Rally for Prisoner Releases RESCHEDULED

Rally for Prisoner Releases RESCHEDULED

Where: 450 Golden Gate Ave, San Francisco between Larkin and Polk at the Northern California District Court
 
End Overcrowding and Release Eligible Prisoners Now!

We
had originally planned to have a rally outside of court on Tuesday
December 16th, but found out today that court will only be in session
this Thursday and Friday, the last two days of these historic
hearings.  This is our last chance to bring the voices of our loved
ones inside out and demand an end to the torture and cruelty in
California prisons created by unconstitutional overcrowding.

Please come out this Friday December 19th at 8:30 AM and
join us in demanding the release of eligible lifers, low-risk aging
prisoners, domestic violence survivors, and medically incapacitated
prisoners NOW!

For more information contact California Coalition for Women Prisoners at 415-255-7036 x4 or info@womenprisoners.org

PS:
You can also read the editorial article below from today's San
Francisco Chronicle for more information on the panel and the
overcrowding crisis.

Jammed by neglect

Monday, December 15, 2008

California officials have failed and failed to reduce
the burdens on our stressed prison system, so three federal judges are
about to do it for them.
After years of jamming too many prisoners
into too few prisons - thanks, in large part, to the decisions of
California voters, who rarely seem to meet a lock-em-up proposition
they didn't like - the state is on the losing end of two lawsuits. The
first one, which found that the state's prison health care system was
so dysfunctional as to be unconstitutional, has already been lost. J.
Clark Kelso, the federal receiver, has been demanding the $8 billion he
needs to fix the system for months now. Both the Legislature and the
governor refuse to give him the money, though they won't be able to
deny him forever.
It looks likely that the state is set to lose the second lawsuit, as
well. That lawsuit, brought on behalf of sick and mentally ill inmates,
asks whether or not the state's prisons have gotten so overcrowded (we
have 33 of them, and they hold nearly twice as many inmates as they
were designed for) that the conditions are unconstitutional. The three
federal judges, hearing that case in San Francisco right now, have
given indications that they are set to demand early releases for
thousands of inmates.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers have already declared
their intention to appeal any early-release decision to the Supreme
Court. They're grandstanding, instead of taking advantage of an
excellent opportunity. They could be using these decisions to push for
small reforms (for example, loosening some of the rigid parole
technicalities that lead to so much recidivism) that would make a
tremendous difference in reducing overcrowding without putting the
public at risk.
But they have been too afraid to do so, in part because of a powerful
prison guards' union, and in part because voters refuse to get real
about the cost of their thirst for punishing criminals. Against all
available evidence, voters in this state continue to think that passing
endless propositions to increase sentencing and levying other
punishments against those who violate the law will keep our communities
safer. In reality, this behavior has failed to magically reduce crime
and it has put the rest of us in danger.

The danger is that we are now on the verge of bankrupting ourselves in
order to pay for prisons. Not schools, not public health, but prisons.
The state prison system already consumes about $10 billion a year. Is
this really where we want to focus our resources, as a state and as a
society?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/15/ED1E14N52G.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle