LIFER FAMILY SEMINARS (March 16 & April 6, 2019)

Hope you can attend one of the first 2 seminars this year, March 16 in Sacramento and April 6 in Yorba Linda. We’re doing some new things this year; for a start, at our Sacramento event both Jennifer Shaffer of the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) and CDCR Secretary Ralph Diaz will be speaking in person, providing insight and answering questions.  For Yorba Linda and other events in coming months, we’ll have a video of both Diaz and Shaffer–the best we can do, absent cloning.

Also, for those who have an understanding of the basics of the parole policy, we’re offering a deeper dive into some of those areas, via small groups in the afternoon, concentrating on several areas, from new laws (commutation 1437 and 1391), to how to prepare a parole plan, to what to expect and do after the hearing, whichever way it goes.  And–for those newer to the journey, we’ll also provide a small group to outline how the whole system works.

Be sure to sign up, the easiest way is via our new and improved website, on the Events page, which, for the first time will allow you to register with a credit card.  We’re finally in the 21st Century!

Staff,
Life Support Alliance
Together we can do this, one step at a time.

Updates on 2019 laws, policies & procedures.

Lifer Family Seminar
Have Hope*Get Help*Come Home

Saturday, March 16, 2019
8 am-3:30 pm
Capital Christian Center, 9470 Micron Ave, Sacramento, CA 95827

Parking on site, directions and maps provided prior to the event. Registration and check in begins at 8 am.

This is a pivotal time for lifers; get the latest, most accurate and complete news on parole outlook, challenges of release and re-entry.

A Day of LEARNING and SUPPORT. Your Lifer CAN Come Home
Learn from officials, attorneys, advocates and successfully paroled lifers

What you and your inmate need to know

• Insight & Causative Factors
• Comprehensive Risk Assessment
• Parole plans & re-entry

$35 up to 3 days prior; $40 at the door
Pre-Registration Requested
Seminar fee includes lunch & materials

Send Check or Money Order to

• LSA, P.O.Box 277, Rancho Cordova, CA 95741 (sorry, no credit or debit cards)
• Payment may be made also via PayPal; See EVENTS page at lifesupportalliance.org

LIFE SUPPORT ALLIANCE  Promoting Public Safety & Fiscal Responsibility
Publisher of CALIFORNIA LIFER NEWSLETTER & Lifer-Line newsletter
staff@lifesupportalliance.org  (916) 402-3750

First Southern California Seminar of 2019

Prop 57 Comments MUST be in by Friday, Sept 1st! (instructions here)

Californians overwhelmingly passed Proposition 57, the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016, to break the cycle of incarceration by prioritizing rehabilitation and reintegration. Now, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) needs to implement the law in the way voters intended. But, CDCR is trying to unfairly limit who can be considered for parole or released under Prop 57.  CDCR’s proposed regulations disproportionately exclude people of color, prisoners with mental illness, young offenders, and low-risk offenders from the benefits of Prop 57.  Please use the below resources to demand that CDCR fixes their draft rules.

Please Send Your Comments directly to CDCR by this Friday, September 1, 2017. Here are several ways to make your voice heard. Use them all if you can!

• Use THIS LINK from Californians for a Responsible Budget (CURB) to send in your public comment, including CURB and Initiate Justice  recommendations.

• Mail, Fax, or Email a letter to the Associate Director of CDCR’s Regulation and Policy Management Branch. This SAMPLE LETTER can be easily adapted and personalized and sent to:
  Timothy M. Lockwood
  Regulation and Policy Management Branch
  California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
  Mail: PO Box 942883 Sacramento, CA 94283-0001
  by Fax: (916) 324-6075
  by Email: CDCR-Prop57-Comments@cdcr.ca.gov

• Use this ACLU alert to send a letter to CDCR Secretary Scott Kernan: https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu/ca/issues/alert/?alertid=78469626&type=CU

• SIGN THIS PETITION: https://campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/implement-the-people-s-demands-for-california-s-proposition-57

• Come Out to the Prop 57 Regulations Hearing! In addition to sending written comments, you can come out to Prop 57 Regulations hearing in Sacramento. If you want to attend, please sign up here.  Info is below:
  Friday, September 1, 2017    9:00am-12:00pm
  Dept of Water Resources Building Auditorium
  1416 Ninth St.  Sacramento, CA 95814

• Donate to Support Initiate Justice! Initiate Justice is a small, volunteer team that cannot do this work without the support of individual donations. Please donate $10, $25, or $50 right now to help pay for stamps to mail the regulations to people inside and support our mobilizations to Sacramento. Every dollar helps!

 

More on CDCR’s proposed regulations for Prop 57…

There are three main problems with the proposed regulations:

(1) The proposed regulations exclude people who are serving life sentences under the Three Strikes law for nonviolent crimes. Prop. 57 promised to apply to all nonviolent prisoners.

(2) The proposed regulations exclude young offenders eligible for parole under SB 260 and 261. At its core, Prop. 57 promised to correct over incarceration of young offenders and encourage positive rehabilitative programming—there is no justifiable reason to undermine the positive reforms of SB 260 and 261.

(3) The proposed regulations do not apply new programming credits to people who have been dedicated to rehabilitation for years, or decades. There is no reason why benefits of Prop. 57 should not apply retroactively to cover genuine rehabilitation programming in the past.

We call on the CDCR to implement the following recommendations to the Prop 57 Regular Regulations:

1. Allow all people in prison to earn 50% good time credits.
2. Make all good time credit earning retroactive.
3. Include Third Strikers in the non-violent early parole.
4. Award retroactive Education Merit Credits for each achievement.
5. Allow every person with a Youth Offender Parole Date or Elderly Parole Date to earn time off of their earliest parole date.

CA state court : Prisoner Can’t Be Punished for Hunger Strike

• Below is the April 23, 2016 article from SF Gate/San Francisco Chronicle (minus photos and video in the article)
• Court’s full decision at the bottom of the post.

State court rules prisoners can’t be punished for hunger strike

http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/State-court-rules-prisoners-can-t-be-punished-7305577.php

A state appeals court says a California prisoner who took part in a mass hunger strike protesting long-term solitary confinement should not have been punished for disorderly behavior because he did not disrupt prison operations or endanger anyone.

Although the 2013 hunger strike, which involved as many as 30,000 inmates across the state, may have affected the workload of prison staff members, there was no evidence of “a breakdown of order” or any threat of violence, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said in the case of a former inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison.

The ruling, issued last month, was published Friday as a precedent for future cases. In addition to overturning a 90-day sentencing increase for the inmate, the decision could help numerous hunger strikers whose prison conduct is scrutinized by parole boards, said an attorney in the case, Carol Strickman of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

For inmates serving life sentences with the possibility of parole, “the parole board is citing the hunger strike as a reason to keep them in prison, because of their ongoing criminal mentality,” Strickman said.

“We hope to use this opinion to try to educate the parole board,” she added. “You might say it makes you more suitable (for release), engaging in nonviolent protest. People could see it as good citizenship.”

The inmate, Jorge Gomez, was sent to Pelican Bay, in Del Norte County, in 2000 and was transferred three years later to the prison’s Security Housing Unit, where he was kept in solitary confinement for more than a decade. In July 2013, he refused to eat for four days and, after the third day, was cited for a “serious” violation of prison rules for taking part in a hunger strike.