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California lawmakers voted to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to completely ban involuntary servitude, a change that would remove an exception in cases involving the punishment for a crime.
If passed by voters, the ballot measure would end mandatory work requirements for state prisoners, instead making jobs for those incarcerated voluntary.
“The current practice of forced labor does not prepare incarcerated people for success upon reentry and often prevents rehabilitative services,” said Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) during Thursday’s floor session. “Let us take this step to restore some dignity and humanity for the often forgotten individuals behind bars.”
The California Constitution mirrors the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. However, both allow involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
The first push to remove that exception from the state Constitution stalled in 2022 after the state Department of Finance estimated that barring forced labor could cost the state billions of dollars annually if the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation were forced to pay prisoners the minimum wage.
The proposed constitutional amendment is one of 14 bills introduced by the California Reparations Task Force, which has sought to create proposals and recommendations to address the injustices and inequities sustained by the descendants of African Americans enslaved in the U.S.
“As we do the work of reparations we refer to slavery as a relic of the past,” said Sen. Lola Smallwood Cuevas (D-Los Angeles). “But as I stand here today we have thousands of indentured servants in our penal system.” The measure passed the Senate and Assembly with bipartisan support.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson (D-Suisan City), chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, revived the proposed constitutional amendment last year. Wilson said the effort has nothing to do with changing wages for prisoners. But Wilson expects the issue of minimum wages for prisoners to come up next session.
An earlier version of the proposal would have made prison work optional, but it did not strike language in the Constitution that says “involuntary servitude is prohibited except to punish crime.”
After negotiations, the governor’s office and advocates came together last week and the new version of the proposal would remove the language. Currently, the Department of Corrections is permitted to require able-bodied inmates to work for as little as 35 cents an hour.
Carmen-Nicole Cox, director of government affairs at ACLU California Action, who has been involved in negotiations, said the governor’s “fingerprints” are on the measure. There was no debate on the Senate and Assembly floors during Thursday morning’s votes.
The new proposed amendment, through Assembly Bill 628, a companion bill to the ballot language, would make prison work optional by instituting a voluntary work program. The bill also explicitly says the state would not be required to pay prisoners minimum wage and that the secretary of the Corrections Department would set prison wages. This was an amendment that criminal justice advocates pushed back on in negotiations with the governor’s office.
“We’ve had to make our concessions,” Cox told The Times. She added that, despite those compromises on wages, a triumph for advocates was to include language that forbids disciplinary actions against incarcerated individuals for denying a work assignment. “We will be the first state to amend the constitution and explicitly say you can’t punish people for refusing work.”
If passed it will go into effect Jan. 1, 2025.
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]]>The post State senators respond to fentanyl, retail theft with legislation first appeared on WORLD DAILY INFO.
]]>A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the California senate on Monday announced a package of legislation to address the growing fentanyl crisis and untamed outbreak of organized retail thefts.
Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), who was sworn in as president pro tempore last month, recited sobering statistics to reporters as he introduced proposals he said will remedy the issues through a more rehabilitative approach.
“There are more than 12,000 drug overdose deaths a year in California. More than half of those deaths are fentanyl-related,” McGuire said. “Black and Latino communities have seen a 200% increase in overdose deaths since 2017. Native Americans had a 150% increase in overdose deaths in the same period. The Hoopa Valley tribe faces a fentanyl death rate eight times greater than the state average.”
The senate’s action comes after Assembly leaders this month presented their plans to remedy the issues, an indication that the drug and theft crises will be priorities this legislative session — and in California’s 2024 election.
The set of 14 bills announced by McGuire and other Democrat and Republican Senate leaders takes a sweeping approach. The legislation, if passed and signed by the governor, would increase access to treatment, enhance addiction services for those in the criminal justice system and penalize criminal trafficking of xylazine, or “tranq,” a horse tranquilizer laced in fentanyl.
Among those bills is SB 1144, authored by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), which will tighten regulations to help prevent stolen goods from being sold online.
Tinisch Hollins, executive director of the nonprofit Californians for Safety and Justice, called the package a “thoughtful approach to nuanced challenges.”
Hollins said the package is needed “in an environment where special interests are gaslighting Californians with destructive and ineffective rollbacks.”
She was referring to law enforcement agencies that have lobbied for changes to Proposition 47, a contentious ballot measure that reduced certain retail theft and drug offense charges to misdemeanors.
Contra Costa County Dist. Atty. Diana Becton called for a strategic approach that strays from a one-size-fits-all approach to public safety.
“I have seen firsthand the need to reimagine our approach to criminal justice,” she said. “To reexamine and reproach it through a lens of racial and socioeconomic disparity, with an eye to restorative justice programs and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent offenses.”
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