Category: American Injustice System,

There Is No Crisis At The Border – And DHS Stats Prove It

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

Due to a combination of changed demographics and improved economic conditions, the era of large-scale illegal migration by Mexicans to the U.S. – the reason cited for building a wall – is over. Today, in a phenomenon that began in the past five years, most of the people apprehended at the border are from Central America and reflect primarily the violent conditions in those countries.

…The “crisis,” from the perspective of administration officials, is that people from Central America are seeking asylum. It is not just an issue of illegal entry, since, as discussed earlier, the data show Border Patrol apprehensions of family units have actually declined slightly compared with the same period last year. Members of the administration would also like to discourage individuals from going to a lawful port of entry to avail themselves of the right under U.S. and international law to apply for asylum. Donald Trump made that clear in a tweet that declared individuals should be sent home without access to “judges or court cases.”

There Is No Crisis At The Border – And DHS Stats Prove It

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The Bail Trap – The New York Times

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,Leave a comment

On average, a couple of hundred cases pass through Brooklyn’s arraignment courtrooms every day, and the public defenders who handle the overwhelming majority of those cases rarely get to spend more than 10 minutes with each client before the defendant is called into court for arraignment.

…The sheer speed of the arraignment process makes it virtually impossible for the court to make informed decisions. Prosecutors have nothing to go on but a statement from the police and possibly a complaining witness, and defense lawyers know only what they’ve been able to glean from their brief interviews and perhaps a phone call or two. It’s in this hurried moment, at the very outset of a criminal case, before evidence has been weighed or even gathered, that a defendant’s freedom is decided. The stakes are high, and not only for the obvious reason that jail is an unpleasant and often dangerous place to be. A pretrial stretch in jail can unravel the lives of vulnerable defendants in significant ways.

***

… ‘‘He thought it was a beer,’’ Tomlin guesses. ‘‘He opens the bag up, it was a soda. He says, ‘What you got in the other hand?’ I says, ‘I got a straw that I’m about to use for the soda.’ ’’ The officer asked Tomlin if he had anything on him that he shouldn’t. ‘‘I says, ‘No, you can check me, I don’t have nothing on me.’ He checks me. He’s going all through my socks and everything.’’ The next thing Tomlin knew, he says, he was getting handcuffed. ‘‘I said, ‘Officer, what am I getting locked up for?’ He says, ‘Drug paraphernalia.’ I says, ‘Drug paraphernalia?’ He opens up his hand and shows me the straw.’’

…When it was Tomlin’s turn in front of the judge, events unfolded as predicted: The assistant district attorney handling the case offered him 30 days for a guilty plea. After he refused, the A.D.A. asked for bail. The judge agreed, setting it at $1,500. Tomlin, living paycheck to paycheck, had nothing like that kind of money. ‘‘If it had been $100, I might have been able to get that,’’ he said afterward. As it was, less than 24 hours after getting off work, Tomlin was on a bus to Rikers Island, New York’s notorious jail complex, where his situation was about to get a lot worse.

… Punched, kicked and stomped, Tomlin received medical attention, his face monstrously misshapen, his left eye swollen shut.

…Tomlin’s eye was still swollen shut on Dec. 10, three weeks after his arrest, when he returned to court. At this hearing, prosecutors handed over a report from the police laboratory, which had tested the drinking straw. At the top of the report, in bold, underlined capital letters, were the words ‘‘No Controlled Substance Identified, Notify District Attorney.’’

…Tomlin had lost three weeks of income, was subjected to brutal physical violence and missed Thanksgiving dinner with his family. But he resisted the pressure to plead guilty. His previous convictions all came from pleas, most of them made with bail looming over him. He knows the bitter Catch-22 of pleading guilty to get out of jail. ‘‘It feels great to go home,’’ he says. ‘‘Anybody’s happy to go home. But at the same time, it feels bad, because that’s more damage on your record.’’

***

…On the night of March 18, Adriana realized she was running low on diapers. A friend at the shelter who also had a child agreed to keep an eye on her daughter, and Adriana headed to a nearby Target. This was after curfew, and when a staff member saw Adriana leaving without her daughter, she called the police.

