it helps them while they're incarcerated. it gives them hope that they will be out and see their families. going to san bruno is impossible. we go thereby car. it takes 45 minutes to get there. so, i want you to please be mindful of those who are in and those who come out, and that help is needed badly. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >>> supervisors, i'm terry anders of anders and anders foundation. it probably will be a jail bill. but like mindy kener who spoke before me, why can't reentry be part of that? see, too often the economics is the about the politics and the politics is about the economics. the people who are poor and incarcerated because they don't have the wherewithal to get themselves into another situation. so, since you are public officials, you're talking about building a public institution with incarceration, which there are some people that probably need to be there. but the reality is why not help change that factor by putting people in reentry who don't have no job skills? putting them to

our safe house is an example of an effective alternative to incarceration. drug court, the sisters program, probation officers, judges, and others refer women to safe house. these women are traumatized. many are suffering from mental illness, and especially from ptsd. some are pregnant. they are young. they are old. they do not need to be in jail. we have a comprehensive program and mental, physical, and dental care, education, group therapy, money management, computer training, job internshipses and more. and we do this for slightly over half what it costs to keep a woman in jail. our graduates are working. they are off the street, out of the emergency rooms, off the welfare roll. out of jails, out of courts, and onto the tax rolls. what's not to like? all the programs that provide alternatives to incarceration, particularly residential programs like safe house, are struggling for funding. a lot of that money would give us a big boost. we would like to open a second house. all the funds would be used for the people we serve and none of it would go to the fi

[speaker not understood], i'm formerly incarcerated. say that not to say that is who i am today, but that is who i am going to be documented as for the rest of my life. but who i am is a son, a father, an uncle, a homeowner, a taxpayer, a student, and i think this resolution is a good -- you're moving in the right direction. but all that who i said what i am will be erased and put what i preface this speech on. formerly incarcerated. if we do not erase that, we do not move into the future. we do not allow [speaker not understood] redemption or forgiveness or rehabilitation to take place in a person's life. so, i thank you, first of all, for taking the initiative to move us into the 22nd century. i thank you. >> thank you, mr. oster. and i'll try to not to identify you as a rams fan. [laughter] >>> [speaker not understood]. >>> good afternoon, i'm not sure you can ban that box. good afternoon, i'm pete riley with the california partnership and we're a statewide coalition of antipoverty organization. thank you to you, supervisor kim, and

i'm here today because my mom was incarcerated in 2009. she was in san francisco county jail and she wasn't let out until 2010. when she was released it was difficult for her to get housing and to get a job because she had a lot of felonies. therefore, it was hard for us to -- my brothers and my sister and i to live with her wasn't able to keep a house or stable job because of her felonies. so, it took about 3-1/2 years for us to live with her and it was very unfortunate because i was in a very uncomfortable situation with a guardian and i just really wanted to live with my mom. it would have really been beneficial if she had services or anything that could have helped her with her housing even if she did have felonies. so, and i also want to say before she was incarcerated she was working at kaiser. she had a cool house and everything. she was comfortably supporting us. but because of her felonies it's really hard for her to do that when she was released. now ab

i am so glad to hear as a native and lifelong san franciscan about all of the alternatives to incarceration that the city has been pursuing and very, very successfully and i hope we do have bail reform. and i'm concerned many of the people we do have in our jail are awaiting trial simply because they can't come up with bail. that said, if we must have a jail, i do believe that it should be in san francisco. i have a serious concern about families having to go out to san bruno. i have a concern about our volunteers. i work with -- i'm a volunteer with an organization that goes into the jails and i'm concerned about our volunteers having to go out to san bruno into -- away from the area where they live. i volunteer while we live in san francisco, we have to go out there. the families, many of the families do have to take public transportation and there's almost no public transportation out there. it is a long way from here if you've got to take the bus. let me tell you. the last stop is -- maybe you could call it bart, but really it's over there at san francisco state and it's a great hardshi

are incarcerated have humane conditions. i really pleav we can utilize this debate as an opportunity to correct the poor harms san franciscans face. step back and look at not only how many can be diverted from the criminal justice after arrest but prevent people from being arrested in the first place. in my work at the coalition on homelessness we see people who end up in the criminal justice system simply as a result of their status of being poor. as being poor people of color, as poor people who have nowhere to live who perhaps suffer from mental illness or addictive disorders, and people who are considered repeat offenders for being so offensive [speaker not understood] arrest in public. other people who are so desperate forest that they are forced to break into buildingses and sleep or desperately hungry they steal food. we know as has been studiously demonstrated repeatedly that we save huge and criminal justice costs when we invest in substance abuse treatment. we know investmentses in supportive housing saves criminal

