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Newsom Unveils Restorative, Rehabilitative Vision for San Quentin Prison

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday unveiled his plan to transform San Quentin State Prison into a facility that emphasizes services and support over punishment, dubbing the new model the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. The governor joined former and current prison staff and inmates, elected officials, and criminal justice reform advocates for a news conference on Friday at the prison announcing the project, which some are calling a Scandinavian approach to incarceration.

Published

2 years ago

March 27, 2023

Oakland Post

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a media briefing at Ruby Bridges Elementary School in Alameda, Calif., on March 16, 2021. (Eli Walsh/Bay City News)

By Katy St. Clair
Bay City News

The governor joined former and current prison staff and inmates, elected officials, and criminal justice reform advocates for a news conference on Friday at the prison announcing the project, which some are calling a Scandinavian approach to incarceration.

“I don’t refer to it as a Scandinavian model,” said Newsom on Friday when asked about the comparison. “This is the California model. The California way, informed by best practices across the globe.”

Newsom said he hopes to make San Quentin “the preeminent restorative justice facility in the world.”

Under the new plan, San Quentin would only hold about 2,000 inmates who are serving lesser sentences and it would move more than 500 inmates doing more time for greater offenses, including those on death row, to other facilities.

The transition would take place by 2025, Newsom said, and he has pledged $20 million toward it.

The so-called Scandinavian model emphasizes education, training and rehabilitation over punishment, with the idea that people shouldn’t leave prison worse than when they came in. Newsom said that some approaches have already begun in smaller prisons throughout the state but this one would be the largest in scale.

At San Quentin under the new model, prisoners will be able to learn lucrative trades to better their chances of making it when they get out. This means inmates can study to become plumbers, electricians or truck drivers.

Currently, San Quentin already has its own college program, an award-winning inmate-produced newspaper, and several other opportunities for enrichment.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, shared his support as well for the new direction.

“We have put politics above smart policy when it comes to our criminal justice system,” he said. “Today’s action by Newsom isn’t just about reform. It’s about changing lives. It’s about ending the prison pipeline that’s impacted California’s communities of color. It’s about creating a pathway for entire families and a stronger future for this state. And it’s about saving taxpayers money.”

At the core for the need for a new approach, said both McGuire and the governor, is the state’s 70 percent recidivism rate. And while he said his office was merely looking at worldwide models of reform and would create its own model, he cited Norway’s 20 percent recidivism rate as an argument for restorative justice over simply warehousing people.

Asked what challenges he faces in implementing the new model, Newsom replied jocularly.

“Fires, droughts, social unrest, pandemics?” he quipped, adding “Ron Desantis?”

He then got serious.

“Interested people find excuses. Committed people find ways of getting things done,” he said.

Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, spoke at the news conference in support of the program.

“For a couple of decades, we had this idea that as a state we could be safer,” he said. “If we put our inmates in the most remote parts of the state, if we could just send them out, separate them from their communities, separate them from us, separate them from their loved ones and from family members, that somehow we would be safer.

“Actually I think the exact opposite is needed,” Ting said.

San Quentin, which sits on prime Marin real estate facing the Bay, is California’s oldest prison and was once home to the nation’s largest death row. It currently houses about 3,300 inmates.

In 2019, Newsom placed a moratorium on executions in the state and ordered that the death chamber at San Quentin be dismantled.

Copyright © 2023 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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SAN LEANDRO: INTERIM POLICE CHIEF APPOINTED TO PERMANENT ROLE

Published

5 months ago

June 13, 2024

Oakland Post

SAN LEANDRO POLICE CHIEF

By Bay City News

Angela Averiett has been appointed to serve as the next police chief of San Leandro.

Prior to her previous role as interim police chief in San Leandro, Averiett served as the police chief in Los Altos.

“Chief Averiett is a well-respected law enforcement veteran, who is an advocate for diversity, inclusion, and community building,” said City Manager Fran Robustelli.

Averiett is also part of The Curve, an organization that gives leaders in policing the most current and creative ideas about leadership and the resources to implement them so they can more “effectively modernize their cultures from the inside-out.”

Averiett stated, “It is an honor to be gifted the chance to serve the dedicated women and men of the San Leandro Police Department and the rich, diverse group of San Leandrans.”