…Before her arraignment two days later, Adriana explained to her public defender what happened. Her friend could confirm that she was looking after the baby, she said. The lawyer told Adriana she’d do her best to get her released on her own recognizance. But when Adriana appeared in front of Judge Rosemarie Montalbano, the assistant district attorney asked for bail to be set at $5,000. Adriana had no criminal record and had never failed to make a court appearance, but the prosecutor cited an ‘‘A.C.S. history,’’ meaning that Adriana and her daughter had previous contact with the Administration for Children’s Services. This was true but misleading. The A.C.S. report involving Adriana had found that she wasn’t responsible for any neglect or abuse. What the A.C.S. did find was violence and coercion on the part of her boyfriend; this is how Adriana landed a spot in the domestic-violence shelter.

But arraignments happen quickly. Just as there was no time to track down Adriana’s friend to confirm that her daughter hadn’t been left unsupervised, there was no time to find out what the A.C.S. order actually said. The judge set bail at $1,500. Adriana’s public defender couldn’t believe it. ‘‘Judge, I’m going to ask you to state the reason for setting bail in this case,’’ she said, according to the court transcript. ‘‘Thank you, counsel,’’ was the judge’s only reply.

…With no way to come up with $1,500, Adriana spent the next two weeks on Rikers Island. Her bail made it harder for her to fight her case, but it also effectively dismantled the new life she was trying to build for herself and her daughter. She lost her bed at the shelter, and her child was living with strangers.

…Adriana’s lawyers tried to get her bail lifted, but they ran into another common problem facing defendants: Once a judge sets bail, other judges are often reluctant to second-guess their colleague’s decision. If they free a defendant who commits a crime while out on bail, the blowback from politicians, police unions and the tabloid press can be substantial. ‘‘I have no idea what motivated Judge Montalbano to set bail,’’ said Judge Andrew Borrok at one of Adriana’s hearings, four days after her arraignment. Still, he said, ‘‘I’m not inclined to change what’s been done.’’

…The judge ordered Adriana released. She could begin reassembling her life, finding a new shelter, retrieving whatever remained of her possessions. But her baby was still in foster care, and her case still wasn’t resolved. In June, a judge finally agreed to dismiss her case if she wasn’t arrested for the next six months. As this story went to press, five months after her arrest, she was still fighting in family court to regain custody of her daughter.

Outside the courtroom after the hearing for her release, Scott Hechinger, who helped coordinate Adriana’s defense, was exasperated. ‘‘Remember,’’ he said, ‘‘this is all about some diapers! Bail changes the conversation. If bail hadn’t been set, Adriana wouldn’t have to be negotiating to get out of Rikers. She’d just be released.’’

***

…Nearly three-quarters of a million aren’t in prison at all but in local city and county jails. Of those in jails, 60 percent haven’t been convicted of anything. They’re innocent in the eyes of the law, awaiting resolution in their cases. Some of these inmates are being held because they’re considered dangerous or unlikely to return to court for their hearings. But many of them simply cannot afford to pay the bail that has been set.

…The federal government doesn’t track the number of people locked up because they can’t make bail. What we do know is that at any given time, close to 450,000 people are in pretrial detention in the United States — a figure that includes both those denied bail and those unable to pay the bail that has been set. Even that figure fails to capture the churn of local incarceration: In a given year, city and county jails across the country admit between 11 million and 13 million people. In New York City, where courts use bail far less than in many jurisdictions, roughly 45,000 people are jailed each year simply because they can’t pay their court-assigned bail. And while the city’s courts set bail much lower than the national average, only one in 10 defendants is able to pay it at arraignment. To put a finer point on it: Even when bail is set comparatively low — at $500 or less, as it is in one-third of nonfelony cases — only 15 percent of defendants are able to come up with the money to avoid jail.