and mass incarceration has a lot of aspects to it. it has -- it has to do with the incredible number of people who get arrested and, of course, this is very [speaker not understood] of it, but it also has to do with incredibly long sentences that people serve in jail and it also has to do with the lifetime kind of sentences that people have with the discrimination against ex felons. so, i think that anything that can be done to reduce this lifetime aspect of mass incarceration is good and should be supported. >> thank you, mr. lion. >>> good evening, good afternoon. my name is vanessa banks. i am a member -- a native of the bayview hunters point community. i'm also interning with coleman advocates. i first would like to say from the bottom of my heart to thank jim -- i mean jane kim and malia cohen for bringing on this initiative for us. growing up in the bayview hunters point back in the early '80s and '90s wasn't always easy. some of us have felonies on our records because of hearsay, not of actual crimes that we committed. because

we did look a little bit at alternatives to incarceration. i know there will be more discussion later. i think that number of offenders who are in this programs has increased. i think there are still some proposals out there. we estimate that maybe as many as 60 more could be incorporated in terms of reducing the jail population. but we didn't actually include that in our analysis because those are not numbers that are -- the programs haven't been implemented and those aren't known yet. our recommendation, then, is fairly straightforward. the city is about to go into environmental review on a 640-bed jail. that should begin early in 2014 with the completion date at the end of 2015. the city at any point can decide to build a smaller jail or no jail at all without having to redo that environmental review, and then as supervisor campos said, the board will have options in 2015 to revisit this. >> thank you, ms. campbell. i especially want to highlight all the time and energy that you personally put into this to get this report out as quickly as

if we must have incarcerated people, to make things as easy as possible. thank you. ~ >> thank you. next speaker. >>> hello, my name is kimberly roar balk. i don't have too much to say that hasn't already been said ~ regarding however people's concerns about families and family connectivity and access. it's my understanding that when san brewin owe was full there were shuttles going back and forth with no budgetary impact between the city and the facility. i venture to guess that the money that a new jail would cost, not to mention the bond money on san bruno that somebody mentioned, far exceeds the expense of actually transporting family members and/or attorneys to and from. so, i just wanted to say that. jenny friedenbach from the coalition on homelessness stated that 27% of the people in the county jail are homeless. so, i think that if there was bail reform that would clear out about a third of the current population. finally, i agree with dorothy. one, it' frustrating here to be speaking against a jail that doesn't need to be built, where the other side is basically grasping fo

because they're incarcerated. so, the clock is ticking. we need to get something done. it needs to be sooner than later. certainly i'll leave it to the experts on some of these numbers. what does that mean and how big or small a facility we need, but i think the hope that -- the camelot hope of no jail just isn't practical. we're going to need something with the fact that the population's going to be what it's going to be. and it's just a very busy place in san francisco. and to go to take people -- like just in, for instance, we can't hold people at many of the jail -- at the jails at the stations because a lot of them are just old. they've been ruled out to take custodies. just booking people that are going to be released when sober, you couldn't take them down to san bruno and then release them from there. they get out at alvarious times. san bruno is set aside, but the tributary server residential neighborhood ~, there's no buses. it's right off of skyline. i think these are all just practical considerations t

lawrence was incarcerated for 11.5 years for crack cocaine conspiracy.rence, you say you and your brother were doing legitimate business with an auto repair company. that auto repair company got tapped for distributing drugs, and the owner implemented you and your brother. >> right. >> what were some of the surprising things you found out about the entire system that you had no knowledge of before your conviction. >> the first thing we got hit with was the mandatory minimum, we were sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison. and we were released earlier. my sentence was reduced by 39 months, my brother's was reduced by almost four years. we had to come into a system that we didn't know really existed and because of our skin color and where we grew up, we were poster children for drug dealers. so it was never about whether we were guilty or not guilty, the numbers was what mattered. mandatory minimums do not work. 15 years for a first-time offender whether he possessed it or was involved in a conspiracy or not, out does not make sense. and wh

incarceration is just one, but not the sole tool to do that. for that reason, in conjunction with his partners, we're at a 40-year low in our jail population and that is no small accomplishment. it has required everybody to participate toward the shared goal and we're seeing positive results from that, something the rest of the state is not experiencing. and we need to take pause and identify what trends have led us to that place and how we continue down that path. programs in the district attorney's office that have led to reduction in jail population and i think will continue to lead to such reductions, i'll name just a couple of them, but our neighborhood courts program is a free charging program where we take misdemeanor crimes and rather than charge the person with a crime, we send them to a panel of neighborhood adjudicators and the neighborhood decides how severe the act was and what the consequence for that should be. jail can never be a answer to that he question. it's all restorative in nature ~. in just one calendar year we saw 700 c