Copyright © 2024 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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CONTACT: Sonia Lee (650) 947-2611 or slee@losaltosca.gov

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Arrests Made at People’s Park as Preparations For Construction on Site Begin Again

Seven people were arrested early Thursday morning at Berkeley’s People’s Park as fencing was put up in preparation for a controversial construction project to build housing for students and formerly unhoused people on the public park.

Published

11 months ago

January 8, 2024

Oakland Post

Opponents fought the University of California, Berkeley's plan to build on the site when construction began in August 2022, but they were dealt a setback when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill last year that was unanimously backed by the state Legislature to exempt the university from a requirement to consider alternative sites for the project.

By Bay City News

Fencing and double-stacked shipping containers will continue to be installed over the next three to four days and surrounding streets will be closed off for about six days, according to a university spokesperson.

Opponents fought the University of California, Berkeley’s plan to build on the site when construction began in August 2022, but they were dealt a setback when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill last year that was unanimously backed by the state Legislature to exempt the university from a requirement to consider alternative sites for the project.

The arrests Thursday morning were for trespassing, with two also arrested for failure to disperse, according to the university. They were cited and released after being booked into jail.

An appeal on the university’s construction project is still being heard by the state Supreme Court, but the university said it has the legal right to close off the construction zone while the case is litigated.

“Given that the existing legal issues will inevitably be resolved, we decided to take this necessary step now in order to minimize disruption for the public and our students when we are eventually cleared to resume construction,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, our planning and actions must take into account that some of the project’s opponents have previously resorted to violence and vandalism, despite strong support for the project on the part of students, community members, advocates for unhoused people, the elected leadership of the City of Berkeley, as well as the Legislature and governor of the state of California,” Christ said.

The plan calls for building housing for 1,100 students and a separate building with 100 apartments for low-income, formerly unhoused people, but activists have fought against the displacement of unhoused people currently living in the park and development on a green space.

The plan would preserve 60% of the 2.8-acre park’s green space and the park would remain open to the public. People living in the park have been offered transitional housing.

Video posted to social media showed trees being cut down and carried by heavy machinery overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning.

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Appeals Court Denies Request to Revisit Berkeley’s Natural Gas Ban

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled against Berkeley’s pioneering natural gas ban. In a majority decision filed Tuesday, the court said Berkeley’s ordinance banning gas pipelines in new construction runs afoul of the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

Published

11 months ago

January 8, 2024

Oakland Post

The act "expressly preempts state and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens," Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote in the majority opinion.

By Kiley Russell
Bay City News
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled against Berkeley’s pioneering natural gas ban.
In a majority decision filed Tuesday, the court said Berkeley’s ordinance banning gas pipelines in new construction runs afoul of the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

The act “expressly preempts state and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens,” Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote in the majority opinion.
“Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result,” Bumatay wrote. “It enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas piping in those buildings from the point of delivery at a gas meter, rendering the gas appliances useless.”

The Berkeley City Council unanimously approved the first-of-its-kind ordinance in July 2019.
It was designed to combat climate change by reducing natural gas emissions throughout the city by encouraging the use of more ecologically friendly electrical hookups.

“Climate change is an existential threat to our city, our homes, and our future,” Councilmember Kate Harrison, who authored the ordinance, said at the time. “It is time to take aggressive action to reduce our emissions across all sectors.”
The California Restaurant Association sued the city in November 2019, and in 2021 a lower court ruled against the restaurant organization.
In that ruling, the court found that the local ordinance didn’t conflict with federal regulations because it indirectly applied to appliances covered by federal law and that the federal rules should be interpreted so as not to “sweep into areas that are historically the province of state and local regulation.”

Last year, a panel of the 9th Circuit disagreed and ruled that federal law preempted the city’s new ordinance and on Tuesday, the full panel of judges denied a request to rehear the case.

Judge Michelle Friedland, writing the dissenting opinion for the 9th Circuit, said the majority opinion “misinterprets the statute’s key terms” and “needlessly blocks Berkeley’s effort to combat climate change, along with the equivalent laws passed by other local governments. Our system of federalism requires much more respect for state and local autonomy.”