…The open secret is that in most jurisdictions, bail is the grease that keeps the gears of the overburdened system turning. Faced with the prospect of going to jail for want of bail, many defendants accept plea deals instead, sometimes at their arraignments. New York City courts processed 365,000 arraignments in 2013; well under 5 percent of those cases went all the way to a trial resolution. If even a small fraction of those defendants asserted their right to a trial, criminal courts would be overwhelmed. By encouraging poor defendants to plead guilty, bail keeps the system afloat.

…. Without bail — and the quick guilty pleas that it produces — courts would come under significant strain. ‘‘The system would shut down,’’ Goldberg says. ‘‘A lot of the 250 people who were waiting to be arraigned in Brooklyn last night would all be coming back to court soon to go forward with a trial for a misdemeanor that no one has any interest in pursuing.’’

…In nonfelony cases in which defendants were not detained before their trials, either because no bail was set or because they were able to pay it, only half were eventually convicted. When defendants were locked up until their cases were resolved, the conviction rate jumped to 92 percent. This isn’t just anecdotal; a multivariate analysis found that even controlling for other factors, pretrial detention was the single greatest predictor of conviction. ‘‘The data suggest that detention itself creates enough pressure to increase guilty pleas,’’ the report concluded.

…The numbers showed what everyone familiar with the system already knew anecdotally: Bail makes poor people who would otherwise win their cases plead guilty.

…The long-term damage [emphasis: New York Times] that bail inflicts on vulnerable defendants extends well beyond incarceration. Disappearing into the machinery of the justice system separates family members, interrupts work and jeopardizes housing.

The Bail Trap – The New York Times

Jeezus….

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

For every day a defendant stayed in the Alcorn County jail, $25 was knocked off his or her fine. Tillman had been locked up for five days as she awaited her hearing, meaning she had accumulated a credit of $125 toward the overall fine of $255. (The extra $155 was a processing fee.) Her balance on the fine was now $130. Was Tillman able to produce that or call someone who could?

…That night, Tillman says, she conducted an informal poll of the 20 or so women in her pod at the Alcorn County jail. A majority, she says, were incarcerated for the same reason she was: an inability to pay a fine. Some had been languishing in jail for weeks. The inmates even had a phrase for it: “sitting it out.” 

…Justice Sandra Day O’Connor called it “fundamentally unfair” to send him to prison for nonpayment without “considering whether adequate alternative methods of punish[ment]” — like community service or a payment plan — were available. To do otherwise was to deprive a person of his freedom simply because he happened to be poor.

…In areas hit by recession or falling tax revenue, fines and fees help pay the bills. 

…Financial penalties on the poor are now a leading source of revenue for municipalities around the country. In Alabama, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center took up the case of a woman who was jailed for missing a court date related to an unpaid utility bill. In Oregon, courts have issued hefty fines to the parents of truant schoolchildren. Many counties around the country engage in civil forfeiture, the seizure of vehicles and cash from people suspected (but not necessarily proven in court) of having broken the law. In Louisiana, pretrial diversion laws empower the police to offer traffic offenders a choice: Pay up quickly, and the ticket won’t go on your record; fight the ticket in court, and you’ll face additional fees.

….By threatening a defendant with incarceration, a judge is often able to extract cash from a person’s family that might otherwise be difficult to touch. “A typical creditor,” he says, “can’t put you in a steel cage if you can’t come up with the money.”

…Among the findings, released the following spring, was evidence that the city had been routinely jailing residents for failure to pay criminal-justice-related debt and that “the court’s practices impose unnecessary harm, overwhelmingly on African-American individuals.” 

…Combing Census Bureau data and city audit documents, the commission noted that of nearly 4,600 American municipalities with populations above 5,000, the median received less than 1 percent of their revenue from fines and fees. But a sizable number of cities, like Doraville, Ga., or Saint Ann, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, have reported fines-and-fees revenue amounting to 10 percent or more of total municipal income.

…“But you can also see,” she added, “that the biggest expenditure, by far, for the city of Corinth is public safety” — including court and police services, or the very people extracting the fines.

