Please Sign the Petition to support AB1270
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We are a grass-roots group asking you to support AB 1270 (Ammiano), which seeks to restore the media’s ability to conduct pre-arranged in-person interviews with specific people in prison under the discretion of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). This bill would allow the media to provide more balanced information about our prison system, keep the public informed, and keep our institutions both transparent and accountable. (AB 1270 is sponsored by Californians United for a Responsible Budget, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, the Center for Young Women’s Development and the Youth Justice Coalition).
THE ISSUE
The 2011-2012 state budget allocates $9.2 billion in
taxpayer money to CDCR, yet public information
regarding our prisons is limited by CDCR’s
restrictive media regulations. Media representatives
can only conduct random interviews with a pool of
inmates pre-selected by the CDCR under current
regulations. In-person, pre-arranged interviews with
a specific inmate are only allowed if the media
representative is an approved visitor, in which case
they must come at regular visitation hours and are
prohibited from using any electronic recording
devices or cameras. Consenting inmates with
telephone privileges may engage in recorded
interviews with a media representative but
conversations are limited to 15 minutes.
Media is even more restricted access to the most
controversial correctional facilities such as the
secure housing units (SHU). Inmates detained in the
SHU are kept in total isolation without any visitation
and telephone privileges. These units have been
heavily critiqued for confining inmates in small
concrete cells for 23 hours of the day without any
contact for up to several months or even years,
conditions that have been shown to exacerbate
mental illness.
Although SHUs house only 5% of the inmate
population, the 2005 bi-partisan congressional
Commission on Safety and Abuse in American
Prisons reported that 70% of all California’s inmate
suicides occurred within this population. Without a
balanced depiction of the situation, it is impossible
for the public to fully understand and address
potential issues within our correctional facilities.
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