incarceration is incarceration is incarceration. and people need to follow the rules.bsolutely no alcohol. no drugs. >> seems like every time i'm trying to do the right thing to do better, it's -- a rock just falls right in front of me and i can't go no further. it's like i'm stuck right there. >> lohden is moved to a fresh arrest dorm. a special housing unit for women newly booked into the jail. she will remain until a judge decides whether to return her to home incarceration or make her serve the rest of her sentence in jail. but lohden seems determined to make an impression. >> that's my bunk. >> yeah, it's mine now. you snooze, you lose. there ain't no bunk assignments in [ bleep ] jail. get that [ bleep ] right. >> hey, come back out here. >> do they own bunks around here? >> you've got to calm down before you come in here. >> come back outside. >> i'm good. >> come on, come on. >> excuse me? excuse me? excuse me. >> i said i'm sick, and i've got to be on the bottom bunk. >> okay, that's fine. but i didn't think the jail, nobody owns no bunks around here. >> we th

legalizing marijuana, and trying to reduce america's problem with mass incarceration.should aspire to make america average when it comes to locking up our fellow citizens. we should not be leading the incarceration. >> paul, came to you. >> yeah, four points, first off we need to look at -- we already have enough projects with the legitimate problems that are legal, alcohol, tobacco we can't contain that problem. also we're never going to win the so-called war on drugs, and we're never going to eliminate drugs on our streets, but that doesn't mean we give up. so i think what we need to look at is drug testing with youth in schools. i'm in the military. served in iraq, our military has a .5% drug use because we use drug testing. lastly, i think the obama administration legacy will be their inaction of what is going on in colorado. the obama administration has basically said hands off on colorado, we're going to let them deal drugs and do everything else. it's a shameful legacy that i will be play out in some dramatic events in the future. >> ben says . . . lawrence same

because incarceration of japanese americans was absolutely crazy! they didn't incarcerate the japanese americans in hawaii. that's the place that was bombed. but the japanese american population was about 45% of the island of hawaii. and if they extracted those japanese americans, the economy would have collapsed. but on the mainland, we were thinly spread out. up and down the west coast. >> so you experienced discrimination early in your life but you also experienced discrimination later in life as well, correct? >> i did. and that discrimination, i was able to kind of avoid. my face, my asian face, was a give-away. but from the time i was about nine or ten, i knew i was different in ways other than just my face. the other boys would say things like, sally's cute. or monica's hot. i thought are sally and monica were nice. but i thought bobby was exciting. and none of the boys thought the way i did. so i knew i was different. and it wasn't the way i was supposed to be. so i was silent about it. and i pretended that i was like one of them. you know,

after we've turned them away from the family, after we put them in the violent process of being incarcerated and ripping them of any job opportunity anyway. i think that in the time it would take to build another jail, we could -- i think it is the sheriff's job to work in line with the judicial system on bail and sentencing reform as well as reassess the criminal confinement of people in poverty. our community knows what it means and we do not need another jail. (applause) >> thank you. next speaker. >>> hello, my name is norm miska. i'd like to thank most people who have spoken already. i'm not going to repeat the nuts and bolts that people have brought up many time. i just have a limerick i wrote right now, thought you might like it. mirkarimi once wanted a jail. his plan surely was doomed to fail. he asked for some cash, but there was backlash because his ideas were stale. thank you. (applause) >> thank you. next speaker. >>> hi, i'm rachel [speaker not understood] with the u.s. prostitutes collective. we wanted to register our opposition to [speaker not understood]. we think that should

have room to incarcerate. when they run out of bed space they hire private companies. they can incarcerate more people without dealing with the problems of sentencing laws and overincarceration. the companies have a vested interest in this. they lobby state governments and federal governments. the associated press ran a report in 2012 finding the top three private prison companies spend $45 million in lobbying. these are enormous amounts of money. what are they lobbying for. they profit from incarceration. they are lobbying for contracts, prisons to be privatized, more people to be put in prison. >> i want your response on that, adrian. >> i 100% agree we have a huge problem with overincarceration in this country. it's out of control. i don't think the way to deal with that is to reduce the prison supply and overcrowding that comes along with that. on the lobbying front, this is a big issue. no one provided an iota of evidence that private prison companies lobbied to have more people put in prison. they give p