…A Municipal Court staff member picked up on the third ring. “Could you answer a question for me?” West asked the woman. “I’m wondering what would happen if I was unable to pay a speeding ticket. Would I lose my driving license?”

“What do you mean?” she responded. And then: “You’d go to jail.”

…Traveling around Corinth, Wood found that nearly everyone she met had experience with the local courts or could refer her to someone who did. Soon her voice mail inbox filled with messages from people who wanted to share their stories. The callers were diverse in terms of age and race. They were black and white; they were young and old. But they shared with Kenneth Lindsey a precipitous relationship to rock-bottom poverty. If not completely destitute, they were close — a part-time job away from homelessness, a food-stamp card away from going hungry.

…And there was Glenn Chastain, who owed $1,200 for expired vehicle tags — and, because he had missed one hearing, was denied the chance to pay a partial fine. Chastain spent 48 days at the Alcorn County Correctional Facility. He said he was in a unit occupied by accused rapists and murderers and was beaten by inmates until his ribs were bruised and his face was a mask of blood. He smiled to show me where one of his teeth had been knocked out. 

…Nearly every one of Lindsey’s court fees related, in one way or another, to his vehicle: expired registration fees, expired driver’s licenses. He couldn’t pay for the right paperwork or pay down his fines, but he couldn’t stop driving either, because driving was how he got to the auto body shop where he picked up the odd shift. 

…“They come out of jail with absolutely nothing but more problems, and then it just keeps on going and going, and it’s like they’re bound, and they feel like they can’t escape,” Andrea Hurst, Glenn Chastain’s girlfriend, told me about her boyfriend and others who find themselves in similar circumstances. “Their license gets taken, and hey, you get pulled over one day, because the cop knows you got no license, and then back to jail again. You just lost that job again.”

How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor – The New York Times

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Where Does Illegal Immigration Mostly Occur? Here’s What The Data Tell Us

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

When it comes to people in the country without proper documentation, the majority of them didn’t cross the Mexican border at all. Most of them came to the United States legally — but then don’t leave.

…Visa overstays have outnumbered people who enter the country illegally at the Southern border every year since 2007, according to a report by the Center for Migration Studies. The report’s authors estimate that the number of total visa overstays was 600,000 more than the total number of border crossers and that in 2014, visa overstays accounted for two-thirds of all new undocumented immigrants.

…Those caught by the U.S. government can apply for asylum if they can claim a credible fear that their lives would be in danger by returning to their home countries; some immigrants, in fact, turn themselves in to federal agents to do so. Apprehensions of people attempting to cross the border illegally, however, far outnumber the number of people requesting asylum at the border.

…It is unclear how many of these migrants applied for asylum after arriving in the U.S.[emphasis: Peanut Gallery]— but the total number of asylum cases has been increasing as well.

“A growing percentage of border crossers in recent years have originated in the Northern Triangle states of Central America,” wrote Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin of the Center for Migration Studies. “These migrants are fleeing pervasive violence, persecution and poverty, and a large number do not seek to evade arrest, but present themselves to border officials and request political asylum. Many are de facto refugees, not illegal border crossers,” the authors wrote.

Where Does Illegal Immigration Mostly Occur? Here’s What The Data Tell Us : NPR

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21 Savage Is in ‘One of the Worst Immigration Detention Centers’

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Race,Leave a comment

These conversations yielded a vivid and harsh picture: “Detained immigrants almost unanimously reported finding objects in the food” — a rock, a nail, a cockroach — and “being forced to eat rancid foods.”

…“The standard wait time for immigrants at Irwin wanting to visit the medical staff is between two days and two weeks,” and “once detained immigrants finally meet with medical personnel, their conditions are loosely diagnosed and their complaints are ignored.” In addition, “pregnant women at Irwin receive no prenatal care and are treated like all other detained immigrants.”

Officials at Irwin allegedly view due process as optional, according to stories from immigrants who have passed through the facility. “Some detained immigrants report being forced to sign documents without speaking to an attorney,” Project South notes. “Others stated that it took months before they had an initial appearance before a judge.”

