New America Media – Prop 47: Sentencing reduction awareness campaign in CA expands
Even though Solombrino had overcome her addictions with the help of the San Pedro-based Fred Brown Recovery Services, she was denied Section 8 subsidized housing because of her felony record. She did get a job at Fred Brown but her position became an issue earlier this year when the nonprofit learned that it could not qualify for a Los Angeles County government grant if any staff members have a felony record.
Ironically, it was during a visit to a job fair last spring that she learned that drug possession and minor nonviolent crimes can be reduced from felonies to misdemeanors under Proposition 47, an initiative approved by state voters last November. She said she discovered that four of her felony convictions could be reduced.
“I couldn’t change myself, I needed [addiction recovery] help,” Solombrino said in a statement posted by Proposition 47 advocates. “And your record won’t change itself. You have to take action. The positive change that [47] can bring needs to be shouted from the rooftops.”
On June 12, Solombrino joined with several others with felony convictions and organizations that help the formerly incarcerated, to give ethnic communities in Los Angeles County a shout-out about the proposition that can help change the lives of those branded as felons for minor nonviolent crimes.
“I wasn’t a bad person,” Solombrino said at the Los Angeles news briefing. “I was a person who made bad decisions…I got help and I’m now contributing to society.”
Another speaker, Joseph Barela, told the gathering he obtained a job at Fred Brown after he was rejected by other employers because of his felony record, which includes theft, receiving stolen property and resisting arrest. He said he learned that two or three of his felony convictions could be reduced when he attended a legal clinic in Southern California last month, a program hosted by the Oakland-based Californians for Safety and Justice, a criminal justice reform organization that is helping eligible residents take advantage of the groundbreaking penal code reclassifications.
“This is history in the making,” Barela said. “[The eligible] have nothing to lose – only something to gain.”
Proposition 47 can also help reduce the state’s mounting criminal justice costs, a rise due to the dramatic increase in incarceration, said Hillary Blout, director of Proposition 47 initiatives at Californians for Safety and Justice. In her comments at the briefing, Blout said the crime rate in the state is about the same as it was in 1962 but that there are about five times as many in prison today.
“We’ve been sending people to prison, spending a lot of money and we’re no safer,” Blout said.
Proposition 47 can apply to those currently imprisoned as well as the formerly incarcerated. Blout said the initiative is important to communities of color because of the disproportionately large numbers of African Americans and Latinos in prisons. She said her organization is building coalitions with community groups and using its website (myprop47.org) to spread the word about sentencing reduction partly because the state government is not providing funding for an awareness campaign.
Such outreach important in Southern California because about 250,000 people in Los Angeles County are eligible for sentencing reduction, said Carol Clem, assistant public defender at the office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.
One member of the outreach coalition, the Los Angeles-based New Way of Life Reentry Project, is organizing legal clinics, distributing information on eligibility door-to-door and making presentations at community centers and churches, said Tiffany Johnson, the organization’s associate director.
The campaign will also have to be targeted because of the language barrier in some communities, said Paul Jung, an attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-LA (AAAJ).
“The criminal justice system is broken and AAAJ is working with communities of color who have been subject to over-policing and mass incarceration,” he said.
Jung said about 6,000 Asians in Los Angeles County – a population that also includes Filipinos and people of Pacific Island descent – are eligible for sentencing reductions. He said two-thirds of the 20,000 Asians incarcerated statewide are immigrants.
“Many of them are English-limited, which makes outreach more difficult,” Jung said. “If we don’t act, they may be left in the dark and may not benefit.”