you know how much it costs a day to incarcerate somebody? >> i'm paying you to lock me up. i didn't ask -- >> you ain't paying me. you're paying tax dollars. >> you just said i'm taking money from y'all. >> you're taking from metro government. i work for metro government. >> so i got to pay the government for them to lock me up? >> yeah, 'cause the government has to pay for your housing. it has to pay for these bills. >> no, i'm not going to bull county. >> you got to pay $25 a day to be incarcerated. >> that's bull[bleep] though is what i'm saying. you're charging me to be locked up. i didn't ask to be locked up. >> we're not charging you. >> i didn't say, "come lock me up." >> taxpayers voted that, all right? >> i didn't say, "come lock me up. here comes some money. here. i want to be in jail." i get bills on the street to pay. [bleep] i don't like paying the government to lock me up. >> step back in. >> [ clears throat ] >> he got kind of mad, but, you know, he's got to deal with the consequences. like lieutenant collins told him, put money on the books illegally. you kn

particularly when those arrests and incarceration follows racial and ethnic lines. so there's beginning to be some recognition that the criminal justice policy that looks at punishment and particularly disproportionate punishment isn't good for society, as well as being not good for individuals. >> hubert williams, we have a very short time least. left. is the public going to understand so they don't arrest as many people? >> i think that the public is not going to go for that. the public wants the police to do their job. what an individual does to himself, how are we going to treat that with criminal offenses now. we have seen big changes in colorado and now the governor of new york. what we classify as a crime has a huge impact on what the police do and fail to do. so society has to come to some recognition, these are the things that when you hurt people and take something from somebody else, these are the priorities that you need to focus on. when we do that to somebody else. >> thank you for joining us. that brings us to the end of this edition of "inside story.

past incarcerations have reduced men's yearly earnings by 40%. and legislation that we are introducing is a recommended best practice, already used by the eeoc for employers. these policies have already been implemented by the second-largest retailer in the u.s., target, and we want to thank target for supporting this legislation, but also modeling it before we even implemented this legislation throughout the country. over 10 states and over 51 municipalities have passed different forms of ban the box to date. this legislation, the fair chance act, would place limits on an established procedures for the use of arrest and conviction history ~ information by employers, housing providers and city contractors and subcontractors. it removes the box from all initial applications for employment and affordable housing. and it doesn't mean you cannot do a background check. it's just the inquiry of that arrest conviction history after the individual has had either a live interview or a conditional offer of employment or housing ~. there is some discretion

. >> now the incarcerated lovers might have another mouth to feed. >> either she's telling the truthshe's completely psychotic or both. >>> though grand rapids is the second largest city in michigan, its residents describe it in terms of small town charm and stable communities. on any given day, about a thousand others face uncertain futures. >> make sure you shut your door when you come out. make sure you make your bed. >> they reside behind the razor wire fences and brick walls of kent county jail. most of the inmates are awaiting trial or the resolution of their cases. upon being booked into the jail, they change street clothes for jail uniforms and leave personal possessions, including cash and jewelry in sealed bags that will be stored until you are released. >> the guy when he was doing the patdowns, we had a long discussion about it. he told me my tongue ring, that's got to come out. i'm like it doesn't come out. if they go to cut it, they'll end up cutting my tongue. he said never mind, we're going to leave it be. >> he was allowed to keep one other piece considered too embed

. >> obviously i believe in the civil rights issues, looking at mass incarceration, that is a huge issue.

a beautiful feeling to come outside, especially when you're incarcerated. all the air you get is to go to court and that's it. you get on the bus. besides that, you get to look out the window. and that's it. >> everybody, place your i.d. cards on your outermost garments. put them up on your chest, please, gentlemen. keep the noise down. we're going to take it inside. we're going to clear the deck and take it downstairs again. one at a time. >> eric prefers to hang out in the dorm, close to his belongings. >> i never really leave my bed because you really can't trust everybody that is here. my letters to my house, my pictures, my girlfriend. i don't have any pictures of my family at the moment but hopefully i will get some. that's about it. every day, i wake up saying i hate this. but, i got to stay here. so until i do my time, i'll be here. and hopefully i'll see this through. >> scott randolph spends his free time writing poetry. >> this one's called "hold this." hold this, grip these words as if your embrace alone will help me save my life. so that i migh