21 Savage Is in ‘One of the Worst Immigration Detention Centers’ – Rolling Stone

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Immigrant rights attorneys and journalists denied entry into Mexico

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Two U.S. immigrant rights attorneys and two journalists who have worked closely with members of a migrant caravan in Tijuana said they had been denied entry into Mexico in recent days after their passports were flagged with alerts by an unknown government.

Immigrant rights attorneys and journalists denied entry into Mexico – Los Angeles Times

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Trump: ‘A lot of people in the NFL have been calling and thanking me’ for judicial reform

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

“A lot of [the protest] is having to do with reform, from what I understand,” he said. “Whether it’s criminal justice or whatever, it may be and they have different versions and everybody seemed to have a different version of it. But a lot of it had to do with that, and I took care of that.”

In boasting about the criminal justice bill, Trump also sidestepped questions from Brennan about his handling of race issues. He also echoed his past statements about low African-American unemployment, saying: “Best numbers they’ve had — literally the best numbers they’ve had in history. And I think they like me a lot and I like them a lot.”

Trump: ‘A lot of people in the NFL have been calling and thanking me’ for judicial reform | TheHill

oy…

Supreme Court blocks Louisiana abortion law from taking effect Monday

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Chick Stuff,, Gulf Coast Region,Leave a comment

Louisiana’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act has been blocked since its enactment in 2014, it requires a doctor to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the abortion is performed.

The state argues that the law is necessary to provide a higher level of physician competence, but critics say there is no medical justification for the law and it amounts to a veiled attempt to unlawfully restrict abortion.

In 2017, Judge John deGravelles, of the US District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, an Obama appointee, struck down the law, saying it would severely limit the number of providers available to perform abortions, result in the closure of clinics and “place added stress” on remaining facilities.

Supreme Court blocks Louisiana abortion law from taking effect Monday – CNNPolitics

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University snow day descends into ‘all out war’ between cops and students

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Schools,Leave a comment

Officers can be seen on video using tear gas and compressed air guns on the students, which were reportedly loaded with “pepper balls.” The non-lethal projectiles are basically paintball pellets filled with pepper spray.

It’s unclear whether the cops were campus police or from the Morgantown Police Department. Students were allegedly throwing beer bottles and other debris at them.

…“Kids having fun on a snow day, the police started the problems and caused the situation to escalate,” tweeted one person in response to WVU’s statement. “The use of tear gas was unacceptable! Let the kids sled and keep them safe, we don’t need another Kent State!”

University snow day descends into ‘all out war’ between cops and students

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Detroit officer as woman walks home in the cold: ‘what black girl magic looks like’ – CNN

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Local Interest,, Race,Leave a comment

Chief James Craig said the officer, a corporal in the Detroit Police Department, stopped the woman for expired registration. Her vehicle was towed, and as she walked to her home in the cold the officer posted a video on Snapchat saying “Bye Felecia.”

…Craig said the officer also made a reference to Black History Month, which he called even more problematic.

…The officer is under an internal investigation, but the department has begun moving to penalize him.

“I’m not troubled, I’m not disappointed, I’m angry,” Craig said. “This officer will be held accountable for his actions,” he said. “We are moving to remove his corporal rank.”

Detroit officer as woman walks home in the cold: ‘what black girl magic looks like’ – CNN

As long as officers of the law are allow to act like such hateful bigots, there will never be law and order, let alone justice.

New wave of ‘fake dates’ cause chaos in immigration courts

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

More than 1,000 immigrants showed up at courts across the United States on Thursday for hearings they’d been told were scheduled but didn’t exist, a lawyers’ group said, as the Justice Department struggles with an overloaded immigration court system and the effects of the recently ended partial government shutdown.

…Thursday’s problems are the latest example of US immigration authorities issuing a large number of inaccurate notices ordering immigrants to appear at hearings that, it later turns out, had never been scheduled.

Lawyers first told CNN last year that they’d observed a wave of what they call “fake dates” pop up. For instance, lawyers reported examples of notices to appear issued for nonexistent dates, such as September 31, and for times of day when courts aren’t open, such as midnight.

