits with his child and he is now to able to effectively co-parent working with his child's mother from jail to address the behavior issues. so the next question is what can we do now? in identifying some of the barriers and solutions that we can work towards. >> you will hear the suggestions here, and if we could go back to the slide. but, where we would like to offer, is that we have to

improve and increase the access to contact visits within the jail as the sheriff testified to. and we have to reach the judges and i don't think that the courts are here often they do not participate in these kinds of hearing because they feel that ethical rules prohibit them and that is a problem because unless we get the courts on board, and certainly some of that change has to come in sacramento that we need the laws that allow the judges to consider the impact on families, and children. and currently that does not happen. and it is pretty much irrelevant and they do not think about the impact on a family at all, or impact on the children at all. often, judges will keep a person in custody, for minor offenses and we had someone the other day who the judge kept in custody on the $50,000 for simple possession, without any regards of their circumstances.

and again, i think that we need to make better decisions in terms of who we feel need to be incarcerated and only incars rate people who really need to be in jail. for example if you are in administrative segregation, you cannot visit your child. often people are in the administrative segregation for reasons completely unrelated to violence or crimes of violence, and home detention should be considered instead of incarceration for non-rye lent offenses and i know that rebbeca is here from the district attorney office and i have spoken to district attorney about this issue and he is also concerned and so we hope that we can begin working closely together on these issues a a result of this hearing. working to reduce the stigma

for the families affected by incarceration and it is smag that we need to be more aware of in terms of of how we function, as individual agencies as well as together. i know that lori is here from the child support and she has been very supportive and has worked very closely with our office on these issues and done the workshops and any time that i have sent a person over there, who had issues with the child support, it has been addressed. and so, going forward, you know, my hope is that we come out with some specific recommendations for the departments to implement. one thing that you may hear from every department is how things are going great, obviously that is not the case, if you know we are still incars rating people who do not need to be in jail and impacting families in a way that is harming children.

and unnecessarily. i did want to point out that earlier this year, and in april, we did a our justice summit and we had a panel on children of incarcerated parents and it is available on sfgov, tv or you tube who are interested in learning more about the subject and it is an excellent panel. and finally, here is the contact information, for nicole harris and any members of the public or anyone else who would like to know more and could use our help. and we could use, two or three nicoles, as you can hear from the sheriff that there is a great need to have even more support out there. but you will hear from the others that are providing the parenting classes and services, and you know, we need to really, enhance, and expand

those resources, because you have to take the parenting class in order to supervisor rised visits and there is a wait of 20, so there is more need there as well. and i appreciate you listening, to my presentation, and give me thanks for taking onthies you. >> do you have any questions? >> seeing none, we will prove on to the presentation from the youth commission and project what. >> to start off, i would like to thank supervisor cohen for sponsoring this hearing and all of you for giving us your

attention. >> if you could speak into the mic. >> thank you. >> i am dennis web and i am the representative of the san francisco youth commission. >> my name is nicole and i am 18 years old and i am attending city college and i am an advocate, as of june of 2013. >> my name is suzy and i am 17 years old and i graduate fromed george washington high school and i have been part of project what since 2013. >> hello, high name is sophia, and i am a chair of the youth justice committee this year. >> the youth commission is made up of 17 youth, and our goals include, but are not limited to identifying the concerns and needs of youth in san francisco. and providing outeding led recommendations to you all. we have been working closely with the youth led organization

called project what. and now i will pass it over to nicole to talk about that. >> thank you. and project what stands for we are here and talking 2.7 million of children of incarcerated parents and our two main goals is one to raise awareness about the impacts of having a parent in incarcerated. and secondly, to improve services and policies that can effect us as well. >> our purpose today, is to assess the scope of the problem and toe ten shall places for solutions to help of the incarcerated parents and to examine these issue and to kham inthe issues that they face through the personal and expert testimony and now i will pass it over to my colleagues. >> our purpose is also to identify what departments are currently doing, to support this population, and what they need to better address and implement best practices, and identify the concerns and needs of children with incarcerated

parents in san francisco. and now i will pass it back over to nicole. >> thank you. nationally there are 2.7 million children who have had a parent incarcerated throughout the united states and although this number is very big, throughout the country, it is parents who incarceration is directly effecting youth and san francisco every year and according to the department of the children and youth and their families 2011, community needs assessment about 17,993, children were estimated to have had a parent incarcerated either in county jail or in prison as of 2010. since, the numbers did not include the children who have had a parent incarcerated at any point in their lives nor does it include, transitional age groups it will be great er in san francisco. and for what has been done, a lot has actually been done and

we would like in san francisco to address this population and we would like to thank the board of supervisors for adopting the children of incarcerated parents bill of right as a resolution in 2005. this resolution, will encourage the city departments and the agencies to consider the children of incarcerated parents, bill of rights, when the decisions are made about us, we would also like to thank the san francisco board of supervisors to pass the ordinance to ban the box on housing and job applications and the efforts to end the discrimination against the formally incarcerated parents and this is an important step in reunifying the children with the parents and we would also like to thank the san francisco police commission to voting in favor of the department general order and 7.04 which is a protocol, for the police officers on how to arrest the parents when the children are parent. and we also will like to acknowledge the san