-San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2011 by Marisa Lagos
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/20/MNL91M01HD.DTL&type=printable

“But the larger question is, once you get to the jurisdictions that are dubious about realignment, that have not bought into rehabilitation as the main goal of the justice system, are we just going to see people gaming the system?”

-San Francisco Chronicle, November 26, 2011 by Marisa Lagos
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/25/BAI81M2O5V.DTL#ixzz1f1oEg6us

“While it is true that a small number of people commit the vast majority of crimes, we also know that they get tired and age out of crime and that keeping punishing older criminals has no effect,” said Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at UC Berkeley’s law school. “The problem with that argument is that they are saying people don’t age out, and all research says the opposite.”

KPCC-FM, Air Talk, November 8, 2011 Host Larry Mantle
http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2011/11/08/21307/how-young-is-too-you

“There is an emerging consensus around the country that this is cruel and unusual punishment. Even where it’s authorized by statute, it almost is never done, which is the definition of ‘unusual.’ Second, the US is almost alone around the world in using punishment like this for children. So, there is an international emerging sense of decency that needs to be considered.”

The Sacramento Bee, October 21, 2011 by Andy Furillo
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/21/3992502/prison-realignment-reduces-time.html

“This law is just designed to say: Let’s be smarter. Let’s make sure that violent people are behind bars – that’s what we all want. And for the property offender, the drug offender types, let’s come up with a penalty that can be served at the local level and won’t cost as much.”

-KQED-FM, California Report, October 4, 2011 Reporter Scott Shafer
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201110040850/a

“The data kind of speaks for itself. Juvenile crime has been going down pretty dramatically. We haven’t seen any increase in youth ending up in the prison system, so the results look pretty positive.”

-Colorlines, October 5, 2011 by Jorge Rivas
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/10/study_locking_juvenile_offenders_behind_bars_is_costly_and_ineffective.html

“We need to reduce incarceration of young people to the very small dangerous few. And we’ve got to recognize that if we lock up a lot of kids, it’s going to increase crime.”

-KQED-FM, Forum, October 6, 2011 Host Dave Iverson
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201110060930

“There’s over 20 counties that currently have court-ordered caps on their jails…. By all indications, many of these jails have much lower risk people who, with some smart programming, can be moved out to make room for the state folks.”

-The New York Times, October 8, 2011 by Jennifer Medina
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/california-begins-moving-prisoners.html

“This is the largest change in the California state system in my lifetime,” said Barry Krisberg…. “Given that what we had was completely broken and was the most expensive, overcrowded and least effective in America, there’s some hope that this will change it.”

-HealthyCal, September 29, 2011 by Heather Tirado Gilligan
http://www.healthycal.org/archives/5939

“Political rhetoric – especially tough-on-crime rhetoric – is what got California into its corrections problem in the first place,” Krisberg said. “In our zeal to punish offenders, we’ve punished ourselves,” he said, citing the significant chunk of the state budget that goes to prisons.

-Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2011 by Alexa Vaughn
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/nation/la-na-prison-guards-20110930

But within public and private systems, some guards think their actions have no consequences because the process for punishing them is so convoluted, said Barry Krisberg. “Screenings are a good start, but what we need is far better training in terms of what the expectations of the jobs are, better supervision to identify potential problems and ways to deal with complaints about their behavior,” Krisberg said.

-National Public Radio, September 29, 2011 by Richard Gonzalez
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/29/140901846/californias-new-prison-policy-has-some-skeptics

The state’s plan is called “realignment.” It shifts certain functions from the state to the counties, says Barry Krisberg….  “With a state with 58 counties and the diversity of California,” he said, “what we’re going to see is 58 varieties of realignment.”

Contra Costa Times, September 18, 2011 by Matt O’Brien
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_18923286?nclick_check=1

“The theory behind these prisons was we’ll collect all the worst people in one place and that will make the rest of the prisons safer and easier to manage. But they weren’t necessarily the most dangerous, violent criminals. And the levels of violence in the other places didn’t really go down.”

The Bay Citizen, August 30, 2011 by Jennifer Gollan and Sydney Lupkin
http://www.baycitizen.org/education/interactive/education-vs-prisons-shifting-priorities/

“The growth in spending for pay and benefits for prison guards, prison health care mandated by various lawsuits, and the extraordinary amounts of money we are paying prison doctors” all contribute, he said. “California is clearly the worst in the U.S. for what we get and what we spend. California has the largest prison system in the U.S., it is the most expensive per capita rate in the U.S. and the state has some of the highest recidivism rates of any state in the nation.”

KAWL News, August 24, 2011 by Chris Connelly
http://bit.ly/p6oIQ8

I think people need to understand that the drug war has failed utterly, in terms of reducing the problem of addiction. It’s driven down the cost of drugs. On the street today, drugs are cheaper than they were 40 years ago and more plentiful and of much higher potency. That doesn’t sound like a victory.

KQED-FM, Forum, August 16, 2011 Host Scott Shafer
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201108161000

“The three strikes law certainly has had a significant effect on increasing the prison population. Between the third strike provision and the second strike provision, there are almost 35,000 prisoners who are there specifically because of this law. The fact that they’re staying so long increases the prison-crowding situation.”

San Francisco Chronicle, Capitol Notebook, August 13, 2011 by Marisa Lagos
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/12/BAHC1KLOIK.DTL&type=politics

UC Berkeley’s Barry Krisberg noted that all of the new commissioners come from a law enforcement background—there’s a former prison official, a prosecutor, a sheriff and a parole administrator…. “Where are the drug treatment experts, the mental health services people, the faith-based community, who might bring a different sensibility?” he asked. “On the surface, it looks like the same stuff.”