New wave of ‘fake dates’ cause chaos in immigration courts – CNNPolitics

This kind of treatment of people who are doing their part to follow our country’s law should be criminal.

Canada Is Sending A Generation Of Indigenous Children To Jail

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 Nearly 50 per cent of youth in Canadian jails are Indigenous.

…98 per cent (no, that is not a typo) of girls in Saskatchewan jails are Indigenous. In Manitoba, approximately 80 per cent of both girls and boys in custody are Indigenous.

…Forty-three per cent of all adult women in Canadian jails are Indigenous, yet Indigenous people make up only 5 per cent of Canada’s overall population.

Canada Is Sending A Generation Of Indigenous Children To Jail | HuffPost Canada

Whoa!

A controversial bill aimed to block protests like Standing Rock is back in the Wyoming Legislature | Local News | trib.com

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Environment,, Local Interest,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

After a veto by then-Gov. Matt Mead at the close of the 2018 budget session, legislation that would create criminal charges for impeding fossil fuel facilities and pipelines during protests is back in the Wyoming Legislature.

Similar in scope to bills introduced in statehouses across the country following the Dakota Access pipeline protests, Rep. Lloyd Larsen’s Crimes Against Critical Infrastructure bill was written with numerous fixes to address questions raised last year.

However, critics told lawmakers at a packed committee hearing Monday that the bill would still restrict people’s lawful right to protest.

A controversial bill aimed to block protests like Standing Rock is back in the Wyoming Legislature | Local News | trib.com

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Homeboy Industries & Father Greg

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Local Interest,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

By 1988, having buried an ever growing number of young people killed in gang violence, Father Boyle and parish and community members sought to address the escalating problems and unmet needs of gang-involved youth by developing positive opportunities for them, including establishing an alternative school and day care program, and seeking out legitimate employment.  They called this initial effort Jobs for a Future.  “Gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope,” Father Boyle has said.  “Nobody has ever met a hopeful kid who joined a gang.” 

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Jobs for a Future and Proyecto Pastoral, a community-organizing project begun at Dolores Mission, launched their first social enterprise business in an abandoned bakery that Hollywood producer Ray Stark helped them purchase.  They called it Homeboy Bakery.  

….Today, Homeboy Industries employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to 15,000 men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.

…Each year over 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles come through Homeboy Industries’ doors in an effort to make a positive change. They are welcomed into a community of mutual kinship, love, and a wide variety of services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management and parenting classes. Full-time employment is offered for more than 200 men and women at a time through an 18-month program.

…We offered a simple question, “What if we were to invest in this population rather than just endlessly incarcerate?” that has redirected our attention away from suppression and onto treatment and education. Homeboy played an integral role in replacing the “tough on crime” mantra that predominated in the 1980s and 1990s with a “smart on crime” model that many police and sheriff’s departments have adopted.

What this place discovered was that it was a lethal absence of hope that leads kids into gangs, and the fact that there was no way out of the cycle of gang violence compounded people’s despair. So Homeboy offered this model, in the fullest sense, of community trumping gang.

… We have learned in that time that jobs are probably about 80% of what these folks need to redirect their lives. The other 20% is a mixture of therapeutic and support services. So, in addition to paying men and women to receive job training, we also require that they spend part of their working day here working on themselves. We offer education, therapy, tattoo removal, substance abuse treatment, legal assistance, and job placement services. We also offer six different social enterprise businesses where trainees can receive real job training that they can use immediately upon graduation from Homeboy. And we provide all of this in a trauma-informed, therapeutic community setting that also allows them to work on attachment repair and building healthy relationships with co-workers who may formerly have been members of rival gangs.