>> the first phase of boot camp is four months of shock incarceration. are allowed no visits, no phone calls, and no communication with other inmates. >> you have to sound like thunder, move like lightning. and it's pretty hard. the beginning's pretty hard. because you're not in shape when you first get here. sometimes it's rough because you sweat, you get tired, but you've still got to move. there's no giving up in boot camp. >> a lot of these kids have never really had anybody to talk to. you'll find that their parents are incarcerated. they've been arrested. we have children that are coming from foster care. so to some of these cadets, we're the only parents that they have. >> we're making you a better person, right? >> sir, yes, sir. >> phase two of boot camp is a two month work-release program in which the cadets improve their education or acquire jobs. >> what about schooling? >> sir, this cadet has plans to go to school to become an accountant if it's possible, sir. >> an accountant. >> yes, sir. >> so you'll be making a lot of money. >> i got to

we call those patients, those patients had not been incarcerated. we called them up and asked to speak with a supervisosuperviso. they told us they'd give us a call back. a week later on the website they stated they were having issues with records regarding incarcerated patients and conversely, we have still not gotten paid, even though those patients were not incarcerated during that service. that's just one small example of some of the delays that are out there. >> we only have 30 seconds left, but you're a small hospital in the community serving a lot of medicare patients, and if you shut down, they are going to have to go some place else. that's bad for everybody. >> right, it is, and it's bad for our employees, as well. >> well, for some reason, i don't understand this whole business about the no-bid contracts when it was working before with the other organization, and now the new organization comes along, it's no bid, and suddenly you've got this nightmare and you've got your small hospital and you haven't made payroll in a month. i hope someb

the behavior that got them incarcerated, we shouldn't accept that same behavior while they're incarcerated with us. >> changing the way things had been done for decades wasn't going to be easy, but it was going to happen. that was the mandate. the first step came in leveling the playing field. >> you hear the saying, power is in numbers. and that's really true. you put 150, 200 class x murderers in a room together and that's a lot of power. you take that number down and knock it down to 50 and you put a couple extra officers there, and it really kind of balances things out. >> today, anywhere you look within stateville there are rarely more than 50 prisoners together. oftentimes there are fewer. unlike many other prisons around the country where hundreds of prisoners congregate, at stateville, whether it's in the prison yards, dining hall or any other location, the number of inmates is always limited. these same limitations also apply anytime prisoners are moved from one area of the prison to another. >> in the past we used to move 200, 300 inmates at a time. now it's no more than 50 inmat

these are extraordinary numbers, meaning incarceration impacts trans people are the a higher level.earts and minds and attitudes. let us not forget, her experience happened in the state of minnesota, the very first state with a nondiscrimination law. we now have major equality that protect against gender discrimination. and yet this still happened to her. we're seeing a few glimmers of hope. a long way to go in terms of creating change for transgendered people in this country, particularly transgendered people who are incarcerated. a few glimmers of hope. the los angeles police department has created a safe facility for transgendered people. just this week, we had a ruling out of the first circuit insisting or upholding a ruling that transgender people must receive the health care that they deserve, while they are incarcerated. just like everyone else. so we are seeing a few glimmers of hope, but we have a long way to go to push for change and to push not only for laws, but for changes in hearts and minds and attitudes. >> katie, let me come to you on this. >> yeah, i think this was

but sean phillips believes that his incarceration at the bear county jail might have been the one thing that actually saved his life. >> i was literally, when i came in here, pretty much knocking at death's door. >> phillips is currently awaiting trial on a murder charge to which he has pled not guilty. when he was first booked into the jail, the 5'10" inmate weighed 437 pounds. >> i was a type 2 diabetic. i was taking insulin twice a day. i couldn't even walk half a block without almost having a heart attack. >> but in the year and a half he has been here, phillips has reduced his weight by almost 1/3. >> i was 437 when i came in. i am now 265 pounds. >> phillips has had several prior convictions for burglary and theft. >> these are some of the previous photos of mr. phillips that we have. 2001, 2003. >> from 200 pounds to morbid obesity, his mug shots tell the story of his exponential weight gain. >> my self-esteem out there in the free had plummeted. i'd stopped giving a care about everything. i was drinking anywhere from a bottle to a bottle and a half of jack a day. i started eatin

. >> my name is jesus garcia, i have been incarcerated for nearly 12 1/2 years.i'm incarcerated for first degree murder and i have life plus 26 years to serve. >> when we met jesus garcia at penitentiary of new mexico he had recently been involved in the bloody assault of two officers. >> leading up to that day there had been incidents where they messed with me. that was the third time. i said, that was it. that's enough. i broke my tv, made a couple shanks and assaulted them. assaulted one of them. i got him, and then another officer came to his rescue and obviously trying to defend myself, i assaulted him, too. >> they were slashed around the head, neck, came very close to the jugular on one of the officers. >> i remember running into the pod. there was an inmate between both of them and they were both being stabbed. >> aaron bell rushed to aid his fellow officers moments after the assault began. >> i hit the inmate, tried to get him by his arm, and i slipped. and i didn't realize what i slipped on was all blood. >> it took a couple of minutes before we got oth