Access to Justice

By Aaron Glantz
New America Media

Is BART the most racist transit agency in the nation?

That’s a question Bay Area residents should be asking after the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday that it was opening an investigation into the transit agency’s handling of BART police officer Johannes Mehserle’s fatal shooting of Oscar Grant. The investigation, which the Justice Department confirms is being launched together with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco. But it is not the first effort by the Obama administration to rein in BART over civil rights.

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The involuntary manslaughter conviction of Johannes Mehserle in the shooting death of Oscar Grant is a near legal and political textbook example of a conviction that satisfies almost no one.

Grant’s family members and supporters were outraged at the verdict. To them, it was yet another in the long train of cases where a police officer wantonly guns down an African-American, gets a half-hearted prosecution before a jury with few or no blacks, and in the rare instances when the cop is convicted, gets a hand slap of a sentence.

By Sam Gold
National Organization of Injured Workers

First of all let's get something straight; there was no reform of Workers' Compensation, period! Call it whatever you want, but don't you dare call it a reform!

The word "reform" is defined in many ways; Here are some examples:

1. To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition.
2. To abolish abuse or malpractice in: reform the government.
3. To put an end to (a wrong).
4. A change for the better; an improvement.

Can you honestly say that what occurred in the legislature in 2004 with Senate Bill 899 meets any of these definitions?

By Cathy Cockrell (interview of criminologist Barry Krisberg)
UC Berkeley NewsCenter

Q. The public mood on crime and punishment appears to go in cycles. Where would you say we are today?

A. We're actually in a good place at the moment, I think. Crime is way down nationally and in California, and there isn't support for building new prisons or expanding corrections. Recent opinion polls show that the public opposes most cuts in public spending, but does support reductions in prison budgets. Our terrible financial crisis may be giving rise to smarter policies.

For juvenile justice, it's an interesting time. Both nationwide and on the state level, the number of kids (ages 12 to 18) who are locked up is substantially down. In 2004 there were roughly 7,000 inmates in California's youth prisons; now there are about 1,400. There are fewer than 800 youth locked up in New York State today. Most of the major states are reducing the number of kids in custody.

By Gene Stonebarger

The California Legislature long ago recognized the dangers associated with collecting and maintaining consumers’ personal identification information, finding that the practice put the physical safety of consumers at risk and jeopardized consumers’ financial security due to identify theft and credit card fraud. In response, the Legislature enacted an amendment to the Song Beverly Credit Card Act in 1990 to protect privacy rights guaranteed to consumers by Article 1, Section 1 of the California Constitution. A recent State Court of Appeal ruling now threatens to open a loophole in this law, enabling retailers to collect detailed personal information on customers who pay with credit cards.

By Beth Capell

We are pleased to see that a Superior Court has agreed with our colleagues at Consumer Watchdog that the refusal of the Department of Managed Health Care to refer denials of care for autism to independent medical review was an underground regulation as well as a violation the Mental Health Parity statute, as reported by the LA Times.

by David M. Greenwald
Editor
California Progress Report

A report was released earlier this week by the Death Penalty Information Center. It concludes that states are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty, draining state budgets during times of economic crisis when money could be used more effectively on other programs.