…In 1994, the ceiling leaked, the oven broke, and the bakery closed. Father Greg found new partners; a worker from the Southern California Gas Company repaired the oven free of charge and USC Medical Center stepped up and said they would buy whatever the bakery could turn out. The business of job training and re-entry grew. Total disaster struck in 1999 when the bakery burned down, but despite these obstacles, Homeboy continued to grow and expand. More social enterprise businesses and new, free social programs were added and by 2001, Homeboy Industries was an independent non-profit. …Today, Homeboy is located in gang-neutral downtown Los Angeles.

…Thousands of young people have since walked through the doors of Homeboy Industries looking for a second chance, and finding community, sanctuary, and family.

…Social enterprises are businesses that apply commercial strategies to improve the well-being of individuals rather than creating enterprises for profit. Homeboy is an organization with many true social enterprises where trainees are paid to learn job skills and take advantage of comprehensive services. By offering former gang members a place to work, Homeboy provides a place for them to learn soft skills, like administration and customer service, and also vocational skills from solar panel installation to pastry baking or catering. These jobs in Homeboy’s social enterprises, often the first “legit” employment our clients have ever held, give our clients confidence and self-esteem while enabling them to provide for their families.

The jobs our clients have through our social enterprises offer them alternatives to re-incarceration or a return to their former gang lives.

Homeboy’s Social Enterprises include:
Homeboy Bakery (storefront, wholesale, and online at homeboyfoods.com.)
Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery
Homegirl Café
Homegirl Catering
Homeboy Merchandise
Farmers Markets
Homeboy Diner at Los Angeles City Hall
Grocery – Salsa
Homeboy Café and Bakery in LAX Terminal 4

What services are offered at Homeboy?
Case Management
Tattoo Removal
Employment Services
Mental Health Services – individual therapy, substance abuse counseling, and group classes
Legal Services
Education – including academic, life skills, wellness and enrichment classes,and a partnership with LearningWorks Charter High School.
Solar Panel Training and Certification

…Homeboy Recycling is the newest venture at Homeboy.  We have partnered with Isidore Recycling who’s mission has been and still is to make recycling electronics easy, secure and accessible, while creating employment opportunities for people who have successfully exited California’s correctional system.

…All of Homeboy’s services, offered free of charge, are designed to equip our clients to successfully turn their lives around. Participants in the 18-month program are offered case management and comprehensive wrap-around services while at Homeboy. All of our services (with the exception of case management and individual therapy) are free and open to community clients as well.

…Homeboy Industries offers employment services to community clients. We provide assistance with developing job leads and building an individual’s marketing package to include resumes, references, and cover letters. Employment services assists with some transportation needs, offers free professional clothing, identification, certifications, work history documents, and other support services for individuals seeking employment.

Homeboy Industries – Father Greg |

(Yes, this is a break from the new cycle. Because we at the Peanut Gallery needed it!)

What a mensch this Father Greg, guy!

Transgender Asylum-Seeker Who Died In ICE Custody Was Beaten, Autopsy Shows | HuffPost

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, The Americas,Leave a comment

A transgender asylum-seeker who fell sick and died while being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement may have been beaten while in federal custody, according to an independent autopsy report released this week.

The body of 33-year-old trans woman Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez was marked by “deep bruises” and “contusions” consistent with “blows and/or kicks and possible strikes with a blunt object,” The Washington Post reported on Monday, citing the autopsy commissioned by Hernández’s family. Her wrists showed signs of extensive hemorrhaging, which the report said was “typical of handcuff injuries.”

…According to the Union-Tribune, ICE has yet to release a detainee death report for Hernández, even though Congress now requires the agency to finalize such reports within 60 days. It has been more than 180 days since Hernández died, the paper noted.

Transgender Asylum-Seeker Who Died In ICE Custody Was Beaten, Autopsy Shows | HuffPost

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OPINION: Sex workers don’t need aggressive prosecution to protect themselves

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Local Interest,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Krasner and his attorneys have begun to decline many prostitution charges, especially if it’s a worker’s first arrest. Those with multiple arrests are sometimes referred to Dawn Court, a diversion program that mandates services for sex workers in exchange for eventually clearing their records of at least some of their prostitution charges. 

Sex workers don’t need aggressive prosecution to protect themselves | Opinion

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