Tag: Brian Kaneda

Newsweek reports that more than a third of federally incarcerated people with coronavirus are now in one institution, Terminal Island Prison in Southern California.

Families of incarcerated people and criminal justice advocates condemned the failure of state officials to act urgently in order to protect people in prisons, one of the populations most vulnerable to severe illness and death caused by the coronavirus.

Community organizers Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Justice LA and Color of Change mobilized more than 770 people to provide public comment yesterday to the newly formed Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee on COVID-19. The comments demanded a “Decarceration Budget” that shifts spending away from corrections and incarceration and toward community-based services and housing.

“We celebrate each commutation that Gov. Newsom granted to people who face danger from COVID-19. However, many people applied for commutations before our current health crisis and are still waiting for an answer,” says Amber-Rose Howard, executive director of CURB. “If our governor is listening to the public – whose voices have been loud on this – and to public health professionals, he has to immediately accelerate the pace and increase the number of people freed, especially older people who are in the most danger, through commutations, medical release and any other tool of freedom his vast authority grants him.”