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What’s working:
Schwarzenegger signs two promising bills
By Globe Staff
Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two bills into law
recently that have the potential to improve the
rehabilitation process of youth and adults in
California’s criminal justice system.
The Family Communications Act, SB 1250, authored by Senator
Leland Yee of San Francisco and sponsored by the Oakland advocacy group Books
Not Bars, will help families stay in touch with their loved ones inside youth
prisons — a critical part of helping youth succeed once they’re released.
Though the Division of Juvenile Justice (formally California Youth Authority)
is in the midst of drastically reducing its population, more than 1,000 youth
still languish in juvenile prisons. For the remaining youth and their family
members, this new legislation is a victory.
This bill also marks another victory
for the advocacy community that has worked for many years to close the Division
o Juvenile Justice while also making the system better until it closes. Though
this legislation is seen by many as common sense practice, without it, youth
were not only locked away but also shut off from their families, thereby thwarting
their rehabilitation process.
The Family Communication Act will:
• Provide
four free calls to the youth’s family each month.
• Allow youth to
speak on the phone to family, clergy or counsel in their native language.
• Provide
blank paper, envelopes, postage and pencils or pens to youth to encourage correspondence
with family and clergy.
• Translate youths’ rights documents into
Spanish and other languages, and provide translated materials to parents or guardians
during orientation.
• Notify parents 60 days before a scheduled parole consideration
hearing.
• Alert parents within 24 hours of a youth’s suicide attempt
or medical emergency.
The governor also signed the Keeping Families Whole Act,
AB 2070, authored by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles. This new law
will make it easier for parents in an institution, prison or residential drug
treatment to maintain their parental rights when it is in their children’s
best interests. The Keeping Families Whole Act won bipartisan support throughout
the legislative process.
This groundbreaking legislation will:
• Require
that social workers document, and that courts consider, the barriers that imprisoned
parents or parents in residential drug treatment face in accessing services and
maintaining contact with their children.
• Require that the court take into
account any good faith efforts that parents make to maintain contact with their
children.
• Allow the possibility of a sixmonth extension of reunification
services where specified criteria are met, especially when it’s in the
best interest of the child.
• Allow for an exception to the strict requirement
that proceedings for termination of parental rights be initiated if a child has
been in foster care for 15 out of the previous 22 months, in cases of parental
incarceration or institutionalization.
• Require the court to consider the
parent’s criminal history only when it substantially relates to his or
her parental ability.
