At San Quentin, district attorneys and inmates agree on prison reform

In the last morning in San Quentin prison, the Los Angeles County is a distress. Atty. Nathan Hochman and more than a dozen prosecutors, killers, rapists and other serious criminals surrounded by a high -ceilinged meeting room.

Make a crime, one of these men probably did it.

“Most murders commit extremely violent crimes and are in a room that is convicted of a room that is not every day,” Hochman said.

Most of these men offered long sentences in ordinary blue uniforms, Marlon Arturo Melelanddez, a native of the murder.

Melendez sat in a “sharing circle ği, which could touch Hochman’s knees, which was destroyed by the rod. They had a chat about the decrease in gang severity in decades since Melendez was imprisoned more than 20 years ago and said that he found Melendez Hochman “interesting ..

In San Quentin, this kind of interaction between prisoners and guests is not unusual. For decades, the Gulf by prison has been making a different imprisonment by carrying a system that focuses on accountability and rehabilitation.

Like other men in the room, Melendez takes responsibility for the damage caused by the damage and works to be a better man every day. When he introduces himself, he named his victims – acknowledges that his actions cannot be taken back, and at the same time he accepts that he does not need to remain the same man who attracts the trigger.

Melendez or no one of these guys walked or not, the worst locking of California once, now offers them the chance to change and is the most difficult place for prisoners.

Creating this culture, Gov. Gavin Newsom is a prison theory and practice that he wants to make standard throughout the state.

It was called the California model, but as I have written before, it is a widespread practice in other countries (and even in several places in the United States). It is based on a simple reality of imprisonment: most people entering the prison emerge again. Public security demands that they behave differently when they do.

San Francisco’s regional lawyer Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco’s regional lawyer Brooke Jenkins, “Either we pay money to keep them here or if they are hurting someone, we pay money,” he said.

Jenkins was the organizer of this unusual day to better understand how the California model works and that even the lawyers of criminal challenging regional lawyers should support transforming our prisons.

As California, as promised by the recent ones, as you move away from the progress of a ten -year progressive criminal justice with new pressures Recommendation 36 (Expected to increase the population of the state prisoner), focusing on rehabilitation on the punishment, continues to progress with a controversial plan to rebuild the prison culture for both prisoners and guards.

Despite a challenging economic year that requires the state to reduce expenditures, it remained more than $ 200 million from the previous budget to renew the Newsom San Quentin, so that the outdated facilities can support more than locking people in the cells.

Anyway, a portion of this construction, which is already realized, is expected to be completed next year. San Quentin will make the most visible example of the California model. However, the changes in how prisoners and guards interact and which rehabilitation opportunities are present continues in prisons throughout the state.

It is a delayed and deep transformation with the potential to reshape what it means not only to improve public security and save money in the long run, but also what it means to be imprisoned throughout the country.

The difficulty of helping Jenkins to understand and value more prosecutors to understand and value this metamorphosis can be very important to help the public support him – especially for DA’s with a system that suffers from a system that suffers from men (usually disgusting). Or, like many people in San Francisco and Los Angeles, like California, they were tired of California’s perception that he was soft to criminals.

“We must admit that all of us are not moderate or progressive, but we are still moderate reforms,” Jenkins said. He started to work after the success of the progressive predecessor Chesa Boudin and a change in the policy of crime in San Francisco.

Nevertheless, vocal about the need for the second chance. According to him, the prison reform is more than the California model, but a wider lens, which includes imprisoned people’s perspectives and their views on rehabilitation.

“Culture in culture [district attorney’s] The office is fair. ”

Rehabilitation makes sense for a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer Hochman, who strongly handed over progressive George Gascón last year. A Fyodor Dostoyevsky likes to explain the quote: “The degree of civilization in a society emerges by entering prisons.”

“In my perfect world, the education system, the family system, the community, would do this on the front, so that these people would not be in the position of a crime in the first place,” he said. However, when this fails, it depends on the criminal justice system to help people correct themselves.

Although he is perceived as a challenging on the crime (he prefers the crime fairly), he is so determined that a new male central prison-paw (billions) in Los Angeles district is an expensive (billions) and non-popular idea.

“Los Angeles County absolutely fails because our prisons and prisons are mercilessly insufficient,” he said.

It is fast to add that rehabilitation is not for everyone. Some are not ready for that. Some don’t care. San Quentin prisoners join him. Vocals violently about who is transferred to prison, knowing that his success is based on having people who want to change – a bandit prisoner in San Quentin can destroy it for all of them.

“This must be a choice. You must understand it yourself,” Oscar said. Now, 32, “CDC Baby”, referring to the California Correction and Rehabilitation Department – and behind bars since the age of 18. He gives San Quentin to help him accept responsibility for his crimes and help him see a way forward.

When the California model works, it is clear what its value is, as regional lawyers see. Men, who was nothing but once dangerous, have the option to live with different values ​​with different lives. Even if they continue to be imprisoned.

“After being accepted as the worst, I am a new man today, Mela Melendez said. “Hopefully (regional lawyers) have been able to see a real change in those who lived with them, and they were convinced that rehabilitation was more efficient for punishment and that decent justice with restoration was better for everyone.”

Other imprisoned men in Melendez and San Quentin want us to see them more than their worst actions. And such as Jenkins and Hochman, even prosecutors who put them behind the bars, sometimes with three -digit sentences, they see that they do not always determine the future of the past and invest in their changes in the safer communities.