Jazmine Ulloa
As the state has rolled back sentencing laws through legislation and voter initiatives, a growing victims' rights movement is pushing for alternatives to incarceration, with greater investment in rehabilitation services and a reevaluation of what it takes to make communities safe. On the other side, a smaller but visible coalition of crime survivors and law enforcement officials wants a return to tougher sentences and fewer people on parole.
Read here.
Few cities have done as much as Oakland to examine and push back against the ways law enforcement, through new technology and shared databases, collects personal information, images and communications of criminal suspects and innocent bystanders alike. Over the last year, as city leaders found themselves at odds with President Trump's immigration agenda, the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission has worked to ensure those surveillance tools aren't used to target immigrant or Muslim communities.
Read here.
Until a few years ago, most students in Winters — a farming community of 7,000 west of Sacramento — did not have computers at home. So the city’s then-mayor, Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, pushed for a program that enabled the school district’s sixth-graders to check out laptops along with their textbooks.
Their parents were required to learn how to use the computers as well. For some, it was their first time surfing the web or sending an email.
“Now they could be a voice for their child,” said Aguiar-Curry, who grew up in Winters. She recalled that some parents were moved to tears. “Now they could work in the fields during the day, and at night they could come home and get on their child’s tablet and find out how they were doing in school.”
Over the last decade, California’s urban centers have become technology hubs, cities where free Wi-Fi and fiber optic lines are ubiquitous. But in low-income neighborhoods, across the state’s inland regions and in rural communities — often home to large migrant populations — families struggle to connect at all.
Read here.
As a public defender in New York City, Gina Clayton realized the cash bail system used in most state courts across the country was placing a heavy burden on women. The grandmothers and mothers who visited her office bailed relatives out so often that they knew several bond agents by name.
Often the women navigated complicated contracts and paid high fees alone, she said. Many ended up swimming in debt. Some lost their homes.
Frustrated with the daily churn of cases, she moved back to her hometown, Los Angeles, four years ago. She had a mission.
Read here.